After the Last of Christmas Days - Happy 2023
Jan 6 – Epiphany, Three Kings Procession thru Bratislava
Ho Ho Ho – Happy New Year 2023.
After the last of the 12 days of Christmas (25 Dec – 5 Jan).
We prayed for Peace on Earth – an end to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine as well as a cessation of all wars. We are also so grateful for the quality living as provided by a Christian morality and capitalistic market economy.
The OECD world would be better if more folks were more grateful for all the goodness available, despite the non-perfection of life. After Daniel was sick for a couple of days, then I was quite sick for a day, then Patrick was sick – all will some kind of stomach flu. Glad Eva was feeling poorly a bit, but not so bad.
Life is short
Sadly, Eva’s great mentor, teacher, founder of her St. Elizabeth’s University, and choir leader, Vladimír Krčméry, died 20 December. Helped found some 80 Health Centers throughout the world, usually associated with a local Catholic diocese. I helped get funding for the one in Eldoret, Kenya; and was involved with the one in Rwanda when I was working there for a few months some 12 years ago.
Thoughts of life and death, and especially how do I want to live as I age out of middle age into thinning, gray haired retirement. More enjoyment, yes; less worry? I worry about worrying less – doesn’t that mean I care less?
Resolution – more frequent, but shorter, substack lists of links that I’m reading and thinking about. With Elon Musk pushing Twitter to stop censoring conservatives, my #TomGreySVK account was unlocked, after I had already started using, thru another email account, #TomGrey56.
Against Demonization
While tired of Trump, he remains the center of a lot of US politics. But that’s because Dems want to personalize the political, and to demonize their opposition. Not Derangement, nor even Delusion, but Democrat Demonization Syndrome. That’s what they were doing with Bush, with Palin, with Kavanaugh, and they continue with Trump and starting with DeSantis as he looks so good in Florida.
I’m strongly against Dem Demonization Syndrome.
But: Love the demonizer, hate the demonization. Like,
Love the atheist, hate the atheism based sinful behavior, and dislike the sub-optimal behaviors.
Love the individual, hate the childish individualism of demanding the world change for “me”.
There are many variations on Love the Sinner, hate the sin.
There were references to hyper-individualism as the cause of many problems, including both conservatives and liberals complaining about Libertarians. It’s not hyper individualism, it’s childish individualism, where the mistakes of irresponsible behavior must be paid by others.
One reason I like commenting on good blogger posts, is that I’m happy thinking the thoughts I think as I read other people’s good thoughts, both what I agree with and what I think could be improved (is wrong?).
Party factions vs coalition government
Slovakia now is governed by a “minority” government, meaning the governing coalition does not have a majority of Members of Parliament – but it can still pass popular laws. Reminds me of Israel and their 3% threshold for a party to get into Parliament and be involved in governing coalition talks; in Slovakia it’s 5%. Our Christian Democrats failed with 4.96%, and then 4.9% in the last election, so they’ve been out of Parliament for two national elections – Eva is not an MP.
The US intra-party faction fights are preferable to the lower stability of “proportional representation”, despite the proportional representation being a better theoretical democracy. I think few people who have lived under both systems, including seeing coalition agreements get broken and folks get frustrated that “nothing is getting done” so that many normal folk vote the corrupt populist parties in who usually agree to do stuff, good and bad, as long as all coalitional partners get lots of govt cash.
None who complain about the current Republicans discussing who is to be Speaker of the House should ever be in favor of Proportional Representation – which so often has power struggles within any honest coalition with disagreements. Politics remains seductively interesting, but not fun.
More fun
More fun means more Karaoke – after two weeks missing for sickness, we were able to go do some public fun singing. Including likely my last time for Driving Home for Christmas (Chris Rea), at least until next Christmas season. So I’m listening to Frank Sinatra and the crooners, since they are more often closer to my range than the 80s & now modern music I like (not rap).
(comments show song list)
But I don’t like Frank’s version of As Time Goes By; I like “Sam”, Dooley Wilson
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by