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 I'm noticing that many of us are reacting to another Trump presidency about the same as we did the first time. Resistance best describes it. We keep calling out the lies, the incompetence, the meanness, hoping that, magically, enough people are going to wake up, and rise up, and somehow keep this country, and the world, from going over the cliff it is currently speeding towards. But I'm not sure we grasp the fundamental difference between his victory this time around and that of 2016.

 Many people, including myself, are fleeing Facebook and starting to use Bluesky. Bluesky is nice, but in it's efforts to be a reincarnation of the old Twitter it has imposed a 300 character post limitation. So if I want to write anything of substance I need to do it here, and then link to it on Bluesky. The upside of that is that I can also link from other platforms, like FB.

Yesterday I posted on Facebook about the well know reggae song and the psalm 137 it was based on.  Today I want to dive into that a little deeper.. I read through psalm 137 a few more times and looked at some newer translations (other than the one by the old English king). The psalm can be be broken into three sections.

Please read my previous post before reading this.

It's New Years Eve 2023. My last post was just after Joe Biden was elected president in November of 2020. I guess I've been happy enough with the way things were progressing that I haven't felt the need to write anything. I suppose were many things I could have written about.

 Although Joe Biden came out on top the election was much closer than anyone had imagined. Democrats could not imagine that so many people would be willing to overlook Trump's racism, his lies, and his handling of the corona virus to ever vote for the man. Yet close to half of the country did.  It seems this country is hopelessly divided with little chance of finding common ground. Is this really true? It certainly is if you listen to the political rhetoric. Republicans think Democrats are all radical leftists who want to take their money and give it to immigrants.

This recent opinion piece predicts that Trump will resign for a deal that shields him and his criminal empire (a.k.a. his family) from prosecution.

Not good enough!

... and all the joy within you dies. It was 1967 when Grace Slick belted out those lyrics. 1967 certainly was a pivotal year for me. My first daughter was born in April and 4 months later I packed up our young family and left our home town of Long Beach, NY and headed for the sunny shores of San Diego. I don't think I was fully aware of just how deep those lies ran for at least another year or so but when it hit home, it hit hard. Growing up in the 1950s we were all feed this beautiful fantasy about America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Psychological manipulation is rampant in social media, we see it all the time, but the ultimate master at this game is none other than the tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump. Take for example this one innocuous sounding tweet "It's okay to say Merry Christmas now". Well of course you think. That sounds totally reasonable. Why shouldn't it be okay to say Merry Christmas? Wait, you mean it wasn't okay before to say Merry Christmas? I didn't know that? So you check it out and soon discover there was a "war on Christmas" led by those godless liberal thought police. Oh no you think.

The United States is a divided country. Toss out any issue and Americans will split pretty much 50/50 on it. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. The age old favorites, Coke vs. Pepsi, Ford vs. Chevy, just led to more choices without causing any harm. But when it comes to politics we are locked into an two party, either/or, situation that is harming us all. To survive our government is going to need some fundamental changes.<br />
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Winner takes all means we all loose.</h3>