The Crucified was not left to be covered over with earth as executed Jews usually were. Roman custom permitted the body to be handed over to friends or relatives. It was not a disciple - we are told - but an individual sympathizer, who appears only at this juncture, the councilor Joesph of Aramathea, apparently not later a member of the community, who had the body buried in his private grave. Only a few women were witnesses. Mark at an early state attaches importance to the official notification of death. And not only Mark, but also the ancient profession of faith, transmitted by Paul, stresses the fact of the burial which is beyond doubt. But although there was a great religious interest at that time in the graves of the Jewish martyrs and prophets, oddly enough there never arose a cult at the grave at Nazareth.
Hans Kung: On Being A Christian
As has been mentioned here before, the start of my real conversion started when, sometime in the mid-1990s, I read John Dominic Crossan's Historical Jesus. But even then there were things Crossan said that I questioned, one of those was his certainty that the story of the burial of Jesus in a tomb was false and that his body was almost certainly left for dogs or birds to devour or merely thrown in a ditch. I remember reading that wondering why he felt so sure when the only documentation of what happened was exactly what Kung says is "beyond doubt" is in line with the above passage. And, considering how much stock he and his fellow Jesus Seminar members put on multiple attestation, all four of the canonical Gospels but also the earliest New Testament writings that preceded those in the form we have them attest to the burial, most of them mentioning the tomb of Joseph. It would seem to be a lapse in method for him to hold that more poplar modern position on this. As much as I esteem his scholarship and his writing, I have to say that my skepticism about Crossan has grown over the last quarter of a century. I do doubt his motives which are too much in line with modern ideology for me to be comfortable with. As Walter Brueggemann has said, like so many other scholars, Crossan wants to reconstruct Jesus to fit his preferences.
The point that Kung makes, that there was no cult of the grave of Jesus in the earliest years of Christianity - even in the earliest community in Jerusalem, the pre-Christian Jesus movement is certainly interesting. The earliest proposed location of the tomb doesn't seem to trace before Constantine sent his mother Helena to find the tomb.
You get the feeling that when a local community got visited by the Emperor's mother with the request to find the Tomb of Jesus that one was going to be found. And so one was, as was a hill with three crosses on it, or so the story goes. I find the absence of a tradition going back to the Jerusalem community which included witnesses to the death, burial and Resurrection more convincing than the supposed location of the tomb. The later proposed tombs, the "garden tomb" discovered in the 19th century and a more recent one found by a cabloid TV huckster and self-created expert aren't even as interesting as the first one.
I think no such site of cultic devotion arose in the earliest community because they didn't think his body was there. I think they figured it wasn't important, as Luke reported the "the two men " said to the women who went to the tomb to anoint the body, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."
Saturday, April 11, 2020
I Hadn't Even Heard About This Catastrophe
Croatia struck by 'biggest earthquake in 140 years' during coronavirus lockdown
Gustav Mahler - Urlicht - Jessye Norman
O Röschen rot,
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not,
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein,
Je lieber möcht ich im Himmel sein.
Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg,
Da kam ein Engellein und wollt mich abweisen,
Ach nein ich liess mich nicht abweisen.
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott,
Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir bis an das ewig selig Leben.
O red rose!
Man lies in greatest need!
Man lies in greatest pain!
How I would rather be in heaven.
There came I upon a broad path
when came a little angel and wanted to turn me away.
Ah no! I would not let myself be turned away!
I am from God and shall return to God!
The loving God will grant me a little light,
Which will light me into that eternal blissful life!
—From Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Friday, April 10, 2020
Ernst Krenek - Lamentatio Jeremiæ Prophetæ, IV, V, VI
RIAS Kammerchor
Marcus Creed
The Lamentations of Jeremiah are chanted on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. These are the three readings for Good Friday.
I'd never heard Krenek's settings of the Lamentations before looking for settings other than those in 16th century polyphony. His follow the liturgical order traditional in Catholicism and elsewhere. They fit the feeling I have this season, this year.
If Dr. Fauci Can Kill Off Social Hugging And Kissing etc. He's My Hero
Gloria Swanson and Eartha Kitt ever so sincerely mugging for the camera with Ira Hawkins backstage at Timbuktu c. 1978. Though I've seen another photo of the same scene which is far more a picture of insincere affection, ol' Glo's face in this one does the job. I'm sure if I went looking I'd find many other such icons of insincerity from Broadway and Hollywood, probably of two people who are known to have hated each other.
Here I was hoping that among the best possible positive things that might come out of this terrible pandemic would be killing off the 1970s as-seen-on-TV- psychologist bull shit that introduced all of that social hugging and kissing that gets geezers like Joe Biden in trouble as they find it hard to shed bad habits gained in their relative youth. I have always hated that stuff. I hate that permission given to people who bought into that figuring they were doing you a favor as you tried to fend off their embraces and, worse, as they buss you. Something that plagues us yet, though not always as literally as it could be said to just now.
Some of those psychologists were "real" psychologists, in so far as some educational institution credentialed them. But many were given their authority by writing crap self-help style books and appearing on TV talk shows. The same way that Dr. Laura and Dr. Phil became aribitors of such stuff despite their academic credentials.
And, talk shows being an aspect of show, a lot of it was show-biz people who did so much to introduce casual, insincere displays of affection that normalized all of that huggy-kissy which, in the ways of show biz, led to touchy-feely of the kind that, it being show folk, quickly became sexual assault. The kind of thing common in show biz that will lose a perfectly fine Senator such as Al Franken his Senate seat but won't have the least negative impact on Republicans, not even Trump's infamous "locker-room" patter with Billy Bush did a thing to damage him being given far more power. If only Franken had gone directly into politics instead of show biz, he might be on his way to becoming a good president. I can only wish that Me_Too would get rid of that among the show folk but that would probably be wishing for too much. Show biz is a world inhabited by 12-year-olds and governed by a jr. high mentality.
Anyway
I was thinking too modestly in hoping for an end to the tyranny of that 1970s huggy-kissy stuff. Still-working National Treasure, Dr. Anthony Fauci is thinking big and hoping that it will kill off hand shaking, something which I couldn't have dreamed could be done away with. I don't know if the old story is true, that hand-shaking originated as a means of two possible deadly enemies demonstrating that they weren't holding a weapon as they met but considering that now we know about how viruses and other pathogens are transmitted by bodily contact, especially those parts of the body which might touch the mouth or nose - all the more reason to want to stop doing it - maybe they had even more deadly weapons than they knew of.
