Oh, I LOVE That.

I just heard someone refer to Elon Musk as Trump's First Laddie!   Everyone, please use it, I can't think of anything that would get under both of their skins quite like it if that became wide spread.  I hope many a cartoon of that is drawn and many a joke about it, with full implications drawn, are made.

Before The Onion, Second City Documented The Pagan Origins Of Black Friday - On The Last Day Of The Church Year

I WENT LOOKING for the Onion post referred to in one of RMJ's posts and couldn't find it but found that something like it by Kristina Felske was posted on the Second City website eleven years back.   It's moderately funny, especially when you recall the online ambiance of the end of the atheist fad of the 00's and other internet anti-Xianity inanity.   Since posting actual information in refutation of the ubiquitous pop-history-pop-kulchr bull shit of that kind yields little to no improvement, maybe mockery will.  

In so far as pagans go, I generally prefer the modern ones to what gets called that from way back-a-when.   They tend to be playful nature and lore lovers instead of practitioners of human sacrifice.   Even though they've been some of the most susceptible to pseudo-historical-archeological bull shit when it comes to the "yule" and other things that Christians are accused of stealing from them - who they stole it from is unrecorded in history as just about everything short of such things as human sacrifices which leave actual archeological as well as histographic evidence.   Though no where near as susceptible to bull shit as the committed atheists and "skeptics." 

Attempting to reach herd immunity through natural infection will result in devastating losses of both life and quality of life for those infected and are completely insupportable as a public health strategy

DARWINISM, that is the theory of natural selection NOT the theory of evolution, is again mounting a direct and deadly danger to the lives of Americans and others through Trump's nominations, most well known the idiot lawyer-liar, celebraty anti-vaxxer Little Bobby Kennedy (I won't sully the name of his father, anymore) but also to other and perhaps even more dangerously important offices.  One of the worst of those is Jay Bhattacharya for head of the National Institute of Health,  Bhattacharya's professional credentials consist of the deadly combination of economist and MD, a combination I don't trust at all because economics is such a pseudo-science, one which apparently dominates in Bhattacharya's interest.   The danger he poses is best shown in his part in the deservedly infamous Great Barrington Declaration.  That declaration advocated a Darwinian form of "herd immunity" which would rely on imagined evolution of natural immunity through the mass infection of the human population, one for which the imagined mechanism of such included a very large number of deaths from, in that case, Covid-19, what we got, especially in the Trump I regime because he and Republican-fascist governors implemented that, none of those more deservedly infamous than the criminal idiot Governor Noam of South Dakota.   And it's a use of the term "herd immunity" based on the crudest and most primitive notions of Darwinism, one advocated by Charles Darwin, his son Leonard Darwin and many others of those generations, especially in opposing mass vaccination against small pox as evolutionarily dysgenic - though I have seen no evidence that the Darwin anti-vaxxers, like Little Bobby, practiced that for their own families.  Here is the most known and influential claims to that effect by Charles Darwin from The Descent of Man:

There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
 

Especially in this case, it is vitally important to notice  Darwin imagines and advocates the idea of the human population as a herd of animals and not a natural herd of animals but those kept artificially under human animal husbandry, to be exploited and then slaughtered  due solely to their economic utility, that slaughter put off, in some cases, due to their perceived superiority IN THEIR ECONOMIC UTILITY.  Though there is no actual evidence that such a thing has anything to do with the evolution of new species or that that is actually an accurate description of what happens in the wild.  That is what lead the, thankfully, unsuccessful candidate for the British Parliament and later big deal in organized eugenics, Leonard Darwin, to run on a platform that opposed mass vaccination against small pox.  And which, since many of the economists advocating "herd immunity" to Trump claimed to be practicing "Darwinian economics," is the inspiration of that deadly and stupid ideology. 

And, as is proving typical of the late 19th and early 20th century concept of natural selection, actual science, especially done later in the 20th and 21st centuries, provides ample evidence it is deadly wrong. 

