ABORTION AS A 'CHEAP GRACE' FLASHPOINT

 I am pro-life. I am also pro-choice.
I am in favor of women in crisis pregnancies being enabled to carry their babies to term and then helped to get back securely on their feet, whether they keep the child or give it to be adopted. I 'm pretty sure such help consistently available will encourage progressively more women to choose life. That is where I think a genuinely 'pro-life' movement's main focus ought to be. Not to mention supporting measures that actually do render life better and brighter for all or at least most of us. But in no case do I support anyone but the women choosing their courses of action.
I also hold already-breathing lives to be at least as important and as sacred as those not yet breathing. This includes those with darker skins than me, LBGTQs, and condemned criminals.
I also know Biblical tradition holds that life begins with breath, which in Hebrew is the same word as 'spirit'. I am also willing to pay any additional taxes that might be levied to pay for such help when offered by federal and/or state governments.
I think a question that should be asked is, does a woman pregnant as a result of rape compound the violence done her by aborting her child? I don't claim to have or know the answer. I only think that the question deserves asking and civil, and cogent, discussion.
I'm married to someone I call a genuine 'pro-lifer'. She takes the late Cardinal Bernardin's 'seamless garment' articulation about the sacredness of life very seriously indeed. I'm not sure I do, but I respect such a stance. I cannot say the same about most others who call themselves 'pro-life'. I call such hypocrites pro-birth Pilates. The minute the child breathes, they take water and wash their hands, although not usually before a multitude. Then they're gone.
I imagine such bipeds, when called on their hypocrisy and being told that, if they were really 'pro-life', they would support such things, you'll get replies along these lines:
"WHAT?! Do you mean now I have to pay more taxes from my hard-earned money so that this no-good slut and her bastard brat can get 'on their feet'?! This slut deserves all the hardship she has coming and she and her slut sisters should cry us Good People a river before they get another red cent from us!The only thing I'll pay for is JAIL for her, her sisters and all their brats and then I'll be happy to pay for a public gallows where their brats can be executed when they're caught in crime--any crime! I wanna see these b*****s bawl as their brats swing and I want them producing more brats so we can all see what SLUTS they are!!" You see, they're usually anti-contraception as well. Basically, they don't want anyone--and certainly no one with less money than they--to have any pleasure at all.
Can you imagine what pumps their blood? If they have hearts, they have to be as small and hard as withered walnuts. And as darkness cannot comprehend light, they think that those who genuinely seek to help are lying about their motives, because that's what they do. They really cannot comprehend any motive which doesn't involve enabling oneself to feel nastily superior to those they seek to help. Thus they project that motive onto many, most of whom it may have never occurred to feel 'superior' or, best of all, to thrust that idea from them whenever they find it in their own hearts.
Today's pro-birth Pilates are addicts to something the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called 'cheap grace'. That is, they look for ways to look virtuous and think themselves Good People which don't really cost them anything. And pro-birtherism is a current flashpoint for 'cheap grace'.
I'll stand with Fr. James Martin when he says that he considers all life equally precious and add that, if anyone is genuinely 'pro-life' it is incumbent on them to be for real gun control, against capital punishment and for making a country and a world where abortion becomes redundant. For any and all measures necessary to that end. About what they are I expect vigorous but civil debate as we reason together right down to the roots of the issues.
But no one should be allowed to call themselves 'pro-life' unless they also support the measures above. Absent such support, 'pro-life' means only 'pro-birth Pilate' which means, a peculiarly nasty variety of hypocrite.

FIGHT EVERY WHICH WAY!!

