Bob's Blog

Ben Shapiro writes at National Review,

We must stop allowing anger to be its own justification.
We’re living in the era of “authenticity.”

Once upon a time, human beings strove not to be authentic — at least not in public. Self-control was predicated on the idea that our most authentic selves had to be overcome by reason and civility. Sure, you hated Bob from accounting — but you were a better person because you never said so, and you treated Bob decently whenever you saw him. The book of Proverbs suggested, “Fools give vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end.” Ecclesiastes recommended, “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” And Aristotle suggested that anger, while useful, should only be channeled in service of reason.

Thanks to the ubiquity of social media, however, those who withhold their true emotions are now seen as inauthentic. Reason must never trump anger — allowing reason to trump anger is a sign of insincerity.

The same holds true of new Democratic stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who has been hailed as the avatar of the new Leftism, or Bernie Sanders, who channeled the supposed rage of the youth, or Donald Trump, the man who captured the anger of conservatives. Overt displays of fury act as predicates to trust: We know we can trust people who can’t control themselves, or who won’t control themselves. They’re not lying to us.

...Our addiction to anger must stop. Anger may be authentic, but there’s no reason to trust angry people to wield power responsibly.

Read more here.

Ann Voskamp writes a post showing how anxiety can wear anger’s mask.

Fear of failing, of falling, of falling behind, it can make us fierce. Oh, yes’m: Life can be messy before nine in the morning.

...It can happen — I felt it —

how unceasing thanks can make all these moments dance brave and unafraid.
Read much more here.

Ann Voskamp's advice for us today:

...Trash your anger. Be kind and be gentle and be thankful. Only Speak Words that make Souls Stronger.

...When the heart’s a bit bitter, better still the tongue. Tongues are tails of the heart. Trust your tongue only when your heart is tender.

The sin of not finding enough Joy in Christ, this is the sin that dresses up as all the other sins.

...And what He calls you to will look upside down and it may not look like it makes any sense. I tell myself that every quaking morning: You’re only living Faith when you taste a bit of Fear in your mouth. It isn’t really Faith unless it tastes a bit like fear. Feel the fear and Leap Anyways.

Your Father is infinitely bigger than your fears.

...Simplicity isn’t a matter of circumstances, but of focus. Five words. Do. Whatever. He. Tells. You. #DWHTY

Read more here.

There’s no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly about than anger. Anger greets most of us every day – in our personal relationships, in the workplace, on the highway, on airline trips – and, often, in our political lives as well. Anger is both poisonous and popular. Even when people acknowledge its destructive tendencies, they still so often cling to it, seeing it as a strong emotion, connected to self-respect and manliness (or, for women, to the vindication of equality). If you react to insults and wrongs without anger you’ll be seen as spineless and downtrodden. When people wrong you, says conventional wisdom, you should use justified rage to put them in their place, exact a penalty. We could call this football politics, but we’d have to acknowledge right away that athletes, whatever their rhetoric, have to be disciplined people who know how to transcend anger in pursuit of a team goal.

...

Mandela used to tell people a little parable. Imagine that the sun and the wind are contending to see who can get a traveller to take off his blanket. The wind blows hard, aggressively. But the traveller only pulls the blanket tighter around him. Then the sun starts to shine, first gently, and then more intensely. The traveller relaxes his blanket, and eventually he takes it off. So that, he said, is how a leader has to operate: forget about the strike-back mentality, and forge a future of warmth and partnership.

Read more here.

Chateau Heartiste has this to say today:

...media shitlibs have taken to cooing stuff like “We can’t let fear and anger dictate our policies.” Newsflash, fear and anger are justified responses to endless violent attacks by enemies within. Fear and anger motivate actions to defend oneself from continuing attacks on one’s countrymen. If you aren’t fearful or angry, you’re holding a useless candlelight vigil and hoping the next truck doesn’t run over you and yours.

Snarky, juvenile language allows media shitlibs to emotionally disengage from a credible threat to one of their own. To wit, shitlibs also like to say “let’s not reduce this problem to something simplistic.” No, of course not. Complicating a rather straightforward horror show — muslim aggression against infidel White Westerners — is the rhetorical legerdemain that allows shitlibs to maintain a facsimile of faith in their Equalism ideology. What the shitlib mistakes for simplicity is to the sane mind known as clarity. More clarity, please, and don’t stop with the clarity until every last shitlib is too exhausted to fagslap the shitlord army as they’re assuming control of the main engine room.

