Something to Do With Ends and Means

 

The killer of the UHC CEO is apparently Luigi Mangione, although some people online have the idea that being caught with the weapon and fake ID of the shooter and carrying a three-page manifesto is a little too "on the nose".  I don't know what to tell you, folks. The above screen cap is his Twitter profile--he definitely did not have that many followers this morning!

I said the other day: 

I am a bit of a cynic at times, and we might find out that the killer is not actually a folk hero with a wronged loved one, bankrupted by medical bills or brought to an untimely end by denied claims. Some of the populist "death to the bloated ticks!" sentiment may be inauthentic (people do love a viral bandwagon).

The idea that a bright, promising young man was deranged by pain from a back surgery is appealing, but inapt. Many people experience pain and don't resort to violence. He deliberately chose a brutal, individualized solution to what could be potentially resolved by legal collective action based on the valorization of the man of action as a hero/martyr.

If he hoped through his actions to put the health care system on trial, the surprise is that he will be on trial for premeditated murder: full stop. 

Gaetz Pulls Out

 

Having viewed at least some portion of the iceberg of dirt set to crash his Titanic nomination for AG, Matt Gaetz has graciously stepped aside for someone else who might slip past senatorial review. 

I'm kind of joking. When I say "graciously stepped aside", I guess I'm still wondering at the hubris that let Matt Gaetz keep his name in knowing of his ethics investigation and probably being well aware of whether he paid for sex with a minor once or a few times or whatever--or whether he was always ass deep in hookers and blow. 

Before we get on to the quandary of Pam Bondi, the recipient of Trump money to forget about any prosecution against Trump University, which defrauded down on their luck folks of all sorts who thought lessons from real estate stable genius Trump would change their fortunes, not leave them even more immersed in debt, as the new Gaetz--let's think about the old one:

Idolatry and the Ten Commandments

 

The theocrats want to put the Ten Commandments in schools for the children's own good. The mere presence is supposed to imbue them with morality. Or would it? I think it isn't about moral instruction of young people so much as a moral win for them. Essentially--it pretty much boils down to letting the children of lesser gods know who is top dog around here. Yahweh. The Storm God of the Near East. You really don't need to venture too far from the first Commandment, or the second, depending on which tradition you follow (because different versions of the Ten commandments exist) to realize that an explicitly "Judeo-Christian" symbol is being put in schools to tell everyone the religious preferences of the dominant culture: "Put no other God before me."

We are told he is a jealous god in the Holy Bible. As a kid, this struck me as weird--who is he jealous of if he's the only game in town? (That, along with "Who the heck is he talking to at creation?" was enough to drop a pretty big silver piece about the traditions that preceded it and the hard work of scrubbing out the "other guys".) But that's not really it, is it?

We are also told humans were made in God's image--it's the other way about. God is jealous because he was made in ours. He throws tantrums--like drowning the world except for one family, or destroying whole cities--not because it is godly, but because the threat of violence is something humans understand: "Someone in power is angry--let's behave for God's sake!" 

TWGB: He Would Like to Not Have Rules, Thanks.

 

So, like, Trump's lawyers really said: pic.twitter.com/qWiQxWxMpN

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) January 9, 2024

 As any thinking person may have predicted, Trump's extreme view of presidential immunity absolutely sanctions death squads, thank you very much. His lawyers just "what if'd" themselves into supporting a sitting president offing a rival, only to be chastised if the Congress can't get with it. But you would be amazed what some people can "get with" once the assassinations start rolling. 

It's a real good thing you did, Mr. Trump, wishing those people into the cornfield, Trump lawyers might add, as Rod Serling showed in his most harsh indictment of totalitarianism. What if a child-brain had absolute power to coerce others with violence? What if every competent person was labeled "the Deep State"? What if every competent journalist was declared an enemy? The "lying press"? 

This is what our Bill of Rights in the Constitution was about--not giving the state absolute power or resting absolute power in the guy who was made executive of the state. We protect the press and witnesses of crimes. We're supposed to have due process for individuals accused of a crime. Even if Trump's investigation (s) were "supposed" to be political at their source, the purpose of our legal system is that the political fuckery is minimized by design. People can hear out the facts, and then be the judge of them.

