“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” –Hebrews 11

Wisdom. Tiziano Vecellio. 1560.

Science is not the opposite of Christianity, but it is almost the opposite of faith.  Faith is a hope in the unseen.  Science is an expression of the seen.  It is inherently skeptical.  If you don’t see it, over and over it’s not science.  If you can’t question it and then come to the same conclusion over and over, it’s not science.  Faith says, Christ is going to take over the world even though I am trapped in the Roman Empire and persecuted by the Jewish leaders. . . written by a Christian 6700 miles away.  Science says, I don’t know how this virus works or how best to treat it, so I am going to observe it over and over in a lot of people and follow best practices to get to the truth.

Then we have another thing all together, applying the truth of science.  Then that faith thing comes in handy again.  Do the people handling that science have an incentive to pervert the conclusions?  Are they ruled by a faith in an ultimate God who will hold them accountable to a moral standard?  Or do they have faith in themselves, as pure materialists who only care about enriching themselves?   Putting religious faith in science is called scientism.  And unfortunately it is all to rampant.  It tries to go beyond the scope of science as a search for truth created under the umbrella of Christendom.  God’s world works a certain way, we can know that, so we should do our best to understand and use this truth for the betterment of our fellow man, as governed by God’s moral law.  Scientism makes science the ultimate authority, and denies truth arrived at in any other way.  Even though this is never consistent.  Minds seeking answers to ultimate questions is just nonsense.  Nevertheless they try.  And cutting out the word of the Creator from your life, just makes a really big mess.  Trying to substitute the findings of social science without the morality of God, and then implementing these findings in the form of social programs, has lead to countless deaths.  Some of these fields are starting to catch up to the wisdom found in Proverbs or Psalms, but they will never know as much about people as the one who made them.

Chesterton says that heresy is taking any one thing and making it the only thing.  This is currently happening even in scientism.  People from one field think that their field is the only thing that matters.  They become monomaniacs, ignoring thousands of suicide deaths because they are not caused by a spike protein.  The idea of a university, is a Christian thing.  Christ is a unifying force.  Without Christ, there is nothing to make the whole world connected in any sensible way.  Separate fields are just separate fields.  But we Christians should know that in Him all things live and move and have their being.  This is his world and he sets the ultimate purposes.  The world is not just one segment.  Economic mechanisms don’t explain everything.  Biological mechanisms don’t explain everything.  Christ is King, he is ruling, he makes the script, he defines the ‘why’ and the direction of the world.  We are in his world doing various things.  We are not in an epidemiological world.  We are in a Christian world.  We should act like it.

Paul exhorts the Corinthians not to take their legal case before secular judges, because we as Christians have the ultimate standard in the Old Testament(I Cor. 6).  We should know how laws and justice work better than anyone.  This also applies to understanding men and groups of men, kingly wisdom.  We can see God interacting with his people in countless examples in the Old Testament.  We have the rich wisdom in the Proverbs, laying out the way this world works.  We have the emotion of the Psalms which should calibrate our feelings to a true standard.  Stop putting your faith in science.

Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, (oil on panel) (1527-93)

It’s always good to consider the the things we take for granted.  The idea that naturescapes are something to be fawned over is relatively new.  I think we owe many of our sentiments about nature to the Romantics.  I used to wonder why pre moderns pained still lives so often.  Who cares about bowls of fruit? But that is because we take our fruit for granted.  For most of human history nature was not some romantic setting for teenagers making out under a giant elm tree, it was the enemy.  Nature was out to kill you.  Insects could wipe out your crops in a single swarm, leaving you without food for the year.  Weather could destroy your shelter, leaving you out in the cold for winter.  Animals could kill your husband as he went to market.  And don’t even get started on the forest.  Any number of evils await there, as you can see from Shakespeare’s writing.  The forest is always bad, entering in, probably means never being heard from again. And this was the ChristianEurope view.  To the pagans, ruled by demons, nature was as capricious as a farie, you never knew what was going on but at the root was a totale fear.

But then as the industrial revolution began to ramp up, the forests were cut down.  And poets and painters began to mourn the loss of the good old days and they created a romantic affinity for this nature in their works.  They pined for a day, which never existed when man and nature existed in perfect harmony and where the noble savage danced around in the forest like a disney musical number.  Unfortunately this never happened.  And the savages, were savage.

