Posts Tagged ‘Baldilocks’

Rise, Take Up Your Bed, and Walk

Posted: June 20, 2020 by julietteochieng in News/opinion, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , ,

by baldilocks

Originally posted July 15, 2004. Edited for contemporaneousness. I think that this is the third or fourth time I’ve reposted it.

What have Republicans/conservatives done for black Americans? I hear that question constantly when I disclose that I am a conservative Republican. Often I will provide the usual facts that seem to be missing from the historical lexicon these days: freed the slaves, were 90%+ in the majority in the votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and many other things in between. However, something about the question sets steel to my nerves.

Implied in the question is that a political party must “do something” for blacks. Not merely the usual “something” that a government entity does for all constituents, e.g. provides utilities, regulates commerce, etc., but something special.

That word special has taken on a new meaning in the past few decades and I think that it applies to the special items that liberals/leftists believe that the government should provide for the special people, the congenitally retarded developmentally disabled folk.

Yes, we special people–with special needs–require special handling: special education and special employment. You can’t expect black people to live up to the standards of normal people. Like paraplegics or the blind or the deaf or those born with Down Syndrome, singular accommodations must be made for the great handicap of being born with black skin. To liberals/leftists, black people are a crippled class that can never be made whole just as long as we can never be made not-black. What’s this notion called?

And if anyone tries to treat us as full, competent adults, the liberals/leftists will scream in righteous anger and protest about the unfairness of it all. And if some of us ‘handicapped’ verbally express the desire to be treated like full, competent adults and act in a manner that demonstrates that desire, we are deemed as traitors by those who share the same racial makeup and who buy into the blackness-as-handicap philosophy.

Yes, we are traitors to that cause, because if some of us refuse to take advantage of the special needs offered and succeed anyway, the vast majority of America will begin to think that we don’t really require the handicap parking space.

The vast majority of Americans will begin to think that we’re not really inferior after all. (Optimistically speaking, I believe that the majority think this anyway.)

However, this idea of our race-wide handicap is so ingrained in the mindsets of of the Left — of all races — that it has morphed into the very core of black identity: a black person who believes that black Americans need extra help to succeed is “authentically black.” Conversely, one who doesn’t buy it “isn’t really black” [Ed. note: Did Biden steal this notion from me?] and is, therefore, a traitor to black identity.

In short, blacks who believe in their own inferiority are the real deal and those who don’t, aren’t. How’s that for twisted dogma?

(This is why Candace Owens comes in for special scorn among the liberals/leftists, especially black ones. Having been born with not merely one, but the proverbial two strikes against her, her very existence gives lie to the entire notion of black inferiority. I’m sure that white supremacists hate her just as much.)

So, when some black people find out that Republicans don’t want to “do anything” for them except to encourage them to take part in the American dream of prosperity, stemming from work and ingenuity, they’re like, “WTF? Where’s my money?” So it is that white Republicans/conservatives, those whose ideology purports to treat blacks as equals are considered racists. We blacks who agree with this are merely sell-outs.

Those that have wondered why the Republican party don’t spend time on “minority outreach” miss the point. Republicans do outreach already. They just don’t do handicapped outreach, not unless you’re really handicapped.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Postmodernism and Her Babies

Posted: June 9, 2020 by julietteochieng in Uncategorized
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by baldilocks

Originally posted with a different title on September 22, 2013 at my old blog.

I notice patterns, more so now than back when I was a young woman–likely because my head was filled with fruitless things with which, all too often, young, single women occupy themselves. It was too crowded in there. Too bad. The ability to recognize patterns could have done me some good back then, both professionally and personally. But, it was what it was. And now, the patterns of life are pretty much all I think about. Allow me to expound on at least one.

Many people subscribe to subjective truth–that each person possesses his/her own truth that may be different from another individual’s truth and I have noticed how normalized this way of thinking has become.

Not long ago, I had a conversation with a man, a friend of a friend, on the definition of earning money. For whatever reason, he thought that any money that a person legally possessed was automatically earned–that legal possession and earning were synonymous. We went back and forth about this until I put forth the following scenario: a man is walking down a street and sees a dollar on the sidewalk. He picks it up and puts it in his pocket. Is it legally his? We agreed that it was. But did he earn it? I’d like to think I won the argument. But I found it alarming that, somehow, the gentleman I was talking to–a reasonably intelligent man–had bound up earning and the legal possession in his mind.

