In the Bible, Luke 6:31 says, “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” In addition, Matthew 7:12 says, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Susan Caraway, aka Stargirl, literally lives by those two passages from the Bible, but the Bible is never mentioned in the book.
I finished reading “Stargirl” by Jerry Spinelli late at night on 8-10-18. A New York Times Bestseller, “Stargirl” was published by Random House Children’s Books. Since I’m fast approaching 73, why was I reading a teen novel?
The reason I read “Stargirl” is because I’m a super fan of singer-songwriter Grace VanderWaal who landed the lead role in the future Disney film for “Stargirl”. If you don’t know who Grace is, go to YouTube and put her name into a YouTube search. I suggest focusing on her iHeartRadio and MTV performances.
After reading the book, I think Grace is the perfect choice to play this role. The setting in Arizona is also the perfect location for this story. Stargirl’s boyfriend Leo Borlock plays an important part in developing the painful allegory that reveals a tragic truth about what’s happening in the United States today.
Back to why I think this book and the character Susan Caraway is an allegory. Simply put, Stargirl lives her life, even if she doesn’t know it, by the two Bible verses above, and she ends up being shunned by almost every student in the high school she is attending because of it. The majority of students shunning Stargirl are led by a hateful bully and troll called Hillari Kimble, and how they treat her reveals why and how the United States is being divided by hate.
The definition of allegory means “a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.”
To understand what I mean, you will have to read the book. There is also a sequel, “Love, Stargirl”, and I’m going to buy a copy and read that one too.
After reading this short novel, you might think that anyone calling themselves a Christian that does not live by the Luke and Mathew versus that started this post are fake Christians, and that is exactly what I think.
We need many more Stargirls in this country and the world to make it a better, safer place to live.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
The legal seduction and sex industry in the United States is built on a foundation of alcohol, food, music and consensual sex, and it earns more than the $14.6 billion that goes to illegal prostitution or the $10 – $12 billion spent annually on pornography – NBC News; Business Pundit.com
For a comparison, McDonald’s is the second largest fast food chain in the U.S. and it only has 14,267 outlets. Number one, Subway, has 24,722, and Starbucks 10,821. And the largest retail chain in the U.S. is Wal-Mart with 4,177 stores.
But the $20 billion annual legal seduction and sex industry beats them all with 45,000 locations. Even box office revenue in North America is less than $11 billion annually. – Statista.com
The legal seduction and sex industry in the U.S. is also an industry where global corporations seem to keep their distance even if their CEO’s, board members, managers and employees are patrons. Instead, it is mostly operated by individual entrepreneurs.
What’s interesting is that we seldom if ever hear about the legal seduction and sex industry in the US media.
Why is that—maybe because most Americans only want to think of the U.S. as a pure, righteous Christian country—a fake role model for the world? After all, the Pew Forum.orgreports that almost 80% of adults in the United States are Christians. In addition, the Hartford Institute estimates there are roughly 350,000 religious congregations in the United States. This estimate relies on the RCMS 2010 religious congregations’ census. Of those, about 314,000 are Protestant and other Christian churches, and 24,000 are Catholic and Orthodox churches. Non-Christian religious congregations are estimated at about 12,000. There are about 56 million weekly worshipers who go to church—less than 18% of the total population..
Does this make the United States a Jekyll and Hyde culture—on one side we have religion and on the opposite side legal seduction and sex that’s mostly ignored by the media to satisfy what devout (the less than 18%) religious Americans don’t want to hear?
In the early 1980’s I was the maître d’ for a few years for a nightclub, restaurant combination that was part of a small chain in Southern California called The Red Onion. The Red Onion where I worked had three bars on one side of the building and three dining rooms on the other side—one with a glass ceiling with full-sized palm trees inside. The lobby joined the two but the kitchen served both.
The nightclub was capable of holding several hundred lusty dancers and drinkers, and it had a DJ’s booth along with a large stage for live entertainment. The dance floor was between the DJ and the stage.