Peasant Family at Meal time, c.1665 (oil on canvas) by Steen, Jan

In stark contrast you have the painting of a bowl of fruit.  Men used to love, honor and cherish fruit.  Fruit was life.  A good harvest meant comfort for you and your family.  It represented the reward of hard work,  well done good and faithful servant.  It was not only the culmination of your year, but the culmination of human endeavor as each generation improved farming techniques.  And the same went for children.  Step one of the great commission was having lots of children and training them up in the nurture an admonition of the Lord.  And so paintings of fruit also included scenes of family and home.  Our ideal is impotent singles hiking from their rentals to federal property with their dogs, in between shifts as cogs in the big tech oligarchy .  Theirs was a complete world, where a man was king of his property, however small, and his wife a queen giving birth to future generations who could accomplish more than he ever dreamed.  They pushed back the curse as far as it was found.  We worship ourselves and our comfort and don’t even know where we came from.

So yes appreciate the sunrise, but really appreciate the sunrise of humanity under Jesus the Christ who turned nature from foe to friend.  If we don’t we are likely to return.

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. -Isaiah 62:4

James Bond is dead. Woke stunts are a lot easier to pull off but just as poisonous to the whole world as the villain’s evil plot.  The Russians he used to battle got their evil into the bloodstream of America after all and rotted it out from the inside.  My God if only we could use our technological and creative powers for good.  What a marvel, of cinematic art, pushing messages that would make Marx blush.  Good and evil are supposed to be brought into their proper perspective in art.  The hero in stark contrast to the villain.  But it never works that way in the real world.  Like when the slaves to evil who think they run Hollywood, tremble in fear of the mob no one seems to claim, but everyone wants to serve.  The Demon Woke.

Hold on tight, but be careful, I might get the twitter mob to destroy your life for putting you hands on me inappropriately.

And so the good is mixed with the evil.  Bond fights for his family like never before, and sacrifices himself for them.  Such good stuff.  But it’s all smattered with girl power like blood on a sanitary napkin.  Who want’s to see that?  James bond riding on the back of a scooter while some ridiculous Amazon plays action hero?  It’s more pathetic than the Last Action Hero telling people to screw their freedom.  I think it’s the hips.  I noticed the same thing in  Die another Day with Halle Berry. The hips just throw of the dance, like watching an Asian driver parallel park.  It’s just wrong, hips are for bearing children, bringing life, not kinky faux fighting.  And what the heck is the point of this Paloma chick?  I guess they just needed another piece of skin in the game.

The plot was pretty good, a nice ending and connection to all the lose threads from the past in Craig’s collection.  It became obvious part way through that it would end in tragedy.  But exiting the theater, the herd of 20 somethings,  seemed to have no idea what had happened.  We don’t know anything about history but we have the ‘proper’ attitudes about it.  They got their does of PC BS.  Of course they picked up on that.  All the men riding shotgun to their girlfriends, towed the line if they wanted any tonight.  But strangely the only real reaction from the crowd, was when Bond put new fake Amazon 007 in her place.  And what a confused mess.  Iron Man gave his life and ended that franchise, now just an feminist nightmare.  Wolverine gave his life and now there are no more Men in X-Men, literally.  And now it is Time to Die for James Bond.

The worst part about the end of the world is that it’s not the end.  The hollow shell goes on, after the Spirit departs.  Rome never new it fell until long after, the event no one can name.  America lives on past it’s life.  No matter, we have been this way before.  The Church has endured a thousand deaths only to rise again like our master.  We are too corrupt, we must die and be reborn.  But how to get over this stagnation problem?  We can’t forever be rising and falling, like that infernal wheel in the East, a dragon chasing it’s tale.  We need to learn our lesson and move on to the next chapter.

I’m a double minority black and a woman! 2 Points. I was the first to fall because it won’t mess up the plot at all to change the secretary. No one cares about the secretary.

I celebrate my abortion. My wife and I really really wish I was the new James Bond. . . Really

Hey can you see my boobs enough? No? Let me just twirl around a bit.

