Burn-Out Chatter

 This week, I read through a news piece which talked up the burn-out rate of ministers in America....now developing into a problem where guys/gals walk off the job.

Trigger?  Well....you would think that the primary job is just to write up a simple 40-minute sermon for Sunday, chat up Moses ten times more than what he deserves, avoid Revelations and demon-chatter as much as possible, pray for sick folks, and just provide a marginal amount of inspiration to folks.  That's it....it was pretty simple.

In the past decade, the minister folks have all become politicized.  Either the 'headquarters' hypes this, or the local deacons, or just membership itself.  So you are working constantly to irk a quarter of congregation....forcing them to leave, and then constantly back in a recruitment drive to bring new people in with like-minded ways to your political dynamics.

Was the profession completely neutral prior to the past decade or two?  No....you can go back even to the 1960s/1970s, and find some political gaming going on.  It's just that in the current era....everything is played to the maximum.  

If you were trying to run a non-politicized church?  I think you'd generally fail within a year or two....because of the current dynamics at work.

What happens to the burn-out ministers?  I would imagine they end up selling real estate, running a insurance agency, and shift-manager work at grocery stores.  

Just an odd thing to think over....burn-out from too much politics. 

This soon reaching schools and teachers?  Oh, I would imagine it's already going on.

The Batman

 I sat yesterday and watched the new Batman movie (2022).  Three observations:

1.  It's about as 'dark' of a script that you can possibly imagine.  If you tried to compare it against the first three or four....it won't work.  

2.  It's more of a mystery thriller than a superhero story, which is fairly entertaining.  

3.  This Robert Pattinson guy does a pretty good job (not as good as Christian Bale).  

It's just an odd piece designed as a mystery movie and keeps you interested.  

Pregnant Men and Bearded Ladies Chat

 I noticed a poll done (published yesterday)....where one in five Democrats believed that men could get pregnant.  

Pausing over this....I pondered the number and the reality.

If you'd asked....do you personally know of any men in this fragile and delicate condition, the response would have been zero.  Yet, they believed this.

So it begs the question....what else might this quarter group believe in?

Could demons create global warming?

Are there any 5th grade teaches who can teleport from Nebraska to Miami?

Are there thousands of Americans with a second asshole?

Was there a fake JFK killed in Dallas in 1963, and the real JFK resides in a underground bunker in Virginia?

Did Hitler marry a guy six months prior to this death in 1945?

Is there a Biden plan to tax birth control pills at $3 a pill?

Did Joe Biden accidentally marry some French lady in 1963?

This brings me to a county fair visit in the early 1970s (in rural Alabama) where the carnival folks brought in some $1 show.....with a gal who had a beard.   For weeks after that, at the school....discussions centered on this, and why she was the only woman to have a beard that we knew of.  Eventually, we came to the decision that the beard had to be false, and that ended the discussions.

I guess I'm waiting for the fake beard reality to hit with pregnant men, and some Democrats having a wake-up moment.  

To Be Honest

 With all this woke, transgender stuff, pronoun chatter and folks stressing out....I'll quietly just say this....to be honest:

- I really don't care to know you, your sexual fantasies, or your 100-page self-spoken history of woes and problems.

- I really don't care to know your shoes size, your boob size, or the reason for your nervous tick with your right eye.

- I really don't care to hear about your disadvantages in life.

- I really don't care to your feelings over religion.

- I really don't care to discuss your reasons for being a vegan.

- I really don't care to hear your thoughts on daylight savings time.

- I really don't care to know how your first, second, third or fourth marriage failed.

- I really don't care to hear talking points over the unfairness of welfare.

- I really don't care to hear your blame-chatter over the amount of stress in your life.

- If you do want to talk over the TV series 'Lost', or Gumby episodes, or septic tank placement, or cowboy westerns from the 1960s, or Star Trek (but not Star Trek Discovery), or the health of Putin, or the failures of New York City.....then I'll give 30 minutes of my time.

Beyond that...maybe you and I really don't have that much to fill three minutes of conversation.  

The Anti-MAGA Discussion

 With the hype of MAGA, we got some dose by President Biden of the anti-MAGA business last week, and it brings up this odd discussion.....why can't President Biden or the national Democratic 'players' invent opposite MAGA....to oppose the Trump 'gimmick'?

