I do believe in a literal hell, even though this rendering sort of reminds me of a mosh pit backlit with a red light.  Jesus talked about hell frequently in the Bible, and I don’t think He was being allegorical.  This being said, thankfully, I have neither the authority nor the desire to consign anyone to that realm.  There are enough horrors right here on this earth to convince me that I don’t want to see such things escalate or continue.

I’m sure that the way I’m wired has something to do with the fact that I tend toward fear most of the time.  Now that I’m older and have the life experience and scripts to be bit more rational about my fears, I don’t always appear to be a deer in the headlights, but those fears are far closer to the surface than I would like to acknowledge.

I’m not necessarily talking about dreams one has while sleeping.  I almost never have the vivid and terrifying dreams I had as a child, but neither do I have the wonderful, majestic visions in “good” dreams I once enjoyed either.  If I remember my dreams at all, they are usually rather banal and bland.   Whether the neutralization of my dreams is a side effect of the medications I take, or this numbing occurs because I seldom sleep soundly, or this graying effect can be attributed to the cumulative grimy jadedness of age, I don’t know.  I am thankful for the dearth of terrifying nightmares, but I could use a really good fantasy or two to savor these days.

Why does Victorian mourning garb remind me of burqas?

I am terrified of the prospect that some day my granddaughter could be forced to wear a burqa and be subjugated to the barbaric laws of Islam. Maybe I am over reacting to what I see and read, but history has much to teach us about Islam and what happens when radical Islamists find their ways into civilization.

Not here.  Not unless it is a personal choice and 100% voluntary. And who would voluntarily choose this?

I remember as a child being afraid (and this was during the Cold War) that the Soviet Union would randomly nuclear bomb the entire world into kingdom come. Of course my childhood was filled with fear around-the-clock,  fear of pretty much everything apart from dogs and books.

Historically speaking it takes pretty dire situations to wake up the American people.  We like to stay quiet and peaceful and complacently bucolic.  For the most part that is not a bad thing, except when change is necessary or a great adversity needs to be overcome.

We have dealt with an ever increasing degree of corruption, graft and cronyism in our government at all levels.  Obama is arguably the very worst and most corrupt president this country has ever seen, so much so that his very ineptitude and disdain for this country and disregard for the people is waking people up. We are pissed. We are afraid for our future, and we are realizing the need to do something about it.