2020 retrospective

 The years 2020 will go down in infamy. I can only say it's been one messed up year: the pandemic, crazy politics, riots, and general malaize. 

I will say I thought 2020 was going to be a year of focus. I know a play of words on 2020 as referring to vision. If it was, what did we see?

I think we saw the unrepairable divide among the people of this country. We are as polarized as we can get. There is no longer a middle ground. Masks, lockdowns, and mail-in voting have only two sides, no middle. 

What will the future look like in the Divided States of America? Who knows. But one thing for sure, there is no middle. 

Christmas, Covid, and Concern: 2020

I put my Plasticville set up this year for the first time in years. This is my train and village set that I put together over 20 years ago. I painted the little figurines by hand I didn't know at the time I had a Trump figure.

In a way, I guess it represents what we wanted to do Make America Great Again, just like the little 1960's village. Maybe some would say it's plastic, and that describes the phony or, as the Urban Dictionary puts it: definition. plastic. A materialistic, fake man or woman. In particular, someone who is attractive yet lacks any sort of depth whatsoever.

But trying to put a perspective on it, we were trying to create something. Coming out of WW2, people wanted peace and prosperity, and the children, "the Boomers," rebelled for a short time and then split. Some went left, and some went right politically. They both built their houses on the sand, as the bible says. 

Now the past failures leave us where we are in 2020. I'll pick this theme up in a later blog post. 

Welcome to the new normal: pandemic paranoia, and panic.

 When Covid numbers hit the 300 thousand mark (at least the death toll numbers with comorbidity), I concluded we are in a new extended period of pandemic- paranoia, and panic. 

Whether or not masks and lockdowns are worth the price of freedoms is one issue, and the global effect is another. The world is forever on an alert for the next virus. Evil nations aband their nuclear missiles and turn to bioterrorism. 

Even if the new vaccine is effective, that will lead to other measures such as tracking people and taking away our right to decline the vaccine. 

What we have lost in the battle to stay healthy and alive is not worth the battles that have been fought to preserve the very freedoms we are now gladly giving away. The cure is worse than the disease.

Remembering Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor day represented to we boomers growing up several things. Some of them were that we should never be lax in our defense and be careful and diligent with our intelligence gathering. 

America was apathetic about getting involved in the wars that were going on overseas. We wanted to take an isolationist approach; this was due to the fiasco of WW1. We didn't recognize the flattening of the earth. 

In retrospect, some of our WW2 enemies (Japan and Germany) are our friends, and our allies (China and Russia) are our enemies. Does this recall the book 1984?

What did we learn? 

Masking our identity or not

 When we go out in public, we're asked or, in some cases, compelled to wear a mask to prevent the spread of Covid-19.  So, now public places are full of masked up folks.    

Some folks choose to wear the usual surgical throwaway masks. Some have specialty designer masks to promote their brand or show off their fashion statement. Some folks have respirator masks like the N-95 or the like.  

I wonder what each mask says about our feelings about the virus or the politics and health concerns. Do they make a more in-depth statement about our reaction to the government and private-sector mandates? 

The no-maskers and rebels are sending their message out loud and clear. 

What are your thoughts about masks?

Living in perilous times

We are now entering strange and perilous times in our life here on earth. With all the fake news and lies we are looking for truth and objectivity. I believe my Christain faith holds the only final answers, 

I recently read two books on how we got to the place we are in the U.S.A. in 2020.

Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands by Roger Scruton.  A very academic read and I suggest getting it only Kindle or simular format because it uses a lot of words and phrases you will have to look up.

Live not by Lies by Rod Dreher. A singular book but from a different perspective. This book connects the action of the past to the present.

We really need to understand the times in order to keep our sanity.

Out of order comes chaos

The very foundation of society has cracked and weakened to the point where the cultures and countries built on it can do nothing but collapse. 

There is nothing but chaos on the horizon. That progression down man's heart of darkness leads to anarchy and madness. The Holy Spirit has been lifting his restraint on evil. Read the following and pray and meditate on it:

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12 (NIV)

7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

The Democrats, media, and education have spoken. The pandemic and climate change cannot be left to sovereign nations to solve. Governments acting independent of one-world -governance can not control these things. Their anti-fascists paranoia will sweep in the anti-christ to a welcoming world. 

