From "A Christmas Carol"

 

“They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

It's not the cheeriest of meditations for a Christmas morning, but I think of these two especially today, because we live in a world where ignorance and want are not mere human conditions created by the lack of something denied: learning and nourishment; but where poor information, misinformation, and pockets of human poverty are designed.  Like Dickens' s Christmas spirit, I think there is terrible danger there. 

The Christmas gift we have is the one given Scrooge--to know that and to make a choice.  Ignorance and want are not someone else's problem but add to the chains weighing down all our human existence. Better is possible. But when I see the gospel preached that ignorance is safety and want builds character, I know why "better" stays a struggle. 

So, He's Like a Mascot, Now?

Sitting down with Nicholas Sandmann - the student at the center of the protest controversy at the Lincoln Memorial. Airs tomorrow on @TODAYshow pic.twitter.com/oSb8ljunQN

— Savannah Guthrie (@SavannahGuthrie) January 22, 2019

So, if I was just seen being ignorant and grinning in someone's face by the whole world at this kid's age, I can honestly say I would not have been getting interviewed on the tv, because I would be grounded. Very fucking grounded. My parents gave me the clear impression growing up that they never wanted to see my smiling face on the damn television unless I was winning an award or something. If the kid is a PR rehab project today, and gets rewarded for his behavior, he's going to grow up and be some company's HR department problem later on. I just don't see how this helps the kid learn anything, or even fixes his reputation, because now his name is all over the place.

It's drawing the drama out. (And perhaps, not in all that sympathetic a way.)

But obviously, his parents are raising him very differently, bless their hearts.

He Won't Even Know What He Did Wrong

While standing in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, President Trump decided that a ceremony honoring the remaining Native American code talkers was an ideal time to bring up his standing feud with Senator Elizabeth Warren and call her by his favorite pet name--Pocahontas.  

Leaving aside whether he intended to use this name he calls her in a racist way (because, screw his intent, the issue is how his words are going to be received by the people he delivered them to), why did he need to make this event about anything else? These are veterans, they risked their lives for a country that has not done well by Native American people, and this was about them, not Trump. Even if what he said was not culturally inappropriate, that he felt the need to backhand someone not present shows his pettiness. 

But it was also culturally insensitive (and this is not the first time he has been culturally insensitive like this, but of course, that was for business). And just as he has used this name of a famous historical Native woman to insult the Senator previously, he should by now know that some Native Americans have taken offense and should by now know to not use it.  But will anyone in the White House try to correct Trump? Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made sure to point out that the real villain here is Elizabeth Warren, for believing her family's oral history regarding her heritage. And I half-believe that even if someone did try to explain to Trump how what he said was inappropriate, he'd never quite get it. (Something something, politically correct, something something, snowflakes.) 

We can expect no better from him, regardless of what his job entails or what we deserve from him.

Marco Rubio Should Keep Out of This

One of the most disturbing things the media tried to do with Marco Rubio was try to portray him as someone who was less radical and incendiary than a loud-mouth like Trump. Rubio's professed beliefs on social issues are extremely retrograde--take his appearance at a homophobe hootenanny.  The guy claimed that the mass shooting at an Orlando LGBT nightclub reminded him of his calling to public service--and at the first opportunity, he's back on the side of oppressing people who happen to be gay, and he won't do anything about guns, either, and oh, he's basically fish-titty useless on understanding the causes and concerns of Islamic radicalism, because he doesn't know the difference between Shia Iran and Sunni Wahhabist ISIS. But you know what he never needs to insert himself in--

Family planning. Especially when it comes to his recent empathy and good sense-lacking commentary on what Zika-infected women should do regarding their pregnancies.

The short of the long is, because he's so very, very pro-life, he doesn't think women should have the right to determine whether they can terminate a pregnancy that may result in a severely impaired child, that may be physically onerous on them (because of being infected) and may prove highly costly to that woman, her family, and their community. He lets his four-letter fig leaf, in other words--"life"--trump everything else that might be meaningful in this discussion. He would prefer he take the power to choose out of the hands of women, leaving them with children whose lives are extraordinarily burdened, and inflicting suffering on families as a result.

I find it less than amusing to note, that he uses the language of pseudoscience: "pain-capable" regarding fetuses, and yet ignorantly and with all paternalism, ignores the actual real pain that is experienced by the post-born people who live in the actual world, and who, if one were the baby in question, endure such symptoms as vision and hearing loss, severely delayed development, seizures, and a host of other ills. And, if one were the parents, a lifetime controlled by the need to provide for a severely impaired infant--who would cease to be an infant in time and would become, at some point, an adult, with all these impairments, with elderly parents who might not outlive that child's needs.

It's none of his fucking pro-life concern whether these people seek out a legal medical procedure to avoid that enduring pain. It's brutality on his part to suppose that his moral qualms supplant the understanding of other people about what they need to do for the better future of their families. He is mind-blind to the struggles they will face, in the certainty of his own internal righteousness.

I hope he loses his damn Senate seat, and that the private sector is as cold to him as as the moral freezer he keeps his regard for us human meat-puppets in.

Brit Hume gets religiously ignorant:

Um--wow. I don't know how many people actually change their entire faith just for better media scope, but there you are: the value of religion as a whole and per a media whore--if you get some religion, it'll fix ya.

I almost admire Bill Kristol for just bypassing the extraordinary silliness of Brit Hume encouraging someone to convert on pretty much media-related grounds, to just predicting that Tiger will still win championships because he's still a premier athlete.

Because that really is what Tiger Woods' business is, and what he's good at, regardless of his spiritual or personal business. It's arrogant for Brit Hume to assume Buddhism doesn't offer a form of "getting right" because he's ignorant of Buddhism, and it's also arrogant of him to assume Christianity is right for some other person. Mr. Woods has to find honesty with himself and his wife in his own way-- and religion will not take the place of the honest confrontation he must do.

It is almost like Brit Hume is endorsing a change in religion for Tiger Woods on the strength of that being a way to be poll-ready, demographically more suitable. In opposition to the advice given to Job in his troubles: "Curse God and Die", he's being told, find God and get your sponsors back. Eww--creepy.

It sounds very cheap.

I hope the guy works it out for himself.