And we must be frank: in their behavior and impact upon the world, Christians are not much different than other people.
The majority of Christians are not highly transformed people, but tend to reflect their own culture more than they operate as any kind of leaven within it.
.. Most Christians have not been taught how to plug into the “mind of Christ;” thus they often reflect the common mind of power, greed, and war instead. The dualistic mind reads reality in simple binaries—good and bad, right and wrong—and thinks itself smart because it chooses one side.
.. It’s time to rebuild from the bottom up. If the foundation is not solid and sure, everything we try to build on top of it is weak and ineffective. Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that so much is tumbling down around us. It’s time to begin again. This will be our new Daily Meditation theme: rebuilding from the bottom up.
How I Learned to Love Putin
In September 1999 a series of apartment bombings in three Russian cities killed nearly 300 people. The Kremlin promptly blamed Chechen rebels, sparking the Second Chechen War.
Later that September, agents of Russia’s security service, the FSB, placed explosives in the basement of an apartment building in the city of Ryazan. Authorities claimed it was a training exercise, and that the explosives were merely sacks of sugar. An independent parliamentary inquiry went nowhere. Documents related to the incident are under 75-year seal. The bombings were instrumental in bringing Mr. Putin to power.
.. Not all of Russia’s gambits are motivated by dark or secret motives. Sometimes the motivation is simple greed... That same year, Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s CEO, gave a speech in St. Peterburg warning that “there is no respect for the rule of law in Russia today.”.. recognizing its territorial conquests in Ukraine in exchange for a Russian promise not to invade NATO member states.
The End Is Nigh
A man, filled with fear and insecurity, created a hatemongering character and followed it out the window. And a woman, filled with fear and insecurity, hunkered down and repeated bad patterns rather than reimagining herself in an open, bold way.
.. From Cohn, he learned about winning, without regard to right and wrong. And from Steinbrenner, he learned about indiscriminately grabbing the limelight.
.. “Donald was not a big night life person, except for Le Club,” said one former Steinbrenner staffer. “He was always very likable in those days. He had a big personality, but he was the youngest of the group. He was never arrogant or full of himself. He always was respectful and pleasant to everybody.”
.. Before he jumped into the presidential race, Trump was seen as bombastic, vulgar, a bit of a buffoon and a cave man, but there was also, as Tina Brown put it, “a cheeky brio.”
.. “he was set up as the Decider and a very discerning judge of character.”
.. If he had stuck with his judicious TV boss persona in a race that fused politics, social media and reality TV, who knows what would have happened?
.. But he created another character for the Republican primaries
.. “He saw the crowd’s adulation and it drove him. He started to get the biggest cheers for saying the most offensive things.
.. “He detached himself from himself. I don’t think he believes in the Muslim ban or half the things he’s saying. It was more, ‘If this gets applause, I do it,’ in a Pavlovian dog kind of way. He just got into this character.
.. And the irony of all this is, he didn’t have to. He could have run as an outsider with a populist message without all the evil and mean components.”
.. Hillary started as a young lawyer on the House Watergate committee, yet she never learned how paranoia can act as an acid on dreams. She couldn’t dismantle her wall of secrecy and defensiveness and level with the public and the press; instead, she built the wall higher and clung to attack dogs like David Brock and Sidney Blumenthal, needing to surround herself with people, no matter how dubious, who would walk the plank for her.
.. The Clintons have earned $230 million over the last 15 years, and if Hillary becomes the first woman president and Bill becomes the first first lad, they will reap many tens of millions more in book money and speeches afterward. So why buckrake on the eve of her campaign with Goldman Sachs speeches?
.. The problem with Donald Trump is: We don’t know which of the characters he has created he would bring to the Oval Office.
The trouble with Hillary Clinton is: We do know. Nobody gets less paranoid in the White House.
The Fallout (Non-Nuclear) from a Donald Trump Victory
Political correctness really has become petty bullying, an attempt to enforce economic consequences for what is a social faux pas. Yes, we’re all supposed to be respectful to others, courteous, and to avoid giving unneeded offense. (The Left would be wise to start practicing what it preaches, to “do unto others as you would have them do.”) There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone declaring, “Hey, that really offends me.” But the Left wants to go further; they want a person who offends their sensibilities to be punished for it. Oftentimes the enforcers of political correctness want the person to lose their job. They want that person to become a pariah and feel constant social ostracization. They want to enforce the most serious of consequences for hurting someone’s feelings.
.. The Left would have to recognize that most of their our political and cultural elites demonstrate epic hypocrisy on a regular basis.
.. Obama declares, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say ‘okay.’” And then, in the words of David Axelrod, Obama keeps the Oval Office so warm in winter that “you could grow orchids in there.”
.. Hillary Clinton denounces greed and selfishness while collecting six-figure speaking fees. Bill Clinton gets a free pass from feminists as the sexual-harassment and womanizing allegations pile up. They talk about the importance of equal opportunity while Chelsea Clinton gets a $600,000 part-time gig at NBC News.
.. Ordinary Americans look at the elites and conclude they don’t actually believe anything they say, or at the very least, they don’t think they have to live under the rules they want to enforce for everyone else.