 This post has been 'simmering' in my mind and heart for a few days now, but one of Faux News's blonde no-hearts brought it to a boil when she called President Biden to task for cancelling 'everything we like'.
Is that so? If it is, then the fire and brimstone following are definitely aimed at you. If you like shutting ourselves off from co-operative planetary endeavors to contain illness and reverse pollution, if you like making already obscenely rich people richer, if you like being the top caste in a country gurgling down the drain, if you like tearing little ones from the mothers' very breasts, if you are content with 'thoughts and (phony) prayers' after mass murders of innocent people, if you like seeing our Gestapos murder unarmed people of color and above all if you seek to tilt both the political and economic tables permanently towards you and no others while trumpeting how unbiased it is, oh, how very, very much and with such force is this brimstone lava coming at you!
First: despite all--and I mean ALL--your protestations to the contrary, all your efforts to look so good, spotless and sanctified--you are not Good People! And unless you turn and repent of your evil, evil ways you will never be Good People! Being Good People has precious little if anything to do with being clean or even clean-shaven, still less with being clean-mouthed and not at all with having money! If anything, the wealthier you are, the more your money might tilt the heavenly scales against you and never mind how much money you give to your church or other religious causes which tell you how very Good you are!!
If what you really like the most is the feeling of being Placed Above Them ('them' being anyone you don't like) or, worse, wielding power in such a way that you actually have a part in tearing others from their dear ones, or making their lives harder and emptier (including making them hungrier and homeless) then no, you are not Good People at all but children of the Enemy! Not included in this is revealing the ignorance of others to them or the evil in which they've had a part. That's only truth, and if truth offends it is never to blame! Remember that saying from Sunday School, anyone?
To Democrats, liberals and progressives, let me say here: I know most of us, by and large, are motivated by the desire to serve all the people. Our enemies--yes,let's be brutally honest here--are motivated by the lust for power over others, to rule and rule harshly! They LIVE for the power to make others weep from their harshness; that is the sort of creatures they are! And y'all must deal with them accordingly!
So, Mr. President, be very, very guarded with your efforts to seek comity. Be quick to break off the negotiations our enemies never pursue in good faith and ready to fight them even unto a domestic analogy to the Rheims schoolhouse where the representatives of the Third Reich signed the unconditional surrender. That is the one and only way to deal with our homegrown fascists: do what the people want done, do whatever it takes to get around our enemies' obstructions and get those urgently required things done, trumpet our doing of them and also our enemies' (and, indeed, the enemies of both our country and the planet!) hypocrisy in wanting only to obstruct when out of power, rule like Ivan the Terrible when in power--but never to serve anyone but those already wealthy on a 21st century feudal scale! We cannot repeat our enemies' hypocrisies and near-treasons to both our country and our planet often enough! Now is the time to basically GIVE a full-throated 'F**K YOUR FEELINGS' to those REAL 'snowflakes' and 'buttercups' even unto--and past--the point where they are SCREAMING their oh-so-easily-wounded hearts (or whatever pumps their blood; it may not be a heart) onto their own lying airwaves! Let's treat their tears and wails as topping for the things which need doing so badly for our planet, our country, and then--but only then, 'cuz that's who we're s'posed to be--for ourselves as well. And even for they I now call our enemies, but they'd rather be atop Fresh Kills than equals with others they see as 'beneath' them in a renewed and expanded democracy!
I should also say of our enemies that they do not understand the genuine desire to serve people in much the same way that darkness cannot comprehend the light. They consider all our talk about 'public service' so much hypocritical hooha covering our desire to rule as harshly as they albeit squeezing different weak points. This is what they tell themselves in order to deceive themselves that they are Not Bad People. When the good fruits of our good and honest service are before their eyes, I don't know whether they will acknowledge their long string of errors and deliberate evils or  whether they will say the good fruits are merely incidental to our enrichment or some other concoction in order to keep on lying to themselves about 'being right'. But that, in the end, is extraneous to the work which needs doing and whatever ways we work out of getting it done. Let's get to it.

DEMOCRACY v. ANYTHING ELSE

 "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised--except for all the other ways of government that have been tried and found wanting."  Sir Winston Churchill

