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Monday, February 12, 2024

THE NYT PUNDITS: RIGHT OR WRONG?

Most of the Times's columnists this morning have been panicking over President Biden's age and, rather worryingly, about how obvious his age is. This is where I hope that they only think they know some things the rest of us don't. The fact that I never hear back from any pundit with whom I've shared what I hope is some useful information in my own writings seems to support that hunch. No feedback, no nothing. Kind of makes me wonder how much of an echo chamber they inhabit. Certainly much less of one than the fascist Faux News and networks further right have constructed, but still without much said by people like you and me.
For myself, I hope my fellow citizens may have learned a hard lesson or two since too many of my 'fellow' Boomer palefaces fell for the soothing tones and the hair dye of a Grade B Dr. Feelgood in 1980 and opened the door to the rollback of too much of the New Deal, Fair Deal and the Great Society!
I hope my fellow citizens can see beneath the seeming vigor of Orange Julius Sawdust Caesar and that they hear how seriously he garbles his thoughts and words. I hope my fellow citizens can understand that our current president reserves his vigor for the quiet and largely unheralded work he does on behalf of all of us and for democracy all over the globe.
I hope my current fellow citizens can see and hear beneath the surface of the (actually really panicky) shouting and roaring of O.J.S.C. and that it connotes panic for himself rather than vigor on behalf of all of us. I hope they can see the good works that the Biden administration has begun and how important it is to all of us that they continue.
And I also hope that they haven't given up on being the linchpin, albeit a very humanly imperfect one, of democracy across the globe. Besides which, here's a tasty tidbit for some who might be reading this: re-elect Biden and vote straight Democratic all the way down the ticket and you will have proven many of the Times's pundits as being much mistaken about you because it seems as though many of them expect many of y'all to repeat your 1980 mistake and vote for appearance rather than the actual reality.
I can't really blame the Millennials and Zoomers for being fed up with old white men (So am I, if truth be known, and I'm an old white man myself) but your choices, however distasteful, are before you: will you vote for the appearance of 'vigor' and the reality of creeping and malignant senility, and the probable dissolution of the Free World, or will you vote for the old fellow who works long, hard and quietly for all of us and who will keep democracy alive and, one hopes, flourishing worldwide?
All hands to repel fascists here; let there be no one still on the sofa and not having voted come Election Day! To stay on the sofa will be a vote against democracy as will be all votes for anyone--repeat, ANYONE--known to be a MAGAt!
And I venture that any vote against democracy is effective, although, unfortunately, not technical, treason against not only the United States, but against the entire Free World and indeed against the very planet on which the Creator has placed us! And however 'Christian' such folks might think themselves, by voting for one who will reconnect religion and state they show themselves Judases as well!
Remember, when Jesus heard that a crowd wanted to force an actual regal crown onto his head, he hightailed it into the mountains to pray! Think about that too!
Let's show the Times's pundits how mistaken they are this time (many of them will be relieved to be thus mistaken) and show that we understand that our diversity is a major strength of ours and that a primary purpose of our country is to be pioneers of democracy, to listen to the so-far unheard! Vote MAGA fascism down so low that they creep back under their rocks!

Sunday, February 4, 2024

MERCY ME?

 I ponder what was said by a trumpolater on television about how he thinks we need a dictatorship which will 'give us a good paddling'. I'd admire to ask that fool, who does he think needs paddling and why?
If he thinks big corporations who have all but entirely bought up our political process so they can become even more obscenely rich and never have to clean up the lethal pollution messes they love to make are the ones in need of chastisement, then the man's onto something real. But he's dangerously mistaken if he thinks Trump will ever paddle that lot; for that we need Bernie or one of his acolytes.
On the other hand, he might be brainwashed enough to want the 'Myrka of 1953 back again and nailed into place permanently. Well, we certainly should up the tax rates and union-belonging percentage of the working people to what they were back then. But we neither can nor should cement the social relations to what they were back then. I suspect that's really what that fool and his like yearn for!                                   

