More OEF Draper Trails

Posted on July 6, 2017 by ehurst

OEF is the abbreviation for Oklahoma Earthbike Fellowship. Actually this is not my scene. Today on the OEF Draper Trails I stopped a couple of times to commune with the forest. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great workout and something I should do once in awhile. However, the forest pointed out that this kind of trail riding isn’t really my calling. It’s too intense for too much of the ride and I can’t easily hear the Spirit of the Lord speaking from those secret places.

Today I decided to visit the red loop. It’s only a mile long and runs back and forth on the only north-facing slope in the OEF park. That means it has a slightly different terrain and crosses this one large gully repeatedly, as seen in this picture. I shot this looking upslope from the fourth and lowest crossing.

There was also a couple of smaller gullies like this one on the left. I had to dismount a couple of times on the big one because the approach was too rough to hit it fast. This little one wasn’t so bad. All in all it was fun one time, but I’m not likely to visit the red loop again, even if I do come back — say, next month.

Here’s another glance at part of the black loop. You can see beyond the board wall a couple of hop jumps. I’m told there are a few riders who really love this stuff, but they complain it’s not very well constructed. I really have no idea what kind of criteria and expertise it takes to make these trails pass muster with the national organization to which OEF belongs, but it’s just not my scene. Too many parts of this trail park are just that kind of elitist stuff. It’s not a good place for someone who’s aging, injured and arthritic, not to mention pretty heavy.

I think I’ll come back out to Draper Lake after the frosts hit again, and ride the wild trails along the shore. That way I can stop when I hear the Spirit calling from those secret places.

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Keep Your Eyes Open

Posted on July 5, 2017 by ehurst

The global elite are about to lose their grip. It won’t happen all at once; it may not even be a total loss. Still, as more and more of what makes this world go, slips farther and farther into the virtual world, the current meat space political elite will be displaced by a different kind of elite. The current elite who don’t make the transition will be left behind.

In virtual space, the elite will be those who make the Internet work. Not just coding and protocols, but those who manage to drag the social and economic center of gravity onto the network. It’s been taking place for quite some time. To some degree that new elite will be the big name entrepreneurs, but they won’t have it to themselves very long. We have a new rising technocracy that will change the meaning of the term “technocrat.” It’s not so much the coders as those few coders who are able to see where it’s all headed. It’s the people with the vision and drive to make things go there.

Meanwhile, we should see a good bit of warfare over the direction the network is taking. The old meat space elite are doing their best to force the network to serve their old agenda. This will fail, but not before it first appears to be working.

This is where it gets difficult and fuzzy for me. I tend to believe that, as the old elite manage to seize some measure of control over the current network, the new elite will create a new network technology that will be impossible to subvert that way. There’s no way for me to guess what it will look like or how it will work. What I see is that the techno-elite will refuse to be let their network be lost to the old elite. They’ll do whatever it takes to come up with something that can’t be taken from their hands.

As usual, this will be made possible by the utter necessity of the old elite scrambling for some advantage amongst themselves. Every time the old order passes, it’s because they seek some advantage amongst themselves and enable the new order to arise. Rome hired Germanic mercenaries, but the Germanic tribes invaded in force later. The Medieval kings needed the money from the surging middle class merchants, and eventually the merchant class took over the governments. Now, the elite are seeking advantages in cyber warfare, and the cybernauts will eventually take over the government.

For the technology sector, we have a major hindrance in the rise of huge centralized monopolies-in-effect. These monopolies are binding the network to the old ways of doing things. Thus, we should expect that, either these monopolies will get a clue and make major changes in their business models, or they will be broken. Centralization is itself a vulnerability in the virtual realm. The network is inherently decentralized, so the tension will eventually break the hardened monopolies.

Here’s a hint: There will be a major shift toward enabling the most radical individual demands, such that all manufacturing and services will drift toward custom one-of-a-kind solutions made to order, and away from mass production of identical products. As more and more of life can be done that way, it will be increasingly necessary to do it that way.

