Thoughtful discourse

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Im sur tht u can rd ths prbly becs u r mor acostm 2 spking thn 2 wrtng bt I wld prbly hav sum trbl mkg my pont if I cont vry lng in ths styl of dscorse.

Spoken discourse and written discourse are very different
The above garbled text illustrates this fact very well. Children learn to speak long before they learn how to write. It is easier to mimic sounds than it is to learn how to spell words. It is easier to shout louder than it is to secure one’s attention by a clear authoritative order. Every beginning student of journalism is taught the difference between an acceptable report of a new’s worthy event and an editorial opinion regarding something that happened, and the different statements are usually displayed differently in reliable printed news media. Written discourse requires more work and thought in order to be clear and positively received than spoken discourse.

Problems in current styles of discourse
A fact should usually be accepted as something that is true and reliable. A lie is a statement that is not true. Mistakes in factual details regarding something that is reported should be recognized as just that, mistakes, that are probably due to sloppy research or sloppy discourse. Fake news is really expressions of opinion and not reliable reports of anything that can be depended upon. Interviews with eye witnesses should be recognized as “hear say” and not as “evidence”. Protests should be recognized as expressions of anger and not as positive expressions of solutions to any problems. Talk of “impeaching Trump” should be recognized as no more thoughtful or helpful than talk of calling someone to fix your computer with a hammer. Tweeting in statements of 140 characters or even 280 characters should not be recognized as being “thoughtful discourse” like a factual statement of logical announcement or appeal. Filibusters in Congress (or other legislative body) should not be recognized as having any value in contrast to thoughtful debates regarding proposed legislative bills to solve real existing problems in anyone’s civic operations. Duly authorized decisions should have more authority than statements of blame for failed efforts to influence others.

Time for thoughtful discourse
It is apparent to many that it is time for our politicians, and probably for the American people, to stop “shouting” at each other about what is “wrong” in America and begin to engage in some “thoughtful discourse” that is articulate enough and logically strong enough to get a sufficient majority of people to agree to work together to fix our serious civic problems. Well written sentences of subjects and verbs that are clearly organized into concise paragraphs and summarized in good logical conclusions are very beneficial statements of thoughtful discourse that in many ways are much more beneficial than most of the style of discourse that are filling our major platforms for communication today. Let’s talk about this.

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Coming together

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The basic necessary strategy
It is apparent to most of our citizens and our politicians that it is not going to be an easy task to unify the diverse people of America with their political, religious, ethnic, and gender different needs and agendas. Beneath all of the political talk of the election of our president and the patriotic demonstration of thousands of people coming together for his inauguration and President Trump’s inauguration speech, the only strategy that is going to really accomplish a coming together of the American people is for the passing of some very crucial bills of legislation on a bipartisan level of agreement on what is good for all Americans. This quality of bipartisan legislation will determine whether or not the non-shooting “civil war” within these American States is ended by the political unity of our legislative processes or whether our “fights” for different personal “rights” and benefits in our civic lives continues.

The simple way to do this
The simple way for our legislators to implement the coming together of their constituents and all of the people of American is for them to thoughtfully work together to compose and to approve legislative bills that cite specific rules for conducting of civic business that clearly reflect bipartisan strategies for the fixing of our common basic American problems. This means that these legislators will have to rise above many of the political agendas of the major political parties in America and begin to see their responsibilities and personal insights with more of a “federal” perspective than that of their “party” or even their local communities. The halls of congress will have to really become a place where the legislative work for all Americans is done, and it will have to be recognize by those who engage in this work as a place that is quite different from all of the other legislative halls in this country.

Some of the problems that Americans face in this country are so serious that immediate action by our President and our legislators is going to be necessary to fix them in order to protect our citizens from personal and economic destructive forces that threat us, and it is going to take more than patriotic talk to implement these fixes, but a new form of political action is being implemented in our government as we are coming together. Continued “fighting” and protests regarding our various political and personal agendas for securing our civic rights and blessings will not enable our President and our legislators to fix our common problems.

Let’s talk about this. What are you willing to do to encourage your legislators to be more “federal” in their perspective on the bills that they compose and pass that this process for coming together in this country might really be implemented? The government of this country is practically being returned to the people. What are you going to do with the new opportunity and authority that you have to influence its processes?