“While the dance floor in a nightclub of this size is the central arena of seduction, actual sex usually takes place in bathroom stalls, exit stairwells, and so on. In other cases the disco became a kind of ‘main course’ in a hedonist’s menu for a night out.” – Disco American Heritage Magazine by Peter Braunstein, Vol, 50, No. 7, November 1999
This world where I worked nights and weekends for several years was the inspiration for my next novel, a lusty murder mystery, The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova—that mixes seduction, sex and religion.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
Lloyd Lofthouse also worked as a maître d’ in a nightclub called the Red Onion for a few years. A romantic at heart, in his award winning novels, he tests true love in difficult situations and the challenges of keeping that love alive. My Splendid Concubine, his first novel, is an epic love story that teaches acceptance and respect for other people and their cultures.Running with the Enemy, his second novel is a love story that will either cost the characters their lives or will complete each other’s hearts. Lloyd Lofthouse lives with his family in California’s San Francisco Bay area.
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My old, extremist, brainwashed friend also doesn’t believe global warming is caused by human activity, and this explains why he is against any or most environmental regulations that would limit carbon emissions—yet, there is irrefutable evidence that carbon emissions are polluting the air causing respiratory illnesses and lung disease, for instance, cancer, and that carbon emissions are altering the pH balance of the oceans threaten the food chain. Rising Acidity in the Oceans: The other CO2 Problem and How Air Pollution Contributes to Lung Disease
But that doesn’t stop extremists like my old friend—who gives me a lot to write about—from wanting a smaller government that doesn’t monitor private sector corporations that pollute the environment.
My old extremist friend seems to think that the private sector should have no restrictions and be allowed to do whatever it wants with no government intervention—he thinks that the private sector will correct itself voluntarily.
If you read this piece in a recent National Geographic Magazine about the EPA superfund going broke—thanks to people like my old, stubborn, extremist friend, for instance, and the Tea Party element of the GOP—you might appreciate the danger of stripping the government of its ability to limit pollution, corruption and/or monopoly in the private sector.
As for abortion, I think a woman should own her body and have the legal right to an abortion before, at least, the 21st week, if not longer to the 30th week. What I think my old extremist friend, who has been brainwashed, is really arguing for is less freedom for individuals and more freedom for profit hungry corporations to pollute the earth and cause more disease and illness.
Oh, one last fact: Gallup also reportsthat only 25% of the people are skeptical of global warming being caused by carbon emissions and human activity versus 75% who are concerned believers or somewhere in between.
Did you know that AEI routinely tries to undermine the credibility of climate science, despite at times affirming that the “weight of the evidence” justifies “prudent action” on climate change and AEI received $3,615,000 from ExxonMobil from 1998-2012, and more than $1 million in funding from Koch foundations from 2004-2011?
AFP also frequently provides a platform for climate contrarian statements, such as “How much information refutes carbon dioxide-caused global warming? Let me count the ways.” And the Koch foundations donated $3,609,281 to AFP Foundation from 2007-2011.
To discover more about who is brainwashing people like my old extremist friend, I suggest clicking on Global Warming Skeptic Organizations and read the report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
One issue that has been raging since Roe V. Wade in 1973, is a woman’s right to have an abortion versus the mostly extremist religious Right-to-Life mob.
In 1975, Gallup reported that 77% of the U.S. population felt that abortion was either legal under certain circumstances or legal under any circumstances, but only 19% felt it was illegal in all circumstances.
Thirty-eight years later, that thinking hasn’t changed much. In 2013, Gallup reported that 78% of the U.S. population felt that abortion was either legal under certain circumstances or legal under any circumstances, while 21% felt it was illegal under all circumstances.
I think it is arguable that 78% is an overwhelming majority exposing the extremist minority of the Right-to-Life mob.
The use of brainwashing techniques is used by the Right-to-Life mob when they claim that “Abortion is murder, because it kills babies.” Using “murder” and “babies” together in the same phrase is designed to arouse emotions and fool people—in effect, brainwashing them—but the truth is that babies are never aborted—zygotes, embryos or fetuses are aborted, and they’re not babies, toddlers or children. In fact, after the sperm fertilizes the egg, life starts as a single cell zygote and divides several times to form a ball of cells called a morula. By the 8th week, the embryo—that develops from the zygote by the 3rd week—measures ½ inch in length, and the organism called the fetus starts to develop at about the 10th week.
Let’s be clear, a fetus is not a baby! At one month—4 weeks—there is an embryo consisting of two layers of cells from which the organs and body parts will develop. At 2 months—8 weeks—the fetus is the size of a kidney bean. At 3 months—12 weeks—the fetus is about 3 inches long and weighs almost an ounce.