Read the book of Revelation and find out the outcome for yourselves.

Going foreword

Well, where do we go from here? Our country is divided almost down the middle. There significant issues of the two parties are polar opposites in critical areas. There is no meeting in the middle.

I don't know how we can unite and heal the country. What would that look like? We are listening to each other and not getting any closer. The winning side wants to delegitimize half of the electorate. The losing side intends to criminalize the other side.

Does this end in a revolution or civil war? Only God knows. But in the meantime, we will be at each other's throats.

The Divided States of America

 On June 15, 2020, I wrote a post titled " A house divided" on this blog. I wrote about how our country was irrevocably divided. I am not a prophet, but Wednesday, November 4, 2020, you are going to see the great divide, no matter who wins. 

The is no culture in America that unites us anymore. We are fractured beyond all repair. The only reasonable way to sort this out is to form different countries. I don't think either side can live peaceably with each other anymore. 

We could have several ways to break up the U.S. and still not destroy ourselves. We can come to a more peaceful solution than what looks like on the horizon.  Walmart has already taken ammo off its shelves.

Let's not kid ourselves anymore.  Bipartisanship hasn't existed in decades. Neither side can bring us together, and there is not enough support for a middle coalition. Polarisation is way too deep for that. 

The next couple of months will prove if my thesis is true. 

We are V.A.'s (Virtual Assistants)

 A brief departure from my series on the topic of the church/state issue. 

We are Virtual Assistants. My wife and I are a team. When we retired from our full-time jobs, we decided to start our own business. We wanted to work together, and we wanted to work from our home office. She was an administrative assistant for her whole career. I was in small business and startups in my career. 

We combined our talents and interests into a business solution for a small business that needs a staff to handle the details of their business that is not the core or revenue-generating part. 

Our ideal client is someone who is spending more time working in their business and not on their business. 

Reach out to us and see where we can help you. Remember before you drown in a sea of stress, call Your Office SOS.

The Church and State and the state we are in ( Part 2)

The church in the middle of the twentieth century was an integral part of America. But after WWII, it took on a decidedly culture Christianity flavor. Everyone was Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. Look at the Arlington National Cemetery at the time. If there are Muslin or Athiest or any other religious symbol, they would have been minuscule and a very tiny minority. Today I am sure it would be much different. The public cemeteries would have reflected the same religious demographics.

The US experienced a kind of revival but not like earlier revivals that were moves of God by His Holy Spirit. There was a return to religion to form a context for a way to view the world as it took shape after the two World Wars and the current Cold war of the mid-century. But the mainline churches had been corrupted by the higher critics of neo-orthodoxy. They offered a context to the godless communism that emerged as a new threat after the Korean War. However, the new wave of religion was a form of godliness but denied God's power and personalness. 

God was getting lost in the suburbs. What connection to each other and God in the agricultural area was morphing into the industrial age, and a mechanized process god: religion emerged. The moral values of America were a Judeo-Christian sort of ethic. Check out Hay's Rule and Hollywood battles. 

School prayer was normative, and textbooks were sprinkled with spiritual values. But the tenuous values and superficial adherence to an abstract God began to crack. 

James Dean and the like began to portend and foretell what the '60s would bring. 

. 

The Church and State and the state we are in ( Part 1)

Oh, where to begin. I need to cover this ground because it's my opinion that the younger people ( I mean under 60) have not received proper education about civics and history in public school.

Let me digress and speak of my own "baby boomer" upbringing. Being raised in the USA in the '50s, we were being fed a lot of propaganda. Propaganda took place in our schools, both public and parochial. The media was only somewhat complicit then, but that is a subject for another blog. 

Post WW2 and Korean War; America in the '50s was fighting the Cold War. These were the IKE years. American nationalism was at an all-time high. Most of our parents believed in God and country. The foreign threat with its nuclear ramifications was uniting our country. But at the same time, simmering unresolved internal conflicts still were starting to appear. 

The racial issues and women's movements seemed to have been put on hold until we could gain some semblance of safety from our foreign enemies.

Many of our parents were 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants who fought to make America safe from the terrors of their "old country." Even so, the melting pot was beginning to boil over in the '50s.

