Cracked 5 … February 13th, 2018

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Jonathots Daily Blog

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What People Under 20 Years of Age Think You Mean When You Mention Historical Events

A. Valley Forge

A mall??

 

B. Woodstock

The name for the non-metal parts of a rifle

 

C. Gettysburg

The new triple-decker vegetarian patty at Panera Bread

 

D. Watergate

A bridge of some sort?

 

E. Vietnam

The food you have to get when the Thai restaurant is too busy

 

 

 

 

G-Poppers … September 29th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3444)

G-Pop is encouraged.

While other folks are sorely distressed over the fussy argument about the correct posture to take in honoring the National Anthem, G-Pop feels the discussion is not only warranted, but well overdue.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve defined peace as being a lack of conflict. Actually, peace is the creative resolution of conflict.

Therefore, it is misplaced idealism to contend that human beings will agree, or even follow a code of ethics or morals from a single source. It’s never going to happen–not in the United States, where we tout justice for all.

The reason G-Pop is encouraged is because the balance in patriotism has been askew for many years.

There was a time when those who disagreed with the war in Vietnam were considered traitors. Now they’re regaled as prophets.

In the early part of this century, we were convinced that supporting the troops meant rubber-stamping the campaign in the Middle East, which now lumbers along, tripping over its own red tape.

May I offer a definition for patriotism? Patriotism is loving my country so much that I will disagree with the stupidities that rise up to tempt her.

Candidly, there is much that the black athletes in the NFL can learn from those who take a rigid salute to the Star Spangled Banner. Equally, those who think they have cornered the market on nationalism should certainly stop off and take a look at the neighborhoods that these talented athletes grew up in, and the brothers and sisters who concern their hearts.

It’s a simple process. You can do it for the nation, you can do it for your marriage, and you can do it in your personal life:

1. What are we doing right?

There are many things that are honorable and even eternal about this country. Criticism can take a temporary back seat to celebration. Let’s find what rings all of our bells before we get too specific about our “favorite chime.”

2. What are we doing wrong?

Anyone who insists that a nation is incapable of error simply by its name or birthright needs to read the Good Book and comprehend that God doesn’t call only people to repentance, but also countries and ideologies. There is much wrong with this country. It won’t kill us to know this. It won’t destroy us to admit it. And we do not need to be at each other’s throats in order to generate dynamic plans.

Which leads to:

3. How can we do more right without doing wrong to each other?

I have absolutely no authority to make fun of someone who stands at attention and salutes the flag when Francis Scott Key’s song is played to honor our country. Likewise, I have no purpose for condemning those who sit or take a knee to express that they are not abandoning this nation in despair, but are demanding that certain ailments be treated.

When the flag becomes more important than the freedom and the integrity of people, we are too engrossed in the flag.

When our cause seems more relevant and valuable than respecting those who take a more traditional profile to loving this country, then we are equally as ignorant in our understanding of liberty.

So I honor my country as I tinker with her.

I stand with those who stand, and I kneel with those who kneel–as we pursue improving the true expanse of freedom.

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G-Poppers … July 24th, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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A whole lot of killing going on.

Or maybe it’s the same. But it just seems like the new killings are more evil.

I guess killing won’t stop until we address what causes killing: people aren’t going away.

G-Pop was thinking about this yesterday. He was trying to form an insight just in case his sons or grandkids asked him about the stuff.

He tries to stay away from too many opinions. An opinion is an insight that draws a conclusion. And the trouble with a drawn conclusion is that it never shows the whole picture.

Fortunately, the problem is simple. Since people aren’t going to go away, we should stop doing things to make them think that we want them to.

Here’s a simple rule:

I only matter if you matter. If you don’t, I don’t.

We have this idea that we can seek out evil, stand against it, defeat it and that’s the end. But slavery and segregation didn’t disappear with the passing of laws. Hatred of the Jews didn’t crawl back into the walls with the death of Hitler and the Gestapo.

People are not going to go away. No matter how much we wish it or hope it, they will remain, claiming their right to be.

We need to take a good hard look at our record as a nation over the past seventy years.

• We fought North Korea. We lost (for after all, there is still a North Korea.)
• We fought to preserve Vietnam. And now there is one Vietnam–but not the one we envisioned.
• Do I need to discuss Iraq and Afghanistan?

It is not un-American to ask the question, “Is what we’re doing really effective?”

Somewhere along the line we have to realize that the world is not going to go away and we have to find a procedure by which we can prosper and be successful, and let that be our best revenge.

You can’t kill off all the bad guys without losing too many good guys. And when we lose enough good guys, the country goes through a lull until we can birth more people with dreams.

I only matter if you matter. If you don’t, then I don’t.

It’s a simple principle.

Can we learn it? If we can’t, we’ll be chasing every noise that goes bump in the night.

Jesus told us not to resist evil. We think that’s idealistic.

G-Pop wonders if idealism actually is the notion that we can kill all the cockroaches.

