By Dr. Jim Ferguson
I’ve said my stories find me, but nothing found me this week; at least nothing around which to construct an essay. So, as I sit on my porch late Wednesday afternoon, I decided to write about what I see from my porch and my observations of the week.
Becky and I built our retirement home at the top of what we call Thistle Hill. Our home overlooks our small farm with white fencing around green pastures for my daughter’s horses. I am not a horse person, but I love my daughter and son-in-law, and I worship my grandchildren. So, keeping them close requires that I tolerate horses. And like raccoons, they are pretty from a distance.
I always imagined damming up the wet weather ditch at the bottom of our hill to make a catfish pond. Unfortunately, Barney Fife at the City of Knoxville claimed the ditch as “blue waters” of the state of Tennessee and forbade improvement of our land. We now refer to the ditch as “Twits Creek.” I’m over it; I don’t even like to fish. I’m just opposed to intrusive big government and bureaucrats who carry one bullet in their shirt pocket.
The pinhead bureaucrats were on parade in Washington DC this week. The ridiculous and vacuous Democrats held a variety of congressional hearings including the interrogation of Attorney General William Barr over the Robert Mueller report and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Congressional Democrats seemed stunned that Barr confirmed President Trump’s suspicions that his campaign had been spied upon during the 2016 election cycle. Barr said the Justice Department is beginning an investigation into what would be federal crimes.
As Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, “Auntie” Maxine Waters, demanded to know what the big bank CEOs planned to do about the student loan problem. Apparently, Waters did not know that the Obama administration took over the student loan situation in 2010, and the bankers no longer make college loans. I’m no banking wizard, but wholesale college loans seem like bad investments, if the utterly clueless AOC’s degree in economics from Boston University is any measure. Personally, I love history. However, though expensive undergraduate degrees in history and psychology may be springboards to advanced studies, alone they will not land you a job or repay college loans.
I would be worried if I were a member of the deep state and had conspired in the “soft coup d’état” which attempted to remove President Trump from office. There’s a new sheriff in town. It has been exposed that the Russian conspiracy was a hoax. CNN and MSNBC are certainly worried as their ratings tank due to their disingenuous trumpeting of “Russians! Russians! Russians!” for the last two years. Perhaps these paragons of fake news will plead ignorance and say they were duped by their allies at the NYT, Washington Post and Adam Schiff.
There may even be progress on the southern border. Democrats – except Omar – now acknowledge a crisis and that an invasion is underway. Some of you may remember the Cloward-Piven strategy articulated by two socialist professors at Columbia University. Obama gave them awards in a Rose Garden ceremony. This Saul Alinsky strategy was designed to increase public expectations which would eventually overwhelm the government and lead to revolutionary change. The same policy is playing out at the southern border as border agents, the military, facilities and our ability to care for the hordes storming the gates are overwhelmed and overrun.
Democrats resist the wall which is necessary to protect our country. They hope to garner a new class of underprivileged immigrants which will vote Democratic. Establishment Republicans (RINOs) share responsibility along with their Chamber of Commerce friends who just want cheap labor.
In the modern day Panem (Hunger Games) of Washington DC who speaks for America and Americans? At this time I see only one champion, and it sure “ain’t” Lamar. With a few notable exceptions, our gladiator (Trump) has called out the corrupt establishment of Washington DC and the perverse media. I’ll not discuss the Holly-weird’s who cheat to get their kids into big-name universities and previously turned blind eyes to “couch auditions” in their sordid industry.
Despite all the foibles of humanity, one great achievement this week caught my eye and even made the cover in the local fish wrapper. The universe we observe is majestic and mysterious beyond our wildest imagination.
One of my axioms is, “Few things have never been thought before.” Two notable exceptions to this axiom are the theory of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Quantum mechanics describes the strange reality of subatomic particles which allows my iPhone and computer to work. No one fully understands this mysterious world of the building blocks of matter. General relativity explains the majestic universe we observe in the stars at night.
I don’t possess the mathematical or conceptual gifts to understand the reality of the very small and the very large. Like all humans I inhabit the world between these extremes. I have an interest in physics, but I have only limited comprehension of the great 20th century theories of the Cosmos.
However, science afforded me a glimpse of the mysterious and majestic beyond the stars this week with a picture of a black hole. A picture is a strange notion of a black hole because these massive collapsed stars have such a huge gravity-well that not even photons of light can escape and cross space to impact upon my retinas or a camera. Nonetheless, a worldwide telescopic network collected light from a collapsing black hole 55,000,000 light years away and published the image. Imagine that these reflected light rays left that region of space about the time that dinosaurs were destroyed by the meteor impact in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.
But we do not have to look into the nucleus of an atom or across the Cosmos to see the majesty of Creation. Science has described the details. The finely tuned universe which has produced thoughtful life is called the anthropic principle and, if you’re interested, eminent theoretical physicist Paul Davies in his very readable God and the New Physics elegantly showcases the Master’s Intelligent Design.