Two great movies which are almost the same movie.  Dry spells between good movies seem to grow longer and longer.  Of course the fads that I excuse probably become less and less as the evils I won’t excuse probably grow.   But I’m not sure it’s me, I think it’s Christianity losing it’s grip on us.  But then there’s Passengers and Palm Springs

Both movies employ a conceit in which two people are basically alone in a world full of other people.  There is a third character in each which appears briefly as a sort of sounding board/comic relief.  Like most good art, spoilers aren’t a thing.  In Passengers two people are alone on a ship full of thousands of people, all hibernating.  While in Palm they are stuck in a sort of Groundhog’s Day.  In both cases the men were first into the pool and a sort of guide for the female.  The men had to come to terms with the reality of aloneness in a harsh world, and then admit that it was not good for man to be alone. And then they set about getting a woman.

In Passengers it is a sort of Snow White image, while in Palm it is a playful accident.  The main conflict seems to center around whether or not Snow White wants to be woken up.  I find movies that have large disparities on rotten tomatoes between the audience and the critics, very interesting.  Passengers is one of these.  And I think the reason is that it holds to typical male and female roles while Palm takes the populist road and tries to be egalitarian.  I overlook the egalitarianism because Palm is very funny, like actually funny.  In Passengers I overlook that they never had a child, though they bear other fruit.  Our culture is still pretending that men and women are the same which is really annoying.  But I don’t really care if Snow White wanted to be woken up.  Men are supposed to disrupt a young lady’s course in life.  It’s always better when that happens, just ask the audience.  And that’s it, deep down we all know how it’s supposed to work.  Chris Pratt actually lays down his life for his woman and for others.  And Jennifer Lawerence takes care of him.  He has a mission, and she gives him more of a mission, while following.  In both movies, the situation forces the man to realize that just trying to survive is no way to live.  Man must have a woman to build for and to jump into the void with.

Despite the growing alphabet we are told is tolerance, a man and wife are two become one who face the world alone in a fundamental way.  Whether on a space ship full of sleeping colonists and robots or in a day that only repeats for you.  No matter the circumstances, there is always conflict, human failings, trials, and romance.  A man wakes up a woman from her slumber, which wasn’t all that great to begin with and battles with her and for her to the death.  On a space ship or in a repeating world, there is no way out.  This used to be how we viewed marriage and it worked.  Two people forced to work it out and share the same bed, become better people and raised healthy kids.  Today there are so many easy ways out.  But taking the easy way out has it’s consequences in increasing suicide and troubled children.  We need the old ways back. Who saves who, husband or wife?  Who cares?  God save us all.  And for the little glimpses of goodness still on the silver screen.

“Every historian knows that it was not Gandhi who ended European colonialism,it was the USA that did so. Not just India, but practically every colony received independence after 1945, even if it hadn’t been educated yet to govern itself. Historians also know that the moral might that forced imperial Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s hand was the Atlantic Charter, announced on 14 August, 1941.”  -Vishal Mangalwadi

It seems to me that we have been drinking the Gandhi Kool-Aid for far too long.  We think that being nice is the solution to the world’s evils.  We have no understanding that the World is governed by the aggressive use of force as Rush always said.  Those instagram trips you took to those far away islands were made possible by British and then American dominance of the world.  Chances are pretty good that that island once contained cannibals.  Are you really prepared to debate that all cultures are equal?  It’s because you don’t know anything about cultures without the USA hanging over them.  You can’t go there, you have to read about it, except for that weird Andaman Island.  And we are now seeing it more and more as the lie of Mohammed, is reasserting itself, in Afghanistan and around the world.

We can see how God used Empires to shepherd his people in the Old Testament prophecy in Daniel.  He didn’t tell us what was happening, he was laying out his plan.  He used Babylon to judge his people and to set up a captivity for a future return to glory.  He use the Persian empire to reinstate his people in the land of Israel.  Then he used Greek and Roman culture to unite the world and prepare it for the easy dissemination of the Good News.

We use Romans 13 as an excuse to be lazy cowards going along with whatever we are told, despite the fact that our rulers are under law, which they are breaking.  But the real point of that verse is that God appointed governments to punish evil.  America is the shyest empire ever.  We were handed this dominance after we humbly won WWII.  But let me ask you was there less evil after we pulled out of Afghanistan?  Is there evil around the world that we could be stopping?  Why don’t we?  Because of this silly doctrine about freedom, and state autonomy?  We should know from Scripture that the only kind of slavery that really matters is slavery to sin.  All other slavery is a distant second as a concern.  We should prioritize saving people from slavery to sin.  That is what the Gospel is.  Christ is reigning, we no longer need to be subject to the savage demons of the past.  The imposition of Rome on Israel in the first century was God’s plan.  It stopped evil, after the Jews rejected their messiah a series of wars erupted culminating in 74AD in Masada.  And this is more specifically what Romans 13 is talking about.  Every Jew who rejected Jesus the Messiah, and took up arms against Rome wound up dying by the sword.  The Christians who listened to Jesus words, fled to the hills of what is now Jordan and the Church, grew from there.  But fleeing is not a one size fits all solution.