Ending the custom of hand shaking, of course, makes as much common sense as it is sensible in terms of medical science and epidemiology as hugging and kissing.
Yeah, I admit I threw in the show-biz stuff because I knew it would annoy the guy who's trolling me. He hates it when someone disses show-biz. Though I think a lot of that huggy-kissy stuff did originate with them. I don't remember much of it around here before TV came to govern peoples social lives and thinking. Mix in the pseudo-science of the social sciences and it can swamp even the most apparent and obvious of public health practices.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
"Oh, you will, Oscar. You will."
I know he steals stuff from here to repeat at Eschaton, and I don't mean the stuff he distorts to lie about what I said, I mean the things I says that he passes off as his own ideas. His fellow "brain trusters" as they like to call themselves, are so stupid that they believe he came up with ideas by himself.
Other than that, I don't know what I should do about it. I mean, right now it would be too dangerous to go knock his stupid beret off of his bald pate and make fun of him to his face.
And the world is going to hell, he's hardly important enough to bother with. The play-lefties of Eschaton are pretty stupid, really. They don't matter.
Maybe The Play-Lefties Are The Ones Who Should Have To Declare Which Side They're On, For A Change
I have been monitoring the Bernie Sanders cult after his decision to drop out, sort of. Some of the things posted the past day said he was going to "remain on the ballot" which will certainly not help much.
Most of the hard-core Bernie cultists are, predictably, having a never-Biden, fuck-the-Dems tantrum, Sam Seder and Michael Brooks taught me one thing I hadn't really realized, how much of the Republican-fascist aiding play-left has been fueled by affluent brats, most of them white men who are ready to burn everything to the ground if they don't get their way.
That's not going to be an insight that goes away, now that I've realized the extent to which we can thank asshole brats like them for the damage to the real left and, so, democracy, I am realizing that has been a theme of the secular left in the United States going back into the 19th century. While there have certainly been members of the American left who have been wealthy, white men, they have almost always been motivated, strongly, by their religious beliefs, not by the substitution of that with Marxism or some other ideology.
But that's for another time.
The non-brat Bernie supporters who have pledged to support Biden have been making the demand that Biden should listen to and be influenced by Sanders and his supporters. Which, I have to point out, isn't being accompanied by them accepting that Sanders and his supporters have an obligation to listen to and be influenced by the large majority of Democratic voters who were not Bernie Sanders supporters.
Sanders supporters are a significant part of the Democratic Party, the ones who are Democrats or who will vote for Democrats, BUT THEY ARE NOT ANYWHERE NEAR AS SIGNIFICANT AS BLACK VOTERS, DEMOCRATIC WOMEN, OTHER RELIABLE AND DEPENDABLE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS. Or as due the deference of party leaders and candidates. The just beneath the surface racism on display among some of the Bernie bots on Majority Report and other places, especially in the comments, in the wake of Biden's support by Black voters in South Carolina played a huge part in my realizing what a bunch of spoiled brats the white-boys and gals of the Bernie Sanders cult are. No rational, or more importantly, moral Democrat would think of offending those constituencies to please that fraction of the Bernie Sanders support, I have been absolutely disgusted with Sanders for not trying harder to quell their excesses and offensive behavior.
If Sanders had stayed in the Democratic Party after he lost the nomination in 2016, he would have had a far stronger claim to be a nominee for its presidential nomination, if, as he reportedly has every intention of doing, again leaves the party after this, he has no right to demand to be listened to by the Democratic nominee. He has a right to ask for that, he has no right to demand it because he is not a Democrat except when it suits his purposes.
Sanders supporters who are Democrats have him and his Bernie-or-Bust supporters to blame for any deficit of influence they might want to complain about. Those like Seder and Brooks, Konst, etc. who will be having tantrums and encouraging people to not vote for the only person who is going to stand between us and having four more years of Trump can be rationally seen as nothing but a very good reason for Democrats to not trust them or want to work with Sanders supporters who aren't part of that anti-Democratic cult.
Most of the hard-core Bernie cultists are, predictably, having a never-Biden, fuck-the-Dems tantrum, Sam Seder and Michael Brooks taught me one thing I hadn't really realized, how much of the Republican-fascist aiding play-left has been fueled by affluent brats, most of them white men who are ready to burn everything to the ground if they don't get their way.
That's not going to be an insight that goes away, now that I've realized the extent to which we can thank asshole brats like them for the damage to the real left and, so, democracy, I am realizing that has been a theme of the secular left in the United States going back into the 19th century. While there have certainly been members of the American left who have been wealthy, white men, they have almost always been motivated, strongly, by their religious beliefs, not by the substitution of that with Marxism or some other ideology.
But that's for another time.
The non-brat Bernie supporters who have pledged to support Biden have been making the demand that Biden should listen to and be influenced by Sanders and his supporters. Which, I have to point out, isn't being accompanied by them accepting that Sanders and his supporters have an obligation to listen to and be influenced by the large majority of Democratic voters who were not Bernie Sanders supporters.
Sanders supporters are a significant part of the Democratic Party, the ones who are Democrats or who will vote for Democrats, BUT THEY ARE NOT ANYWHERE NEAR AS SIGNIFICANT AS BLACK VOTERS, DEMOCRATIC WOMEN, OTHER RELIABLE AND DEPENDABLE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS. Or as due the deference of party leaders and candidates. The just beneath the surface racism on display among some of the Bernie bots on Majority Report and other places, especially in the comments, in the wake of Biden's support by Black voters in South Carolina played a huge part in my realizing what a bunch of spoiled brats the white-boys and gals of the Bernie Sanders cult are. No rational, or more importantly, moral Democrat would think of offending those constituencies to please that fraction of the Bernie Sanders support, I have been absolutely disgusted with Sanders for not trying harder to quell their excesses and offensive behavior.
If Sanders had stayed in the Democratic Party after he lost the nomination in 2016, he would have had a far stronger claim to be a nominee for its presidential nomination, if, as he reportedly has every intention of doing, again leaves the party after this, he has no right to demand to be listened to by the Democratic nominee. He has a right to ask for that, he has no right to demand it because he is not a Democrat except when it suits his purposes.
Sanders supporters who are Democrats have him and his Bernie-or-Bust supporters to blame for any deficit of influence they might want to complain about. Those like Seder and Brooks, Konst, etc. who will be having tantrums and encouraging people to not vote for the only person who is going to stand between us and having four more years of Trump can be rationally seen as nothing but a very good reason for Democrats to not trust them or want to work with Sanders supporters who aren't part of that anti-Democratic cult.