Then there was another conversation with another person about the ethnicity of Jesus the Christ. This lady was adamant that Jesus in the flesh was not a “white European” in the manner in which He is often rendered. I agreed, but in the conversation, the passage in The Revelation describing Jesus’ hair was cited. Here it is:

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow…

–Revelation 1:14 (KJV, emphasis mine)

The lady contended that this passage was describing the texture of His hair; that it was like wool, and, therefore concluded that Jesus was “black.” When I countered that the passage only described the color of His hair and nothing about the texture, she said that I wasn’t “interpreting” the passage correctly. This particular conversation did not end as hopefully as the previous one. (As for Jesus’ “race,” I am…ahem…agnostic on the subject. Moreover, I don’t think it matters.)

But whatever one thinks about the truth of the Bible or the proper translation from its original languages into English, it’s fascinating to note that even an English description of a thing is open to “interpretation” in the minds of some; that an explicit mention of a color has many meanings outside of its scope.

And, by fascinating, I mean scary.

I don’t think this type of thinking is an anomaly and I certainly don’t think that the widespread inculcation of this type of thinking is accidental.

A few years back, I coined the term Coconut Treatment. It didn’t catch on but it’s still useful for the purpose of recognizing this particular pattern:

Take a coconut, slice it in half, scoop out the meat from both halves and toss the meat—the substance–into the garbage disposal. Then take a pile of dog manure that Fido deposited into your yard, fill both halves of the coconut shells with it and glue the halves back together. What do you have now?

A “coconut.”

This is what has happened to words and concepts in the minds of many and it is the fruit of primary, secondary, and collegiate education also known as the Great Dumbing Down. The fruit has been emptied of its nutrients and then painted over or glued back together and called “fruit.” At some point, individual words and concepts became subjective. That is, they became fluid and not set in stone. My old blog friend, Jeff Goldstein, had a series of posts at his old blog on this phenomenon, and a lot of people didn’t get that he was talking about this very thing.

(I was going to say that the idea of subjective definition is more common among those with bachelor degrees or higher, but, in the past few years, I’ve noticed that many who don’t have much formal education also subscribe to the notion. The difference between the two groups is this: the latter are less likely to believe in subjective meaning and, even those who do will shake off this idea once it is pointed out and explained. The former tend to be too well indoctrinated.)

Being one of those with less formal education, I had long observed this phenomenon, but until I read Jeff’s intentionalism series, I didn’t know how to articulate it. Then, [in a long ago] Sunday Morning Book Thread at Ace’s place, OregonMuse, the book thread master, added to my informal education by posting the following

Postmodernism is a complex of concepts that asserts that all our constructs are just that, constructs; that there are no grand narratives or abiding truths; that all such grand narratives are illegitimate power moves; and that every perspective is necessarily a limited and local one.

and said, jokingly, that

One year of free AoSHQ Premium content goes to the first [person] who spots the giant logical hole in this worldview.

So, being insufficiently indoctrinated with the Coconut Treatment, I was the first one to point out the hole.

According to postmodern logic, postmodernism itself is a construct and, therefore, limited and local.

And, of course, that means that postmodernism, itself, is false, illegitimate and a mere power move, by the postmodern narrative’s own logic.

I started writing this post weeks ago [sic], and, after reading OregonMuse’s post, it occurred to me that postmodernism is the very fecund parent of subjective definition. Oh, I’m know that I’m not the first person to come to this conclusion, but, keep these things in mind: I have only a two-year degree and, what little I do know and think about comes from volitional reading, observation and from thinking ideas through to the end. (I had heard of postmodernism, but whenever I began to read anything written by its adherents, my eyes began to close.)

Something else that occurred to me about postmodernism, besides its logical fallaciousness, is that its advent has been long predicted. Speaking of the perilous times in the Last Days, Paul in his second letter to his protégé, Timothy, writes this:

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.

–2 Timothy 3:13 (KJV, emphasis mine)

Lying and being lied to.

Postmodernists like to make their written offerings seemingly complicated, but such are really quite simple, and I mean that in both senses.

It is but one big gigantic lie, negating itself even. Above, I likened postmodernism to a mother with countless children and those who read the Bible know who the father is. Subjective truth and definition? The Lie-baby.

It’s up to each individual to see the lies for what they are, to shake off the indoctrination.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Frenzy

Posted: June 2, 2020 by julietteochieng in News/opinion
Tags: , , , , , , ,

by baldilocks

What to make of a year in which there has been a worldwide pandemic punctuated by American mass rioting-looting-killing?

It’s only the beginning of June.

A lot of people will have a list of people to blame for the calamities which seem to have engulfed us – and they will probably be mostly correct. But my view is that this is a spiritual issue. Law enforcement personnel, politicians, regular citizens, terrorists and their fund sources, and all the rest of humanity are prone to the spirits they allow to rule them, whether the spirit is good or evil.

And there is only one that is good.