Here from a paper by Angela Rassmussen, thankfully available to the public, which notices the objections of comparing the human population to a herd of animals as kept for exploitation by agriculture:

Herd immunity is a relatively recent concept, and some have taken umbrage at the term as it equates human populations with animals. However, this reflects the origin of the term, which was originally coined by livestock veterinarians in the early 20th century referring to epidemics of “contagious abortion,” or pathogens that caused spontaneous miscarriages in herds of cattle and sheep. By the 1950s, the term was applied to newly developed vaccines and their potential for preventing widespread viral diseases such as polio at population scale2. As herd immunity as a concept became more broadly associated with immunization campaigns, it gained that specific meaning. Until recently, herd immunity generally referred to population immunity acquired through vaccination.

UNTIL RECENTLY.  

It's from the National Library of Medicine so you might want to copy it and any like it before the Trump team gets in, they'll probably suppress it as they did suppress science not congenial to their idiotic and homicidal line during his first regime.

Notice that the original use of the term by actual scientists referred to its use in assessing the efficacy of vaccination.  She, as well, honestly ties the concept to the theory of natural selection.

Human communities defend themselves against specific infectious agents in a way that extends beyond the simple sum of the immune status of its individuals. By analogy with individual immunity to specific agents, the community level of immunity may vary from complete susceptibility to full protection. Herd immunity has been used to name this community property, which is the result of evolution through natural selection, leading to relationships between two species, typical of prey–predator systems. Varying uses of the term herd immunity led to the use of other expressions, such as herd protection, herd effect and community immunity. Knowledge derived from observational studies and models on herd immunity has supported decisions on the choice of vaccines and vaccination strategies for the benefit of populations. This knowledge is most likely to be extended in the future, with far-reaching effects.

Notice the phrase "typical of prey-predator systems" which is as close as anyone I've read on this in the short time available to admitting that the concept is derived from the deaths by slaughter of those labeled as "susceptible."  IT SHOULD NEVER BE FORGOTTEN THAT WHEN THE PHRASE "NATURAL SELECTION" IS USED, THAT "SELECTION" MEANS SOMEONE IS DEAD, DEATH IS THE "SELECTIVE" FORCE IN THE THEORY.   In Darwin's imagination and that of everyone who accepts the theory, the dead one is biologically inferior, though there may be no other evidence of such a valuation in nature.   It is no accident that such thinking is so congenial to the racist, bigotry practicing, elitists in the Trump world.  I would say that such Darwinism is entirely in line with it because that's the case.

Certainly, from the hard experience of human history under modern economics, including many from that list of unfortunates marked as dysgenic by Darwin in the quote above.  Elsewhere and throughout the book he lists entire groups of such dangerously dysgenic People* as the economic underclass (a product of entirely artificial choices made by law makers and the economic elite, in no way a natural population) and entire ethinicities and races of human beings, those as well subject to entirely artificial discrimination and subjugation.  I will note he not infrequently makes the contradictory claims that such "inferior" People have an enhanced state of vigor due to their violent culling by "nature" and by each other, even as he marks them as inferior.  I mention that because such thinking is endemic in the Republican-fascists who support such Darwinian economics, even those who are among the most rabid "Anti-Darwinists" as long as by that is only meant his association with the theory of evolution.  They love the scientific-racism and eugenics of Darwin, they only hate that it's tied to the fact of the evolution of species.

In her paper Angela Rassmussen also says:

Furthermore, relying on natural infection rather than vaccination to reach the herd immunity threshold assumes that infection and vaccination induce comparable immune responses with similar durability. There is growing evidence that this is not the case. Many pathogenic viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, inhibit the activity of type I interferons, which drive innate antiviral responses that are critical to both initial suppression of virus replication and subsequent induction of robust adaptive immunity. SARS-CoV-2 infection profoundly suppresses type I and type III interferons compared to influenza A virus in vivo 7. Systemic suppression of type I interferon is associated with severe COVID-198, which is also linked in multiple studies to lymphopenia9. As type I interferons drive Th1 polarization, which enhances both neutralizing antibody and CD8+ cytotoxic T cell responses, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the subversion of these responses could impact adaptive mechanisms of viral clearance and the development of immunological memory. Although most COVID-19 patients do develop detectable antibody responses, multiple studies have observed that serum antibody titers may rapidly decline within months, for SARS-CoV-2 as well as other coronaviruses10. While the significance to functional immune protection is unknown, it does suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection may result in atypical long-term immune responses. A recent study showed substantial depletion of follicular CD4+ T cells and a loss of germinal centers in the lymph nodes and spleens of patients who died of COVID-19, and this was accompanied by severely reduced follicular B cells11. As follicular CD4+ T cells within germinal centers are necessary for differentiation of memory B cells, this finding suggests a possible mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 infection may impair the development of long-lasting, durable immunity.