Rep. Porter, Sara Nelson Propose Idea To Keep More Workers Employed
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes . . .
THIS MUST BE TALKED ABOUT EVERY DAY, EVERY HOUR.
The Blond Bimbo Liar Trump Hired To Succeed Spicer, Sanders and the one who never did the job Is A Product Of Catholic Prep-Ivy
Kayleigh McEnany, the rich-girl, blond bimbo liar who Trump hired as probably his most morally degenerate (yet) Press Secretary is a Georgetown - Harvard Law school product. She is demonstrably not stupid but she is even more demonstrably totally and absolutely bereft of morality else she would never have had the CV she has and the career she has.
I would not have mentioned that except that the moral atrocity is one in a long line of Republican-fascist moral atrocities I've documented here who is a product of nominally Catholic, elite prep-schools, in her case the Academy of the Holy Names in Tampa, Florida.
While such an educational profile is not a guarantee to produce a degenerate, lying fascist, racist scumbag like the ones I've noted have been mainstays of Republican-fascism, it is such a strong trend that it, itself, has to count as a moral crisis in Catholic education which, obviously, joins the private secular and Protestant preps in turning out rich degenerates and degenerates who aspire to be rich through service to oligrachic, Republican fascism.
Oh, she's also married to a beefy MLB player, no doubt Trump hired her hoping for more than just that she'll lie shamelessly on his behalf, hoping she likes them fat. And I don't regret saying that. Anyone who thinks Trump doesn't want to screw the members of the Aryan Peroxide Sisterhood he gives jobs to hasn't been paying attention to who Trump is. He openly lusts after his own daughter who is a member of the APS, after all. The man is a moral atrocity leading the moral atrocity of Republican-fascism, the poster example of why Me-Too was never going to reach far into Republicans who are, in 2020, moral degenerates.
The very few exceptions among governors brought out by the pandemic would best serve the country by openly and definitively breaking with the Republican Party over its failure to get rid of the fascists, the rapists and molesters who have dominated that party for a long while, now. They are the immoral protected and promoted and nurtured by the amoral in the political-judicial Republican establishment and the media.
We are not reaching but are at Suetonian levels of degenerate decay in the United States, we are not alone but we are proof that there are such basic and disastrous flaws to our Constitution which are guaranteed to continue producing this until they are corrected and liars are punished and kept well away from power, both political and judicial.
The Catholic hierarchy, the Catholic Church joins in that pagan, Roman style imperial corruption. If I were Pope, I'd abolish all such elite institutions serving the wealthy. Their properties should either be put to service to the poor or sold and the money given to the poor. This is a sandal as big and as morally atrocious as the pedophile abuse scandal. I don't doubt in many cases, they are the same thing.
I would not have mentioned that except that the moral atrocity is one in a long line of Republican-fascist moral atrocities I've documented here who is a product of nominally Catholic, elite prep-schools, in her case the Academy of the Holy Names in Tampa, Florida.
While such an educational profile is not a guarantee to produce a degenerate, lying fascist, racist scumbag like the ones I've noted have been mainstays of Republican-fascism, it is such a strong trend that it, itself, has to count as a moral crisis in Catholic education which, obviously, joins the private secular and Protestant preps in turning out rich degenerates and degenerates who aspire to be rich through service to oligrachic, Republican fascism.
Oh, she's also married to a beefy MLB player, no doubt Trump hired her hoping for more than just that she'll lie shamelessly on his behalf, hoping she likes them fat. And I don't regret saying that. Anyone who thinks Trump doesn't want to screw the members of the Aryan Peroxide Sisterhood he gives jobs to hasn't been paying attention to who Trump is. He openly lusts after his own daughter who is a member of the APS, after all. The man is a moral atrocity leading the moral atrocity of Republican-fascism, the poster example of why Me-Too was never going to reach far into Republicans who are, in 2020, moral degenerates.
The very few exceptions among governors brought out by the pandemic would best serve the country by openly and definitively breaking with the Republican Party over its failure to get rid of the fascists, the rapists and molesters who have dominated that party for a long while, now. They are the immoral protected and promoted and nurtured by the amoral in the political-judicial Republican establishment and the media.
We are not reaching but are at Suetonian levels of degenerate decay in the United States, we are not alone but we are proof that there are such basic and disastrous flaws to our Constitution which are guaranteed to continue producing this until they are corrected and liars are punished and kept well away from power, both political and judicial.
The Catholic hierarchy, the Catholic Church joins in that pagan, Roman style imperial corruption. If I were Pope, I'd abolish all such elite institutions serving the wealthy. Their properties should either be put to service to the poor or sold and the money given to the poor. This is a sandal as big and as morally atrocious as the pedophile abuse scandal. I don't doubt in many cases, they are the same thing.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Elizabeth Warren: Wisconsin Shows Why We Need Vote By Mail and Expanded Early Vote
Republicans hate it, it has to be good for democracy.
The United States Supreme Court Is In A State Of Treason Against Democracy It Can't Be Allowed To Operate As It Has
"They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again."
That, of course was Trump admitting on FOX the other day that Republicans are for suppressing the vote because if most people voted, Republicans would be out of power. And that has been something Republicans have always known, as the oligarchs who wrote the Constitution knew, one of the reasons they adopted the safety valves for oligarchy, the Electoral College, the Senate, confirmation of the Supreme Court by the blatantly anti-democratically structured Senate, that anti-democratic structure something retained even after the putrid Constitution was amended to allow for Senators to be chosen by direct vote, not by state legislatures.
And it is why the United States Supreme Court under Republican-fascist domination, federal courts and state courts under Republicans have sought every means at their disposal to either enhance Republican state governments to suppress the vote to favor Republicans and to thwart Democrats' and others attempts to protect and expand the vote and elections.
The United States Supreme Court, since the mid 1970s has actively involved itself with corrupting the elections in the United States, both through the permission of money to dominate, along with such entities as the ACLU, and through blatant efforts to suppress the votes of citizens with a legitimate right to vote.
The criminal, treasonous antics of the Republican-fascist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to elections proves that the Supreme Court should have been reigned in after Bush v. Gore and disciplined by Democrats in the brief period when they held the other two branches of government. It is clear that the Republicans on it, now that Stevens is retired, dead and gone, are blatant partisan political actors who may, once in a blue moon vote to reign in some of Trump's more shamelessly blatant and illegal acts but which will ALWAYS promote partisan Republican interests.
