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Well, here it is. The last day of 2020. And it has been one of the strangest, and certainly the stupidest year in my life. And that’s saying something, considering the decades I’ve accumulated. I wish I could say it surprised me. But the only part of it that surprised me was the level of fear and how easily it could manipulated. Right here in good ol’ America.So, this last day of the year is an ending date, but not an end.
In fact, 2020 seems to point to a new beginning. A beginning of the end. But not the exact beginning. Because that started during the foundation of America. Our “founding fathers” were brilliant men. But they weren’t infallible. Not by any stretch of your imagination. So, they built a government that was actually doomed to fail. Doomed to go exactly where it has gone. And all because they compromised.
But I’m not going into the whole history of America’s roots. Because I’d like to focus, for a minute or two, on that “beginning of the end” part again.
When a small group of elected “officials” discover they can manipulate the entire population of a country with an invisible germ, it’s just a matter of a few steps until that manipulation becomes control. And when control freaks (aka elected “officials”) get control, they rarely give it up.
In fact, they typically double-down on their control when confronted with even the strongest, clearest evidence against their positions.
But what keeps millions and millions of people from rising up and fighting off that stranglehold of control?
Fear.
And, in this case…like I said…fear of an invisible germ.
Of course, I understand germs can be deadly. But that didn’t start in 2020. There have been deadly germs since the first or second generation of human beings. But when America used to operate more from a powerful position of logic and reason, citizens understood their responsibility to step up. And not give in to fear.
Even a socialist president, from our past, understood it.
Franklin Roosevelt famously said, during an inaugural speech, “…the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself…” Yeah, that’s the famous part. But his description of fear that followed that part is even more relevant to what America’s fear is like now. Roosevelt said that fear was (and is) “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
So, my recommendation, as 2020 ends and a new year is on the horizon, is this…
Don’t let an invisible, unreasoning, unjustified terror paralyze you. And don’t let it stop your efforts to advance toward those who’d prefer to usher in tyranny. And don’t let it stop you from saying, “My rights were given to me by God! And no person can ever or will ever justifiably take them away!”
If you follow my recommendation, I can almost guarantee you won’t be popular among your friends and neighbors. But I can also guarantee you’ll store up treasures in Heaven none of those people can ever take away again.
Now…even though this message doesn’t sound particularly happy, I hope you have a blessed, Happy, and healthy New Year. This year, and every year for the rest of your life.
Here’s something I started the first day of this year with, and it still applies to this last day.
Alliteration Translation
Fill the feelings fuller.
Make the moments matter.
Steal the silent seconds
Cheat the childish chatter.
Be the better beacon
Or the obbligato
Reconciled to reason.
Mindfulness the motto.
Upbeat understanding
Tethers this translation.
Welcome words of wisdom
In imagination.
© 2020 Tony Funderburk
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