We cannot see yet what shape the new virtual world will take, and what kinds of service and features will take hold and remain viable in the midst of the coming chaos. You and I as heart-led agents of the God’s Kingdom are watching to see where it will go. We need to discern just who we are before this gets too far along, so that when the path God has for each of us is revealed, we will simply recognize it and be ready to charge ahead.

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Always Offering Shalom

Posted on July 4, 2017 by ehurst

I refer to a very long page at the Thinktank: Why couldn’t Israel take in the Amalekites like they did foreign survivors in Deut 20?

I will allow you to read about the Amalekites if you like, but my point at issue here is this:

So, in the case of surrender, they were simply treated almost at the same level as ‘regular Israelites’???! And they were not subjected to the post-surrender atrocities of mutilation, torture, and horrors of ‘normal’ invading armies???!

He says that after first describing what a horrific treatment fell on folks who were besieged by almost every other kingdom and empire in that part of the world. Israel stood out as the most merciful of nations, bringing almost anyone under their Covenant shalom. Thus, they became feudal vassals and were expected to live by the Laws of Noah as Gentiles.

With such a peace treaty, there was no plunder. Economically, all it meant was offering a tithe of their productivity back to the royal house of Israel, to include some amount of labor and services. It was simply shifting from one sovereign to another, and often a much better deal. They weren’t occupied and did not lose their homes or lands, but were expected to allow free trade as well. Furthermore, they were protected from attack from outsiders. Even when someone fooled them into offering a vassal treaty (see Gibeon Joshua 9), Israel took seriously the responsibility to protect them from attack.

This helps to fill out the image of how we as individual operate in a moral feudalism. God makes us His vassals, but then we in turn accept vassals into the limited domain He grants to each of us as our mission and calling. And we are to be noteworthy for our mercies. Yes, there were exceptions in Israel’s history, as there will be for you, but they are exceptions.

The meaning of shalom is hardly restricted to leaving someone alone, though it could mean that. Rather, it is the broader concept of inviting someone to participate in the social stability, prosperity, safety, and health that are promised blessings of our covenant with Him.

Note: This long explanation by the author of Christian Thinktank also helps explain why I reject the libertarian doctrine of “taxation as theft.” Everyone serves someone on this earth, and taxation is a divine right. The only debate is how those ancient provisions can be translated into our modern day.

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Moral Discernment in the Social Context

Posted on July 3, 2017 by ehurst

A primary feature of the Alpha Male personality is sufficient arrogance to reject the entire civilization in which he lives. More to the point, a genuine Alpha is quite willing to embrace the role of “bad guy” in all its various forms, if the mainstream insists on using such labels in an attempt to control his behavior. If “manly” is defined as “evil,” then the Alpha will proudly fly that flag and go to war with society.

The form this all takes is wholly native to the Anglo-Saxon mythology. More importantly, it is native to what has become of Anglo-Saxon mythology as it has survived to this day in the West, particularly in the US. If you were to take up a genuine study of any of the ancient influences on Western Civilization in general, you will find that those influences are changed and even perverted in the process. So for example, Western Civilization is not true to the teaching of Aristotle, but it is Aristotelian in many ways, in that his teaching has an influence. It’s not a question of Aristotle himself, but what people have done in response to his teaching, and how they have used some of it to shape a world he would find foreign and objectionable. It’s the same with all the mythology of the ancient German tribes that invaded the Roman Empire, to include the Anglo-Saxons.

The modern day cults of Odin and Oester are not a fair representation of the ancient mythology at all, but anyone can discern the influence of ancient mythology in the sense that we cynically expect humanity to latch onto the stupidest part of everything they can find and run off with it in all directions. What we live with today in the US is a cyclical battle between Cults of Odin-masculine and Oester-feminine, and a very bad version of both.

For some time now, the femmes have ruled in the mainstream cultural sphere. That is, the modern day Cult of Oester controls the public debate by controlling the terms and frame of reference. They have seized virtually all forms of expression so that everything is defined in their terms. Thus, the popular image of what it means to be “masculine” is whatever they say it is before anyone even starts talking.