With what the fascists on the court did in regard to the Wisconsin election, a blatant attempt to thwart democracy in a time of national crisis, acting blatantly on behalf of Republican interests in Wisconsin and the country is a warning that, as the Rehnquist Court did in Bush v. Gore, they intend to install Republicans in offices wherever they can by suppressing the vote in whatever way they can. It is a blatant attack on electoral democracy from the unelected Court, WHICH, SINCE IT IS UNELECTED IS THE BRANCH FARTHEST FROM THE LEGITIMACY THAT ONLY A VOTE OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE CAN GIVE TO A GOVERNMENT, IN WHOLE OR IN PART.
The blatant political actions of the unelected Supreme Court delegitimates it, the members of it who vote to suppress elections, to allow Republican-fascists to corrupt elections are in a state of treason against the legitimate governance of the country. In a real democracy, they would be impeached and tried, in a real democracy what they are doing would be not merely illegal but considered to be an act of war against the legitimate governance of the country, against the absolute foundation of legitimate government THE VOTE OF THE PEOPLE.
The United States Supreme Court, despite the absurdly sanctity it has been held in, has always been the source of some of the most blatantly oligarchic inhibition and prevention of egalitarian democracy since it was dominated by slave owners who repeatedly made decisions that favored, not only their class, but themselves and by Republicans in the period when that party went from a brief burst of anti-slavery idealism to the corruption that came in with the Grant and Hayes administrations, acting on behalf of the wealthy who the Republican Party have, ever since, acted for.
Getting over the sanctimonious view of that most corrupt and anti-democratic part of the Federal government is probably the first hurdle to protecting democracy from them. Remember that the next time you hear the pious tone of voice in someone reporting on the court or, really, about the profession of the law. The aura of civic sanctity in regard to the Supreme Court is best dissolved by looking at its long history of protecting and promoting slavery, the subjugation of women, of benefiting the rich and powerful, of promoting their own class interests and even personal benefit.
The first thing I'd do is take them out of those friggin' qausi-clerical robes that make them seem like high-priests to people stupid enough to mistake the costume for the actor wearing it. And I would make them subject to confirmation in both the Senate and the House, since they gave themselves the power to overturn laws duly adopted by the legislative branch, they should have to submit to the approval of the entire Congress, not just the far less democratically legitimate part, the less than fifth of it.
The second thing I would do is limit them to a ten year term, no one should get to sit in that kind of judgement till decrepitude or death removes them, those are not reliable enough means of removing the majority of mediocre and terrible hacks who have sat on that court. There is no reason that the fate of the country should rest on a Ruth Bader Ginsberg lasting for another year or more in her fragile state of health.
If American democracy is to survive the Bush II and now Trump regimes, this attack on egalitarian democracy, the reign of Murdochian-Trumpian fascism, there will have to be a showdown which results in the Courts, packed with fascists by Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Lindsay Graham, etc. having their powers to nullify laws removed. The Congress and Executive must declare that any court action to the effect THAT LEGITIMATE VOTES ARE NOT TO BE COUNTED OR EVEN CAST IN THE MOST BLATANT OF PARTISAN VOTER SUPPRESSION is illegitimate and, indeed, for any judge or "justice" to try to do so will result in their removal and prosecution. The courts are the open enemy of egalitarian democracy right now and they have often been for the entire existence of that court and many other courts.
That, of course was Trump admitting on FOX the other day that Republicans are for suppressing the vote because if most people voted, Republicans would be out of power. And that has been something Republicans have always known, as the oligarchs who wrote the Constitution knew, one of the reasons they adopted the safety valves for oligarchy, the Electoral College, the Senate, confirmation of the Supreme Court by the blatantly anti-democratically structured Senate, that anti-democratic structure something retained even after the putrid Constitution was amended to allow for Senators to be chosen by direct vote, not by state legislatures.
And it is why the United States Supreme Court under Republican-fascist domination, federal courts and state courts under Republicans have sought every means at their disposal to either enhance Republican state governments to suppress the vote to favor Republicans and to thwart Democrats' and others attempts to protect and expand the vote and elections.
The United States Supreme Court, since the mid 1970s has actively involved itself with corrupting the elections in the United States, both through the permission of money to dominate, along with such entities as the ACLU, and through blatant efforts to suppress the votes of citizens with a legitimate right to vote.
The criminal, treasonous antics of the Republican-fascist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to elections proves that the Supreme Court should have been reigned in after Bush v. Gore and disciplined by Democrats in the brief period when they held the other two branches of government. It is clear that the Republicans on it, now that Stevens is retired, dead and gone, are blatant partisan political actors who may, once in a blue moon vote to reign in some of Trump's more shamelessly blatant and illegal acts but which will ALWAYS promote partisan Republican interests.
With what the fascists on the court did in regard to the Wisconsin election, a blatant attempt to thwart democracy in a time of national crisis, acting blatantly on behalf of Republican interests in Wisconsin and the country is a warning that, as the Rehnquist Court did in Bush v. Gore, they intend to install Republicans in offices wherever they can by suppressing the vote in whatever way they can. It is a blatant attack on electoral democracy from the unelected Court, WHICH, SINCE IT IS UNELECTED IS THE BRANCH FARTHEST FROM THE LEGITIMACY THAT ONLY A VOTE OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE CAN GIVE TO A GOVERNMENT, IN WHOLE OR IN PART.
The blatant political actions of the unelected Supreme Court delegitimates it, the members of it who vote to suppress elections, to allow Republican-fascists to corrupt elections are in a state of treason against the legitimate governance of the country. In a real democracy, they would be impeached and tried, in a real democracy what they are doing would be not merely illegal but considered to be an act of war against the legitimate governance of the country, against the absolute foundation of legitimate government THE VOTE OF THE PEOPLE.
The United States Supreme Court, despite the absurdly sanctity it has been held in, has always been the source of some of the most blatantly oligarchic inhibition and prevention of egalitarian democracy since it was dominated by slave owners who repeatedly made decisions that favored, not only their class, but themselves and by Republicans in the period when that party went from a brief burst of anti-slavery idealism to the corruption that came in with the Grant and Hayes administrations, acting on behalf of the wealthy who the Republican Party have, ever since, acted for.