I wouldn't call myself a merciful man by nature. I also always ask myself, is it wise to extend mercy to those who will almost certainly see it as weakness and will break the peace as soon as they think they can get away with it? My hatred for bullies may well be pathological and my initial impulse is to wrench a horse-doctor's dose of their toxins down their own throats. But at least these days, somewhere in the middle of all that and probably Deo Gratias, I ask myself: What else have these poor lumps of mostly unbaked dough ever known but such brutality? And why am I reinforcing it?
Then the question becomes, what else can I, and others like me, do? One ugly fact of life which my fellow liberals and progressives have been, and may still be, reluctant to face (except, for some of them, when Jews appear to be 'bullies') is this: we need to insist on good order and everyone being given a chance to speak--and the flip side of this is no one, and no group, gets to crowd out anyone else--and that those norms need to be enforced, at times harshly so. We've been far too reluctant to do that. And we also need to show quite plainly the 'tinfoil' quality of the 'arguments' of those who are either maliciously self-interested or, to use one of my dad's expressions, don't know their a**es from holes in the ground!

Also, at the same time, we need to insist that part of the education of experts (if it isn't already) must be the ability, as Lord Rutherford said, to put their knowledge into language understandable to all, or as near to all as we can get. I suggest this is necessary to restore trust in experts.
Finally, if we are not to use worse brutality in reinforcing and expending democratic norms, we need to find other ways. Arguments are one; so too is asking questions of those who have either lost, or never really had, faith in democracy. We need to say, often and loudly, that God, Who is Love, is no bully, too many 'religious' leaders to the contrary. For one thing, doesn't God choose the smallest and ostensibly weakest to hear, speak and live His message on a seriously consistent basis? And for another, did not he who is named the Word made flesh agree to die like an uncommon criminal (the Romans employed crucifixion only for political and economic rebels or those who arguably spoke such rebellion) as part of drawing all of us to God?
We also need to say loudly that God favors the honest questioners and that those covens where questions are frowned upon at best cannot be where His Spirit is. And let's keep asking honest questions of those who have turned their backs on democracy. If they continue to insist on their own Great Importance, Dunning-Kruger style, let's remember something said by Martin Luther:
"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts or Scripture, is to jeer and flout at him, for he cannot bear scorn." 

 We need to keep our powder ready and dry even while we hope we'll only need some custard pies. Trump knows the power of ridicule; why else would he want to stomp anyone who tosses eggs, tomatoes OR custard pies at him? By this, perhaps more than anything else except his unceasing lying, he shows who he follows and to whom he leads his idolaters.
We need to repeat all this endlessly, possibly for years until the anti-democrats among us are (again?) a tiny, insignificant and powerless minority.

 

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

CLEARING AND STRIVING

 Let's start by busting one all-too-common assumption.
The 'Palestinians' are not guiltless. Not at all.
The earliest mass murder of Jews which I remember reading about in Eretz Israel took place in 1834. I believe it was in Safed. There might have been a pogrom in Hebron at about the same time.
This was when most Jews in Europe still had faith in assimilation and the Jews living among their Muslim/Arab cousins were viewed as were 'common n***ers' in the Jim Crow USA as a whole, not to mention the Jim Crow South as the heart of that evil mindset and practice!
And that mentality is still all too prevalent among Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, in that part of the Middle East. Arabs only started speaking of 'Palestine' in 1968, after Israel won it all in the Six-Day War.
One Arab said in 1938, "This is our land, it is South Syria, and the Jews are our dogs."
Not to mention the uncharged war criminal who was Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, who helped Hitler and hoped to build extermination camps in the Dothan valley. Or Zahir Muhsein, who in a 1977 interview for Trouw magazine, admitted that all the talk of 'liberating Palestine' was just that: talk. He, too, referred to the area as 'South Syria'. And Hamas has to be utterly destroyed.
The really tough question is, is Israel acting in such a way as to do that successfully? And so far, no one I know has a really satisfactory answer. Making Gaza itself into a bigger pile of rubble than it was already seems to have a very limited utility, especially since too many of the cowards who lead Hamas, and their families, are safely and luxuriously ensconsed in plush hotels or apartments in Qatar.
Yes, I know that if someone is determined to kill you, your whole family and all your neighbors, there is nothing for it but to kill them first. But is there no better way of determining who is who than killing them all and, as an infamous shirt says, letting God sort 'em out? I would really hope there is!
For example, has anyone thought about putting together a caravan which would supply power to the Gazan hospitals--especially the ones with neonates in ICU and/or dialysis machines? As heavily armed as they might need to be?
Speaking of neonates, I personally think that Israel ought to copy something done by the native peoples here, while the frontier was along the Alleghenies: the natives used to take young children of the settlers and raise them as their own. According to Parkman, when Bouquet demanded those abductees be returned--not a single one returned to white society willingly! Not one!
Jews and Arabs are cousins. If Israel were to do this, would it give pause to genocidal maniacs made drunk on bad religion; the idea that the IDF soldiers might include some of their own children?
And, after all, Israel is the natives' state and Arabs are the 'settlers' in this case.
This is one time I wish there was a REAL Jewish Laser Squad, Mazel Tough and all! Maybe lasers could find and kill Hamas members and sympathizers with far more precision than bombs. At least, I'd imagine so.
And what about encouraging ways of building peace from the ground up? I have heard of such groups and that they've had at least some success. How can we help in doing that?
I see two things at work here: Christendom and Islam both need to get used to Jews not being helpless victims anymore but actually winning battles and, yes, wars as well. And Israel needs to stay where it is without putting its national soul in serious danger. I suspect that has been a bad side-effect of having been, willy-nilly, an occupying power of sorts for the last 56 years and that a full-scale ground assault on Gaza might well aggravate it.
Maybe we all need to think again of the meaning of the name 'Israel': they that have striven with God and men and have prevailed. I know that Israel has a hard road before it, but I also believe that God has faith that Israel can not only walk it but improve on it. And let those who yell, "Submit! Submit! Submit!" take notice and grease the dusty wheels of their spirituality with those improvements.