I say repeatedly that mobs are demonic. Here’s how those demons operate: they plant their anger and malevolence into human beings and when such human beings gather together, those emotions feed on each other and rev up the gang into a frenzy of violence and, often, horrific bloodshed. Any target of such violence will be unrecognizable after the mob gets through and this applies to human beings and to property. All rationality is banished – if it ever existed in the first place.

Therefore, we see mobs do mindless things like burn down their own neighborhoods or murder the pillars of their own community or attempt to murder innocent passersby or shoot at houses or gang rapes.  Mobs do things as a corporate body that some individual members of the mob would never do by themselves. And later, after the horrific event is over, individuals will often have no memory of what they were thinking during the mayhem. It’s because something else took over.

I’ve already told you how individuals can protect themselves from the demonic. However, I have a hunch that these spirits know that they are already defeated and decided to have a nationwide party before they are conquered.

That, I contend, is what we are seeing now.

The other emotion which these entities feed on is fear and it’s understandable that many are afraid right now. Heck, we’ve been told since mid-January that leaving the house could result in our deaths. Well, guess what? That is true. But the key to defeating fear is to step out of the house in faith and in wisdom.

Ask me how I know.

This frenzy of demons will end, and we will look back at it and wonder if it was a mass nightmare we all had.

But we will wake up. That’s what I think.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Jackson’s Party Trumps His Faith

Posted: May 23, 2020 by julietteochieng in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Old News

by baldilocks

24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:

25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

— Hebrews 10:24-25

The Reverend [sic] Jesse Jackson has other ideas.

Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is calling on people, especially religious leaders, not to follow through on President Donald Trump’s demand [sic] for churches and houses of worship to start reopening over Memorial Day weekend.

“To go to church or Sunday mass is an act of defiance, not an act of worship,” Jackson told WTOP’s Ken Duffy.

Trump on Friday asked governors to allow the reopening of places of worship, calling them “essential” and to “open them right now.”

The president also threatened state leaders that if they don’t follow through on his demand, he will “override the governors.”

Jackson, founder of the civil rights nonprofit Rainbow/PUSH coalition, believes that attendees who want to go out and worship should stay home until the threat of COVID-19 is over.

Jackson called on religious leaders and worshippers to “lead the way” and continue to obey coronavirus restrictions and social distancing measures.

“The virus does not have religion,” Jackson said. “It has no regard for your situation.”

First of all, the president isn’t giving orders to houses of worship. He is demanding that governors cease from standing in the way of corporate worship and that they come into alignment with the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

And, as mentioned in the Book of Hebrews, part of the free exercise of Christianity involves the assembling together of the faithful. This is simple.

Some questions I would ask Jackson if I thought he had a brain cell in his head that wasn’t devoted to enriching himself.

Do you believe that the God of the Bible is all powerful?
Do you believe that He is a healer and a protector if we ask it of him?
Do you believe the God rewards obedience to His Word?
Do you believe that God is more powerful than viruses?
What makes defiance and worship mutually exclusive?
If your governor outlawed Christianity, would you stop being a Christian?

I could go on, but my point is that Jackson is not a man of the Christian cloth and hasn’t been for a very long time – if he ever was one.

He’s just following orders dispensed from his Organized Left Puppet Masters.

Me in 2015:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the prototype for the Black Leader concept, though not an epitome of it; other actual black leaders like Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X were leaders organic to black populations/communities.

MLK certainly had rhetorical and financial support from outside of his community, but he didn’t start out that way.

(snip)

[T]he two nationally most well-known Black LeadersTM in this country are the Reverends [sic] Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and I contend that both are created personae, totally supported and publicized by the Organized Left.

A better label for the two? Community Organizers. You’ve heard of those before, have you not?

Also me a year earlier:

Sharpton has been a hilariously awful commentator for MSNBC for a bit. But even before that, MSNBC, CNN and even Fox News had been sticking microphones under him and other “civil rights leaders” as the go-to guys–and sometimes girls–as if they were the go-betweens for “the black community” and the rest of America.

“Civil rights leaders” almost never just spontaneously come to the fore anymore; they are created. The rise in the fortunes — literally and figuratively — of Sharpton should be proof of this. (And, as it turns out, Sharpton has always hidden backers.)

Even the concept of a civil rights leader is a created one. But, ‘agitator’ is better because it is more descriptive. The word makes me think of that part inside your washing machine — the constant spinning and the noise-making. And that’s where the comparison ends.

No one will be made clean by these men.

There have always been fake pastors, but Jackson is the modern American forerunner — and Sharpton is his “son” — selling fear instead of faith. But he’s old now and irrelevant.

Beware of the fear-pastors who are not so old.

Go to church/synagogue/mosque. Or don’t. But it is not your governor’s place to keep you from it. Don’t forget that.

Get some free exercise.

(Thanks to “Carlos Osweda.”)

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

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