Getting over the sanctimonious view of that most corrupt and anti-democratic part of the Federal government is probably the first hurdle to protecting democracy from them. Remember that the next time you hear the pious tone of voice in someone reporting on the court or, really, about the profession of the law. The aura of civic sanctity in regard to the Supreme Court is best dissolved by looking at its long history of protecting and promoting slavery, the subjugation of women, of benefiting the rich and powerful, of promoting their own class interests and even personal benefit.
The first thing I'd do is take them out of those friggin' qausi-clerical robes that make them seem like high-priests to people stupid enough to mistake the costume for the actor wearing it. And I would make them subject to confirmation in both the Senate and the House, since they gave themselves the power to overturn laws duly adopted by the legislative branch, they should have to submit to the approval of the entire Congress, not just the far less democratically legitimate part, the less than fifth of it.
The second thing I would do is limit them to a ten year term, no one should get to sit in that kind of judgement till decrepitude or death removes them, those are not reliable enough means of removing the majority of mediocre and terrible hacks who have sat on that court. There is no reason that the fate of the country should rest on a Ruth Bader Ginsberg lasting for another year or more in her fragile state of health.
If American democracy is to survive the Bush II and now Trump regimes, this attack on egalitarian democracy, the reign of Murdochian-Trumpian fascism, there will have to be a showdown which results in the Courts, packed with fascists by Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Lindsay Graham, etc. having their powers to nullify laws removed. The Congress and Executive must declare that any court action to the effect THAT LEGITIMATE VOTES ARE NOT TO BE COUNTED OR EVEN CAST IN THE MOST BLATANT OF PARTISAN VOTER SUPPRESSION is illegitimate and, indeed, for any judge or "justice" to try to do so will result in their removal and prosecution. The courts are the open enemy of egalitarian democracy right now and they have often been for the entire existence of that court and many other courts.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
In Quarantine For Another Three Weeks
Things here took a serious turn since my last post. The relative I've been helping was admitted to the hospital, the second in one month. There is no question now that I've been exposed to Covid-19 and have been told to quarantine myself AGAIN. So, another two weeks of not knowing at best, of wondering if every sore throat or cough - typical of someone with bad allergies - is a potential death knell. That's one of the consequences of the Trump-Kushner-Pence, etc. Trump regime profiteering on testing - if they weren't they may as well have been and if it occurred to me that they could profiteer off of an "American test" I'm sure it occurred to that bunch of croooks, AND I KNOW IF IT OCCURRED TO THEM THAT IT WAS POSSIBLE, THEY'D DO IT.
I will tell anyone who has been fortunate enough to have not experienced it that the terror of being with someone gasping for breath as Covid-19 leads to is a terrible experience, in itself. Avoid any chance of getting infected or passing it on that you can avoid. It's not worth it except in the most neccessary of situations.
I curse the governors and federal officials who have facilitated its spread, I curse the talking heads in the media who have, they have committed crimes against humanity, I curse the legal language that allows the mass media to do it, it is total and criminal insanity to allow FOX and its like to exist to lie thousands, potentially millions into death. If it were up to me, they would all face prosecution in a Nuremberg style proceeding from the top down to the Lord Haw-Haws of FOX and Sinclair and from the Heritage Foundation and Hoover Institute. Facebook would be obliterated as would all other media that has had a hand in this attack against not only the American People but People everywhere. This is a product of lies and the things lies produce which produce these pandemics.
Since it's being ignored, the origin of this plague in the killing and eating of wild animals is bound to be ignored, the list of those, from AIDS to Covid-19 which have come from the cruel and dangerous practice of killing wild animals given by Jane Goodall in this video (at about 2:12) is something that has to be stopped, everywhere. That's a truth that needs to be told because it is a potential wherever animals are either captured and killed from the wild or on factory farms and egg operations and those practices are endemic to the human population.
This is guaranteed to happen again, the list of diseases so transmitted given by Jane Goodall below are from the past half-century, alone. And, as I've mentioned before, there have been both diseases that made the jump to human to human transmission and near misses in the meat and egg industries too, a number of those originating in the United States - no question of "racism" in bringing it up, it is a dangerous habit of the HUMAN species as long as we continue as we have been.
I will tell anyone who has been fortunate enough to have not experienced it that the terror of being with someone gasping for breath as Covid-19 leads to is a terrible experience, in itself. Avoid any chance of getting infected or passing it on that you can avoid. It's not worth it except in the most neccessary of situations.
I curse the governors and federal officials who have facilitated its spread, I curse the talking heads in the media who have, they have committed crimes against humanity, I curse the legal language that allows the mass media to do it, it is total and criminal insanity to allow FOX and its like to exist to lie thousands, potentially millions into death. If it were up to me, they would all face prosecution in a Nuremberg style proceeding from the top down to the Lord Haw-Haws of FOX and Sinclair and from the Heritage Foundation and Hoover Institute. Facebook would be obliterated as would all other media that has had a hand in this attack against not only the American People but People everywhere. This is a product of lies and the things lies produce which produce these pandemics.
Since it's being ignored, the origin of this plague in the killing and eating of wild animals is bound to be ignored, the list of those, from AIDS to Covid-19 which have come from the cruel and dangerous practice of killing wild animals given by Jane Goodall in this video (at about 2:12) is something that has to be stopped, everywhere. That's a truth that needs to be told because it is a potential wherever animals are either captured and killed from the wild or on factory farms and egg operations and those practices are endemic to the human population.
This is guaranteed to happen again, the list of diseases so transmitted given by Jane Goodall below are from the past half-century, alone. And, as I've mentioned before, there have been both diseases that made the jump to human to human transmission and near misses in the meat and egg industries too, a number of those originating in the United States - no question of "racism" in bringing it up, it is a dangerous habit of the HUMAN species as long as we continue as we have been.
Monday, April 6, 2020
Peter Navarro, Hack Gangster As Medical Expert
I hadn't heard Trump's trade thug, Peter Navarro, Harvard econ. PhD presenting himself as a medical expert on CNN till just a few minutes ago
WHAT A MASSIVE EGOTISTICAL A-HOLE!
Republicans are in a competition to see who can be most evil and they're all winning. What Navarro is doing should be illegal, that it isn't proves that our Constitution and the law made under it have major and dangerous defects.
WHAT A MASSIVE EGOTISTICAL A-HOLE!
Republicans are in a competition to see who can be most evil and they're all winning. What Navarro is doing should be illegal, that it isn't proves that our Constitution and the law made under it have major and dangerous defects.
You Think What I Said About The Dangers Of Letting The Media Lie With Impunity Was Overblown?