I don't intend to address the broad scope of the tear in our nation's fabric in-depth here. I am content for the moment to single out the significant fraction and reason why our form of government is on the brink of collapse in 2020.

To set the stage for the boomer view of history lets briefly look at the 1st half of the century. "OK, Boomer" gets its context.

It seems like war and depression and then war again marked the 1st half of the twentieth century. But there were two other issues that I will interject that had a significant influence on the first half of the twentieth century that are critical to our story's development: Woman's Suffrage and the Temperance Movement. 

Those two issues brought together an alliance with unintended consequences. 

From a blog: https://amazingwomeninhistory.com/womens-suffrage-and-temperance-movemen

Women were thought to be morally superior to men by nature, and many advocates for women's suffrage argued that women should have the vote because of this. Advocates for temperance wanted women to have the vote because it was believed they would vote for prohibition due to their moral superiority.

So when I say radical Christian Fundamentalists and Feminists in 2020, no such coalition could be conceivable. But in the first quarter of the twentieth century, that's exactly what happened.  

During this period, the church, for the most part, was visible but beginning to fracture. Cities everywhere sprung up with the steeples of churches dominating the skyline. They were taller than the courthouses and commercial buildings; this is a fact that should not be dismissed lightly.

But as the organized churches grew in size structurally and physically in both size and number, their spiritual growth started to stagnate and decline. 

At this point, we will leave off for today and take up the topic again on subsequent posts. 

Don't get blindsided

When someone takes the initiative to start a small business, they usually possess some strong characteristic traits.

Not everyone who has an idea or product to sell has the stuff it takes to start a business venture. These folks are called wana-preneurs.  

But those bold folks who do dare to start out on their own can become victim to some of their strengths. They are usually rugged individualists, and sometimes that can insulate them from glaring mistakes because they can't see the forest for the trees. Some mistakes I have observed:

• They fall in love with there logo or brand because it's their baby. All well and good if it's effective and on point. But all too often, it's amateurish and misleading. 

• They don't know their costs and numbers is another blind spot. They price things because that's what the competition or market says that is what they should charge. If they can't figure out the cost of doing business and profit margins, they are at the mercy of the customer and consumer. They need to know their numbers and justify the price that is profitable and fair. 

• They can't manage their time is another trap that snags the solopreneur. They get bogged down in working in their business on not on their business. They end up getting behind, not following up with clients, not keeping their paperwork in order, and their schedule is dictated only by one urgent task and then another. 

• They don't have the skill sets to promote their business, product, or service. They never learned to sell, prospect, or market. They just run after the easiest path of least resistance to get to market.

• They often fly by the seat of their pants with no plan, no goals, and no structure. They are chasing one shiny object after another. 

So let me say if this is you, let us sit down and let us evaluate your business practices. We at Your Office SOS have decades of business experience and insight we can bring to help you navigate the choppy waters of the business world. See our website www.yourofficeoss.net for the details. 

Doctor Zhivago Now

I thought of what it must have been like in the time of the Russian Revolution while watching one of my favorite movies Doctor Zhivago. I think we are in the early stages of that movie here in America. 

I never thought things would get this bad here in the USA; they are. There is no getting around it. We are going to have a severe battle or revolution of some scope on our hands. I do not hear any voice on either side that is powerful or influential enough to appease the calmer voices in the middle. 

The divide is too strong, and social media reinforces that divide. We all get our confirmation bias feedback from our tribe. The media we watch panders to our given views and becomes a reality for the narrative they want to advocate. Advocacy has replaced journalism and has infected every media source we read, listen to, or follow. 

I read a blog recently when I searched for the lyrics to the song by Buffalo Springfield, "For What it's Worth" (There's battle lines being drawn And nobody's right if everybody's wrong ). The blog had a perspective on the middle that I found interesting. I hardly agree with her (when looking at her bio) in any area religiously, politically, and philosophically, but she has a point.

http://dlhalperblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/nobodys-right-if-everybodys-wrong.html

Opening a can of worms

Well, after taking last Monday off for the Labor Day Holiday, I am back doing my weekly Monday blog.

This week I am going to be addressing a topic that may trigger some folks. As they say, "fools rush in, where angels fear to tread," so here I go.