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Thanks

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Your interests
Thanks for your reported interest in my website and blog. According to the Awstats for my website, christianityetc.org, and its blog there were 100,459 “unique” viewers to this site in 2016. These stats also indicate that there were 164,717 “visits” to this site, and the “average viewing time” was 2.4 minutes. That means that the average viewer probably read at least one of my statements on this site during his or her visit. My statement on “faith” was apparently viewed by 24,738 individuals, “morality” was viewed by
23,193, and “redemption” was viewed by 16,986 viewers. According to stats from the Google search engine, my statement on “Christian faith” (at http://www.christianityetc.org/faith.php) is ranked #6 out of 132,000,000 sites for this phrase. According to stats for the Bing search engine, my statement on “Christian morality” (at http://www.christianityetc.org/morality.php) is ranked #4 out of 241,000 sites for this search phrase. And considerable views to various features of my blog were also noted among these stats. I think that these stats demonstrate some keen interest in my website and its blog.

Your particular interests and concerns
I would like to know more about these matters in order to provide more specifically helpful resources and discussion posts on my site and its blog. If you have any particular questions about Christianity, what are they? I will try to answer them for you. If you have some particular concerns about more secular or civic matters of your life, what are they? I would be glad to try to generate some discussion about them from “posts” that I would publish. The more I know about your particular interests and concerns, the more helpful I might be in what I publish on my site and its blog. Let’s talk about this.

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A Happy New Year

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Expect some changes
A new year is coming, and with it a lot of changes are expected to be implemented around the world. A new president is going to be installed in the USA, and he is planning to install a new cabinet of advisors and to appoint some new members to the Supreme Court as new members of Congress assume their responsibilities. Changes in the foreign policies of the USA are already being discussed, and some changes have already been anticipated in how the USA is going to conduct its civic and business operations. These new year changes are going to be extensive, and many of them are controversial. There is no universal agreement regarding the wisdom and strategies for many of these changes, so there is a lot of talk about them and some efforts are already being taken to affect them. But there isn’t much that you or I can directly personally do to basically affect these changes.

Prepare your response
All that we can really do in the face of the new year that is coming with all of its anticipated changes is to prepare how we are going to individually respond to them. That is our fundamental option as we prepare for the New Year. And your attitudes toward this new year and the anticipated changes that it will bring will determine whether or not your daily experiences of living in this world will be ones of being happy, disappointed, frustrated, frightened, angry, sad, peaceful, confident, hopeful, thankful, wise, or foolish. Your attitudes will determine your decisions and your responsive behaviors and they will determine the quality of your experiences, not the nature of the anticipated changes.

Let’s talk about this
What would make you happy this new year? What would make you most sad and disappointed about what transpires from day to day in our world in the new year? What would make you most hopeful and confident in what you see happening in our world in the new year? What are you going to commit yourself to do as you experience the changes that are going to come in the new year to produce the best possible positive results in your personal life? If you would like a to experience a fresh start in your life this year, I invite you to consider this statement New Life in Christ. Let’s talk about this.

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The U.S. Election

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Unify our nation
Everyone agrees that the election of Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States of American was a major political achievement that has seldom, if ever, been seen before. It has been said that he has turned the political situation in these States on its “head”. He and the other political leaders of our country agree that they and the representatives of the people of this country need to now work respectfully together to unite our people at every level of government into a unified body of Americans who are committed to preserving and implementing the ideals of freedom and the rule of law and its principles of justice and respect for individual differences and dreams for everyone who chooses to participate in this special gathering of people in this world.

It is obvious that the people of this country are still divided in some of the basic objectives for their political activity in spite of the fact that one political party holds the majority of seats in both houses of Congress as well as the presidency, so the task of building unity through our political procedures will not be easy. New leaders will be installed into positions of responsibility. Some bureaucratic programs will be changed. New rules will be passed and others will be removed. Relationships between civic leaders at all levels of authority, domestic and foreign, will be reviewed and refreshed.

The residents of these United States will find themselves to be under a revised form of political processes that are somewhat different from what has been practiced for many previous decades, but the officials of these political processes will also be aware of a persist new voice with a clear message from a large group of American citizens who in the past have been somewhat silent and passive in regard to their individual participation in these processes. Politics in these United States will never return to “business as usual”.

Your participation
Regardless of whether or not you voted or which side of the aisle your representative in Congress sit or even if you are not a citizen of this country, you are going to be affected by the changes that are going to be implemented in the way that Americans conduct the business of their government from now on. What changes are you anxious to see made in our civic situation in these States? How do you plan to personally participate in this business from now on? Let’s talk about this in a positive way to enhance the ideals of the American form of government for all of our people.

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All lives matter

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Really do they?

This is a much more extensive and more basic issue in our culture and in our country than just the discussion that has been taking place regarding racial relations between police officers and black or minority young men in our communities that has been generated by some acts of violence against individuals because of how we think about them, which has been considered “right”.

