Doing It To Ourselves - Misdirection and Road to the Apocalypse

The massive political upheaval that is taking place in America these days reminds me of a David Copperfield magic show. Our eyes are drawn from one illusion to another - a flash here, a flourish there while all the real action happens behind false walls and below trap doors. The news media trumpets the triumphs of the Obama administration. The leftists wail that it's not enough while the fringe right yammers on about conspiracies.  Now the fringies are saying Ronald Reagan was a big conspirator and Abraham Lincoln, a socialist and a bad man.

Apparently, since pundits like Glenn Beck have finally convinced people that the president and the Congress are up to something underhanded, the kook fringe feels the need to attack traditional conservative icons too. What is it with these people?  Whatever it is they think they are doing, they really only aid the real deception by drawing our attention eleswhere.  The irony is that both tree-huggers and gun nuts are helping disguise the real threat taking place in broad daylight in front of their noses.

The progressives have told us plainly that they want to turn the U.S. into a communist worker's paradise complete with massive government and an elite cadre of privileged "leaders" we all look up to and adore.  (Obama - mmmmm, mmmmmm, mmmmmmm!)

Confusion has always been Satan's most powerful tool and even more so as the Apocalypse.  The battle lines are drawn, but the lines may not be where you think they are. They aren't between lassez-faire capitalism and progressive socialism as some would have us believe, nor between Christian and Muslim, Jew and Gentile or Catholic and Protestant.  They are drawn between good and evil; between those who seek the light and those who cherish darkness; between those for whom lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath and pride are a way of life and those who embrace chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Quick, which list made you to smile?  Which list caused you to curl up your lip in a sneer of derision?  If one of those lists of character attributes either appeals to you or disgusts you, you may have already chosen sides.  If you are like most of us, you probably halt between two opinions.  It's amazing, though, how often the great philosophical debates of the times have been between two evil choices rather than between good and evil - between sloth and greed rather than between sloth and diligence.  The devil likes to conduct those kinds of battles; the ones that, whichever side you choose, you lose!

But as for me and my house.......