I want to address the topic of diversity and inclusion. 

First off, I am writing this as a straight, white male going on 70, which gives me a perspective on how we got here and why we got here on this topic.

One definition of diversity and inclusions parameters:

A person who identifies as a woman, a person of color, a Muslim, a member of the LGBTQ community, a foreign-born non-citizen, a disabled person, an older person, a young person, and any other underrepresented people group.

 

My question asked is why any of these qualities, traits, or ethnicities qualify anyone for anything. Nothing here addresses the fact that very short ( P.C. here: vertically challenged ) people do not make the NBA or blind (P.C. again: visually challenged) folk don't make it in NASCAR.

It seems D&I only apply when there is ambiguous subjectivity involved. 

The sports analogy shouldn't be dismissed so lightly. Why would any other endeavore so rigorously be required to slot a person in just to fill an identity role? 

Men have dominated just about every endeavor up until recently. Maybe technology levels a lot of things. Is it just because just brute strength is not as necessary as it once was? 

Why are there not more female jockey's in horse racing? I believe every major sport would love to have the first female on a men's team. I watched Anika Sorenstam play the Colonial; no one is stopping her. She just couldn't make the cut.

When we lower strength requirements for police. military and EMT personnel are we not violating 

the Hippocratic oath of, "first do no harm?"

I could go on about why. Why no Asian defensive backs in the NFL? Why so few blacks and Hispanics in hockey? These are all too rampant in sports analogies. I would get redundant.

Why do Asians dominate our schools as academic achievers? Why are there not more women plumbers? 

Every President was a male, and until just recently was there a black President. Only three females have ever run and are running for Vice-President. Was it because voters didn't vote for someone solely based on their identity. Women and minorities have had the vote all my life. 

I am not sure why certain groups and specific identifiers happen. I am sure that with today's victim mentality and identity politics so pushed by our politicians, media, and academia, there would be a better, more reasonable explanation come forth that just explicit discrimination. 

All this being said, I know that whatever opinion I have is quickly dismissed and discredited because I am an old straight white male. 

I only hope that in the future, we can ride on airplanes that are flown by and built by the most qualified folks and not the most diverse. Just an example for sure. But when identity triumphs over anything else, the results will not turn out well.

Work life balance

 Are you drowning in the details if your business? You got in business because you love "whatever." You want to work on your business, not in your business. 

You start finding your day is consumed by prospecting, answering emails, planning your schedule, preparing that PowerPoint presentation, etc. No time to post to social media. No time to follow up on those proposals. Phone calls are not being returned. 

 

Pretty soon, you no longer have a business because you drowned in the details. Your health is declining. The kids are feeling neglected. Now, the wife is ready to leave. All because you couldn't turn loose of the details you didn't need to be doing anyway. 

We can free you to do what you do best: we take care of the rest. SO before you drown in a sea of stress, call Your Office SOS.  We will turn your life from crappy to happy.

Why hire us as your Virtual Office?

 At the end of the day, when you get ready for bed and reflect on how your day went, do you say, "I didn't do anything to move my business forward."

You stay awake thinking that all you did was tread water, and even at that every day, the water gets closer to drowning you. 

You fall back asleep then wake up in the middle of the night panicked because that client didn't get called back. You suddenly realized his bill never went out. Then you start to sweat because you remember you missed some critical meetings. 

You toss and turn, and then it occurs to you that the proposal you meant to mail is on your nightstand. The proposal is under a stack of invoices you forgot to pay. Of course, money isn't coming in because you have no time to prospect for new business. 

Your spouse then wakes up and starts complaining about the fact you haven't spent any time with the family. You know you are missing your children growing up, and you will never get that chance again.

You may have just gotten back to sleep. You try to pray when you suddenly realize you haven't been to church or spent any time with God or His Word. Yikes! 

You reach over on your nightstand, and it hits you; there is a bottle of pills to reduce stress. There is a glass of wine to help you sleep because you drank too much coffee during the day trying to focus. 

There is a better way. We at Your Office SOS let you do what you do best, and we handle the rest. We give you back those precious unrenewable resources; your life and your time. 

Before you drown in a sea of stress, call Your Office SOS. We turn your life form crappy to happy. 