Immunity induced by vaccination is likely to produce very different responses. The current vaccine candidates in late-stage clinical trials do not cause SARS-CoV-2 infection, therefore will not interfere with or evade either innate or adaptive immune responses. Although several of the candidates are viral-vectored vaccines, these undergo an abortive, non-pathogenic replication cycle and do not suppress these immune responses. Therefore, they are less likely to result in subversion of memory immune responses. Data from pre-clinical and phase 1/2 trials support this finding: while infection results in a wide spectrum of antibody titers, immunization consistently produces neutralizing titers comparable to the highest titers seen in convalescent patients12 , 13. While there is not yet data on how this impacts durability, it suggests that immune responses elicited by vaccines are fundamentally distinct from those produced by naturally acquired infection. Thus, reaching herd immunity through immunization rather than infection will not only occur more quickly and with vastly less morbidity and mortality, it will likely result in greater functional immune protection for a longer duration of time (Figure 1 ).

In other words, there is evidence that natural infection may not produce the levels of natural immunity that the damned economists dream of.  I suspect that is tied with the widespread (even within science) old-fashioned idea that viruses and bacteria, once identified as a species, are a fixed entity which the human immune system will recognize and successfully fight off when the truth is that such pathogens are, in many cases, rapidly evolving - evolving especially rapidly in epidemic or pandemic situations in which more host organisms are infected and reacting to them - and that, as in the cases of influenza and the common cold, they are very able to surmount the human immune system due to their evolution of defenses against it.  Such is what such up-to-date researchers in evolution as Denis Noble and James Shapiro have repeatedly pointed out as overturning the neo-Darwinian dogma that most such college-credentialed "experts" hold as the foundation of their pseudo-scientific proclamations and declarations.   There are, of course, organisms which are far more permanently suppressed, perhaps in the rarest of cases to the point of extinction by mass vaccine programs. 

Rassmussen's paper ends.  

Many questions remain about how herd immunity will contribute to the ultimate control of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the long-term prospects for preventing future outbreaks. However, several facts are abundantly clear. Although vaccines, when available, will require months to distribute and tremendous efforts to overcome vaccine hesitancy, they still will reach the herd immunity threshold, whatever that may be, in far less time than natural infection would permit. They may produce more robust, longer-lasting, and more protective immune responses than infection. Most importantly, decades of reliable research demonstrate that vaccines are a safe and highly effective means of preventing widespread infectious diseases and are the only morally and scientifically acceptable approach for achieving herd immunity at national or global scale. Attempting to reach herd immunity through natural infection will result in devastating losses of both life and quality of life for those infected and are completely insupportable as a public health strategy for controlling a generational pandemic.

Our mass media, our legal system, our political class have put us at the mercy of psychotics wedded to mid-19th century science who haven't even defined their terms correctly.  It's obvious from how many of them hold prestigious university positions that the academic community isn't anything like up to date with the science.   

Will we have a mass disaster, maybe a huge version of the measles epidemic that Little Bobby helped set off in Samoa, leading to a large number of deaths of children?  Something which he lies about his role in, regularly.  Maybe it will be a new and worse pandemic disease such as is incubated regularly within the animal husbandry industry.  The damage that Trump and his pseudo-scientific hacks, Harvard trained lawyer-liar, economists - the evil of Darwin's theory of natural selection being a development of Malthus's economics - may get a lot of us killed.  One thing is clear, they will take a wrecking ball to what may be the best scientific health agency in the world and, if we get the chance, it will probably take decades to rebuild it after even four more years of Trump.   That's what was chosen earlier this month.

