Grievance is key for American Maoists. Grievance nearly took me out. I had beef with a long list of enemies. At the top of the list was her, my son’s mother. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be on probation. She is the reason I have to do weekend jail. I’m so justified in holding a grudge. If it wasn’t for her and her mouth, I’d be fine.
If you know me or follow me you know that for the last twenty years I have worked hard to make grace and mercy a core discipline. I have the skill and strength in putting grace first because of twenty years of practice. God never visited me in a dream or any of the other fantastic encounters detailed in the bible. He does talk to me. His voice is more like a wrestling coach or judo sensei.
Today I have gratitude for the gift of my son. I also have gratitude for the discipline of grace and mercy that began with bragging about a book she needed to read and do what it said. She and I don’t talk. We tried and the bitterness lit fires between us. So I accepted the challenge of the book and the men who said I should do what it said.
Collective Guilt
I asked in “The Five Pillars” what your grievance is. Confessing your unconscious bias and innate “_ism(s)” is the Maoist analog to our confession of sins. Your social credit score improves with the sincerity of your groveling in a struggle session. The difference is this: we forgive confessed sin. The Maoists punish confessed sin. Where we want to build a way for you to shed your sinful ways and follow Christ the Maoists seek ever more violent punishments because your confession is insufficient.
Even if you are personally blameless your ancestry and class condemn you. You are guilty of something. You say that love is love, and follow that with a creed full of grievance. The only way you can preserve your social credit score is to blame someone/something for the personal pissing cloud that bedevils you. You didn’t choose your parents or the class you were raised in. Please pay a tithe to the shrine to Mao sufficient to diminish your innate evil this week.
Word salad, right? Absurd, no? Yeah. There is an art to enduring a struggle session. You have to appear to confess your unconscious racism or systemic privilege without actually admitting to anything. It has to be someone/something else that is at fault. Pro level is turning your seeming confession into a litany of grievances that excuse your evil ways. Word salad is an excellent tool for this.
You Sexy Thing
Grievance is key. It is also sexy. Nursing the emotional fire that comes from it is energizing. It’s a rush to taste the bitter liquor of resentment. It also eats our light a little at a time.
Like liquor or speed the early days are awesome. That fire energizes your life. You can go for days without sleep or food. Your thoughts are strong and clear. For a while. Then the fire starts to hurt and it takes more outrage to just feel normal. Good days get harder to do.
Welcome to the highway to hell. You have crested the pass between light and dark. It only gets darker from here. From here the negative consequences escalate until you either begin recovery or die. I chose recovery twenty years ago.
Maybe Grievance is Key, not
Our reptile brain survives because we still need an ability to respond to danger. Us, in the first world, are mostly safe from predation by apex predators. So our reptile brain is bored, unrestrained and looks for things it can latch onto as apocalyptic death threats. The engine of our reptile brain is emotion. It hijacks our prefrontal cortex where calmer impulses reside and puts us in battle mode. ENDORPHIN RUSH BABY!!
But . . . hot mode isn’t supposed to be baseline. It’s there to answer deadly threats. Steady state needs a better framework. Staying in guilt-mode or grievance mode does two things. First, it makes us stupid. The prefrontal cortex is too slow for hot mode. Second, it will manifest as physical illness if it is sustained long enough.
Last thing on this point, you will lose. Whatever the cause triggered by grievance it will never succeed while it is rooted in resentment. Grievance is on Camino a la Muerte. There is no low, no uglier than your enemy, that will win for you without hurting you as well. Grievance bleeds life and light from you until there is nothing left.
This is the Way
I repeat this story a lot. In 2002 or so I was homeless, carless, broke, and estranged from my wife and son. There was a no-contact restraining order on me preventing me from contacting my family. Why? I punched my wife in the shoulder. She called the cops, they asked me if her accusations were true and I said they were.
The next year was consequences and dealing with such. I was convicted of misdemeanor battery, separated from my son and his Mom, and on probation. Anger Management class was one Saturday around a conference table listening to a Deputy Sheriff describe “the bucket” and an admonition to not let it get full. I left that class unchanged.