OAN: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
"For the king it was a lie. He needed to heed the Deuteronomist. Or better, he needed to consult with the janitor who knew more.."
Having a few hours to look for that story about the janitor and eschatology and after finding the wonderful picture of the hospital cleaner whose Americanism should make every Trumpian xenophobe shut up forever, as I purused the news, I found that the wonderful Walter Brueggemann had more to say about janitors and how their perspective on the world had probably more to tell us than the elite voices of those they clean up after. I don't have the time to go through the entire paper, which I've read far too quickly, but I wanted you to have a link to it because the paper and the embedded sermon have such profound relevance right now.
Just a sample:
So the panel ended. The folks went home. The king retired to his quarters exhausted and satisfied. He was only mildly alarmed by the Deuteronomist, for who listens to such abrasive theology? And anyway, that guy always said the same thing and people no longer paid him any attention. Everybody went home, except of course the janitors. A big crew had to clear up the litter. It was everywhere. Old bulletins of the service were even left around the ark. The ark had been the focus of the service. It was the oldest, most honored symbol, kept over from the days of the revolution. It was said to be God's special place. One of the young custodians, who had become cynical by living too close to "holy people," thought he would take a peek. He did not believe much about God's presence, but he did not have the skill or ability to doubt the claims of the throne very critically. It just seemed to him it was all more mundane than the liturgy suggested. His cynicism had helped him notice that the ones who believed all these liturgical claims so deeply were also the ones who seemed so well-off and secure. Perhaps such self-contained, excessively reassuring liturgy is more compelling when one has more of this world's goods. He suspected the claims might not convince so easily if one were not so well-off.
So he took a look into the ark. He did not touch it, for his cynicism had not advanced that far. Nor was he that jaded. He did not know what he expected to see. But he was shocked when he looked. What he saw was not God, but two tablets.
There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone
which Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a
covenant with the people of Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt. (I Kings 8:9)
The words said nothing mystical or enigmatic or eloquent or supernatural about God's presence. Only the old simple words first uttered to the liberated slaves:
No other gods,
No graven images,
You shall not steal,
You shall not commit adultery,
You shall not covet.
Kings have better words, more syllables, smoother, more reassuring, not so costly, but slaves and peasants tend to get down to basics. The janitor, at the end of the pageant, was driven back behind the pageant to the liberating miracle and the moment of bonding when Israel's life was changed and Israel's identity was set for all time in obedience against all the rulers of this age. The janitor was not a sophisticated theologian, or he would not have been messing with the litter. He never made the choir. He never participated in a theological forum, but it dawned on him that simple folk have found God's presence in the daily radicalness of holding to a covenantal ethic. Obedience is the shape of God's presence.
Moses had put obedience and presence together:
What great nation has a God so near,
,
What great nation has a torah so righteous. (Deut. 4:7-8, author's translation)
The Deuteronomist loved that word remembered from Moses. Moses did not have in mind the triviality of morality, but the deep vocational embrace of covenant. The janitor had a hunch that day that God's presence would not be found in the large, eloquent liturgies. He sensed inchoately that most of that was for reasons of state, contrived to enhance security and legitimacy. One must not be deceived and God must not be mocked.
It seems to be the theme of my day, janitors and what they see from where they are. The ones who are as important as the ventilators and treatments of the doctors, the ones who are doing the scrubbing down to lessen the dangers to everyone else and what they know. I hope everyone includes the when they are applauding and blowing their horns and making the speeches because they're as heroic as anyone in this.
Just a sample:
So the panel ended. The folks went home. The king retired to his quarters exhausted and satisfied. He was only mildly alarmed by the Deuteronomist, for who listens to such abrasive theology? And anyway, that guy always said the same thing and people no longer paid him any attention. Everybody went home, except of course the janitors. A big crew had to clear up the litter. It was everywhere. Old bulletins of the service were even left around the ark. The ark had been the focus of the service. It was the oldest, most honored symbol, kept over from the days of the revolution. It was said to be God's special place. One of the young custodians, who had become cynical by living too close to "holy people," thought he would take a peek. He did not believe much about God's presence, but he did not have the skill or ability to doubt the claims of the throne very critically. It just seemed to him it was all more mundane than the liturgy suggested. His cynicism had helped him notice that the ones who believed all these liturgical claims so deeply were also the ones who seemed so well-off and secure. Perhaps such self-contained, excessively reassuring liturgy is more compelling when one has more of this world's goods. He suspected the claims might not convince so easily if one were not so well-off.
So he took a look into the ark. He did not touch it, for his cynicism had not advanced that far. Nor was he that jaded. He did not know what he expected to see. But he was shocked when he looked. What he saw was not God, but two tablets.
There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone
which Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a
covenant with the people of Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt. (I Kings 8:9)
The words said nothing mystical or enigmatic or eloquent or supernatural about God's presence. Only the old simple words first uttered to the liberated slaves:
No other gods,
No graven images,
You shall not steal,
You shall not commit adultery,
You shall not covet.
Kings have better words, more syllables, smoother, more reassuring, not so costly, but slaves and peasants tend to get down to basics. The janitor, at the end of the pageant, was driven back behind the pageant to the liberating miracle and the moment of bonding when Israel's life was changed and Israel's identity was set for all time in obedience against all the rulers of this age. The janitor was not a sophisticated theologian, or he would not have been messing with the litter. He never made the choir. He never participated in a theological forum, but it dawned on him that simple folk have found God's presence in the daily radicalness of holding to a covenantal ethic. Obedience is the shape of God's presence.
Moses had put obedience and presence together:
What great nation has a God so near,
,
What great nation has a torah so righteous. (Deut. 4:7-8, author's translation)
The Deuteronomist loved that word remembered from Moses. Moses did not have in mind the triviality of morality, but the deep vocational embrace of covenant. The janitor had a hunch that day that God's presence would not be found in the large, eloquent liturgies. He sensed inchoately that most of that was for reasons of state, contrived to enhance security and legitimacy. One must not be deceived and God must not be mocked.
It seems to be the theme of my day, janitors and what they see from where they are. The ones who are as important as the ventilators and treatments of the doctors, the ones who are doing the scrubbing down to lessen the dangers to everyone else and what they know. I hope everyone includes the when they are applauding and blowing their horns and making the speeches because they're as heroic as anyone in this.
No, Thank Her
Hunter Walker
@hunterw
My mother-in-law is an immigrant from Peru working as a hospital cleaner near the center of the #coronavirus crisis in Westchester NY. She posted this photo and said, "This is my chance to thank New York for making my family's dreams come true." I love her a lot and am so proud.