You wouldn't even need to tamper with witnesses or the jury if you were innocent. If a fair hearing of facts benefitted you, why would you even tamper with witnesses or a jury or the judges or the prosecutors, or want violence for any of them? You wouldn't need your little fan club to swat judges and prosecutors. You wouldn't even have their names in your mouth, because you could be assured the facts set you and them straight. 

Did He Say "Militant Secularist" Like it Was a Bad Thing?

Militant secular "ascendency" has "brought with it immense suffering," William Barr said in a startling speech at Notre Dame. https://t.co/QJGZLothM9

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) October 12, 2019

He sure did. I don't quite appreciate the value of a religious-freedom message that needs to exclude people of no religion, but I understand it in the same sense that I understand the use of the term "Judeo-Christian" to be inclusive of "People of the Book" regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (to a certain degree)but to leave Muslims out of the coalition of Abrahamic faith altogether (because--brown? or maybe--exotic to Barr's reckoning?) and to also omit the equally vibrant Western traditions of people who philosophically rejected faith. Basically, this speech, even if I have not seen the whole text, rankles me in the way that Pat Buchanan's culture war speech did over 25 years ago (but more so, as he is in an actual position of power at a critical juncture for this country). I see it as rhetoric that singles out me as the problem in need of fixing, and we have seen in history where being the "problem" is a fatal diagnosis. But I do have this question from his speech that I can easily answer:

“Among the militant secularists are many so-called progressives, but where is the progress?” he asked. “We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?”

I do not, as a "militant secularist" (I guess, as a practicing democracy-loving atheist) believe that we are living in a post-Christian era, except in the chronological sense that Christ seems to have lived some time before us. Christians certainly still exist. The text they read from still exists. The morality of Christ in the Book of Matthew is still instructive to even faithless secularists who profess progressivism.

What has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? Well, if you are one William Barr--partisanship and the notion that a unitary executive, however dodgy in his capacity, should rule over persons because ordained by electoral fate. Apparently. If you are me, the supposedly not Judeo-Christian secular militant (who nonetheless has drawn deep from that well, like a Samaritan of good will) you would hope that what follows from rote understanding of religion would be dialogue, moral testing, an appreciation that all humans should be treated as equal under the law of either God or mankind (or such laws are capricious and unworthy), and a cessation of blind faith in the divine right of earthly kings as revealed through a clearly jiggered legal system made to benefit top dogs as if they were tin pot gods.

Where Barr speaks the words "freedom to live according to one's faith", I can read the lines "to use one's faith as a cudgel against other people's ability to do so."

I do not find this point of view salutary or fit in the highest lawman for a diverse people. He reckons those of us of the inappropriate level of faith an "enemy" to the public good--but I have seen in his public duties where he has pardoned and exculpated the lawless deeds of an only nominally Christian president. How should I look at his rebuke of law-abiding faithless progressives, in his slavish toadyism to a tyrant of appalling lawlessness and nominal Christianity?

I can suppose he means none of it. I can assume he has blinders and lives in a delusion. He is either a liar or a mad idiot. But in neither situation is he a fit arbiter of law, so long as he does not appreciate it should fall on all equally without fear or favor.

He's pious, but poor in moral strength, for good would even be good without God to make it good, if God were logical and words meant things. Barr flings words about. What they mean is no good to those of us of religious minorities, or who oppose the would-be monarch he's become a dependent of.

It's a Clearly a Budget. It's got Lots of Numbers in it.*

"We stand by the numbers," Trump budget director says of $2,000,000,000,000 error that uses same money twice. https://t.co/iSU10e0wy3 pic.twitter.com/jeIdJlFumX

— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) May 24, 2017

You can say a lot of terrible things about the Trump budget, but the bottom line is: They (Trump and Ryan and Mulvaney--oh, lots of folks) don't care. Is it based on a mathematical error? They don't care. Is it going to cut Social Security and Medicaid? They don't care. Is it actually going to add to the debt because they can't do math and Trump doesn't hire the best people? Is it sheer misery encoded in a document that nickel-and-dimes away basic decency?

Pfft!

They don't care! And they meant to do it like that. So there!

*Title courtesy of President George W. Bush.

Climate Sunday: Climate is a Moral Issue

The Pope visited the US, and particularly my own city this weekend, so I am going to frame this post in light of the Pope's visit, and his urgent message, downplayed to the US Congress, but stated a bit more forcefully to the UN--We have got to do something about this climate change.

Marco Rubio, presidential candidate and Catholic, reminds us that the Pope "is not a politician". Bless his heart.