Well, That's Over - Hate Mail

I KNOW HE won't read it but here is a good introduction to the character of zionism beyond the PR lies by Alice Rothchild,   Zionism’s uneasy relationship with antisemitism,  that lists the blatant hatred of Jews by zionists from Herzel to well into the Israeli establishment after 1948.  She quotes most of the biggest figures in zionism, all of them I'm familiar with were atheists (since making that point has his pinafore in a twist) and I suspect the ones I am not as familiar with were hardly religiously observant.  She talks about having been sold a bill of goods in her introductory paragraph:

I grew up with a deep love for Israel, the redemptive, out-of the-ashes, kibbutz-loving, feisty little country that could do no wrong, fighting for its life in a sea of hateful Arabs and Jew-haters. I learned that Jews were a people dedicated to worship and the study of Torah and this identity kept us alive during the centuries of antisemitism in Europe. If I was not able to dedicate myself to the religiosity of my davening grandfather, tfillin and all, I understood that as a people, we were deeply committed to healing the world and working for social justice, an equally virtuous and inherently Jewish task. After all, we were naturally good, or as my mother explained, Jews bore the responsibility of being chosen for a uniquely positive role in this world.

That last sentence pretty much what I said this morning. 

You didn't have to be Jewish to have been brought up with that view of Israel. Growing up in the post-WWII decades by parents who had both been in the military in WWII, having been brought up with a knowledge of the Shoah and knowing that bigotry of all kinds was a serious sin, that's how I thought of Israel until well into my adulthood.  Her next paragraph deals only with the relationship of zionism and hatred of Jews, something I didn't know much about until the past year as I heard and read various anti-zionist Rabbis and scholars.  My disillusionment with Israel was based in its non-stop aggression and displacement of Palestinians and the theft of their land.   As I've mentioned one of the landmarks in my understanding of that came from reading the Jewish-Argentinian journalist Jacobo Timmerman and his criticism of the Israeli government, especially his statement that most of the anti-Jewish violence and acts were motivated by the actions and nature of the state of Israel.

As the decades passed, this mythology shattered against the hard rocks of reality.  One of the most difficult contradictions I now face is understanding the perverse relationship between Zionism and antisemitism. I was sold the story that political Zionism developed as a response to antisemitism and as a modern, liberating movement in the backward Middle East. But in 1897 as modern Zionism was born, it adopted the trope of the diaspora Jew as a pale, flaccid, yeshiva bocher, a parasite, an eternal alien, a nebbish. That Zionism embraced the idea that this pathetic weakling (who was often to be blamed for antisemitism) needed to be Aryanized into the bronzed, muscular Hebrew farmer/warrior tilling the soil in the Galilee is a chilling realization.  The evolution of Jews as a people who lived by Torah and its commandments into a biological race with distinct characteristics, (the money Jew, the ghetto Jew, the swarthy, hook-nosed Jew) mirrors the worst canards of antisemites, European fascists, and white supremacists. 

As she notes, that is part of the heritage and culture of those who rule Israel and have since its founding.   Added to that is some of the most racist hatred of, particularly, Palestinians and Arabs in general as well as the rampant white, European Israeli Jewish racism against Middle-Eastern and African Jews.  

I've learned almost everything I know about zionism and the reality of what Israel is and how its government and military have really acted from Jews, many of them from Israel.   It is a racist, apartheid-democracy, a violently imperialist state which has had a long-standing policy of land acquisition that is indistinguishable in result from the theory of Lebensruam. 

I will guide your attention to the excellent short critique of the United States contained within her article as a means of understanding the terrible reality of what Israel is in reality instead of the old Abba Eban style PR:

This is the combative voice of the new Jew, the Hebrew reborn in the fight to colonize and create Israel from Palestine. It is not a voice interested in negotiation, tolerance, democracy, or respect for other narratives or backgrounds. Political history creates the social and cultural norms we see today. The U.S. is facing a national conversation about the contradictions between our mythology – the American dream of justice, equality, and freedom for all – and the fact that our national heroes were slaveholders and actually only had dreams for white, landholding men.  Their lived experience and attitudes were the foundations for the cultural norms that characterized the most shameful aspects of U.S. history: destroying native peoples, enslaving Africans, owning their children, Jim Crow, redlining, discrimination in opportunities from the GI Bill to employment, anti-miscegenation laws, white nationalism, and the persistent bigotry and institutional racism that is still a major challenge in the 21st century. This kind of honest, painful discourse is critical if we are to turn our so-called democracy in a more positive direction. I would suggest that Israelis need to be having their own national origin conversation and mostly, they are not. This does not bode well.