God used evil men to punish evil.  How much more when the Gospel has spread and whole nations are now operated by Christians? The statue of all those great empires is crushed by God’s Kingdom.   We have Paul’s words.  He even yelled at the Corinthians for needing to go to worldly judges to decide matters.  We have God’s word, we of all people should know how do administer justice, how to punish the evil doer.  And we have Romans 13, we know the purpose of government.  So why don’t we act like it?  Why are we all distracted about state sovereignty and quoting George Washington’s farewell address out of context?  We should be punishing evil.  But we like our evil. We don’t fight it in our own hearts, churches or communities, so why would we fight it in our country or our world? If we don’t repent and start seeing things the way scripture lays them out, we are not only going to lose our dominance of the world, but we will be harshly judged for our apostasy.

It’s sad to see the battle lines being pushed back from the front with actual evil, to the limp-waisted minds of enfeebled Christians.  China is marching around the world consuming resources in it’s large maw of evil and we are worried that social media posts might be mean.  Instead of defeating actual evil we are forced to fight our neighbors over idiotic things like masks.  The unity Christ and Paul prayed for, was so that we could present a united front to the world.  Bringing his will on earth as it is in heaven, remaking the whole Earth. When you look at the history of Europe from 600 to say, today, it’s sad to see European Christians fighting amongst themselves instead of fighting the real evil, Mohammed.  Death and destruction and the very slavery that reached our shores was begun by Mohammed and his hordes.

The Good Samaritan. Rembrandt. after 1633.

In Luke 10 Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.  “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.”  But we are in an even worse position, we are passing by when he is still being beaten.  And we walk away.  Don’t we have a duty to stop the beating?  Do we try to go preach the Gospel to the robbers, as a hyper Evangelical minimalism might suggest?  Jesus makes it clear, walking by a brother in need is evil.  He also makes it clear that the whole purpose of government is to punish evil.  That is the real point of Romans 13.  These men should be caught and punished.  The government is the servant of God who carries out his wrath.  We don’t say “who am I to judge”, we punish them, God says.  Now secular governments can mess this up, but how much more should Christians punish evil when we the show?  Stopping the beating, catching and punishing the wrongdoer, is part of the Gospel.  How much more should this apply to whole nations?

Currently most of the church has become what Christ warned against.  We are the priest and the Levite passing by the man in need.  They did it because they were preoccupied with their reading of the Law.  They thought he was unclean.  But we do it for a more ridiculous reason, we are worried that we are unclean.  We are so self-obsessed with our problems and worrying about being perfect that we can’t do anything.  This is a completely different thing from fighting our own sin first and then fighting the sin out there. Which is correct.  We waffle with double minds tossed too and fro by every new woke doctrine.  But Paul says this is what children do (Eph. 4:14).  We need to grow up and spread our light to the world.  We need to be equipped to form a strong body and to fight.  For some reason we no longer see fighting as a Godly act of sacrifice.  But putting on your weapons and going in to the battle means that you could be killed too.  If you intervene with the Samaritan you could be killed, you are laying down your life for his.  That is what makes it a valiant act.  And that’s what makes not stepping in, cowardly.

So, if saving one man on the road being beaten is a good thing, how much more for a large capable body, like say a country, to step in and save another large group of people being abused?  Of course we should view unsaved peoples as first and foremost needing the Gospel.  And we should send the Gospel to them, as we have for generations.   But how do we sit back and watch people being abused all over the world.  How do we watch starvation, and the abuse of women, and the enslavement of other tribes?  “Who is my brother?”!  Do we just write it off as cultural differences?  And even worse we fund the very country which is guilty of this evil the most, China.  Every big tech company is in bed with China for money.  Where is the pressure on them? Instead we worry about offensive comments about people who don’t know what sex they are.  How about sending pallets of cash to Iran one of the most hated oppressors on the planet?  And then you elect Biden to do the same thing because you think it’s better than mean tweets.  You are a child.  This blood is on your hands.  Get some perspective and get in a real fight instead of all this child’s play.    Of course we need repentance, from this especially.  But we need to get on to better things like exploring the depths of God’s word and his world instead of the bottomless pit of self pity.