Jeb Bush, presidential candidate and Catholic, advises us that the Pope "is not a scientist".

The Pope is the head of the state called "Vatican City" (can you say that Marco Rubio?--Knew you could!) and represents a religion whose adherents number over a billion. You tell me that guy isn't any kind of  politician, I will laugh at you for a long damn time. The Pope also is qualified to understand science. Actually, notwithstanding the Galileo stuff, the Catholic Church is pretty reality-based regarding science. Teilhard de Chardin and Gregor Mendel were notable religious who advanced the cause of human scientific knowledge. It's not unheard of for the Church to be ahead of the curve--look at all the educational facilities and hospitals the Church has created. They aren't anti-knowledge (says the Catholic-adjacent militant agnostic).

Climate Sunday: Am I the World's Keeper?

In Genesis, the brother-slayer Cain replies to God when asked where his brother is: "Am I my brother's keeper?" It's a very sarcastic and defensive question. He is trying to deflect from his culpability in slaying his brother, to ask whether he was ever responsible for making sure his brother was safe to begin with. When reading the scriptures entire, an answer to this murky question of filial responsibility emerges--"Yes, stunato, you are your brother's keeper! Not only are you not to murder him, but you should see to his thirst and hunger. You should love him as you love yourself. "

The encyclical of Pope Francis with respect to the creation goes a sensible degree further--"Yes, you are also the World's Keeper." And why wouldn't you be? You and your brother live here, and nowhere else.

The response to this simple moral entreaty to not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs or to try and make the wheat grow by pulling it up by its stalks, has been greeted by some fairly thick people by labeling the Pope a Leftist if not a Communist. Why, they fret, is the Pope trying to hurt the economy? Why is he decrying greed--isn't greed good? Shouldn't people make money off of the earth? Doesn't financial success speak for itself?

If Santorum Enters the Race, It's Like I Get All the Hits

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I surf--the Internet.

Okay, I admit I love the Internet. I live here. Which is why I loved this article:

11 Firsts in Internet History

Oh, wow.

Because I really like boldly going where only 300 million of my friends have gone before, I typed in "sex.com".

There was a C.S. Lewis reference. Which did, in fact, surprise me, because I don't associate C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia Chronicles, which I read when I was a very young girl and enjoyed immensely, with Internet porn. What I got was this.

Or, in case contents shift upon transmitting:

Philly.com has published an article by the local head of a ministry entitled "Resisting - Not Repressing - sexual Desires Leads To Self Knowledge." And to support his thoughts, he evokes the writings of C.S. Lewis of the Narnia series fame. He states that Lewis writes "People often misunderstand what psychology teaches about 'repressions.' It teaches that 'repressed' sex is dangerous . . . But when an adolescent or an adult is engaged in resisting a conscious desire, he is not dealing with a repression . . .On the contrary, those who are seriously attempting chastity are more conscious, and soon know a great deal more about their own sexuality than anyone else. They come to know their desires . . . as a rat-catcher knows rats or a plumber knows about leaky pipes. Virtue - even attempted virtue - brings light; indulgence brings fog." FYI, the author of this article equips the Church on how "to minister the gospel to those impacted by sexual sin and additions."

Which reminds me of my own thought about, say, Ann Coulter as Constitutional scholar; she is a Constitutional scholar in the way that an oncologist studies cancer, to completely eradicate it, someday. To think of one's sexuality as rats or leaky pipes seems to me to be missing quite a bit--

I don't like rats, although they do make tolerable pets; they are definitely loyal, surprisingly clean, and affectionate. But the free-range ones are troubling to find in a public place, that much is true. I also genuinely dislike leaky pipes--water shouldn't be wasted, and plumbing repairs can be costly.

That being said, having explored my own sensorium regarding things sexual--I like it. Sex can carry disease, as rats do, one might say--and yet one can choose one's partners well and use prophylactics. Also, I can't relate sexuality at all to leaky pipes. Perhaps because I am young and somewhat fit, not to mention cosmopolitan, I tend to not relate sexuality with plumbing at all. I tend to relate it more to a beneficial work-out. As in, "I totes did twenty minutes of vigorous horizontal cardio today." So long story short--um, that link doesn't go anywhere.

So, for those who care, sex.com actually can be a philosophical site that provides content and not just out of context pron. Yay, internet.