Did you now that a fetus doesn’t feel pain until the 20th week? Actually, it doesn’t feel much or any pain at all until delivery—as you will discover.
The reason why I’m writing about the issue of abortion is because of my old friend, who suffers from a mental illness called extremism caused by brainwashing and/or irrational dementia. When we argue the issue of abortion, the terms he uses most often are “babies” and “murder”.
How can you murder a fetus without a developed brain that can’t feel pain, has no memoires and couldn’t survive outside the womb? The definition for a human being says: a man, woman or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech and upright stance.
And, according to the CDC, 89-92% of all abortions happen during the first trimester, prior to the 13th week of gestation; 6.9% of all abortions take place between 14-20 weeks of gestation, and 1.2% take place at or after 21 weeks of gestation.
The fetus starts out looking like the alien from the Alien film franchise, but eventually the fetus will develop a human form. That does not mean it is a viable, thinking, feeling creature with an active memory. In fact, it is arguable that it is not until after the 30th week that the brain has developed enough to be considered a complete human.
At week 5, the fetus’s brain, spinal cord, and heart begin to develop. At week 6-7, the fetus’s brain forms into five different areas. Some cranial nerves are visible. After week 8, the fetus’s brain will continue to grow until week 27 when it will start to grow faster.
The average unborn baby, while it is a fetus, will spend 38 – 40 weeks in the uterus.
When does consciousness arise in the human fetus? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. … What is fascinating is the discovery that the fetus is actively sedated—drugged—by the low oxygen pressure (equivalent to that at the top of Mount Everest), the warm and cushioned uterine environment and a range of neuroinhibitory and sleep-inducing substances produced by the mother’s body.
What does the Bible say about Abortion? OpenBible.Info lists 37 Bible Versus related to Abortion. Some—I’m convinced—will horrify you. For instance: Deuteronomy 28:53: “And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, who the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.” Of course, the brainwashers will cherry pick versus they want their extremists to hear, and then tell them what to think.
Continued in Part 3 on December 6, 2014 or return to Part 1
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
An extremist is a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views that are very far from what most people consider correct or reasonable and that are highly disagreeable to the majority of the population.
Dementia is a general term for loss of memory and other mental abilities severe enough to interfere with daily life, and it is caused by physical changes in the brain.
For instance, what Oliver Sacks wrote in Speak Memory, February 21, 2013, in The New York Review of Books about our ability to edit and revise our own memories to fit whatever we want to think. Oliver Sacks says, “From the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials to the Soviet trials of the 1930s and Abu Ghraib, varieties of ‘extreme interrogation,’ or outright physical and mental torture, have been used to extract political or religious “confessions.” While such interrogation may be intended to extract information in the first place, its deeper intentions may be to brainwash, to effect a genuine change of mind, to fill it with implanted, self-inculpatory memories, and in this it may be frighteningly successful.”
Then there is Eight Ways to Identify Religious Brainwashing. In part seven of this eight part series, “Leaders who emphasize ‘Doctrine Over Person’ usually have dominant personalities and rigidly interpret biblical commands. Thus, while their language sounds spiritual, in fact they merely enforce their own preferences about how to live life.”
In addition, in 6 Brainwashing Techniques They’re Using on You Right Now, we learn that “Every cult leader, drill sergeant, self-help guru and politician knows that if you want to quiet all of those pesky doubting thoughts in a crowd, get them to chant a repetitive phrase or slogan. Those are referred to as thought-stopping techniques, because for better or worse, they do exactly that.”
I have an old friend who is an extremist and I’ll talk more about him in part 2 and 3 and why he is against abortion, and doesn’t think global warming is caused by human activity.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
In Milton Friedman’s world, profits are god—more important than an end to poverty, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To Milton Friedman thinking, the only way to end poverty is for the top 1% to earn more than the bottom 99%, and to see that those earnings for the 1% continue to increase while the net worth of the 99% continues to shrink.
And here’s a perfect example of how this thinking works: The Hunger Games franchise.
The latest Hunger Games film, Mockingjay – Part 1, came out on November 21, and the next day, Saturday, I read a major media financial news piece about how this film was a loser, because it didn’t earn more money its first weekend than the previous Hunger Games film, Catching Fire. Before I reached the end of this piece, it mentioned how the stock prices had dropped for the production company behind the film due to this horrible opening.IMDb.com
Now for a dose of reality—production costs for all three films compared to the total box office to the date of this post:
The Hunger Games cost $78 million to produce, but total global box office earnings reached $692.3 million its first 168 days.