 

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Populie: People Want to be Free … October 1, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2368)

Freedom is great. A very popular battle cry.

People want to be free. Hold on a second. We just stepped into a populie.

Even though entertainment, politics and religion love to tout the power of a struggle in which someone or some people who are oppressed gain independence from an oppressor, the truth of the matter is, most of the world is not free nor does it desire to be.

Even though since our inception, we evangelistically have preached the gospel of 1776 all over the world, we’ve had few takers.

Cuba, the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq have all felt a push from us to accept our form of government, only, in varying degrees, to opt for their own choice.

I think it’s important to understand what people do want:

1. People want to be free of responsibility.

It’s a garden-variety human error–and when I say “garden,” I mean Eden. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the devil. We’re just repelled by the notion of being held accountable for deeds.

Even though many countries do grumble about the King, the Parliament, the Magistrate or even the Dictator, the structure grants them a scapegoat between reality and their need to change.

2. People want to be rich.

I did not say that people want to work. People want to satisfy the passing whim, which in their minds means having obtuse amounts of cash to throw at the latest fancy. Even if the craving is just their daily bread, they would rather believe that they don’t have to bake it.

3. People want to be free of people.

We have come to the conclusion that the greatest interference in our lives is the competition from other human beings, which tends to split a pot, prohibiting us from becoming rich and independent.

So you can see, the American rendition pontificated by Jefferson by proclaiming, “all men are created equal,” immediately runs into a wall of resistance by those who are running from responsibility, seeking riches and always somewhat angry at their neighbors.

We must be honest, in 1861, we couldn’t get the North and South in America to agree that “people want to be free.”

So is there an answer?

First of all, let me say that I believe the true definition of imperialism is thinking that the joy, peace, contentment and direction you have found in your life can be transferred to other people by forcing them, or even by teaching them.

Frankly, I’m not so sure that we all evolved directly from the monkey–but we do like to ape the success we see, rather than having it legislated for us.

America will eventually have to let the countries of the  world find their own way instead of treating them like errant children who need to be punished.

I don’t mean to burst anyone’s balloon, but people don’t want to be free. So the best thing we can do to help our fellow-men is to:

A. Make things simpler

B. Make things more reasonable

C. And make sure our country, churches and entertainment are less judgmental.

 

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

 

The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!

 

Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

Click here to listen to Spirited music

Populie: We Support the Troops… September 17, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2354)

The greatest courtesy I can offer to any of my readers is to attempt to provide a non-prejudiced format of information which is vacant of opinion. (Of course, this is basically impossible to do since I am a mortal, and love to hear the sound of my own voice.) But let me attempt to be more faithful with today’s populie.

In the first one hundred years of our existence as a nation–1776 to 1876–our young, fledgling experiment was involved in nineteen years of war. In other words, 19% of the time we were sending young men off to die in some sort of escapade “for freedom.”

In the next one hundred years–from 1876 to 1976–we were involved in seventeen years of war. 17%. A drop.

From 1976 to 2001, a span of twenty-five years, we took three of those to be involved in war, placing us in a descending 12%.

But from 2001 to present–thirteen years–we have been involved in eleven years of war. An astounding 86% spike.

This increase in blood, guts, aggression and interference has caused us to develop several national policies, quietly, to sustain this burdensome effort. Among them is the popular notion that the military is honorable and should be given special consideration, and the hypocritical populie of “we support the troops.”

Entertainment loves it because even though they tout themselves to be liberals who want to preserve the turtle doves in some park, they have never met a movie that does not require a gun.

Religion favors this populie because it gives us something to pray for, allowing us to feel we’re transforming the world one bullet at a time.

And of course, politicians not only rattle their sabers, but occasionally brandish them to warn infidels and heathen of the power of our nation, while stirring the blood of the voters in their favor.

Do you really want to support the troops? Then get real instead of putting on a phony patriotism and a theatrical appreciation for our men and women who serve. Here’s how you can support the troops:

1. Stop starting wars that have nothing to do with us.

If we really believe we’re a Christian nation, we should only attack if we’re attacked. Period. I will guarantee you that soldiers would be satisfied to be “at readiness” instead of in peril.

2. If you find yourself in the position of starting a war which is considered to be necessary, then institute the draft.

Don’t go to your volunteer army or your reserves and ask them to take on innumerable tours of duty because you don’t want to bother the elite young people of our country. I will tell you, if George W. Bush had instituted the draft in 2003, the Iraq War would not have lasted more than four years, and if it had, there would have been protesters in the street, just as there were in 1970 regarding Vietnam.

3. Take care of the obvious needs of our veterans, granting them the dignity of acclimating back into society without being impoverished second-class citizens.

Don’t tell me you support the troops and then fail to notice that we are not taking care of their medical needs or helping them get off the street–homeless ex-soldiers.

I do not like a charade. Since we have come across the same situation we had in the Civil War, in which our weaponry has outgrown our medical ability to take care of the human body, we might want to slow up the carnage so we don’t have so many combatants trying to move around without limbs and hampered by severe brain injuries.