Along with the words that need some serious consideration for adoption I will include "apartheid-democracy" because I'm always hearing apologists for Israel - as I recall hearing for apartheid era South Africa -  say that they have elections.  Well, they had elections in Alabama and Mississippi all during the lynch-law period.   We just had one which may well cement in the reinstallation of Roberts-Court anointed American apartheid.  As you will know I've been facing the facts about America's liberal democracy which has been coexistent with our own version of apartheid administered and kept in place by our own, indigenous form of fascism, white supremacy, for the entire time America's so-called democracy has been in place.  And that's not to mention the many wars of aggression, from those which stole the continent, including that with Mexico, Spain, etc. Including the disastrous Netanyahu encouraged invasion of Iraq.  

Slavery and apartheid was embedded in our Constitution from the start and its vestiges are still there, ready to be used by white supremacists under the permission of a white-supremacist Court such as the Roberts Court is.  Contrary to popularly believed faith, it survived the Civil War and the Civil War Amendments.    An apartheid democracy is not a legitimate government, no government that keeps any percentage of its citizens in legal second and lower class status is a legitimate government. 

There is no "right" for any state to exist, I've been over that many times.  If you declare that "Israel has a 'right' to exist, you cannot claim that any other government does not have the same "right,"  including the Nazi regime, the Stalin regime, that of Mao or Pol Pot or the Kim dynasty in North Korea.   States have no rights, they exist only as illegitimate despotisms or apartheid states or they exist legitimaty with the just consent of those who are governed WITH THE PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS OF THOSE IN THE MINORITY.   Israel has no right to exist,  I've recently heard an expert in international law point out that there is no such thing in international law as  a state having a "right to exist,"    That is a smokescreen to shield the Israeli government from the same kinds and levels of criticism that is made against any other country.   Israel certainly doesn't have the right to be protected from criticism of its crimes and criminal policies and its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  

What you're upset about, Simps, is that increasingly Israel is being given equal treatment instead of the special treatment the American, couch dwelling, petty zionists who will never set foot in the place demand.   Well, that's over.   It's entirely over. 

Author Arundhati Roy lambasts ‘US and Israel’s genocide in Gaza’ at London award ceremony

 

 

In line with what was pointed out here the other day about the "official definition" of "antisemitism," Arundhati Roy cannot honestly be accused of it because, as the fascist-nationalist Modi government in India is bringing false charges against her criticism of her own as well as many other governments.  As I never have,  she is not treating Israel in any other way than she treats other countries.   If the IHRA "official" definition is an honest one, she can't be accused of "antisemitism."  Though I doubt anyone will honor that trifling ass-covering part of the "official definition"  because it is a definition whose drafting and adoption counts on the media and most People as being too lazy, ignorant and stupid to notice such things.   Neither will they notice, I guess, her obvious care to use the word "zionist" where so many others would dishonestly or ignorantly or malignantly say "Jewish."

She says in under four minutes what others I've listened to have taken an hour or two to say.

I would quibble with one thing she said, accusing the Zionists in Israel of believing they are "the chosen People."   First, and most importantly, that often misunderstood idea is not an idea of biological supremacy and privilege as it is generally understood by the ignorant, now.  The idea was, from the time of its beginning in the Mosaic books, rather, a radical moral responsibility based in the acceptance of the many Commandments of God laid down in those books.   Repeatedly, over and over again, throughout Scripture, any idea of "chosenness" was tied not to privilege but to doing justice to everyone, including the least among the Children of Israel, INCLUDING THE ALIENS WHO WERE LIVING AMONG THEM.  I have no doubt that the secular zionists include many "Jewish" supremacists among them and that, now, under the perversion of that ideology, I'd guess heavily influenced by 19th century Darwinian notions,  there are allegedly religious racists who preach even the most extreme Jewish supremacy.  For now, and I hope foever, that kind of thing is less common among Jews I've encountered than various other perverted racist-nationalist-supremacist ideologies are among Christians.