In The Absolutely Last Resort
In one of his many fine lectures and sermons that I've had the great pleasure to hear in the past several years, the Protestant Old Testament Scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann talked about how at the seminary he worked in, one of the janitors asked him what was this eschatology that he was hearing about, apparently in the dismissive tones as has been fashionable in modern academic fashion. When he heard what eschatology dealt with, as given in Merriam-Webster:
1: a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind
2: a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind
specifically : any of various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment
Brueggemann said the janitor pointed out that to someone in his humble position, without that, he was left with nothing. I wish I had the time to go look for the passage so I could type it out verbatim to do Brueggemann and the Janitor justice but that's what I remember of the story. I had a not totally unrelated experience when, as I was arguing with new-atheists online, I pointed out that what the person who bagged our groceries, the woman who ran the feed store or, I think I said, a janitor at the local school had as valid ideas about the existence of God as any atheist hero with a degree. It must have been Dawkins or Harris or Dennett or one of the Brits we were arguing but that comment thread is long gone, probably several iterations of the software ago.
So I'm going to finish this series I had meant to finish yesterday, going through the last pages of the Swiss theologian Hans Kung's Eternal Life? the third of his great trilogy of books in which he discusses God's existence, the figure of Jesus and Christianity and, then life after death, in which Kung tells us what you can get from choosing to believe, though that's far from the only thing Kung means by it.
God all in all: I can rely on the hope that in the eschaton, in the absolutely last resort, in God's kingdom, the alienation of Creator and creature, man and nature, logos and cosmos, the division into here and hereafter, above and blow, subject and object, will be abolished. God then will not merely be in everything, as he is now, but truly all in all, but - transforming everything into himself - because he gives to all a share in his eternal life in unrestricted, endless fullness. For, Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, all that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. To him be glory forever.
God all in all: For me it is expressed in unsurpassed and grandiose form - interweaving cosmic liturgy, nuptial celebration and quiet happiness in the last pages of the New Testament at the end of the book of Revelation by the seer in statements of promise and hope, with which I would like to close this series of lectures on eternal life. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea (the place of chaos). I saw the holy city, and the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful as a bride dressed for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice call from the throne, "You see this city? Here god lives among men. He will make his home among tme: they shall be his people and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone." It will no longer be a life in the light of the Eternal but the light of the Eternal will be our life and his rule our rule: "They will see him face to face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. It will never be night again and they will not need lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will be shining on them. They will reign for ever and ever."
I began this short series noting the criterion that modernism, materialism, scientism, modern atheism is founded in, when it is honestly admitted, what does that get for the one who chooses to believe it. As I have mentioned Kung began his large trilogy by going over the philosophical foundation of modernism in Rene Descartes' desire to establish the study of the material universe in the same kind of hard proof available to mathematics*. Modern mathematics and physics give us more reason than Descartes could have probably suspected, that mathematics doesn't even full explain itself and that science can't provide us with the total certainty that the ideology of modernism insists it does. While it might be a, sometimes, useful tool, an essential one - as this pandemic proves it must be taken as - it cannot give us full understanding, not even with the time that we don't often have to fully work things out. The pseudo-scientific babblings peddled by Richard Epstein which he asserts had the certainty of evolutionary biological science should stand as a potent example of how that naive faith among the most credentialed and conceited of us can get us a lot worse than the common sense of stay-at-home orders provides us.
It is one of the most frustrating things that the atheist-materialist self-assigned champion of scientific thinking, especially those who call themselves "skeptics" (but who are, actually, absolutists on insisting on their ideology, and so skeptical of nothing) that in such large numbers so much of humanity refuses to fall in line. I think that a number of people, even those who might not be fully aware of the lapses of science and even mathematics, that they intuit that as compared to the radical economic justice, the social justice of the Gospels and The Prophets, they get far less out of the modernist eschaton of meaninglessness (if only Descartes knew his philosophical conclusions led to that end!) insignificance, non-justice, non-meaning and a meaningless extinction after a life of experiencing injustice. Is it any wonder that they choose even the most naive and distorted articulations of the Scriptures over the sour, dismal injustice of modernism? But that's a huge topic full of contradictions - as modernism is - and will have to be gone through later.
I suspect that what Kung said in his books, the passages I've given you, would be very controversial in some evangelical circles, I would guess those who are allied to Trumpian mammonism would be especially hostile to it. But I will point out that they would have to get in line behind the Catholic right **in their hatred of Hans Kung and his theology. One of the slams on the Catholic right, the part of the Catholic church which joins the white-evangelical right which supports the vulgar king of Mammon, Trump, is that Kung isn't a real Catholic theologian, that he is, in their accusation, a Protestant theologian. His doctoral dissertation was about the theology of Karl Barth - Barth read his dissertation and attested that Kung understood his thinking. One of the features of Kung's writing is that he, as he has said, relied far more on the text of the New Testament than he did medieval theology in coming to his conclusions. I think his theology is a good bridge between the two major traditions of Western Christianity, perhaps it can be seen as erasing one of those distinctions that the will disappear in the coming time.
* I found it humbling to read that section of the book because several ideas I'd thought I had discovered had been articulated rather brilliantly by Kung and, as he humbly noted, had been discussed in the criticism of science long before he wrote about them. I can't entirely regret that so many of my hours were spent playing piano but there was a cost to that in that you can't do everything and the time I could have been reading more theology and philosophy was spent on music. I would recommend Kung's trilogy of books, or so many others, because one thing I've discovered is that a good theologian has a far more profound knowledge of and treatment of philosophical topics than most of the modern philosophers I've read do. Modernism has that Cartesian conceit that mathematics is the model for thinking about all aspects of human experience but, as Kung notes early in his book Does God Exist? one of those things I only realized recently, mathematics deals with the simplest, most abstract entities, numbers and their properties and that the level of proof possible about those simple things known only to reside in our minds, quickly becomes impossible when dealing with even relatively simple physical objects. I would wonder if instead of numbers being the language of God if, perhaps, numbers are our limited minds grasping at a convincing explanation of things in terms we can deal with.