C. S. Lewis talked about the unfortunate degradation of language in which words ceased to express unique ideas and only became further terms for ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

It’s sad to see this happen to the word ‘religion’.  I appreciate Keller trying to reach his audience, but participating in the degradation of words, which is really just a sneak attack on traditions that were really good, is not Christian leadership.  Sometimes your audience drank bad Kool-Aid and they need to be instructed on a better way.

Religion had two senses, the general practice of a faith and an aspect of Christianity.  These are reflected in the more specific definitions from Webster’s 1828 dictionary.  The first three definitions reflect the Christian culture in which this was written and the word understood, the fourth the general sense.These definitions weren’t attacked because Christianity was doing so badly, they were attacked because it was doing so well.  People hate Christianity.  Any stick is good enough to beach Christianity with as Chesterton said.

We had plenty of words already to express badness and plenty of words to express badness as one relates to his Creator.  Hypocrite, pretender, sham, fake, false teacher, anti-Christ, Pharisee, Judaizer, Legalist and on and on.  But what words are we left with to describe an aspect of our relationship with God that is not theology and not moral virtues?  Piety?  Reverent?  Hardly words in common use.  They also seem to lack a certain joy.

The fact is that saying “I don’t have a religion I have a relationship” is a religious statement.  And as such it is a lie.  Humans are religious beings.  You can see this all around as the religious rites of COVID take hold.  If you don’t use the proper word, wear the proper things or act the proper way, you are a heretic, and are banned, shunned, your bank accounts will be cancelled and you will be erased from the internet. Anti-religion religion is self contradictory and hypocritical.  On two levels.  It is doing what it is accusing others of doing and doing it badly.

And the main problem is all the Christians who think that obeying what God says is somehow a problem.  It justifies ever worsening behavior.  It is a race to the bottom.  It makes good religion the enemy.  It enables sin and demonizes those who are better than you in practice.  It is sinning so that grace may abound as Paul says.

We have gotten rid of the word and the practice.  Language is inextricably connected with our thinking and actions.  Do you compare your actions with that of your Christian brother and try to love God more than they do?  Is bringing his will to earth as it is in heaven a priority for you in every area of life?  Or do you criticize people who are better than you? Do you make up excuses for why your behavior is fine?  That is not for us “certainly not!”.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” -Jesus the Christ

It’s interesting that the same people who have been taking about how they stay off of social media because it’s not real, are fine staying home for Zoom church. There seems to be a common denominator.

Martin Luther, (Eisleben, 1483, Eisleben, 1546). German reformer. Doctor of Theology and Augustinian priest. In 1517, outlined the main thesis of Lutheranism in Wittenberg. He was excommunicated in 1520. Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenberg castle church his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.

Technology really hasn’t change things all that much. There have always been letters, books, notes, public notices, public debates, second hand information, gossip and on and on. These aren’t nothing, but they aren’t to be the extent of appropriate fellowship for the body of Christ. Listening to a CD is not the same as being at a concert. How much more the power of the Holy Sprit sharing fellowship among believers. Until very recently the meeting together of the Believers was centered around a Eucharist table. Jesus invited his followers to the table. Jesus made it possible for men alienated by sin to come in and have table fellowship with a Holy God.

“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” Revelation 3:20

We have become to comfortable pretending that the physical world is just a placeholder for our minds. This is gnosticism. The physical world is the world. Christ came back from the dead with a new body, that resembled the old body, here in the real world. James says a faith without works is dead. Theory without real relationships in this world, are meaningless.
Paul laments that he can not meet with believers in person (Gal 4:20, I Thes. 2:17). But he writes them nonetheless. Letters are important. Writing is important. It allows us to connect with people who lived long before our time or people who live across the world in our own time. It is a sort of fellowship. There is nothing magical about one or another medium. It is like anything, it can be for evil or for good. Posts online can glorify God or blaspheme him. But if there was no point in being on social media, why are the richest people in the world so obsessed with controlling what goes on there? The reality is that by so many good people being afraid or too lazy to spread the light of the Gospel to these realms, they created an evil place. We have retreated from the public square both publicly and digitally and so they are very dark.

Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church. It was the Facebook group for his community. He was beginning the discussion about certain church abuses. Were people in the crowd wringing their hands “I don’t get involved in church doors.” “It’s just the worst of humanity.” Lincoln and Douglas travelled around the U.S. in 1858 having public debates. No one lamented that these two were disagreeing in public and how unChristian it was. Rigorous debate has been a staple of Christendom for 2000 years from Paul opposing Peter at the first Church council to debates between G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Don’t be such a sissy. Humans disagree, we need a responsible system in place for handling those disagreements. We don’t just stay home. Get in there and spread the light. If you are unqualified for the fight, then get qualified. But at the very least stop lamenting on those who do get in the ring.

Seraph in the second Matrix movie said you don’t truly know someone until you fight them. It really is true. You don’t know yourself either. You are a spoiled kid who thinks he is the best in the world, because he has never been tried. Liberals want to end debate because they don’t want to know anyone and they don’t want to find out that they are wrong and incapable of forming arguments. It’s easier just to use the power of the victim identity to shut down everything they don’t like. The Christian approach seems to be to let them. Then when everything falls apart we claim it is proof Jesus is about to return. No it is proof that the Church is full of cowards.

Requiring voter ID is supposedly evil because it’s the same as a poll tax which is evil because it’s what we used to do to all poor people including white crackers.  Wait till they find out that children can’t vote.  Hey if I’m a descendent of a cracker, do I still have to pay reparations?  I’m not at all convinced that poll taxes are bad and would have no problems standing before God and saying so.  There are some more fundamental things than voting, like , I don’t know life.  You know part of that “life liberty and the pursuit of cancelling everyone you don’t like”?  No, that can’t be right.  If restricting access to voting is evil how about restricting access to life? 

I was struck by this reality as I was listening to a hollywood actress with no clothes figuratively and literally drone on about the virtues of making movies when no one else can work.  I heard the clip from a third party because like everyone else I have better things to do than watch godless people give each other awards.  These people can work because they are tested repeatedly and quarantined and besides they are hollywood elites so they can call up their mayor/governor and get whatever they want.  But the average business man can’t afford all this extra cost.  Maybe he could if he were not already jumping through hundreds of hoops from the tax code to the OSHA, EPA, and a dozens other do-nothing State and Federal agencies.  These are all restrictions on the most basic function of moral productive life, working.  Like that guy in the Princess Bride says “they aren’t sucking poll taxes, they are sucking life.” Or something like that.  And that is actually the point, laws are just about restricting access and securing special privileges.  We just have a more fancy way of doing it today.  Rich people can afford lawyers and lower class slaves to comply with all of these pointless rules, the COVID rules are just the latest layer.  But the rest of us must expel our life, if we even have the option of complying.

I was thinking of another comparison.  While you are taking off your clothes, and being swabbed and harassed and scanned and stripped by incompetent airport security, ( I’m sorry is is rude to call a group of people who fail more often than COVID, incompetent?) they are hopping on their private jets, with no security checks.  Private flight is fine if you can afford it, but they have to preach to us the whole time about destroying the planet.  I just looked up some basic numbers, it costs $75,000-$125,000 to charter a private plane from LA to DC.  Which Nancy Pelosi does regularly, either paid for by us or some donor scam.  The average commercial flight is probably $300.  Those numbers represent the materials and personnel needed to make your flight happen.  Minerals need to be mined and refined and be organized into a plane.  People need to be organized to fly and service the plane.  Oil must be refined.  These numbers are really just units of energy.  The private flight person has consumed 100,000 units worth of resources for their trip, the average joe has consumed 300 units.   Now for people who own their own plane, it’s even worse.  They pay for the convenience of always having it at their disposal.  You are consuming hanger space, and unused plane potential, even when not flying.  The pilate ratio is the same as the private charter, but you might pay his whole salary to have him available at all times.  I would have a moral problem consuming so much for myself regardless of the environment.  But these people are pure hypocrites.  And why do we put up with al this?  Why do we honor, and respect and exalt such horrible people?  Where is the responsibility of those with a lot, or in leadership to set a good example for others?  And it’s not enough that they have all this, the encourage rioting mobs to come and burn down our COVID closed businesses.  And we dare to protest actual suppression of votes, and they hunt us down and put is in jail for nothing, and put us on the no-fly list.  So we don’t even have the option of being publicly sexually molested by the TSA.  It’s not about sticking it to the rich, it’s about leaving us the hell alone so we can work and travel freely.