Navigator, what's the course?

Many of my friends are urging me to shut up, hold my nose and support Donald Trump because, even though he is a thoroughly despicable, dishonest and dishonorable human being, we must support the "course" the GOP represents.  Well, as an ex (short time) navigator's helper on a sea going vessel, I have examined the GOP's course and that is the problem.

In navigation, there are two separate terms for the direction you are steering the pointy end of the ship.  One is heading, that is the direction that the bow is pointed at that particular moment.  The other is the course, or to make it clearer the "base course."  That is the direction you want to go.  Your heading may change constantly while maintaining your base course.  You may ease off a few points one way or another to ease the motion of the ship.  You steer one direction off the base course for a while and then make it up by steering the same amount the other direction, all the while maintaining the same base course.  Or, you may be facing strong winds and have to steer a few points off the base course to "crab" along sideways on the base course.  This happens more often in aircraft than ships.

So, let's take a look at the base course of the GOP.  Every president since Ronald Reagan has steered the GOP on a leftward course.  When it was necessary, they would change headings a bit to make the ride a little easier, but the base course always remained the same, just a few points to the right of the Democrats.  So, given that, no matter which party was in power and which distasteful candidate the GOP tried to foist upon the electorate, the Democrats have actually been steering the ship the entire time.  The destination is Europe. (literally European style socialism)  The course changes demanded by either party will only determine whether you make landfall at Rotterdam or Antwerp.

The GOP claims to be the pro life party but in decades of  controlling both houses and the White House, Roe v. Wade remains stronger than ever. The GOP claims to be the party of traditional family values but with control of both houses and the White House the gay rights movement has completely won the culture war.  The GOP claims to be the part of fiscal conservatism and yet, even before Obama, the GOP House, Senate and White House had no stomach for fiscal reform.  And finally, while the GOP claims to be the party of conservative judicial nominees, if you check the record, our worst Supreme Court decisions were decided by majority GOP appointed courts.  And that doesn't even take Justice Roberts and the Obama Care betrayal into account.  The bottom line is that the GOP has lied to the voters and continues lying.  If you continue to believe a known liar you are deluding yourself and will get what you deserve.

Donald Trump does not represent a major course change.  Until he decided to run for president he was a sharp dealing, Hillary supporting, gun grabbing, mobbed up, philandering, crooked New York real estate speculator.  Once elected, he will revert to his natural inclinations.

If you don't like the direction a ship is taking and the officers in charge are constantly engaged in vicious arguments, NOT ABOUT A COURSE CHANGE BUT A HEADING CHANGE, then you are on the wrong ship.  If you don't want to go to Europe, it is time to jump ship because your leaders are just arguing at best about which port in Europe you are going to wind up in. And at worst, they are arguing about the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

My Shrinking World

Most afternoons, I allow myself an hour at a local coffee shop.  I sip a tall iced coffee, eat a small cookie, glance at the headlines on the overhead television screen and then settle in to spend a quiet hour or so in the company of my Kindle. Sometimes, this is the high point of my day.  It is my daily indulgence if you will, my non spiritual quiet time.

The employees all know me.  I guess I am the "Norm" of this little "Cheers."  When the employees see me coming, they often change the satellite radio station to the Sinatra Channel or doo wop because they know I like it. I am usually the only person in the room except for employees.  It is normally quiet, friendly and peaceful. 

However, of late, there have been problems in my sanctuary.  For one thing, a Muslim intellectual

from a nearby university has taken to hanging around about the same time that I usually show up.  Americans would call him a lay missionary for his zeal in engaging unwitting passersby in conversations about the wisdom of Islam and the popular misconceptions concerning the "religion of peace." If you let him go long, he will quickly lead you into the five pillars of Islam in all of their glory and do it all with his face six inches from yours, his hot breath wafting over your face.  I have had to cut my respite short  twice in the past week to avoid him.

Today, I decided to show up half an hour early to avoid him.  Moments after I arrived, an inspector with the Tulsa County Health Department came in.  She was an attractive, very well dressed middle aged lady.  After a brief inspection she sat down at the table next to me to write her report. We exchanged a few pleasantries.  I apologized for appearing to stare at her and explained that the television set was directly over her head and I was following the news story being shown.

A few moments later, a loud young Millenial drove up on a motorcyle with a casually well dressed black girl on the b*tch seat.  He had the typical man bun/ponytail sexually androgenous look of his ilk and she looked for all the world like an up and coming feminist studies or black studies professor in the making.  She definitely looked like she was the alpha (insert gender appropriate non-offensive gender choice pronoun here) in that relationship.