** It is one of the ironies of both Protestant Fundamentalism and Catholic integralism and its pop version so on display in the Catholic right, that they are both a sport of modernism and not the return to the past that they claim to be. Both of them have the love of authoritarianism, gangsterism, and a hatred of equality and democracy. I would not hesitate to say that neither of them measure up as paths following the teachings of Jesus. No more than Trumpism or Bush II were democratic.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
1: a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind
2: a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind
specifically : any of various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment
Brueggemann said the janitor pointed out that to someone in his humble position, without that, he was left with nothing. I wish I had the time to go look for the passage so I could type it out verbatim to do Brueggemann and the Janitor justice but that's what I remember of the story. I had a not totally unrelated experience when, as I was arguing with new-atheists online, I pointed out that what the person who bagged our groceries, the woman who ran the feed store or, I think I said, a janitor at the local school had as valid ideas about the existence of God as any atheist hero with a degree. It must have been Dawkins or Harris or Dennett or one of the Brits we were arguing but that comment thread is long gone, probably several iterations of the software ago.
So I'm going to finish this series I had meant to finish yesterday, going through the last pages of the Swiss theologian Hans Kung's Eternal Life? the third of his great trilogy of books in which he discusses God's existence, the figure of Jesus and Christianity and, then life after death, in which Kung tells us what you can get from choosing to believe, though that's far from the only thing Kung means by it.
God all in all: I can rely on the hope that in the eschaton, in the absolutely last resort, in God's kingdom, the alienation of Creator and creature, man and nature, logos and cosmos, the division into here and hereafter, above and blow, subject and object, will be abolished. God then will not merely be in everything, as he is now, but truly all in all, but - transforming everything into himself - because he gives to all a share in his eternal life in unrestricted, endless fullness. For, Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, all that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. To him be glory forever.
God all in all: For me it is expressed in unsurpassed and grandiose form - interweaving cosmic liturgy, nuptial celebration and quiet happiness in the last pages of the New Testament at the end of the book of Revelation by the seer in statements of promise and hope, with which I would like to close this series of lectures on eternal life. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea (the place of chaos). I saw the holy city, and the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful as a bride dressed for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice call from the throne, "You see this city? Here god lives among men. He will make his home among tme: they shall be his people and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone." It will no longer be a life in the light of the Eternal but the light of the Eternal will be our life and his rule our rule: "They will see him face to face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. It will never be night again and they will not need lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will be shining on them. They will reign for ever and ever."
I began this short series noting the criterion that modernism, materialism, scientism, modern atheism is founded in, when it is honestly admitted, what does that get for the one who chooses to believe it. As I have mentioned Kung began his large trilogy by going over the philosophical foundation of modernism in Rene Descartes' desire to establish the study of the material universe in the same kind of hard proof available to mathematics*. Modern mathematics and physics give us more reason than Descartes could have probably suspected, that mathematics doesn't even full explain itself and that science can't provide us with the total certainty that the ideology of modernism insists it does. While it might be a, sometimes, useful tool, an essential one - as this pandemic proves it must be taken as - it cannot give us full understanding, not even with the time that we don't often have to fully work things out. The pseudo-scientific babblings peddled by Richard Epstein which he asserts had the certainty of evolutionary biological science should stand as a potent example of how that naive faith among the most credentialed and conceited of us can get us a lot worse than the common sense of stay-at-home orders provides us.
It is one of the most frustrating things that the atheist-materialist self-assigned champion of scientific thinking, especially those who call themselves "skeptics" (but who are, actually, absolutists on insisting on their ideology, and so skeptical of nothing) that in such large numbers so much of humanity refuses to fall in line. I think that a number of people, even those who might not be fully aware of the lapses of science and even mathematics, that they intuit that as compared to the radical economic justice, the social justice of the Gospels and The Prophets, they get far less out of the modernist eschaton of meaninglessness (if only Descartes knew his philosophical conclusions led to that end!) insignificance, non-justice, non-meaning and a meaningless extinction after a life of experiencing injustice. Is it any wonder that they choose even the most naive and distorted articulations of the Scriptures over the sour, dismal injustice of modernism? But that's a huge topic full of contradictions - as modernism is - and will have to be gone through later.
I suspect that what Kung said in his books, the passages I've given you, would be very controversial in some evangelical circles, I would guess those who are allied to Trumpian mammonism would be especially hostile to it. But I will point out that they would have to get in line behind the Catholic right **in their hatred of Hans Kung and his theology. One of the slams on the Catholic right, the part of the Catholic church which joins the white-evangelical right which supports the vulgar king of Mammon, Trump, is that Kung isn't a real Catholic theologian, that he is, in their accusation, a Protestant theologian. His doctoral dissertation was about the theology of Karl Barth - Barth read his dissertation and attested that Kung understood his thinking. One of the features of Kung's writing is that he, as he has said, relied far more on the text of the New Testament than he did medieval theology in coming to his conclusions. I think his theology is a good bridge between the two major traditions of Western Christianity, perhaps it can be seen as erasing one of those distinctions that the will disappear in the coming time.
* I found it humbling to read that section of the book because several ideas I'd thought I had discovered had been articulated rather brilliantly by Kung and, as he humbly noted, had been discussed in the criticism of science long before he wrote about them. I can't entirely regret that so many of my hours were spent playing piano but there was a cost to that in that you can't do everything and the time I could have been reading more theology and philosophy was spent on music. I would recommend Kung's trilogy of books, or so many others, because one thing I've discovered is that a good theologian has a far more profound knowledge of and treatment of philosophical topics than most of the modern philosophers I've read do. Modernism has that Cartesian conceit that mathematics is the model for thinking about all aspects of human experience but, as Kung notes early in his book Does God Exist? one of those things I only realized recently, mathematics deals with the simplest, most abstract entities, numbers and their properties and that the level of proof possible about those simple things known only to reside in our minds, quickly becomes impossible when dealing with even relatively simple physical objects. I would wonder if instead of numbers being the language of God if, perhaps, numbers are our limited minds grasping at a convincing explanation of things in terms we can deal with.
** It is one of the ironies of both Protestant Fundamentalism and Catholic integralism and its pop version so on display in the Catholic right, that they are both a sport of modernism and not the return to the past that they claim to be. Both of them have the love of authoritarianism, gangsterism, and a hatred of equality and democracy. I would not hesitate to say that neither of them measure up as paths following the teachings of Jesus. No more than Trumpism or Bush II were democratic.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Hate Mail
"Simels said . . ."
I don't care.
Update: As I said, he's an habitual liar and his audience doesn't care that he lies. Like Trump's audience. Such is Duncan Black's comment community.
I don't care.
Update: As I said, he's an habitual liar and his audience doesn't care that he lies. Like Trump's audience. Such is Duncan Black's comment community.