Your Office SOS to the rescue!

 My wife and I started our company, Your Office SOS. SOS stands for supported outsourced services. We are Virtual Assistants that take the place of having a physical office and staff. 

Our ideal client is that solopreneur or entrepreneur. They have launched their business. Now finding they are working in their business instead of on their business. 

Maybe when they were first starting, they could rent a coworking space and get the details accomplished. When there was time left, then they could focus on the revenue-generating aspect of the business. 

At a certain point, they are working so hard to stay afloat trying to get it all done; they soon start to go under the waves of details. At that point comes Your Office SOS to the rescue. We will rescue you from the non-revenue producing work and focus on what they do best. 

We can handle the sales, marketing, and business development to make you profitable. We also can manage the administrative services such as scheduling, organizing, and customer care. 

We free you to do what you do best, and we take care of the rest. 

To mask or not to mask: that is the question.

 I am genuinely intrigued by the controversy over mask-wearing in public during the current Covid-19 crisis. I am observing that its one issue that transcends political partisanism. 

As a conservative Christian, we tend not to trust in medicine or science when it touches politics. Those disciplines seem to align themselves with particular worldviews that skew their objectivity. We especially don't believe global organizations that reflect globalist agendas. We tend to be rugged individualists and Constitutionalists. 

Progressives and liberals tend to be more collectivist and generally see the collective good outweighs individual rights in most areas. They see science as more valid than any other institution. 

Which brings us to the issue at hand, to mask or not to mask. 

I can usually tell whether a person is progressive or conservative by any number of political issues. There is no middle ground anymore. 

However, this mask issue has me confused. There are people on both sides that see different reasons to wear or not wear a mask. 

The pro-mask seems to think that we are responsible for the populace at large to wear a mask to prevent the spread of the disease. The mask is to prevent you from spreading the virus but is of little or no effect in preventing you from getting the infection. They see the mask as your duty to the public. 

The anti-mask folks seem to think that there is no real scientific consensus as to the effectiveness of the mask. Therefore it becomes a visible sign of acquiescing to government tyranny and infringes on individual rights. It is a sign of weakness and cowardice. They think if you are afraid stay at home. 

I fall somewhere in the middle of this, but I would love to hear your comments.

Flee from the destruction coming.

I am going to rant a lot in this post. America is not perfect. No country is. Fallen people populate the planet. Every country has its own challenges and issues. 

We are the greatest and best of what free people with self-rule can achieve. Now we are at the breaking point. We are being torn apart by those who hate themselves and hate everything virtuous. God will not stand by for long. He has been restraining evil. But it looks like he is lifting his restraint. 

The Man of Lawlessness

1 Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 

2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 

3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 

4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

You must choose sides and quicky. Look around I am not a gloom and doom type of person. I am just being real. I want you to accept the salvation offered by Jesus Christ.

1. Admit (to God, & Yourself!) that you are a sinner.
2. Confess that Jesus is Lord.
3. Repent (change your mind about sin). 
4. Be baptized as an outward sign of your inward commitment.
5. Live for Christ; follow Him.

Get yourself connected with a group of strong Bible-believing Christians. Hear God's revelation to you, in His Word, the Bible. 

Age and experience's peak

When does age and experience peak? Well, that is a question that has several facets to it. It depends on the individual and the experience in question. 

Tom Brady has much more experience than Partick Mahomes. Tom may have peaked a few years ago and in football that maybe 35 years old for a quarterback. Sports such as racecar driving, basketball, baseball, and golf all have those magic moments when the athlete hits there peak. 

What about in the business world is it different from sports? Well, yes and no. Obviously, the physical requirements are not as much of a factor. What about the mental capacity to keep up with the rapid pace of change. 

Technology is building on its own swift pace, and everything speeds up. 

See Moore's Law: 

Moore's Law refers to Moore's perception that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, though the cost of computers is halved. Moore's Law states that we can expect the speed and capability of our computers to increase every couple of years, and we will pay less for them.

Are we prepared?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/24/905789/were-not-prepared-for-the-end-of-moores-law/

I believe we peak when our brains, stamina, and willingness to learn subside. But until then, age and experience are our most valuable asset.