First, the male appearing Millenial tried to engage the Health Department worker in conversation.  She brushed him off.  The couple then sat down on a sofa a few feet away and he said loudly to me, "I see you are wearing a gun.  What kind is it?'  I replied that I did not want to discuss it.  He then said, "Oh, I guess you just like to brandish it."

What is itabout this generation that forces them to make an issue out of things they don't understand?  Make no mistake, the question the Millenial asked was not designed to get gun info.  The words "Glock 43 Gen 4 with a 25 cent trigger job in a Blade Tech Kydex IWB holster" would not have satisfied him. I doubt that he would have really understood them. His body language, eyes and speech patterns all indicated a liberal troll on the make to start an argument or create a scene that could not end well for me no matter what happened. 

To say that I was angry does not begin to describe my feelings.  I wanted to say a lot of things like, "You're an idiot if you think my sitting here in the corner quietly reading my Kindle with two inches of gun butt sticking out of my waistband under the table is brandishing a weapon."  I really wanted to say, "Bud, open carry is legal in Oklahoma especially and while I don't do it often, I am licensed to carry this weapon just about any way any time I choose to."

But, I didn't say anything.  Talking to jerks like that usually only escalates an already degrading situation. I just began pulling my shirt tail out over my weapon.  However, as I did that I asked myself, "Why are you accommodating this jerk?" The peace of my quiet time had been broken.  There was no need for me share space with that type of jerk.  I simply packed up and and walked away, muttering under my breath.

But sadly, my world gets smaller and more annoying all of the time.

Man With a Gun! Oh You Poor Frightened Little Cupcake!

OK, I admit it. I have gotten lazy of late. I sometimes open carry around the neighborhood. There are many days when the only places I am going are neighborhood restaurants and my special coffee shop where they all know me very well and all know they have no reason for concern.

By habit, I am a shirt tucked in guy. So, when I am among "friends" in the hood I don't worry about someone seeing my weapon. And, it's not like I'm wearing some huge tactical rig or carrying a carbine around on my shoulder. Most days, I am carrying a Glock 43 in an in the waistband Kydex holster so all that you see is about two inches at most of black pistol butt sticking out of my waistband. BUT, the bane of my existence are the occasional out of town or at least of local experience TU types that frequent my hangouts.  They can be a pain the *ss.

One day a couple of weeks ago, one of these darling little TU cupcakes was apparently "triggered" by the"microagression" of seeing me sitting there in the corner, minding my own business, drinking my coffee, reading my tablet with two inches of Glock showing from my waistband. I really wonder how they even saw it since the table should have blocked their view. BUT, it takes hard work to be offended, saw it they did and so they called the police.

I knew something was going on when a cop who doesn't normally frequent the place showed up and didn't order. He was an older, larger guy. I have a nodding and speaking relationship with the motor cop who hangs out there regularly. The SWAT shop is right down the street and I know the faces of most of those guys who come in for take out regularly and I'm sure, that since they are by nature very situationally aware, they know mine. After a few seconds, this cop's face registered. He is a senior patrol officer that works our neighborhood.  After a few seconds, the light bulb lit up over my head.  He was working actually working a call concerning me!

The officer came in, positioned himself diagonally from me across the room and pretended to be looking at upscale coffee accessories.  I thought, "Gimme a break officer.  You could probably care less about a French Press or a European stove top espresso maker.  You're not the type. You drink coffee black that comes out of a pot."

After a few minutes of that little performance, the officer asked to use the bathroom.  That would take him right past my side were he could see the weapon on my waist that was hidden by the table. He did so, got a good look at me and the weapon and then pretended to use the bathroom.  We exchanged man type comments as he came out of the bathroom.

After he left, all I could think was "What a colossal waste of that officer's time."  I'm on a first name basis with most of the employees of the coffee shop and many of the regular customers.  I am something of an institution in that place, the old half retired lawyer that sits there at the corner table sipping coffee and sometimes meeting clients over a cup.  I come in several times per week, tip well and mind my own business.

Somebody taught that little TU cupcake to be scared to death of a firearm.  Somebody taught that little TU cupcake that he or she was doing the right thing to call the police and make trouble even though open carry is perfectly legal in Oklahoma.  I'm sure the little cupcake secretly hoped that the officer would show up and make my life miserable for a while.  And, I'm sure the little TU cupcake also hoped that if enough people followed his/her/it's/their example that the police would get tired of making useless calls and make it tough on folks who dare show a weapon in public.  But, none of that happened.  The officer was clumsy in his "investigation" but professional.  And,  I refused to get angry or rattled by the fact that a cop was checking me out for exercising a perfectly legal right. There were no arrests, no shootouts, no sponaneous eruptions of gunfire.  Just an awkward moment for the officer and an annoying moment for me.

Bottom line, you lost this one cupcake.