Friday, September 15, 2023

CHILE, 1973. USA...????

It was suggested to me by a trusted advisor that I write a short post about the parallels between Chile just before the 1973 coup and our country unto this very hour.
I have mulled the parallels over as I mixed and baked honeycake and then challah today. It seems to me that two and maybe three parallels stand out.
First seems to be that, half a century ago, the democratic forces were caught quite flat-footed. Now, at least some of us (including me, I hope and believe) are doing our damnedest to make sure we are not caught flatfooted. How successful we have been, and still are, remains to be seen. And while we can't see how successful we might be, we'll keep up the drums to awaken as many who care for democracy as there might be.
The flip side of this, of course, is that we need to be hopeful that we can and will win decisively and conclusively over 21st century fascism. My wife finds it hard to maintain hope and, fairly often, voices that we ought to flee while we can. I snap at her for her Vichyite moanings, even while I wonder inwardly if she's right.
The DOJ, including the FBI, has a big part to play. The fascists need to be watched like purported 'Com-symps' were during the 1950s.
Second, the Chilean democrats didn't seem to know who their real friends were. I think I read something by Ariel Dorfman a few days ago in which he mentions that Allende considered Pinochet as  a sympathizer to his government!
It is imperative that we know who our friends are in the Services, the FBI, and the police forces and those of us who have served in those organizations. We need every single one of them and then some! Not least for the purpose of pointing out our enemies and those of democracy!
Third (and I am not sure whether this was true of the Chilean democrats, but I can believe it was) they insisted on staying within the law. This may not avail for saving democracy this time, to put the brutal truth out! And also, I personally suggest that those who have sought to destroy the rule of law should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to hide behind the law when cornered!!
This applies only for those who are known to have done this. So, all you liars at Faux News, all you Murdochs et al., when we win this one you'd better be getting some plastic surgery done, or grow a large beard, or something. Because you will be treated as outlaws and the traitors you are!
This last is not, so far as I know, a parallel but it is something very, very necessary. Everyone, of any and all denominations, who call themselves Christians, MUST denounce white 'Christian' nationalism as the blasphemous heresy that it is! No ifs, ands or buts about this; it MUST be done by all!
We shall need to stay mobilized for as long as fascism threatens democracy here and elsewhere!
Part of reducing fascism's appeal will have to be the reduction of wealth and income inequality; on such a skewed picture the anti-democratic fungi of both fascism and Leninism feed!