The United States has decided it’s the Roman Empire, and just as the Romans did, we are beginning to over-extend ourselves under the guise of being the “muscle men of the world”–to eventually be taken down by our version of Vandals from Germany, whom I am sure the Romans also considered to be terrorists.

I support the troops with all my heart–so much so that I work for peace, I challenge avarice and I question my government when it tries to excite the populace by waving the flag over the next conflict.

 

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

 

The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!

 

Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

Click here to listen to Spirited music

A Bookmark … December 18, 2011

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I am a child of God …

The heavens reverberate with a shudder of grief when I am in tears

The angels from a million pinnacles give a shout when I find joy

For I am part of a universal plan

A determining factor in His Almighty decision

Whether I fly by night or drive by day

All of heaven is hushed and brought to action

When I am in need …

 

This is a poem I wrote on a Greyhound bus when I was twenty years old, on my way to meet up with a friend who was in need. I had a can of Vienna sausages stuck in my pocket, two containers of Zesta crackers and a can of Diet coke–with exactly $1.25 in my wallet for other incidental expenses. I didn’t care. After all, I liked Vienna sausages. I also didn’t care that I had $1.25 in my pocket.  And truthfully, I still don’t.

 

I wake up this morning sixty years of age–my birthday.

 

Sixty is significant. First of all, you’re no longer fifty, which is that in-between number, where you’re not quite an “old codger,” even though you’ve passed any possibility for male model or stud. Sixty is the gateway drug to Medicare, or perhaps that would be better phrased, the gateway Medicare to free drugs. There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour. Sixty is three twenties, six tens, four fifteens, twelve fives … and now I’m just getting ridiculous.

 

The reason I shared the verse with you at the beginning of this essay is that I could have written it today and it would have been just as fresh and true. I still believe it. I still believe that I am a son of God–not in the sense that I must be careful handling my water glass, lest it gain alcoholic proportions, but a son of God because I am included in the mind of my Creator and Father.

 

Everybody in our generation is concerned about “liberal” and “conservative,” right and left–but honestly, my friends, I’ve always prayed for a straight, plain path and avoided the drastic turns based on society’s pressure to conform.

 

In the 1960’s, when I was  teenager, it was posh to cast a jaundiced eye towards civil rights and social reform while rallying around the American flag about Vietnam. It just never made sense to me to go halfway around the world to kill off the people in a small country in the name of democracy when we hadn’t yet given full rights to all of our citizens.

 

In the 1970’s, it was all about partying and lavishing oneself with platitudes of perfection and dancing the night away. Since I knew I wasn’t perfect and wasn’t a very good dancer, I chose to work on my personality, principles and trying to practice what I preached.

 

In the 1980’s, while the religious community was becoming obsessed with social issues, I continued to expound upon the notion that since God does not look on the outward appearance buts looks on the heart, we should spend more time working on our own internals and not so much about our own morality falling into the majority.

 

Likewise, in the 90’s and even coming into the 2000’s, I just could never become a “signer on the dotted line” of the Contract with America–to be self-obsessed.

 

You see, it’s because I know how limited my faculties are, how fragile my talents and how weak my resolve that I find the will and determination to avoid movements that extol the great panorama of potential in the individual. What I mean is, the problem with self-esteem is that it easily loses its steam and always has to be boiled up again, leaving us totally self-involved, with no awareness of our true self or the needs of others.

 

Today I am sixty years old.

• Starting at my feet, they feel about seventy-five.
• My ankles are hangin’ in there at about fifty-two.
• My knees are about ninety-one.
• My hips maintain a really cool forty.
• My waist … well, let’s not go there.
• My heart is a mystery, but certainly has more creaks than it used to.
• My face has a myriad of ages, depending on how much sleep I get.
• My eyes are a split vote–the right one an octogenarian, and the left one, still floating around thirty-five.

 My emotions are daily cleansed so they’re like a newborn.

My soul is always attempting to be as old as God but as young as a child.

And my brain … well, my brain is still twenty years old, riding on that bus, believing that God cares …  about me.

 

Don’t be so concerned about the right and the left. Look at where you want to go–and steer your life straight ahead. Because after we’re gone, no one is going to discuss our faults, only our good points. If we don’t leave behind much of a record of righteousness, we probably won’t be mentioned at all. What I want people to remember is that I started out doing something and on the morning I passed, I was still doing it.

 

So let me call sixty a bookmark. I have fewer chapters to write than those that have already been edited. But that means I have the complete capability of going for a great twist in the end.

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Here comes Christmas! For your listening pleasure, below is Manger Medley, Jonathan’s arrangement of Away in the Manger, which closes with him singing his gorgeous song, Messiah.  Looking forward to the holidays with you!

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To see books written by Jonathan, click the link below! You can peruse and order if you like!

http://www.janethan.com/tour_store.htm