Rambling Thoughts On Race

Shown is a picture of a stained glass window in the predominantly black 5th Presbyterian Church of Blacksburg, VA.  It lovingly depicts the death scene of legendary Confederate General Stonewall Jackson.  The window was commissioned by the sons and daughters of slaves who were taught to read and write, in violation of the law, by Jackson when he was a professor at VMI.

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It would seem that every conversation in America today is dominated by race and every issue is tainted by race. I'm tired of hearing about it.  I make no apologies for the color of my skin nor do I expect anyone else to.  I make no apologies for my Confederate ancestors who served bravely in a lost cause but firmly believe, along with Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Patrick Cleburne, that slavery was an evil institution that had to end.  I make no apologies for my frequent criticism of race hustling and the gangsta lifestyle and for that matter racial politics whether they are practiced by the new "majority rule" in South Africa or the stealth Muslim race hustler now occupying the White House.


I was brought up in a Southern society that was by nature racially prejudiced.  But when those race relations were reduced to a personal level the details became a lot more complex.  Those folks were our neighbors.  We worked alongside them.  Unlike the rich and northerners, we had to live with them.  Some of my earliest memories of colored people come from the cotton fields.  I remember my mom and dad picking the long rows right alongside black people, brown people and other poor white people.  We all worked together because we all had to buy groceries and gas.  There were no segregated cotton fields or spinach patches ... just day work for folks on the bottom rung of the employment ladder.

When I was older, I learned the story of my father's adoption.  My grandmother, crazed by pain, tried to cure her kidney stones with a medicinal dose of arsenic, a common home remedy at the time.  She got the dose wrong.  It didn't kill her but it did reduce her mental faculties to those of a six year old child.  In those days, the mere hint of suicide brought deep shame on the family and mental illness was social anathema.

One side of my family looked the other way while my grandfather tried to care for two toddler boys and a sickly baby. The Cherokee side of the family did not look the other way however and my half Cherokee great aunt and her full blood Cherokee husband took my father to raise as their own.  I never really knew the socially prominent side of my father's family but I have fond memories of smiling brown faces and big hugs from my Cherokee great aunts.  When Dad needed help getting the farm going it was one of those Cherokee great aunts and her full blood Choctaw husband that loaned us a tractor ... for several years.  They didn't seem to care one bit that I was a lot fairer than them.  They just treated me like a member of the family.

Only recently, I learned a fascinating story from my mother's childhood.  As I was growing up, we had an interesting relationship with an old black man.  He was the best horseman in the county in his prime and until his death the only veterinarian that many poor people could afford, black or white.  He doctored our stock when asked and charged what we could afford.  My mother treated him with great respect.  I knew there was more to the relationship than met the eye but southern people learn to live with secrets.  I got the answer only recently while talking to the last surviving member of my mother's people of that generation.

I knew that my maternal grandfather was a socialist political organizer, a rambler, a talented itinerant  musician and a drunk.  I knew that one evening in the mid 1920's, the local Klan came visiting with a horsewhip because, on top of the rest of his errant behavior,  he was also not supporting his family.  I even knew that when he saw the Klan coming he took off running through the fields half dressed, left the state and did not come back for several years, leaving my grandmother in a sharecropper's shack with small children and a poorly tended crop in the fields.  It was all a major scandal and it left my grandmother destitute .... and isolated.

What I did not know that was that that old black man that my Mom respected so much was a well to do neighbor at the time of my grandmother's abandonment by her husband.  This kind black man let the poor white "grass widow" and her hungry kids work in his fields so that they could put away a little money for the winter.  When they worked for him, he fed them well and paid them the going wage when everyone else was ready to take advantage of them. He took a terrible risk letting a needy white woman and her brood of kids work for him in a day when black men were lynched and burned for just looking the wrong way at a white woman.

When I was in the military, I wound up being AWOL because my flight back to the ship was delayed by a massive snowstorm.  I was AWOL because I had manipulated the system to be gone longer than  allowed and traveled farther than allowed by regulation.  Everybody did it when we had several days of in port stand down, you just didn't want to get caught at it.  As I was walking back up the dock to face the music, our short, fat, black, career Navy Personnelman grabbed me aside into the shadows and said "Here Kumpe.  Quick.  Sign these."  He had made out a leave request, backdated it and gotten the XO to sign it without realizing what was going on.  He then escorted me back on to the ship and had the OD log me in as returning from regular leave.  He literally saved my stripes.  Later, I remembered that a while before while on Shore Patrol duty, I had cut one of his best friends, another black career Navy man, loose without charges after he got roaring drunk and made public advances on a stripper.  I most certainly saved his stripes if not his career. 

