New Tribalism

#1758

"What I believe about God is the most important thing to me.- A.W Tozer

             

Smart intelligent people are just as sinful as the less intelligent, less attractive people. They just hide it better. Dr. Benjamin Franklin said, "in the blackness of night all cats look grey." It is a known fact of sociology, biology, and theology that the men

tal ability of God's chief creation, mankind, is limited. People are not as smart as they think they are. Usually seeks their own levels-standards-limits. We like to be fooled, like to think that things will "work out." For instance, there was a war on poverty... now we have more poverty. There was a war on drugs... now we have more drugs. We are engaged on a war on terrorism and have had nothing but increased terrorism. Ever since this writer was old enough to pay any attention to political advertisements, "why Johnny cant read." Increased billions every year to spend on public schools, yet more and more parents home school their children. An attempt to escape the war against education. An education system intent on entertaining, indoctrinating. instilling liberalism... rather than the fundamentals of learning.

            My Grandparents never saw a movie. The first movie most of us saw (poverty stricken, tobacco farmlands of Eastern North Carolina) were movies shown at night, outside on the side of a large store building. Early movies were westerns-shoot them ups. Many had jail scenes, some females attempting to smuggle into the jail a saw blade to her boyfriend. All these years later, oceans of technology, latest "jail break"  New York state, saw blade smuggled in (frozen meat.)

            Separation of human beings via skin color, interest, religious traditions, has always been as normal  and as natural in human beings as was the various tribes found in America  when our ancestors arrived here. Paleontologists have written about the various native American tribal customs-food-methods of warfare. Indians, Onuwii (Eskimos,) just as did the Jewish tribes in early bible history. Enjoyed their owned traditions-customs-heritage. In America, farm life moved to urban centers, city clubs, social clubs religious denominations were formed because some people, some families, from DNA or just sheer luck preferred the association and company of one another. To see these people on the streets, you would not recognize their differences, but a Pentecostal group is totally different from a Episcopalian service. Men lined up for a physical examination at a military hospital, hair shorn, perhaps the same type of underwear, can not be distinguished... the Dr's son from the janitors son, but putting on the accomplishments of stores-education and there is a tremendous difference on the golf links.

            Mr. LBJ, reverend Jackson, Mr. Obama and his elk, would have complete integration the justice" of same sex marriage, elimination of clonkers. Miracle of midnight basketball, "don't ask don't tell," and all will be as wonderful as Nicola linen or Joseph Stalin or the Mao Zedong. Mao killed 80million  Chinese trying to accomplish this. Stalin killed 40 million Russians, great society. Yet after all this murder-mayhem-welfare malarkey and I have spent much time in both places, the people, socialists comrades, still separate themselves. Gods computer did not install the right programs for human equality. There has always been inequality. Sheep and goats, fare sees and sinners, pagans and puritans, it is as simple as those who observe happy hour at a beer joint on a backstreet of my old town. Or happy hour at a plush country club in the excesses of my town or happy hour at the golf course, compared to happy hour at a local pool hall.

            The progressives, socialists, liberals of our time, usually calling themselves democrats... will not be happy UNTIL Americans are all part of a giant prison system. Prisoners to a government subsidized house. Prisoner to a green government welfare check. Prisoners too absolute control from "big brother and big government."  This writer has been to China 3 times since it has re-opened after the Nixon visit. My first visit to communist China in 1976, everyone in the same costume... men and women. The same haircuts, men and women. Everyone mostly on bicycles, men and women. Four families shared an apartment, different shelves for the different families. All the parents were at work, children in government facilities (children palaces.) All young men were in the military and you could see them doing their calisthenics. On my morning walks, the populations, out of bed ready for work... eating rice with their chopsticks out of a large pot out in the middle of their housing developments. When you, my fellow Americans, look at your home owner associations, meals on wheels, plastic welfare cards at the grocery store. Licenses and permits necessary for money to do anything. You will realize just how rapidly the land of the free and home of the brave are moving toward commune copulation, controlled actions.

            When you see like minded-similarly dressed, similar speech individuals enjoying one another's company whether in a "beer joint", fast food emporium, cheap walk-up ball game, or even enjoying praising god in a store front "house of worship." Be glad that tribalism with all its mysterious attractions, its magical joyfulness still exists in the real spirit of Americano. When people lose the right to freely associate, families lose to right for a reunion, schoolyards no longer have patches of laughter. We have lost it all.

            We live in a world of warrior-ism. On Facebook pages the rich-pour learned-unlearned enjoy the well worn act of sharing one another. From the beginning, mankind has been a sociable animal. Mankind is the only animal that can blush, that can laugh. Man is the only animal that knows he is going to die. The grace of god has given us freedom. The senses are truly remarkable when in use. As we age, we lose our eyesight, our hearing, often our sense of touch. God left us lastly to lose our sense of smell and taste. "Taste and see that the lord is good." (Psalm 34:8) Plant flowers that you will not pick or smell, just know that your marvelous contribution in life is the members of your personality that you leave behind to those who wanted to be in your group. 