Thursday, August 31, 2023

A TWISTY THOUGHT SEQUENCE? MAYBE

 'O...o, po' little Jesus, dis worl' gonna break yo' heart.....'
So starts a spiritual. This particular train of thought begins with my thinking of how my late first wife's heart, had she been alive to see the Penn State scandal of 2010, would have been broken (she loved Penn State, of which she was an alumna). From there, I mull over how, sooner or later, this world breaks the hearts of close to all us bipeds.
Then I ask myself, and maybe ask God, What do we expect? We all need to grow up and know our parents, our countries, our 'tribes', including our faith communities, are human beings or human communities, with all their failings as well as their points of light. Why, then, do such shocks hurt as they do?
One reason is, how bad most humans (we Americans are, unfortunately, by no means unique in putting together theologies in almost every way but the God-centered way; anyone remember about Islamism and/or Hindutva, to name but two other bad examples?) are at understanding, and acting like, God.
One thing that I see as indispensable here is drawing a clear, sharp line between acting in the same way God looks to be and 'playing God', which is what humans do when they imagine God in all-too-human ways.
For us in what used to be called Christendom, Jesus is the primary exhibition of what God is really like, shorn of all (or most?) of the human projections we all put on God. Maybe Krishna is like that in Hinduism. Anyone who can enlighten me and my readers on this, please feel free. Jews and Muslims have their own, sometimes wonderfully idiosyncratic, 'takes' on these matters.
I've reminded my readers before of the meaning of the name 'Israel'; it means to have striven with God and man and...prevailed. Say WHAT?! Prevailed?! With GOD, no less?!!?
That's what our reaction might be if we read this seriously. Now, one can say (and be almost certainly right) Jacob 'prevailed' with God in the same way that a small boy might think he's 'prevailed' with his daddy, who he thinks he's just wrestled to the ground--that is, if he's one of the lucky ones who gets enough of the affectionate horseplay dads ought to give their children as needed. I'm happy to say my sibs and I are among that fortunate cohort.
To turn to probably the most immediately relevant example: the machinery of democracy always needs keeping up, and can always use improvements. We've been all too negligent in that since 1980, perhaps at least partially by design. Because an indispensable part of doing that is to have a citizenry with at least some time and gelt to spare from the struggle for our daily bread and a dry roof over our heads. Having those blessings has grown considerably harder since too many of us decided we wanted to live in Disneyland--by design? I wonder, myself. Those readers of mine who know of the economist James Buchanan (NOT the 15th president!!) should also wonder about that!
And I wonder if our anxieties about imagining ourselves to be Good People have a connection with this: could it be that those anxieties have grown as we've become so much more atomized and individuated? Could this be behind us growing more 'tribal', or is that aspect of our society only more apparent than it once was? Certainly the sense that our own particular parts of the economy are shrinking has something to do with our scrunching more into hostile 'tribes', although the extent of that is quite debatable.
I also think our anxieties about wanting to at least look like Good People are at the bottom of today's 'culture war' over CRT, living with LGBTQs, and the teaching of truthful history. A (shrinking) majority of us , including yours truly, are still Christians of various types. Being Christians, aren't we supposed to know our Scriptures? Jesus hit a deep mark when he said what is now Matthew 6:5-8, for one thing.
I mention this as those who are the loudest 'Christians' also are most conspicuous for acting the most unChristianly.
But more importantly, we need to remember something Jesus said to a rich young man who asked him how to obtain eternal life: "Why do you call me 'good'? No one is good, except God alone." (Mark 10:18, NIV)
If we remember that more often, maybe we can concentrate more on doing what is just for all of us, including restoration of what has been taken from people belonging to 'marginalized' groups and indeed to restoring whole ecosystems and our planet home as well. And not worry about looking like Good People.

Thursday, July 6, 2023

WE NEED SOME NEW 'TRUTH-IN....' LAWS!

 Our fascists, and their fellow-travelers who hide it progressively less (if at all) are making it clearer each and every day: their outlook and their foolosophy is based on lies. Little else, almost nothing more.
We see this more and more in cases that come before the courts without real plaintiffs, injunctions seeking to keep lies on social media platforms, armies of online thugs intent on squelching any real discussions of any kind of baked-in inequality, be it racial, religious or class-based and a Taney Court that is intent on locking in the rule of white males who are also obscenely wealthy at the expense of all the rest of us!
And one thing I see us in serious need of is new laws! Specifically, either omnibus or as a set of more specific laws which will do the following.
First, make sure that all parties to any legal action are actual individuals or organizations.
Second, that parties to legal actions can claim some real and present injury. None of this bullpuckey (thank you, Rachel!) about possible or anticipated injury! To put what I think of that politely, copulate that!
Third, that posters on social media can be yanked for posting crudely offensive threats. I would want to exempt counter-threats to such postings, which might be possible if the counter-threats are phrased to say, 'Come at me, sucka, and no one will find your remains' or any variant thereof. Lawyers and judges are not stupid; they can get at the basic meaning of phrases. We will need laws which might sanction for rapid-fire rhetorical questions which are intended just to stifle discussion, as shown that answers are given no space except by shouting the verbal thugs down.
And in these matters, I'll leave the details to the worthy ladies and gentlemen of the law; we have lots of real and hopeful (not to mention wannabes) legal eagles in this land.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, we need to do a lot of discouraging of bullies and legal thuggery coupled with teaching all of us, beginning with all our children, how to recognize and defend ourselves against such thuggery. The Sermon on the Mount, properly explained, includes some instances of such nonviolent resistance which might also be termed moral jujitsu: using the adversary's weight and motion to throw him or her.
We also need one or more truth-in-reporting laws which, with luck, might put certain 'news' networks out of business. And most of us know which ones, am I right?
If anyone has other suggested remedies for these problems which might be at least as good as what I suggest here, let them come forward now and share their ideas with the rest of us.
This is something of a new legal frontier, sure, but can any one of us deny that such laws are very sorely needed? If anyone thinks so, let them stand forth and put their case. For real, I mean; no hypotheticals or fictional plaintiffs allowed!

