Current assumption of the epithets “patriot,” “christian,” and “family,” should not go unchallenged. Why should ignorant, xenophobic bigots be able to claim the name “patriot” in their attacks on democratic values. “christian” is now a dog-whistle synonym for reactionary bigot. Authentic christians must speak out against the explicit and implicit exclusiveness, anti-feminism, and anti-intellectualism that are involved in the abusive appropriation of this epithet. “Family values” are patriarchal values, and the many families flourishing outside the patriarchal system should complain about this usage, or, better, start to identify what true family values are.
Manners
1 IV 2017: Coupons, discounts, rebates and other irritations
I was in the check-out line of a local store yesterday. A man was buying a jar of pretzels, simple enough, but he presented clerk a coupon and a couple of other vouchers that entitled him to some discount on the jar of pretzels. The transaction must have taken at least five minutes. This happens so often at the grocery store, where someone presents a handful of coupons that the checker has to enter into the system one-by-one. I am sometimes tempted to ask these coupon clippers for my share of the savings, since the waste of my time enabled them to save money.
20 III 2017: New look, old world
I was away and sequestered last week at an ACTS retreat. We were allowed no cell phone, no i-pad, no TV or radio, and were given time and isolation in which to take a new look at our lives, ourselves. So on Sunday I returned to the unreal world predisposed to take a fresh look at it, to see it anew. Well, I checked the news and found that “the world was the old world yet.”
How many more investigations, how many failed lies is it going to take to convince people that Trump is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg? Of course, there is an invincible ignorance among the hard-core Trump cultists. This is common in all kinds of cults: the cult leader can be convicted of crime after crime, caught out in sin upon sin, and the cultists will remain loyal because they choose not to accept simple truths. They know how they FEEL and prayer and fasting cannot exorcise them.
The case of the Republican Party is otherwise. They knew from the beginning that Trump was a stinker and tried to distance from him. But as he grew in popularity and power, one after another somehow found his/her way to get on the Trump bandwagon, heedless of how much they might be shamed and perverted by his company. Now that they have shown the country their true character, they see Trumpism as their only claim to leadership, as the linchpin to their position of power, and they will fight for Trump, just as Republicans of old fought for Nixon, until disgust or fear made them dump him.
11 III 1017: The Din of Dinner
A kind friend invited us to have dinner recently at an upscale restaurant. The food was good, the service acceptable, the ambience purgatorial. We were seated in a dining room under a Maginotesque concrete vault that echoed and augmented the ear-splitting roar of the semi-intoxicated guests at the nearby bar and surrounding tables. Alas, it has been my sad experience that there is more peace and quiet conducive to conversation in fast food restaurants than in most clip-joints. Why is this, I wonder? Haven’t the upper-crust restaurateurs the prudence to employ an acoustical engineer to optimize their premises for civilized dining? Or could it be that these venues are riotous by design?
I have observed that my fellow American cannot be sure they are having a good time unless surrounded by noise that numbs the mind and prevents truly social conversation. For instance: in the city park across the street, every fun event is heralded and accompanied by obstreperous music from loud speakers, gyrating, dissonant music that accompanies singing that is a series of wails and shrieks. Or, at the ball park, the silence and tension between plays that make baseball the queen of sports are a thing of the past, that contemplative space now being filled by thunderous music or vulgar announcements. I watch the people in attendance there and see that most of them cannot shut up and pay attention to the game, but are busy talking, no, shouting to one another over the din of the music and the shouted communications of people who surround them.
Contemporary society has, I think, a horror ritus, sc., a horror of formality, and must diffuse any hint of formality with a barrage of first names and banal folksy humor. Similarly, contemporary society has a horror silentii, a horror of silence, and must prevent or expel silence with anesthetic pop-culture music and bellowed pop-culture prattle.
6 III 2017: Well said, Izaak!
from Izaak Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne:
It hath been observed by wise and considering men, that Wealth hath seldom been the Portion, and never the Mark to discover good People; but, that Almighty God, who disposeth all things wisely, hath of his abundant goodness denied it (he only knows why) to many, whose minds he hath enriched with the greater Blessings of Knowledge and Vertue, as the fairer Testimonies of his love to Mankind ….
5 III 2017: Trump: The Early Years
Little has ever been brought forward about Donald Trump’s years in elementary school. We know that he has an ivy-league degree, that he has the best words, etc., etc., but what was he like in his formative years? A psycho-historian I know might attempt to draw inferences about Mr. Trump’s schooldays from his behavior as an adult, along the following lines: Donald was a very unhappy and unpopular child. His ostentation of his expensive toys and outfits, his bragging about his father’s great wealth, and his pretensions to athletic and intellectual prowess probably alienated the other children, with the result that they avoided and ignored him. This would have led to a grave psychological crisis the gravity of which is suggested by the anti-social behaviors he would develop at that time. He would become an insolent braggart, constantly asserting and invariably exaggerating his successes. He would live in a dream-world in which he was ever superior, ever victorious, and this would lead to a pathological aversion to truth, probably with psycho-somatic manifestations, e.g., breaking out in hives whenever compelled to tell the truth. His fierce resentment of the children who recoiled from him very likely turned him into a bully (he was probably large for his age). Moreover, he is likely to have been hyper-sensitive to any real or imagined slight, and could let no insult or criticism pass without an immediate retort, however inappropriate. Nor was that enough, for constant resentment probably made him unable to let go of any imagined insult, and, holding a grudge, he would never cease looking for an opportunity to avenge himself. He would have had a deep resentment against schoolmates who were popular, whose fine qualities were generally recognized. Hence he may have developed a propensity to paranoia, as he imagined that this or that popular student, envying his own obvious precocity, was conspiring with others somehow to deny him a chance to succeed and win the recognition he deserved.
I do hope that Mr. Trump did not have so terrible a childhood as all this would suggest, for the woeful consequences for the United States and the world would be terrifying.
3 III 2017: The Spin Goes On
So Kellyanne Tweeted that she hoped that it was not true that Rep. Wasserman Schultz did not stand up during the ‘ovation’ for a Gold Star Widow at the State of the Union address. Then Wasserman Schultz provided a videotape that shows her standing. But now a website called RedState shows a second video “that clearly shows that they [Reps Wasserman Schultz and Ellison] must have sat down long before the rest of those present for the speech,” and finds that “Neither video seems to show the pair of democrats applauding.” So, though Wasserman Schultz did stand, she didn’t really clap her hands, and then sat down again too soon. Does this mean that she gets a low score on the enthusiasm meter, that though American, she is not American enough? Before jumping to conclusions, let’s consider an alternative explanation: Maybe she realized how hollow and insincere a spectacle was being presented.