We can argue whether our president is actually an Alpha, but we cannot deny he acts like one. Everyone tells him he shouldn’t use Twitter, especially the way he does it, saying nasty things about people he doesn’t like. But it’s obvious that in his eyes, he’s being unfairly attacked by people who hate him, so he’s only hitting back after they draw first blood. And if it means people will call him evil, so be it — hoist the black flag and start slitting throats. He’s in charge and everyone who hates him can just screw themselves.

Now, let’s back up a minute and think this through biblically with our heart-led minds.

It’s one thing to recognize that our society is somewhat stratified by various degrees of social charisma that people can manifest. It’s not a question of their personal moral virtue, but the ability to project their presence into the awareness of others. This is very real and is wired into us, partly by the Fall and partly by divine design. Some of it you can learn and some of it is simply what you are born with — you can only do so much with your inheritance. However, at least some of your influence rests on your choice to capitalize on what you have. You can increase your social influence by understanding what many call “Game” — the Game Theory of Socio-sexual Response (see footnote below).

A critical part of this is recognizing that both sides in this mess are deceived, but that the deception is deeper and more completely developed on the feminine side. Feminism rejects a priori the truth of things, and your average female is so deeply pickled in this bitterness that you will find the Cult of Oester ruling in every aspect of society as the norm. (It’s the dominant cultic influence in Western churches, especially.) To be “Western” is to be feminist. There is no masculinist position, except as a problem that afflicts the mainstream.

Meanwhile, there is a tiny handful of males and females who see through this vast deception and are pulling away. Some are using their position to prey on those trapped inside the big lie, but most are simply taking advantage of their insight for less predatory purposes. They are content to win prizes with a little more meaning than mere self-gratification.

And quite a few are spreading the message online. Yet, even their clear view of reality is still deeply wed to the broader false mythology underlying Western Civilization itself. What appears to them as reality is still just a matter of illusion so massive that there is precious little chance that any other story will be heard. Thus, the Game folks are buying into some mixture of truth and error, in that they still embrace the image of being “bad guys” because it’s all they have left in this crazy context. They believe what they have is truth, but are waiting the time when the feminist control breaks down, as it inevitably must. What Game folks do not understand is that when feminism dies, so will Western Civilization. There won’t be anything left for the masculinists to inherit and rebuild.

Granted, an awful lot of folks living through this shift from Western Civilization to the Networked Civilization won’t even notice it. That’s because the latter will most certainly incorporate elements of the former, as has been the case with every civilization. Still, the new world coming will be quite different and a great many Game folks will be at a loss when their expectations don’t come about. Much of what they take for granted as “reality” is still illusion.

We who have committed ourselves to a heart-led life can see this coming. We are in a position to sift out the false elements of Game to discern what parts of it comes from Scripture. So we know, for example, that male dominance is not simply inevitable, but utterly necessary. It is essential to living in our fallen world and we will promote it as morally good and right. However, we will most certainly dispute with Game folks about what male dominance means and what it should look like when exercised properly. We uphold the shepherd image, not the Anglo-Saxon warrior image. We are not Beowulf, but King David, and we take very seriously the burden of responsibility to ensure we know what that really means, not buy into some Westernized perversion of it.

We can understand Trump, and we can easily see how he is God’s agent of destruction. We know prophetically that this coming destruction is utterly necessary in light of God’s revelation. We embrace it with a paradoxical mixture of joy and sorrow. And we know that what follows will not be some virtual golden age, but that it will seem such to a great many who walk through it. They will be no less deceived than those who came before them, because that’s the nature of the Curse of the Fall. There is nothing we can do to deflect the course of history as God herds humanity along the path of His will.

Instead, we seek to harvest just those few souls He has prepared for us to reach. We emphasize a message about what this world should be like, what God had intended it to be, and the sad truth of what it has become. And yet, we know of a certainty that we walk in His revelation and still manage to harvest a fruit of joy and peace that brings us as close to Eden as anyone can be.