As Winston Churchill was something of a historian, I for one am inclined to believe this quote of his.
The recent fascist thuggery at our Capitol, with large-scale abettance by individual police officers and/or departments, along with four years of Trumpery, has reactivated the debate about democracy v. anything else. Our democratic allies were watching in dismay and with bated breath while our autocratic traditional 'enemies' howled in thigh-slapping delight.
And commentators here have also remarked on how delightfully (to the autocrats) hypocritical our attempts to further 'democracy' over the globe look now and how the autocrats will be saying how democracy produces license and puts the least capable people into the seats of power. Not to mention the airy-fairy notions of Innate Human Goodness on which such 'nonsense' is based. First big mistake.
Democracy is based on exactly the opposite idea: we are all equally corruptible by power, including the economic power that is wealth. And this being the case, no individual nor small group of people can or should be trusted with too much power. And even no majority based on immutable but unimportant characteristics as skin shade or which way our hormones run can or should be trusted with power over those of smaller groups based on the same political trifles. And from this comes the observation that, the realer that equal rights for all becomes, the more secure everyone's rights are. Rights are not zero-sum; quite the contrary.
Such being the case, part of making democracy realer ought to be the limiting of privately-held wealth to, say, $500 million. This way, everyone can at least have enough with enough public goods for all including ecosystems. It might even re-introduce better ways of measuring societal happiness than said wealth. Besides, a study a few years ago showed, once the kids were educated, people protected against medical bankruptcy and people could retire in at least modest comfort, that was enough wealth for most people.
On the other hand, some autocrats might say, democracy, with its frequent elections, takes too little account of the future and of long-range necessities. I may be missing something, but I don't see any authoritarian or autocratic government taking more account of long-range needs than most democracies. Including today's Celestial Empire which now calls itself the People's Republic of China.
Democracy and Autocracy both have their weaknesses in inculcating the ethic of service necessary for and in any government. Democracies might offer more to the shifty cons than it should. But autocracy, and authoritarian regimes generally, tend to cultivate less of an ethic of service to the country at large than they encourage civil servants to kiss the Dear Leader's ass! It's a very bad idea to confuse Dear Leader's ample derriere with the country as a whole--even if said Leader voids on the country often enough! And non-democracies seem to encourage less seeing themselves as trustees than seeing the country as their private property, just as did Clovis, king of the Franks at the advanced age of fifteen (in 481 C.E.) and with about the same understanding of government as too many boys that age! Seems to me that this kind of setup produces at least as many Caligulas, Mad King Ludwigs and Bashar Assads as Marcus Aureliuses, Good King Wenceslases and Ataturks.
Democracy seems at least somewhat better in encouraging the necessary ethic of service to the country as a whole and all that is best in it. Its main drawback right now, fueled largely by white racism, seems to be a Dunning-Kruger effect which seems most pernicious in white males who come from inherited wealth and who, notwithstanding being mediocre students at their historic prep schools and colleges, often wind up in powerful and/or high-paying jobs in government and/or business.
Chances are good that we are in the threshold of making democracy realer than it's ever been here, and maybe anywhere else. I pray (literally) I may be right in perceiving this. Perhaps as we make democracy realer for more kinds of people, more creatures and living things generally, that Dunning-Kruger effect may evaporate and be replaced by respect for real but plainly-expressed (minimal shop talk, I mean) expertise. Another weakness of democracy is the idea that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge, to quote Isaac Asimov. Which it isn't, but autocrats have no reason to boast on this point! Authoritarian regimes by and large share this weakness in an aggravated form where Dear Leaders are concerned.
So long as we continue to strive to realize more and more of democracy, it will continue to have an edge on authoritarian and autocratic regimes. As true and as unflattering a knowledge of history is a very necessary part of this, as is ensuring that equal justice under law is real. As real for BLM as it is for pasty-faced fascist thugs, for example.

APPROACHING 'CRITICAL MASS'?