Read more here.

Sarah Kaplan writes in the Washington Post about a woman who

crashed her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed. ...The husband, Balenga Kalala, ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to murder, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (the ABC).

Andrew Klavan writes at PJ Media,

Why are Republicans supporting a man who, for all his millions, can’t even buy himself a decent hairpiece? Because he said something that sounded sort of kind of nasty about all the Mexican criminals pouring into the country and then refused to back down when the corporate left pulled its usual Frankenstein mob scene to shut him up.

Yoda is right. Our anger comes from fear. Fear of being bullied into silence. Fear of the IRS coming after us for our opinions. Fear of our businesses being destroyed by small-minded H8ers. Fear of a White House that finds myriad ways to harass and even imprison those who disagree with it. Fear of a media that lies and lies and lies, that covers up non-compliant reality in order to sell a left-wing narrative that will secure their sense of virtue and increase the political influence of their corporate bosses.

When a man like Trump seems to spit in the eye of the people we fear, we rally behind him thinking we’re fighting back. We’re not. We’re following our fear right down the rabbit hole.

You want to win back your country? Here’s how. Fear nothing. Hate no one. Stick to principles. Unchecked borders are dangerous not because Mexicans are evil but because evil thrives when good men don’t stand guard. Poverty programs are misguided, not because the poor are undeserving criminals, but because dependency on government breeds dysfunction and more poverty. Guns save lives and protect liberty. Property rights guarantee liberty. Religious rights are essential to liberty. Without liberty we are equal only in misery.

These things are true. They’re true for white people and black people, male people and female people, straight people and gay people. We should support the smartest, most proven, most statesmanlike candidate who best represents those principles. And we should do it out of — dare I say the word? — love. Love for our neighbors, our fellow citizens, white and black, male and female, straight and gay.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” That’s the word of #RealYoda, baby.

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads… well, to stupidity really. That’s what muppet Yoda should’ve said.

Read more here.

Are you the only mom who has ever lost it with her kid? Does your anger ambush you? Are we time bombs that must be defused with regular rest, food, and space? Lisa-Jo Baker has written "10 Things to Do Differently *Before* You Lose Your Temper" here.

“By God’s marvelous design, few life experiences humble us quite as effectively as parenting. …This tiny tyrant is providentially placed in our house with one grand program: to mold his or her parents into the image of our Lord. The way up spiritually, is by looking down physically.”~Gary Thomas, Devotions for Sacred Parenting.

Thanks to Ann Voskamp

Ann Voskamp reminds us today that

anger sells, but anger doesn't win. Ask Jesus.

There is the passion of the Christ that begs you to love people enough to suffer with them — not make them suffer.

Are you a parent? Do you ever lose it with your kids? Ann Voskamp writes about that today.

You don’t think about how you can open your mouth and let the sharp side of your tongue tear the innards out of a soul —- and there’s no way you can stuff the whole bloody mess back.

When you’re upset, you upset what’s really in you.

How can you have held the child that came from you as an ember of very heaven and then glare blind angry and stomp him right out? Who can look into a child and forget miracle?

Me — the amnesiac mother who forgets holy all the time.

How can grace get a hold of you when the past won’t let go of you? How do you leave a legacy different than the one you’ve been left?

And I kneel down and let go of his arm. And I hold his face. That’s what I should have done, done right at the beginning. What would happen in a world where anger was your flag to reach out and cup a face?

If you don’t fight for joy, it’s your children who lose.

What do I want my children to remember — my joy in clean floors, made beds and ironed shirts — or my joy of the Lord?

You will be most remembered — by what brought you most joy.

Joy isn’t an optional feature to the Christian life — it’s the vital feature of the Christian life.

Every ungracious moment means someone doesn’t understand grace.

And the boy crumbles into me and I hold onto him and a forgiveness I’ll never deserve and there’s a grace that can hold us, that can mold us, the way joy can bend you soft at all the joints.

And I murmur it into the thick of his hair, that even now He can still make us like Him.

The boy touches my cheek like a flag waving yes.