************

Footnote: It’s called “Game Theory” because it uses the same approach to understanding socio-sexual response as any serious gamer uses in beating a computer role-playing game. Such computer games are virtual reality, an imaginary world with its own rules and so forth. A true gamer approaches it like an Alpha Male, with some detachment. That is, he doesn’t lose himself in the game; he’s not a true believer. Instead, he uses some version of scientific method to explore, fully expecting to lose and die over and over again until he understands how the game is designed. It’s about sifting out false clues from actual results. Then he can beat it with a stunningly high score, and go on to the next game. Men who learn to apply that approach to dealing with females — and society in general — can then ignore all the noise about what women claim they want and give women what they actually respond to, to win whatever high score and prizes are available.

Please note that this Game Theory approach in itself is evidence of the rising Networked Civilization; it’s a departure from Western Civilization even as it pulls something from it.

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Alien-nation

Posted on July 2, 2017 by ehurst

I tell ya, folks, I’m feeling more and more like an alien every day.

Sometimes I’ll have a little spare time and read sites that claim to offer “Christian news” stories. Some are distinctly liberal, offering globalist propaganda. The others are distinctly conservative evangelical. So far, I’ve not found one that attempts to cover news of interest to Christian mystics. Either way, as previously noted, it’s all about various forms of cultural and political influence.

And in more mundane terms, while I can certainly understand the folks I encounter daily, I still feel like I’ve come from another planet. Once or twice during conversation, I’ve used that image of myself when something I said seemed too far outside their experience. I’m not trying to put them off; I can tell they aren’t that interested in the first place. I’m just trying to save them the trouble. When folks really want to understand, your heart can tell. The Holy Spirit is present to open the door of their souls.

Right now, that’s not too often. Most of the time I’m just an alien, harmless and going about my sometimes inexplicable concerns. Most of the time I can tell that people around me have me placed on a mental hook; they only think they know me. Again, I’m not hiding and not smug about this. It’s just the nature of things. I really do belong to a different world.

We who belong to the Sheik of Heaven are just visitors here.

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Psalm 138

Posted on July 1, 2017 by ehurst

A psalm of David, this one makes more sense if we keep in mind the image of a God who reveals Himself through His character in Creation. Anyone born anywhere has the capacity and means to grasp something of God’s personality and moral nature through the voice of reality, even if they never learn of His covenants or His name. This psalm celebrates answered prayers.

David declares that his heart is fully committed to Jehovah. He refers to celebrating Jehovah in the face of elohim, often used as a figure of speech referring to human VIPs as well as angels or pagan deities. It hardly matters, since there is none on the level of his Lord. So it makes no difference who regards his physical form; David is going to elevate his Master in the face of everyone and make it clear that no one has any greater authority.

No matter where he finds himself, David will symbolically face toward the place God has marked with His name on the earth, Jerusalem. A noteworthy thing it is that God prefers to be known first and foremost by the power of His moral truth rather than a name or title that men might repeat. Either way, those who call upon Him by any name at all will find He answers and gives His servants boldness from within their own souls.

How can anyone of power, upon hearing the Word of His commandments, not marvel at the wisdom and rightness of it? Nothing in this world could make as much sense to seeking hearts as the revelation of our Creator. It shines with blinding brilliance. For here is one who resides in the very heavens, and yet is able to crawl down on the level of those oppressed and driven to the ground. Yet those who think highly of themselves will be lucky if He even allows them to come into His Presence.

So David is assured that even in the midst of distress, God will reach out to him. Everyone who seeks to persecute David will have to face the wrath of Jehovah. In the midst of noise and confusion, God knows that really matters. He is fully aware of our commitments, and His mercy will meet us there to fulfill our real needs. He has made us along with everything around us; He has no intention of winding things up to let them run out on their own. He pays close attention to His own Creation.