One of the most serious of these issues has to do with the deadly violence that is inflicted every day on the living bodies of human beings who with beating hearts are waiting for their bodies to mature to a level when they can be normally born into this world as a living child, but who in their mothers’ wombs can be subjected to intense physical procedures that stop their beating hearts or even poison them or suck out their brains while their hearts are still beating just because their mother has decided that the presence of this living human being in her body is a “threat” to her health or well being or has become an inconvenient unwanted person in her life. Does the life of that human being whose heart is beating inside of his or her mother’s womb really matter?

Another non -racial manifestation of this culture is the current legal right that states that a person who thinks that he is really a woman has the physical right to enter into public restrooms and locker rooms that have been traditionally reserved for the exclusive use of females to provide them with personal privacy and safety from any male persons who might harm them or watch them in their personal physical activities that would allow the personal intimate parts of their bodies to be exposed just because he now thinks that he is a female who has the legal right to be regarded and treated as a female even though he may still have the genitals of a male. Should a transsexual human being have the legal right to emotionally and even physically subject another human being to some impersonal invasive treatment just because he or she thinks that he or she shares a common gender quality with that person?

And to the point of our current racial issues between police officers and black or minority young men, should police officers really have the right to draw their deadly weapons and kill another person just because they think that the person presents them with a deadly threat to their life or that of others who are near by because they perceive that they have a gun or they have been advised by someone else that they “may have a gun” or may have committed an of violence against someone or been involved in another type of serious felony or are reaching for a gun? The right to defend one’s self by the use of deadly force has become a part of our legal culture that complicates this principle of “all lives matter”, particularly when the life and death decision may only be made in an interval of a split second of time. Do the lives of “suspects” really matter in such circumstances where split second decisions can easily be made by armed men because of what they think at the moment?

It should be apparent from these examples that there is a culture of violence in our society that is much more extensive and more easily accepted than the one that we are currently intensely discussing regarding racial relations between police officers and black or minority young men in our communities. And this extensive popular cultural attitude of how we think about others has some very personal implications for the safety and lives of others in our society, some of whom are absolutely helpless in their personal situations to go on living.

Let’s really talk about this

What is it really going to take to change this culture of violence in our society and to really demonstrate that “all lives matter”? I think that it is probably going to take more than a lot of talk about this matter. It is going to take some fundamental changes in our laws and their application in our courts. And it is going to take some real changes in how we think about ourselves and our relationships with others in this most diverse society of men and women, boys and girls, and young children of both sexes who are just beginning to try to learn who they really are in this world and country of a lot of different types of people.

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Transgender rights

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Should they be legally established?
Basically I recognize that the transgender factors that effect the rights of individuals who believe that they are really of a different gender than what they physically appear to be is more mental than it is physical. This means that although a person may have a penis and testicles, this person really believes that “he” is a woman and not a man. Or although a person may have fully developed breasts and a vagina, “she” really believes that “she” is a man.

These factors of physical sexuality do not have the same legal status as do the physical characteristics that are evident with a person’s racial identity. I don’t believe that it is legally recognized that a person with “black” skin and other negro features should be legally regarded as being “white” just because he or she thinks that he or she is “white” and wants to be treated and regarded as being “white”. But it has been legally recognized that such “black” persons should have the same civic rights as “whites” because their racial characteristics are “normal” and they should not be legally abused or personally disrespected for displaying them or accepting them. Prejudice against a person because of his or her race, whether “black” or “white” or “brown” or “light” should be legally prohibited, because that is a “normal” factor of his or her conception and birth that is not a matter of his or her mental perception.

A transgender attitude of identification by a person should not be given legal status for civic rights, because it is not a “normal” factor of his or her conception and birth. Just because all human beings have nipples, both women and men, doesn’t make them all females. It only means that in the process of their conception and early development this female factor of their sexuality got initially established while other such physical factors took longer to be established and developed. Factors of racial physical characteristics can also be mixed in individuals, so many “black” individuals have some “white” genes in their DNA and many “white” individuals may have some “black” genes in their DNA. Or other individuals may have mixed racial factors in the composition of their DNA’s identifying make up. But the physical presence of these different genes is not given legal status in the civic rights of individuals with mixed racial genes in their bodies just because they think that should be regarded and treated as persons with some preferred “racial” characteristics. Questions or confusion regarding a person’s gender should be recognized as a mental disorder that is not “normal”. Technically such a mental state is referred to as transsexualism, which is best treated by a psychiatric examination and possible hormonal or surgical treatments. There is no good reason from professionals who understand this condition why individuals who suffer from this “mental disorder” should be given any legal rights to enter any private or semi-private space that has been reserved for persons of the opposite gender for which they have initially been identified.

Let’s talk about this
Legal efforts to allow transgenders to enter the personal space of others who are identified as members of the “opposite” gender are not professionally justified. And restrictions on such activity by transgenders is not a matter of discrimination that should be addressed by any civic laws. Let’s talk about this.

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