Phantom

#677

A little known book of the great American writer Washington Irving is called, The Phantom Picture. A Picasso painting, which Picasso did in one day, sold in Europe last week for 106 million dollars. I have had the wonderful experience of touring most of the world's great art galleries, the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid etc. The painting which stays in my mind, and I could see a little then, is found in the Cathedral in Toledo, Spain. It stays in my mind because of the colors and figures involved. The painting is called The Burial of Count Orgaz by El Greco, 1586. This priceless masterpiece, which I was allowed to see, shows the benefactor of the church being buried with the posthumous assistance of St. Augustine and St. Stephen, who have miraculously appeared at the funeral to thank him for all the money he gave to religious institutions named after them.

Today, May 2010, mankind is a victim of “phantomization” (victims of phantoms) as never before in the history of the world. The disaster cannot be put on canvas, film, or even in words. We are victims of the phantoms of government leadership … people who lie, cheat and steal in a deception beyond the comprehension of most “dumb-sheep” who just follow along because they do not know anything else to do.

Niccolo Paganini, who died exactly 170 years ago this month, world's best known virtuoso violinist, best known for his Caprice No. 24 in A Minor, set the standard for violinists with his honesty and integrity.

Once, he walked on the stage to a full house of cheering music fans. When he stared to play, a sting broke. Un-phased, he kept playing and another string broke. The crowd was heart-broken, never before had this happened. He kept playing until finally only one string remained. He played as few violinists had ever played with just a bow and one string. Never had there been such applause and reception. In life, it is not what you do when everything goes well, it is what you do when everything goes wrong.

I lived through the Great Depression. I know what it is like to wear patched clothes, re-soled shoes. I can still see my father re-soling our shoes by kerosene lamp-light, in a house on a dirt road where most of the people went to bed hungry. I can still hear my mother, weeping after the voting polls where she worked as a Republican poll watcher during the all Democrat Primary voting in this solid Democrat state and the fact that she could remember both of my grandmothers weeping because they were having to sell everything sell-able just to pay the taxes on their farm land. My father, and his family, needed our milk cow, but he sold the cow in order to pay taxes. Besides, we did not have any feed for the cow except cotton seed. Today's spoiled generations cannot imagine what real poverty was like during the Great Depression. It was written with an indelible pen on the minds of everyone who lived through it. Many did not live through it. There was a funeral at the church almost every week. My parents, grandparents, the aunts and uncles who lost everything talked about this disaster of government until their death.

Roosevelt, with his Communist Vice President Henry Wallace, his Communist Chief of Staff Harry Hopkins, others in the Democrat controlled government, thought they could solve the problems of unemployment on the farms and in the factories by passing out subsidies to the workers in the form of butter and cheese while stabilizing the farms by cutting down crops and letting them die in the fields. The corn could not even be fed to the animals. The SS troops of Roosevelt, and these were Americans, just like the Americans who killed the 85 women and children at Waco, Texas, killed 50 million pigs and buried them. My great grandfather, Elder P. T. Lucas, one of the founders of Mt. Olive College, wrote, after he had returned for a Baptist meeting in Nashville, Tennessee involved in the Great Depression, “It is not over until it is over and it will not be over for a long time”.

Things improved with WWII, unemployment was reduced and with the military industrial complex and our continued warfare we have kept up the “phantom” activity of smoke and mirror prosperity. We actually believe that when you get in a hole, in order to get out, you keep digging. We actually believe, that when you get in debt for 1000 dollars, you loan yourself 1000 dollars an then you write off the bad debt which you cannot repay on your taxes as a loss. We actually believe that prosperity comes when you keep raising the appraisal on property so you can keep raising the taxes on the property, further enslaving those ambitious enough to own property with all the risk involved (insurance, maintenance, crime etc.) The so-called Carbon Tax, an international taxation on the very air you breathe is still being pursued even after Copenhagen. Some liberals, anxious to solve the world's economic problems … so many countries in the throws of insolvency (Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Dubai, U.K. etc.) are promoting taxation on every security trade in America. They maintain that the trillions from this taxation will bail out America and most other countries of the world. America owes 100 trillion in national debt and future promises … that is 100, 12 zeros.

Most people have the pipe dream that they cannot do anything about anything and they just believe anything thrown at them. In spite of TEA Parties, warnings about the future economics status of everyone still breathing. In the very county in which I live, a plurality, this week, on Primary election day, voted for a sales tax increase. They had the erroneous idea because of the promises and prodding of the crooks involved in local government that their property taxes would not be raised IF they voted for a sales tax increase. Because they are dumb sheep, they thought a sales tax would equalize. The very next day, the government big wheels announced they would immediately raise real estate taxes. Governor Charles B. Aycock, governor around 1900, who attended a one room school in Wayne country with both my grandfathers, said, in his history book on North Carolina, “you raise ad volorem taxes a few mills at a time so people will not notice it much”. The “pick pocket” tax people stopped using mills long ago … they hardly think of pennies anymore (a penny is 100 mills). How long will it be before the dollar, which is now worth about 7 cents, will be insignificant to the tax collector, purveyor of slavery?

In the new science of utopian anthropology, the bioethics of the world, seeking to control the world population and the conditions of mankind in the world through genetic engineering are trying to establish equality thorough cell manipulation. They actually believe they can genetically change cells so that people can be programmed to live shorter lives to act in a more humanist way … Be real nice to one another and everyone will be on an even playing field … total equality.

In our study of human anatomy, when you amputate a limb, finger, arm, leg etc, even after the stub heals and the anatomy, physiology and neurology are no longer there you still have “phantom” feelings. Thank God, Americans who have given much for their country will still have “phantom” feelings and memories of what liberty was like here in this land of the free and home of the brave before enslavement.