As a matter of setting up a nation-state, Zionism is a racist ideology that is dedicated to the exact opposite of a number of the Laws of Judaism,  born out of late  European-Russian 19th century proto-fascist nationalism, a particularly bad time for any political ideology to be developed.  Ironically and instructively one of the most potent forces in the modern and most deadly manifestations of what the Jew-haters would give the sciency name for their nationalistic, exclusive hatred of Jewis, "antisemitism," included a reaction to zionism.  I think it was probably a vicious circle, zionism being a reaction to antisemitism and, as zionism started becoming a mass movement, a further incitement to hatred of Jews.  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a Czarist fabrication whose penning and publication followed close on a Russian  zionist conference, was probably inspired by zionism.  It became and remains a mainstream of Nazism and neo-Nazism and, I would hazard a guess, the emoting that substitutes for the thinking of many a "Christian zionist" who anticipates either the mass conversion of Jews or their death.

"Antisemitism" is a word that has been distorted out of any honest use so I will, from now on call what I mean "hatred of Jews" and those who hate Jews the fittingly jarring term "Jew-haters."  All hatreds should be named by jarring terms, not pseudo-scientific ones.   "Antisemitism" is a word that will increasingly be tied "officially" to the protection of even the worst crimes of the zionists in Israel.

The IHRA "official definition" and the campaign to get it inserted into the law of the United States and other countries is a transparent campaign to get governments to enforce a ban on the criticism of the Israeli government and the voters who put those governments in office from the most justifiable criticism.   I would like to know in what other instance is a foreign government given such protection by any government apart from the allies of dictatorships.   That should forevermore destroy the usefulness of the term.  The intentions of he incoming Trump II regime to use the IHRA difinition to target free speech in the media and universities and elsewhere should make it and that campaign entirely disreputable.

"Zionism" is another word that is covered with massive layers of often dishonest or, at least, ignorant usage.  Zionism as a Jewish phenomenon was and to a large extent still is mostly a secular and even atheist phenomenon.   As Rabbi Yakkove Shapiro and others have pointed out.  The fascist, Likud leadership has always been dominated of such.  They may be biological supremacists but they are not, in themselves, a manifestation of that idea, they are nationalists.  The bizarrely associated "Christian" zionist phenomeon is a perverted heresy of "evangelical Christianity" (talk about terms that have been damaged by dishonest use) which is tied intimately to white supremacy,  hatred of Jews and the heresy of "Christian" nationalism.   The combination of American zionists and such "Christian" zionists have distorted our government's policy to the point where very reluctantly agree with Arundhati Roy that the Biden Administration can honestly be accused of, at the least, war crimes for supporting the Israeli invasion, genocide and imminent annexation of Gaza.   I say that noting that Joe Biden has been the best American president since at least LBJ and very arguably has been a far more skilled master politician than even Johnson was.  His administration being caught up in Israeli politics was, for me, the very last straw in the Democratic tradition of unquestioning support of what the zionist government of Israel does.  

I think a careful consideration of what Roy says AND HOW SHE SAYS IT is in order and I might transcribe it if I have time to.   What she says about the genocide in Gaza is what is important,  I'm just pointing out the above so that can be concentrated on.

Thanksgiving Afternoon 2023

How desolate, going outside after supper in the quiet Thanksgiving afternoon and hearing the train hauling gravel blowing its whistle at the crossing. 

Comment On A Video About People Who Won't Be Seeing Their Trumpzi Relatives Today

 I wouldn't talk to anyone in my family who voted for Trump after 2016,  it would be like voting for Putin after the first time.  EXACTLY LIKE VOTING FOR PUTIN AGAIN.   Luckily, other than one branch of cousins who we don't talk to anyway,  no one in my family voted for Republican-fascists.