I wasn’t a member of a church in 2002. But I needed help and the help offered by social services was useless. “Don’t let the bucket get full”? Seriously?! So I asked my Dad and he suggested Bruce Gillette. Reverend Gillette suggested St. Giles Church and Dr. Randal L. Bremer. Dr. Bremer suggested the Men’s Fellowship.
The Jesus Way
I was in love with a book by a California Family Court Judge. She asked divorced couples to keep their petty disputes out of her court. Treat each other like business associates. Behave with respect for the other. Well . . . she was the one who needed to come correct so I could be happy.
David Snead, Thomas Scott, Wally Smith, Brian Regrut and others of the Men’s Fellowship admonished me, “that is not the way.” My son’s Mom had already demonstrated that her shovel could dig lower and throw more dung than mine. My best path was to take the high road. Never mind what she did.
So it began. It’s 2024 as I type this. Twenty-two years living out the promise to my son that the last time will remain the last time. I made it. I kept the promise.
All Have Sinned
We all have something. Maybe menial, maybe mortal. But no one, except one, can say with confidence that they have not sinned. That’s not a condemnation. It is something we all share that gives us room for improvement. We are all both not yet accomplished in our discipleship and fully forgiven through the grace of Christ.
Lately, in California and in other Maoist hot spots, the fashion is to wear one’s sin as a shield against an accusation of privilege or bias. Coffee klatches are held where those attending confess their ancestral racism and innate privilege. Reputations are improved based on the sincerity and emotive weight of the confession. Punishments are possible and then, “let’s do this again next month.”
One such struggle session comes in the form of an online webinar called The After Party. It is a seven session seminar in crossing enemy lines. I’ll give you the answer in three words—give grace first. Keep giving grace first until it becomes clear that doing so is unwise. It is that simple. Another phrasing, “treat others the way you wish to be treated.”
May I suggest “Story Corps, One Small Step“? It’s healthier than a monthly coffee klatch where competitive confessionals rule the day. Mayhaps not as thrilling as getting your digs in on that scritch who wore a better BLM camisole than yours.
毛澤東的道路
Maoism demands that you make the Premier a god king. There is no god, only the 皇帝. 紫禁城 will provide everyone what they need equally. You will own nothing and be happy. It’s better this way.
If anyone of the collective sins then everyone has sinned and must be punished. Punishment will continue until morale and behavior improves. Morale and behavior tend to remain below par so . . .
An estimated 94 million people have died under Communist rule. The promised utopia of Maoism delivered genocide. This is a better way to live? At the root of Marxism and it’s kin, Maoism, is an addiction to grievance. You want me to throw away the last twenty-two years and begin ruminating on old grievances? For what? So I can gain acceptance by toxic people? Hard pass.
The Way, The Truth, and the Life Everlasting
John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Also, Exodus 20:5, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God . . .” I’m 22 years into following a call to give grace first. I can’t do what “The After Party” asks.
So . . . what’s the answer? Nothing new. You probably know the cliche’s. I said one of them above, treat people the way you wish to be treated. Also, what the guys said to me, “be a lady or a gentleman.” Never mind the collective sins of the past or whatever the latest fashy outrage is. Now . . . to the shouty zealots in California who just want the fight—your day passed when Nixon was president. It’s over for you. Even if your mortal enemy Hair Gropenfuhrer loses and HRH Concubine Kum Mamala is coronated, you are yesterday.
You zealots are the attention getting minority whose behavior goes viral because it makes money for news outlets. There is a city/town around you that is filled with normies who are tired of the tantrums. Your Dear Leader, Bagman BiteMe and his side piece, HRH Kum Mamala are annoying and incompetent. It’s not gonna matter how tasty your word salad is. Nobody cares that the Romaine lettuce was hand picked and washed with Calistoga mineral water this morning by Haitian refugees and dressed with Extra Virgin Spanish Olive Oil and Modena balsamic vinegar or that the anchovies are organic. The rest of us just want you to go away and be quiet. Since we only have two choices, HRH Kum Mamala and Fanta Fascist and HRH Kum Mamala is stupid, it’s gonna be Salmon Voldemort.