Did this film lose money, and what was the profit margin?
Catching Fire cost $130 million, but total global box office earnings reached $864.9 million in its first 133 days
Did this film lose money, and what was the profit margin?
Mockingjay – Part 1 cost $125 million, but total global box office earnings reached $480 million in 10 days.
Did this film lose money, and what was the profit margin?
Does Mockingjay – Part 1 look like a loser to you? It does to anyone who worships at the altar of Milton Friedman, because profits must always show an improvement over the last quarter. There is no room for DOWN. There is only room for UP.
That is what Milton Friedman economic thinking looks like—if you worship at Milton Friedman’s altar of GREED, you worship wealth acquisition anyway you can get it even if those methods cause the extinction of homo sapiens by destroying the earth’s environment.
For instance, the Tea Party movement, funded by the devout Catholic, professed libertarian Koch brothers, is not interested in facts, truth or reality. The Tea Party was born on a platform of lower taxes and less spending ONLY after Obama—an African-American—was elected president, who is, surprise, surprise, a Milton Friedman neo-liberal.
No one who follows the Tea Party movement blindly will mention, discuss or admit that three GOP presidents since 1945, are responsible for 62% of the federal National Debt of $17.9 Trillion: Presidents Reagan and the two Bushes, and it was Reagan who ushered in the era of Milton Friedman economics that is a major force behind the corporate war on the public schools in the United States.
There have been 12 presidents since 1945 starting with Truman.
The federal National Debt this morning hit about $17.9 Trillion, and $10.64 Trillion of that debt came from those three GOP presidents thanks to Milton Friedman’s insane theory of greed-based economics.
By the way, the Koch brothers are also funding the propaganda campaign to deny that Global Warming is caused by carbon emissions. Guess what the foundation of their great wealth is based on?
oil
And don’t expect anyone who worships at Milton Friedman’s altar of greed to mention the country that reduced global poverty by 90 percent in the last 30 years—Communist China.
Milton Friedman thinking leads to Disaster Capitalism
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
I do not know when it started, The religious meltdown Where I lost my faith And my family blew away with the wind.
Maybe it started after the death of our family gatherings.
Where grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers and cousins
Drove hundreds of miles to sit around the sagging
Table with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy
Along with pies:
Pecan, pumpkin, apple, mincemeat
And my dad’s favorite, a moist lemon cake
With snowy powdered sugar dusting the top.
On Thanksgiving, my dad and brother-in-law
Competed to see who could eat the most
As football games on TV filled my sister’s house with screaming fans.
It could have been after we stopped celebrating Christmas.
When I was ten and Mike was five,
We huddled behind the closed hallway door along with his younger sisters
Waiting for Santa to leave so we could rush the tree and rip into packages
Squealing with delight at what was discovered.
Then again, maybe it was when Easter expired
And that chocolate bunny
Stopped laying those eggs we once hunted in the grass.
Those fun family moments started to fade
At the same time Disneyland arrived,
Television became king,
Fast food replaced home cooking
And Ringo beat his drums on the Ed Sullivan Show
Introducing an epidemic of obesity along with video games and YouTube.
The free love movement and the pill did not help.
Everyone off doing their thing smoking dope, dropping acid,
Becoming an individual,
Listening to harsh music,
Protesting Vietnam,
Spitting on uniforms
Before going off to occupy a therapist’s couch
Looking for someone else to blame for their mistakes
While buying shrink-wrapped fun
And quivering in fear of HIV/AIDS
Soon followed by the next popular media-induced paranoia.
It seems as if my country, the land I was born in and fought for,
Is driving down a one-way street shouting drive-by hate,
Narcissistic me, me, me
While real families grow weeds.
For decades, I have been hunting for what was lost
Traveling the world looking for that ghost family
That may only exist in my imagination
When the laughter did not come from foul-mouthed comedians
And shock jocks.
Sometimes, in the early mornings, after I exercise,
Surrounded by the humming silence
While everyone else is sleeping
I open my mind to God
Asking if He were created to forgive man’s sins.
He answers.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