Psalm 51

 

 

Ely Cathedral Choir 

Directed by Paul Trepte

 Psalm 51. Miserere mei, Deus.
HAVE mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness; * according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.
2 Wash me throughly from my wickedness, * and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my faults, * and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight; * that thou mightest be justified in thy saying, and clear when thou shalt judge.
5 Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, * and in sin hath my mother conceived me.
6 But lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts, * and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.
7 Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; * thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness, * that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
9 Turn thy face from my sins, * and put out all my misdeeds.
10 Make me a clean heart, O God, * and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from thy presence, * and take not thy holy Spirit from me.
12 O give me the comfort of thy help again, * and stablish me with thy free Spirit.
13 Then shall I teach thy ways unto the wicked, * and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
14 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou that art the God of my health; * and my tongue shall sing of thy righteousness.
15 Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord, * and my mouth shall show thy praise.
16 For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee; * but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.
17 The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: * a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.
18 O be favourable and gracious unto Sion; * build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations; * then shall they offer young bullocks upon thine altar. 

Book of Common Prayer 1928

While You Are Being Fed Ye Pilgrim Fathers Bull Shit Get Ready For What They've Got Planned After Trump

 The theo-bros.

I'd love to know if their wives followed their line for Women and didn't vote this month.  I'd say the chance that they and their followers followed that "religious revelation" is about as likely as J. D. Vance's wife was just sittin' home makin' him supper and watchin' the kids.  She sure didn't before Trump tapped him for VP, she was a member of a law firm and if he'd lost the election she'd have gone right back to her professional career.   

You can read Kiera Butler's article the video is based on  at Mother Jones, here.   

I'd love to ask Vance's wife what she sees her place as a Hindu in the fascist regime her hubby is going to try to impose on us.  

For that matter, I'd love to see Peter Thiel pinned down on this, as he's one of its funders, is that faggot planning on being the head capo in the queer death camp they're talking about? 

 

 

I'm Not Thankful For The American Media But

THIS is why I love Brian Tyler Cohen,  listen to him blow up the putrid, Lord Ha, Ha of the cabloids,  Piers Morgan's, many words of bullshit with one Piers puncturing question.

Mick Goodrick quartet - Give It Up

 

    Jerry Bergonzi: tenor saxophone
    Mick Goodrick: electric guitar
    Bruce Gertz: bass
    Gary Chaffee: drums

Something for the night before Thanksgiving. 

Hate Mail

I'M NOT GOING to let People who don't read and don't think and believe lies determine what I'm going to say.   If I was going to do that I'd be no better than what I gave up twelve years ago at places like Duncan's or I'd just give up and I'm not going to do either of those.  Why would I do this if that's all I was going to do? 

After The Billionaires Decide That Trump-Vance Were A Big Mistake

and Democrats are left to do what they always have to do after Republicans have wrecked the economy, fix it,  there's one thing that we have to remember

WE DON'T OWE WALL STREET OR SILICON VALLEY ANYTHING.   BAILING THEM OUT COMES LAST, THEY CAN RISE AFTER THE LEAST AMONG US, THE WORKING POOR AND THEN THE MIDDLE CLASS ARE RESCUED.

It was one of the worst things about the Obama administration that they wasted the best hand a Democratic President had been given in a half-century on the policies of his elite economic advisors and officials and his first Chief of Staff.  NONE OF THEM SHOULD BE  TRUSTED BY A FUTURE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT, IF THERE IS EVER ANOTHER ONE.  

Even if, as some are predicting, Trump is prevented from doing the massively stupid thing he promised, start a tariff war with China and Europe and our closest neighbors, his other policies, fueled by the racism of Republican-fascism will sink the economy.   Vance and the billionaire tech bros will do it if, as I'm sure they're hoping, the idiot dies in office.   