In midlife, I did a stint doing "special projects" on contract for a large insurance company.  My helper needed to be street wise, have free time to travel on an irregular basis on short notice and be good company during the long drives.  I wound up hiring a black ex-cop turned Pentecostal preacher who always needed the extra money and was free to travel.  During the two plus years that project ran, we traveled all over the United States.  We ate together, drank together (two beers per day "for our stomach's sake," non-alcoholic if we could get it) and, to save expenses, slept in the same hotel room.  We got to know each other as well as two men who work together ever will and frankly I can't think of anyone I would PREFER to work with under those conditions. To me he wasn't a black man.  He was just a good solid man who did a good job for me.  I knew I could trust him to watch my back.

Every human being is created in the image of God.  Jesus taught us to look beyond our natural, carnal differences and be like Him.  We are supposed to strive to be like Christ in all things, including our relationship with people of other races. Like my hero Gen. Stonewall Jackson, I believe that there is no place for racial division in the body of Christ.  Jackson risked arrest by teaching black men, women and children to read and write in illegal Sunday Schools while he was a professor at VMI.  If there is any place where brothers and sisters in the Lord should be able to look past the circumstance of their birth and share the brotherhood of their common faith it should be the church.

Flawed as he was, Dr. Martin Luther King taught an invaluable truth about race relations.  We should judge each man by the content of his character not by the color of his skin.  I strive to do that.  It is the "Christian" thing to do. 

A Great Falling Away or THE Great Falling Away?

Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015 I posted a blog entry that began:

"The Kim Davis matter has caused a fault line in the American Church.  Huge numbers

of individuals and organizations who purport to be Christian have taken the position that she should have resigned.  Many of the best minds in the Christian world disagree.  Dr. John McArthur recently declared from his pulpit, "We will not bow" to homosexual bullying.  Dr. Franklin Graham has supported Davis in the strongest terms.  Dr. John Piper released a statement supporting her as did Dr. Robbie George Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton.  Her lawyers are led by former Liberty University Law School Dean Mat Staver. And yet, scores of alleged Christians refuse to see the import of this case.

"There is a reason for this.  A lot of these people can't understand Kim Davis's position because they are not really Christians. There is no kinder way to say that.  Recently, Glen Beck, a Mormon, aired a searching dialogue in which he suggested that people who say the right words and lay claim to their fire insurance policy salvation may be deluded, especially when they can look the other way when evil is literally before their eyes."

While I am anything but a mystic, during the Kim Davis affair I clearly saw a vision in my mind's eye, the vision of a great fault line running through the church with the sheep on one side and everyone else on the other.  It was a chilling, chilling thought.

I am seeing that vision again.  This time the subject is Donald Trump.  The choice for GOP presidential candidates couldn't be clearer.  Ted Cruz is a devout Christian with a lifetime of honorable government service and impeccable legal credentials. Trump is a loud mouthed braggart with no qualifications or credentials other than being born wealthy and being able to hoodwink the gullible time and again.  And yet, millions of Christians are being taken in by Trump while rejecting and even attempting to discredit Cruz.

The Trump phenomenon bothers me on two levels.  This first is earthly and second is spiritual.  From an earthly sense, I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would pay attention to Donald Trump.  On his face, the man is a braggart, a liar and a con man.  He is everything people in the flyover country usually hate about a New Yorker.  He's bad mannered, brash and a bully.  And yet, people who should know better still listen to him.

I always check the opinions of other people whose intelligence I respect when I get a visceral reaction to a public figure.  I have done that with Donald Trump.  The best minds I follow in the press all universally despise Donald Trump.  I have a lot of respect for Christian constitutional attorneys like Mat Staver and David French.  They have both publicly renounced Trump.  I have a lot of respect for Christian leaders like Dr. Everett Piper who has denounced Trump.  I have a lot of respect for courageous broadcasters like Glenn Beck who has denounced Trump.  And, I have a lot of respect for courageous journalists like Michelle Malkin and David Shapiro who have denounced Trump. These people are among the best and brightest of our time and they all say a Donald Trump nomination is a disastrous idea.

However, he spiritual implications of the Trump phenomenon bother me even more than the amazing suspension of common sense by millions of Americans who should know better. Christians who are really Christians have a built in radar that warns them in the face of evil.  My spiritual radar has been screaming "Warning Danger Ahead" ever since the Trump phenomenon came on the scene.

I have often wondered how it was that over the millenia again and again huge masses of people could ignore God's clearly revealed plan and follow false leaders to destruction.  The answer is now becoming obvious.  From Ancient Israel to 20th Century Germany, when a nation or a people become so sinful, so removed from God's will that He has decided to punish them,  God blinds them and allows them to follow their very worst instincts to their destruction.

I believe we are at than point in America and Donald Trump is the proof of it.  Only a spiritually and intellectually blind nation could choose him has their leader.