In the past six months, this has been on my mind.

I eventually came to this conclusion....there are probably forty different minor counter-MAGA 'gimmicks' at play currently, but nothing really ties them into one central package.  

You can't invent a national counter-MAGA that influences working-class Democrats, Hollywood Democrats, Hispanic Democrats, Black Democrats, Puerto Rican Democrats, farmer Democrats, mass urban Democrats, rural Democrats, woke Democrats, environmental Democrats, and so on.  So there is some minor theme being played out, and probably only appeals to 5-to-10-percent of the Democratic base itself. 

The college debt thing?  There's a lot of folks in this group....but if you spread it out across the US....it's not a unifying thing.  A fair number of non-college working-class Democrats actually aren't that thrilled of the deal.

The 'soul of America' speech by President Biden last week?  Maybe in some weird way....he tried to present a negative slam on MAGA, but then you wondered....where was the counter-MAGA?  Basically, he just wanted you to stand up and hype democracy.  Thats a sales gimmick with limited potential.  If you lined up a hundred odd Democrats....probably a quarter of them were thrilled with the speech and the rest were either shaking their heads or wondering if there was a phase two to the 'soul of America' 'arc'.  

So this is the odd part of the landscape.....as badly as there needs to be some counter-MAGA.....no one has yet to figure out how it'd work.  It's like inventing a cheesecake which has only 16 calories per slice, and you know it just isn't rocket science.  

Paper and Digital Chatter

 For about twenty years of my military life....I worked in vaults and handled classified material.  Just in paper content and shredding/burning....I probably handled enough crap by myself to fill five tractor trailers with material.  

At one location, we had a closet area big enough to store about two-hundred grocery bags of plastic or paper.  About every two months, we'd have a group of three folks who'd get forced into hauling this to one central burn facility on the base.  You'd start the fire around 10 AM, and it'd take a good three hours of continued burn to be done.  Then you wasted an hour cleaning the ashes.  Your plus-up?  By 1:30 PM.....you were done and sent home.  Usually, you were dehydrated and your uniform had this smoke scent to it.  I should note, this was always a Friday job.  

But added to this burden, there was usually every six months....this effort to clear out the folders.  You'd go through three-hundred-odd folders (marked Secret or higher) and you'd rid yourself of old crap. 

What you did with the old folders?  Well....you threw them into a box, and they got re-used.  You might have a couple hundred of these stamped folders....with nothing in them.

So I look at this FBI chatter going on in the past day or two, and nothing makes sense.  They seem hyped-up about stamped but empty folders in the Trump raid....like they should not exist and something funny is going on.  No....the crap that was not useful to keep....got shredded or burned.  It's not rocket science.

Why are the FBI idiots like this?  I sat and contemplated this, and came to this logical 'ending'.  In the FBI world....shredding/burning is not their function.  They probably hire out some contractor group....a $15 an hour job....for Marvin, Woody and Delmar to come once a week....pick up their classified waste and dispose of it.  So they've never gone on a burn trip or wasted four hours shredding 700 pounds of paper garbage.

Looking at this whole discussion over achieves, the Trump material and discussion.....you come to this odd aspect.  Data is data, and typically....there are probably 15,000-odd copies of x-message around on literally hundreds of servers throughout the CIA, the White House, the Pentagon, etc.  To say that the message (one single message) matters when on paper?  No.....it's the digital copy that should matter and exist in the end.  It's been that way for over twenty years now.  We no longer live in a paper/plastic world.

Maybe there are some sixty to eighty year old government idiots around with paper on their mind, but at this point....the shred/burn gimmick is becoming less and less of value....because there's more digital than paper.

The Joe Strategy For Mid-Terms

 This centers on four things:

1.  Shipping out tons of US funds to Ukraine.

2.  Selling Trump as a combination of Cartman (Southpark), Stewie Griffin (Family Guy), Cruella de Ville (101 Dalmatians), and Mr Burns (The Simpsons).  

3.  Making MAGA sound like a combination of Covid and the plague.

4.  Allowing woke to be a national standard.