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

BASED ON LIES OR TRUTH? CHOOSE!

"A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is still putting its boots on." Mark Twain

Our reactionaries and fascists seem bent on bearing out the truth of this saying to the point of rubbing all our faces in it!
First (and these are only the most recent and egregious cases) the Taney Court 2.0 has 'decided' not one, but two, cases with no actual plaintiffs!! The 'case' which struck down Student Loan Forgiveness was not brought by any actually injured party but by a group with no direct interest in the outcome!! And then, they go and 'decide' an essentially hypothetical case because the supposed 'defendant' in the case of the bigoted web designer is actually straight and has been married to a woman for fifteen years! And, sez I, may they continue as happily for at least another fifteen! But you see the point; the 'plaintiff' actually made up the 'defendant' and yet the Taney Court 2.0 took no notice of this!!!
It seems to me that the Taney Court was preparing pink triangles for same-sex couples. What think you, O Gentle Reader?
Second, a University of Chicago professor named Rebecca Journey was scheduled to offer a seminar this coming fall semester titled The Problem of Whiteness. An apparent young fascist named Daniel Schmidt was so agitated by this that he posted what are probably dishonest rhetorical questions on TikTok and Twitter about it. Professor Journey then received an avalanche of hate messages heavy enough for her to postpone her seminar till next spring semester.
Third and probably most egregious of all, a Louisiana federal court has enjoined the Biden administration against keeping anti-scientific, anti-vaccine cranks from spewing their utter, total, complete ROT on social media!!!
Obviously, much needs to be done to counteract these lies and knock all such liars into history's dustbin!
For starters, I suggest the courts need to be regulated in such a way that only individuals or organizations directly concerned or injured can bring suits. Suits must be real, not hypothetical; at least as real as the suits one can get at any Men's Wearhouse! No more suits by 'interested parties'; the place for them remains in amicus curiae briefs!
But as to Professor Journey's case, any solution needs to involve all of us who believe in multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith, expanding democracy and in such a democratic republic that human history has not yet seen. All of us who believe in the truth and in justice that really is equal for all!
Many of my fellow liberals, who have been so well-brought up to be such Polite and Good Boys and Girls, won't like what I will say next. But I defy any and all of them to deny the ugly reality which makes this necessary.
 We will have to take time and answer whatever 'questions' from them as we can. We need to be 'battle-ready' in this respect. We also need to be battle-ready in answering their threats. We may need to do a little googling to refresh our memories about the more horrendous punishments of days gone by and use them in our replies to threats, basically daring them to try to carry them out and that no one will find their remains afterward.
The English ancestors of many of us, including me, had a particularly nasty way to deal with traitors (with which, at least verbally, we can threaten vicious liars as well) known as hanging, drawing and quartering. Only thing is, today we wouldn't be exhibiting pieces of their carcasses except electronically.
But my point is, we need to be ready to fight bare-knuckle against the fascists who hate both democracy and the rule of law--verbally and, maybe, otherwise. But let's be peaceable as long as we possibly can. For myself, I fairly itch to loose some verbal counterpart of boiling oil, or some politico-religious fire and brimstone on their dough-faced heads! And don't be afraid to go ad hominem/mulieram. Just keep that truthful, too, and as relevant as possible. Mehdi Hasan agrees with this, so it's not just me talking. Think about this, brothers and sisters, and let's prepare ourselves for a long, hard and sometimes bitter fight for truth, equal justice, and expanded democracy.
Ain't no Superman coming to save us; both George Reeves and Chris Reeve are long gone. It's just all of us who believe in the things I just named and know we must now fight for them. So let's do it!