New Tribalism

History has been marked by the inability of human beings to get along with one another. Because of wars, men and their civilizations have walked upstream in a river of sorrow. Rodney King perhaps said it best on the third day of the LA riots, “can't we all get along?”

On a trip to Berlin, Germany, 15 years after WW2, the city was still in shambles. One couple, Americans staying at my hotel, were weeping after they had visited the street on which they had previously lived. The buildings they had known, their own house, damaged beyond repair from the bombs of warfare. The first time I visited Jerusalem, and this was before the 1967 war, the city was divided with Jordan controlling the Muslim section. My Jewish guide was not allowed to go into the Jordanian area.

Perhaps, man's inability to get along with others has led to these great dividing lines, even in America, where, supposedly, there is equality for all. Bill Gates in his Ten Rules for Success in Business said, “life is not fair, get used to it.” When I left my farm home, in a community where everyone was more or less on a level playing field, my mother said,” it is going to be a new life, far different people than you have known before, but if you want the same as you have here, there is no need for you to go to college.”

It did not take long for me to learn about the differences in the status of people. Fellow students from elitist preparatory schools, the chatter of the “fraternity row” crowd, their handshakes, their pledge parties, their expensive clothing, their expensive convertibles. It was a state university, supported by state taxpayers, but the most unequal place under the sun. If your father was a legislator, judge, official in the Democrat party, they would bend over backwards to make sure you were happy, not having any problems of any type, anywhere. The administrative office assigned elitist students to a counselor who made sure all was well. If a professor want to get fired, all he needed to do was upset the son of a legislator. My friend, Charlie Justice, was almost flunked in Spanish, professor Hugo Lopez said, “Senor Justice must pass.” Just I have never known a politician to return from an elected political office poorer than when he went, I have never known the child of a politician to flunk out of college.

Elitist college graduates become elitist civic leaders, usually there is a family fortune to be managed and inherited. This society wants a place of refuge from the “muck and smuck” of poor people. Here comes the country club, delightful paradise for the poachers of the world.

I was just a small child, knew nothing about the tribalism of America, taking a load of cured tobacco to the auction market in Wilson, North Carolina (the world's largest tobacco auction market). You turned the corner off of Highway 301 from our farm and there was a magnificent house up in the wooded area. I saw men with funny clothes, and a black boy caring a bag, these men were hitting a small white ball on the grass. I asked my father, “what are those folks doing?” He said, “that is a country club for the rich, and that is the way rich men get their exercise: hitting a ball on grass and then chasing after it” They wanted exercise, but they had someone else carry their clubs, and some even rode around on a cart. I will never forget, he said, “the rich are not like us, in that large building, the country club, they enjoy the best food that can be cooked, expensive liquor, gambling, prostitution, every sin that Satan can find. Then, they go and make laws for the rest of us, they are held up as examples, many even go to church.” These country clubs are probably the most exclusive tribes known to man, behind the Maharaja's policies in India.

Civic clubs (rotary, Jaycees), social clubs (moose, elk), have become tribal entities, so have committees such as the chamber of commerce, supported by elitists (Committee of 100, Industrial Commission). Authorities such as the airport authority, water and sewer authority, have become appointments for restless worn-out hack politicians seeking to further enrich themselves through these cash cow authorities, who always keep two set of books. You will never find hard-working, god-fearing, respectable individuals appointed to authorities.

Just as homeland security has become the gestapo of America, political intrigue has taken over law enforcement. As a lawyer in one of the most prominent law firms in my city said to me, “don't expect justice at the courthouse unless you have 'political pull'.” So it is with law enforcement. It is a sad day that finds only bullies and thugs wearing law enforcement badges and carrying weapons. Law enforcement is now a tribal affair, us against them. How well I remember walking down the street with my father and his uncle who was sheriff of the county; to every black person on the street, my uncle would say, “keep moving!”

So, as bad as the new tribalism is in America, think of what is like now, and was then, with minorities...not even allowed to go to a public university...not even allowed to go to a public beach.

Many of today's dividing lines, come with financial responsibilities. I note that even national religious conventions are held in such expensive places that the average church member or average pastor cannot afford to attend. The latest Southern Baptist Convention was held last week in Orlando, Florida, the most expensive city in the state. Past conventions were held in such places as Dallas, LA, Las Vegas, etc. Patriots, members of the tea party movement, average working republicans, cannot afford to attend (travel, hotel, food, etc.) conventions in the large convention cities where politicians like to nestle. The Democrats do not worry about these things because most of them, elected and appointed, are on the government time card and credit card. This is the way the tribes of political and spiritual interests are negated and regulated in America.

Traveling the world, every continent, even the villages of Africa, it is always the same, “big I, little you”. Mothers, along with the precious DNA that they have given their children, give them the hunger for equality, affecting themselves and others.