 The November election was both a mighty relief and a bitter revelation. The reason for the relief is obvious to anyone with an eighth of a brain; the bitter revelation was that a majority of my 'fellow' pasty-faces were quite willing to install a fascist regime! The Georgia runoffs which will probably conclude later today are something quite different: this is a revival of real hope in more ways than one!
First, it's a sign that many different racial groups, especially the African-American women who won the November election and thereby saved the country, have been organizing for real and their efforts are now bearing good fruit!
Second, (and may this be especially heartening to all my fellow 'race-traitors' who saw the same things I did in November and felt the same way), our pasty-faced minority (I mean, among the pasty-faces) might just be approaching 'critical mass' status. I'm not certain about this and anyone can think otherwise but if you do please tell us why. This second reason for hope is big because, if we 'race-traitors' are approaching 'critical mass', guess what that means. It means, from the march toward making equal justice a reality, there will be no turning back! It means that even a majority of our 'fellow' unbaked pasties will not be able to turn things back to the bad old days! Is it too much to hope for that, even those among us to whom racism and bigotry were not deal-breakers are now beginning to understand why they have to be seen as deal-breakers?! OK, I admit it: here's where I might be running away with this; better slow down and steady meself, right?
The Devil, or his most prominent current representative, went down to Georgia lookin' for some votes to steal--and it looks like there were enough of us in Georgia to whom 'equal justice' means all of us and not just those as pale as we, along with relatively new arrivals like Latinos and Asians (btw, Jews are also Asians, from the western end of that continent) led by the strong and beautiful women who have done such glorious organizational work (and who really have, unlike us, no choice but to keep on fighting) to LAY THAT DEVIL DOWN!!! HALLELUJAH!!!
With the Georgia runoff elections. the political future is taking shape! Maybe, just maybe, an all-races, all-faiths, all-sexualities coalition of working people who want a decent deal for themselves and others, including other creatures and ecosystems, is taking shape now! Maybe they will come to understand that rebuilding ecosystems is vital and not naturally opposed to a revived economy which will have enough for all needs but not for everyone's greed, as Gandhi once said!
After the November election, I took a long and relieved breath. Then I felt bitterness welling up as I looked to see who was serious or hypocritical about our country and its promise. Now, I feel both renewed hope for all of us! All us pasty-faced 'race traitors' who just might be approaching critical-mass status and the rainbow of good women and men who are now our leaders on the long march toward 'liberty and justice for all'! America may yet truly be America for us all--for the first time!! May it be so; let's keep on moving to that end, sisters and brothers!!
And let's do what urgently needs doing and waste no time trying to appease those who aren't interested in anything except power and more wealth for their political masters! We've tried that for forty years; has it really worked for the country at all? I suggest it hasn't. So let's drop it and use the power our voters have won for us all!

SAWING BRANCHES & CONSEQUENCES

 

As is often the case at the start of time periods, I was reflecting on some Biblical verses earlier this morning.

I was thinking about how The Message translates the passage about 'the sin against the Holy Spirit'. It gets to the main point that Jesus is making: that those who deny the power of the Spirit are, in the context of Jesus's message, sawing off the tree-branch on which they sit and, thus, set themselves up for a seriously great fall.

Then, I thought about that sort of wicked stupidity in some more earthly contexts as well. The application of this teaching to the current pandemic is SO obvious I hardly need mention it; am I not right? But far more than that is how we just go on devouring the earth and so much on and in it. AND how the counterfeit right-wingers who call themselves 'Christians' while daily insulting Jesus, eating away his message from within and making those of us who walk the walk look like hypocrites like themselves, say that we need to devour more and faster so as to hasten Jesus's return.

I got news for y'all: you're sawing off the branch on which all of us--all life on earth--sit and urging us to join you in doing so! But doing that will NOT hasten Jesus's return in glory. Why? I suggest to you and all my readers that, if we continue in such wicked and deliberate stupidity, there will only be forgiveness for us 1) after a probably lengthy period of time in which God allows us to taste the consequences of such evil in much fuller measure than has yet been the case and 2) showing some seriously real repentance! I say that God will NOT sweep down like Superman before we hit the ground!

No, I say He will allow us to hit the ground without a bounce and be there only when we moan and wail how 'we've fallen and we can't get up!' Then He will come to us not as Superman but as the Merciful Healer He is.

Remember the hymn 'Come Ye Sinners, Poor And Needy'? That's how God sent His Salvation to us all, as one of us. Not as a being from another planet with superpowers to swoop down and save us from our wicked and stupid greed! No, the Godhead will allow us to taste much more of the gall and wormwood we have made ourselves before He lifts us up after the cataclysm which will come if we don't change our greedy ways bigly, to borrow someone else's word. Think about it, all y'all fascist text-proofers without any grasp of God's Holy Spirit!