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Draper Mountain Bike Trails

Posted on July 1, 2017 by ehurst

You can find the official website here. It includes a link to download the PDF map, but that map is out of date by some years. The trails generally have even more loops and switchbacks than drawn in with colored lines, and two or three times I found myself in areas of the map with no lines at all. I went out on this ride Thursday.

It was my first visit to the trails park and I really didn’t intend to shoot too many pictures. This shot is about what most of it looked like. The trails are well-worn, somewhat sandy and the terrain itself feels mostly flat. The rise and fall is long and gentle in most places. The whole thing sits on a faint ridge that runs north-south. There are the occasional natural features with gullies and places where the underlying red sandstone juts to the surface, but it’s mostly thick underbrush dominated by blackjack oak.

There are just a few man made features. This one is an over-n-under where the trail runs below and then doubles back to climb over. I am still not quite recovered enough to make that climb without dismounting. Such happened only a handful of times in the considerable distance I rode. At no time did I find any of the sand pits too much to handle, but there were an awful lot of them. I think somehow my well-trained eyes saved me far more than my actual riding skill, but I didn’t hurry.

For some reason the trails were marked with instructions to follow a reverse direction on most of the defined loops. From the parking lot, I was directed by red-on-white arrows southward to the yellow loop (moderate difficulty). At some point it merged into the orange loop (another moderate trail) without any kind of notification. By the time I came back out to the open cut through the woods, I was already tired, but I carried on into the green loop (fairly easy and very long). I skipped the red loop simply because I was already tired and headed down to the blue loop, supposedly the easiest. In the midst of this was the black loop, featuring a large collection of man made challenge features. I spotted a banked wooden wall that was off the ground a bit, as well as several other things impossible for me.

The blue loop was quite easy in one sense, but there were so very man tight switchbacks that I could almost see myself coming and going. There were dozens of places where you could reach through the foliage and grab someone behind or in front of you. Eventually I was led back to the green loop which had been interrupted by the detours on the northern end of the park area. By the time I finished, I was whipped. It took me about an hour-and-a-half for the loops I chose. I noticed it felt more like running than those long steady road rides, frequently swapping between fairly hard surging and coasting. I managed to get started early enough not to melt in the heat of the day.

I could stand to do this about once per week. I think I’ll skip the blue and try the red next time.

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Cultural Christianity Will Die

Posted on June 30, 2017 by ehurst

Mr. T asked a very good question on the previous post. Good questions always open a line of thought I had not previously pursued, but which my heart already knows how to answer. Based on what his question drew out of me, it seemed there was another point to make.

The only valid religion is the one that sprouts from the roots of your personal faith; that’s what Radix Fidem means. It assumes a genuine heart of conviction ruling over the mind. A valid expression of faith inevitably leads to people wanting to fellowship and commune over common experiences of that faith as their hearts pull them together. It is wholly organic and feudal in nature; it is how we are wired. Note that it will inevitably include folks who are drawn in socially, but are not heart-led. However, those who are are heart-led should instinctively recognize each other and keep things on the right path. It’s not a question of precision, but of the spirit of things.

Any other path to forming a shared religion is bogus. It has nothing to do with whether such a false religion will prosper as human activity tends to do now and then, but that it will not lead to a truly biblical community of faith.

Instead, the many human organizations that claim to be churches will more likely take on the shape of secular human cultural and political activity. They will become focused on this world and it’s concerns despite a presumption of commitment to eternal things. This worldly focus becomes the true nature of the community, but in order to justify pulling aside from all the other human organizations, they will develop a peculiar cultural veneer that becomes their group identity. That sense of separation may vary widely in degree from one religions institution to the next. Further, the degree of separation from the ambient worldly culture will vary widely among the individual members of each institution. Still, as long as these religious identity groups lack the defining features of heart-led otherworldliness and feudal family structure, they are just another socio-cultural identity group.

When following Christ is reduced to a socio-cultural identity, it’s just one more like any other religion-based cultural identity. In that sense, Western Christianity is just like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a lot of other large cultural identities. Just the same, it will vary considerably in different locations, but each location will cling to some common mythology that allows them to claim a part of one or the other major world religion.

