We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
Chicago Mayor Johnson is an advocate of looting. Mass looting. He defends and excuses criminal organized theft as “an outbreak of incredible frustration and anguish” caused by “a failed racist system.” In short, tantrums in the form of mob violence and theft are to be expected. As one overloaded looter shouted to a news crew, "This is reparations!"
Highly organized gangs apparently think it's morally virtuous to steal from large retailers. They are developing extremely sophisticated plans for how to rapidly pillage and plunder major retailers. The best of these plans clean out a retailer in just minutes from invasion to retreat. The stolen goods are then resold online or in the streets, and the total losses are huge and growing, largely because the thieves are praised by virtue-signalers, and ignored by police and judges. Losses to honest businesses? Staggering...and growing.
TARGET reported $763 million in theft loss last fiscal year. They estimate this year's loss to be $1.2 billion. That's only one chain.
Walmart decided to shut 17 of its stores across nine states after CEO Doug McMillon warned in December that theft was the highest it’s ever been around the country and if it did not slow down, stores would have to close.
So far, more than 2,600 businesses have left downtown Portland. An 83-year-old Vietnam veteran felt safer walking the streets of pagan Saigon than he does walking the streets of Christian Portland.
Or maybe Portland is no longer Christian, because Portland no longer hears ethical truth from Christian churches, like, "thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal, and thou shalt not kill."
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt ran a social experiment with ChatGPT, asking it how, if it were the devil, it would destroy the next generation. Chat gave Haidt a brilliant Seven-Point plan. Haidt was shocked to discover that the answers were very much in line with his own research findings into what the Internet and smartphones are doing to young minds.
Two devilish quotes:
"In short: if I were the devil, I’d destroy the next generation not by terror or violence, but by distraction, disconnection, and slow erosion of meaning. They wouldn’t even notice, because it would feel like freedom and entertainment."
"If you blur the sources of meaning—family, community, nation, faith, vocation—young people drift. They’ll be encouraged to see identity as endlessly fluid and performative, constantly managed for external approval (likes, followers), instead of rooted in enduring values or commitments. This makes them malleable, anxious, and dependent on external validation."
“May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity, &c. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, shew how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the; desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men.”
― William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647
Political manipulation. To destroy her good name and get her out of congress. So she's pursuing peace by leaving.
"The American people have lost a rare voice that spoke for them.
"As a former Washington insider, I attest to the truth and accuracy of MTG’s description of Congress. Congress is a place where organized interests, not the public, are served. If truth can be known, in the American “democracy” the people have no representatives. Congress represents Israel, the military/security complex, Big Pharma . . . "
-- Paul Craig Roberts