So it stands to reason that none of these are valid expressions of the Creator’s mission of self-revelation through people devoted to Him. Thus, they are all merely political influences, a part of that image from Scripture that I’ve used a great deal on this blog, of God herding humanity as cattle. His purposes will be largely inscrutable to us unless and until He reveals bits and pieces of His divine purpose to His prophets. We should expect to understand the broad sweep of history in light of His revealed moral character. But we should not expect to understand the specific movements of the herds in terms of God’s plans because it’s all just background against which His glory is revealed.

Organized Christian religion in the world today is just another part of that cattle herding business. It is not a valid expression of His revelation, so it’s not that important in the eternal scheme of things. This has nothing to do with whether any of the members of such religions are going to Heaven. Rather, this is about the organized institutions as political influences. Most of us will bear some affinity with organized Christian religious institutions, as most of us still participate to some degree. But we do so only to the degree it helps us give expression to our faith as individuals. In another sense, most of us have come out those institutions and they may still be part of our comfort zone. But they don’t own us and we can surely carry forward for Christ without them.

Most of them will fade away with the Western Civilization on which they are based. Don’t get too bent out of shape if Islam takes over big chunks of Western “Christian” territory. As a consolation prize, I suspect Eastern Orthodox Christianity will be around a lot longer, yet. It’s not as if God has abandoned His children; it’s just politics and cattle herding. Your faith should remain fully intact and your witness will adjust and find a way to shine the light of glory wherever God calls you to reside.

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Center of Gravity

Posted on June 30, 2017 by ehurst

Numbers 16 made a dramatic movie scene: Moses spoke about how Korah and his buddies had defied God Himself, so their punishment should come directly from God’s own hand. Let the earth swallow them alive! And so it was.

Do you see the symbolism? Their contention was groundless; it was a lie against God and His reality. The Tectonic Plate Theory should make you feel small and humble, because there is nothing in this world — including the earth on which we stand — that cannot be altered radically at God’s whim. There is a matching symbolism in prophetic literature about stars falling from the sky and the sun and moon hiding their faces. The lights in the sky we use to keep track of the cycles of life can turn against us, too, if we push too far against God’s truth.

Korah’s Rebellion represents an attempt to reject the revelation as Moses proclaimed it. The whole business of the Covenant proposed a new theology and Korah’s cabal were trying to reassert their old pagan mythology. What you see in Korah’s public dispute reflects the heathen assumptions about a pantheon of deities who were not truly different from mankind, just a little more powerful. They were convinced that anyone who approaches a deity with the proper protocols and offerings could demand certain things from them. They were angry because they imagined that Moses was hiding the spells that anyone could have used to perform those miracles. Jehovah made it a point to say how He resented being associated with that crap. There comes a point when the blasphemy is too much, and He acts to punish the insult.

We are in just such a time in Western Civilization when God has had enough insult. We should expect the ground itself to open up and the lights in the sky to fall down on our heads. Everything people have trusted and taken for granted will show themselves more alive and variable than anyone is prepared to believe. It’s not so much the physical reality of natural disasters — though we should expect to see some of that — but the moral symbolism of being unable to trust your assumptions about reality. People will be in shock; they’ll go bonkers as the world they thought they knew rebels against them.

The only place you can find a point of anchorage is in your own soul. If the Rock of Truth is not a part of your being, then you have no place to stand, and nothing to help you keep track as reference points to reality.

Even in the best of times, for evangelism you and I often have to wait until someone experiences a personal version of that turmoil. Against their personal turmoil, you and I can stand on the Truth of God and capture their attention by how we handle chaos. We become centered on a personal sense of order and divine justice. But in these days Our Lord is yanking the earth out from under a whole civilization. There will be an awful lot of people looking for a solid anchorage and some of them will see us handling it with peace.

The issue is not that we face things with a deep passion, as if our sanity rested on accomplishing things. Rather, our sanity is the source of the passion. We know what we are called by God to try to do, regardless how it works out. Our identity is the passion we have for Our Lord’s glory, not merely all the ways it can be made to shine. One way or another, we shine for Him.

Do you remember when Jesus walked on the sea? When there was no solid ground, He floated on the surface, buoyed by His divine purpose. He was His own center of gravity. Let’s walk out there with Him.

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VA Policy: Access Denied Veterans Running Linux

Posted on June 29, 2017 by ehurst

Can I get some help from someone with more expertise? I can code HTML on the fly, but I don’t mess with scripting; I have no use for it. Yes, I know my blogs have scripting, but someone else handles that. All I write is the content and the markup. If you would like to help spread the word, feel free to plagiarize this post.

First, let me assure you that I am utterly cynical about whether I can get someone to listen, in the sense that bureaucrats not only don’t give a damn, but are frankly hostile to making the least accommodation beyond their own idea of what their job is. I rarely engage in any kind of activism because it tends to be pointless, but this is something that surely affects other disabled veterans.

Consider this webpage for contacting technical support for the My Health Vet website. There is a similar page for the rest of the VA website system, but this is the site disabled veterans use to interact with the system. While we could use the phone system, that is woefully understaffed by design, to save money (never mind the very frustrating menu system). So it’s much better for the convenience of technically inclined disabled veterans to use the website and the messaging system to simply make their various requests for service from the system.

That website is broken if you run Linux. I can log in well enough and most features seem to work about as well as you might expect from a government bureaucracy. However, if some feature doesn’t work for you, the standard method of requesting help is a bunch of FAQs written for the lowest common denominator. As you might expect, “lowest common denominator” approximates users who are dangerously close having no real use for a computer.

Experience teaches me that this is the norm for virtually all services to disabled veterans; this is how I’m treated by most everyone in the system I encounter. Most of those employees of the system are decent people, but the system itself teaches them to assume everyone is at the lowest level of competence. Their training is so thorough on this point that a significant portion of the staff cannot deal with someone who is actually rather competent.

This is what shows up on the My Health Vet website, in the sense that whoever made the executive decision about coding that website took a backwards route: They set it up to accommodate only Windows (Internet Explorer only) or Mac (Safari only). Granted, they do have some instructions for those who run Chrome or Firefox, and of course for AOL’s browser, but I have been told in no uncertain terms from their tech support that they flatly refuse to help anyone running Linux regardless of which browser.

I have discerned that at least part of this website system is contracted out to Oracle. Now, we all know that Oracle has been openly hostile to the Open Source community in general. And perhaps no one is surprised that the entire US Federal Government has shown antipathy toward open standards on the Internet. Thus, I’m not sure who to blame, and I’m willing to bet no one will take responsibility for that decision.

Here’s what happened when I tried to use that contact page: I can input everything into the proper blocks on the form, but when I type in my email address, I get a popup that insists my email address doesn’t match something inside their database. But then the scripting blocks any further action from my browser. I keep getting that popup no matter where I click. Even if I close the tab in which that page is displayed, that popup continues showing up on any other page I click on in any open tab. I have to clear my cache to get rid of it.

It happens with Firefox, Chromium, Opera and Seamonkey. I run Linux Mint 18.2 64-bit with XFCE and all of my browsers have uBlock Origin, and most have some version of a cache cleaner (usually Click-n-Clean). Chromium alone adds the animation policy extension and is set to allow animations to run once, a setting I use on all of my browsers when possible. None of that should make any difference if your script code adheres to open standards for input forms like that. That much I know because it works at bank sites, eBay, Amazon, every other major retailer site, and every social media site I’ve ever bothered to use for any length of time. I take the position that my government, having made so much loud noise about accommodating veterans and their real needs, can make that portal OS and browser agnostic. I can only imagine that their restrictive approach is more difficult and expensive than simply using open standards.

Before I escalate this any farther, I’d like to get some more expert help from someone who can examine that particular page, or perhaps someone with inside knowledge, to help me build a case for bugging my Congressional representatives.

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