I wouldn't trust anyone with the pedigree of a Timothy Geithner or a Lawrence Summers. really,  no one from the Ivys or their equivalents.   Those have been the nursery of corporate oligarchic fascism and the "progressive" accommodation of that which is, actually, what the Obama administration was.   Just as I wouldn't trust campaign advisors and staff who have lost elections, I wouldn't trust such insider nest-featherers to do what needs to be done to save American democracy BY EXTENDING IT INTO EGALITARIAN DEMOCRACY.   The Ivys and the like are the training grounds of oligarchs and those who will be their well-paid, devoted servants. 

'There was nothing left-wing about Harris': Mehdi Hasan slams the media for blaming the Left

 

There is a statement or, rather, an emphasis here and there I don't agree with but Mehdi Hasan gets it pretty well right.   I will repeat that James Carville should shut up forever,  he's been milking his long, long ago role in getting Bill Clinton elected but that's long ago and far away.   And his guy Bill Clinton has had a direct role in both the loss of Hillary Clinton and a minor one in Kamala Harris's.  

No More Posts From You Simps, Maybe Till After The New Year - Just Because It's My Experience That Blog Hits Go Way Down The Closer We Get To Thanksgiving

 that is unless you say something different, which I think I can safely assure the world is not likely to happen.   

I should have posted this from the ADL article linked to below:

Also responding to the allegation of Jewish "control" of Hollywood, author Neil Gabler told The New York Times: "This is a tradition that will endure as long as the motion picture industry exists. It's made by people who hate film, who hate the modernizing influence that film has had on American life, and who hate Jews."

Simps, it reminds me sort of what Noam Chomsky said when the late and unlamented Christopher Hitchens declared he was Jewish.   "From antisemite to self-hating Jew in a day."   There you have it,  Simps,  your  claim that "Jews control Hollywood characterized by the man you said proved that,  he said it was a claim made by People "who hate Jews."  

And once more for the road,  

Mop Heads 

Update: Speaking of mop heads

OK, I can't resist this:

 ""This is a tradition that will endure as long as the motion picture industry exists. It's made by people who hate film, who hate the modernizing influence that film has had on American life, and who hate Jews."

You do realize realize that you're describing yourself, right? Especially the part about hating film and the modernizing influence etc ????

Oh god, Sparky...you're the single least self-aware person I've ever encountered without actually meeting.

You're among the stupidest and most post-literate People I've ever bothered to argue with but this is stupid even for you.  I DIDN'T SAY THAT YOU ASS,  NEIL GABLER DID!   THE MAN YOU CLAIMED SAID THE VERY THING THAT HE WAS CONDEMNING IN THAT STATEMENT,  THAT "JEWS CONTROL HOLLYWOOD."   This is something so stupid I think even your fellow Eschatots would understand just how stupid you're being.  Though you're in luck, your fan base and audience NEVER read anything. 

The Kind Of Christmas You Need Right This Very Minute Is Probably Not What You're Getting

HALLMARK XMAS flicks wax large among the Christmas junk most devoid of Christ but I've never heard a right-winger complain about them. 

They're grotesquely materialistic,  lavishly vulgar and superficial and, as I asked a Woman I know who has been binging on them so as to take her mind off of the disaster of Trump II,  has anyone ever mentioned Jesus in any of them?   She, who has watched scores of them over the years, couldn't recall one that did.  And I'll leave out that they all have the frickin' same plot and use the most treadbare of movie and crap theater cliches over and over again.  You could probably do a drinking game at guessing which of those cliches you were about to see though I'd advise against it.  Unless you were as stupid as a . . . . um, troll, you'd probably all die of alcohol poisoning by the end of the crap.

But, then, the most pervasive and ultimate American messaging around Xmas, the commercials, never do, either.  They are dedicated to the exact opposite to the Gospel of Jesus, the Epistles, Acts and, especially Revelation.   

The best way to do Christmas would center on exactly what American Xmas doesn't, especially what gets on FOX Lies and the other imaginary command centers in the defense of "Christmas."  

It's gotten so my favorite thing about Christmas is Advent, ignoring American Christmas, entirely.   RMJ's is a good place to get a lot of that,  in fact, he's started a week early.  That's the kind of Christmas I need right this very minute and no one does Advent like him.

The Dangerous Subtlty Of Thinking Like A Fascist Or A Nazi In Everyday American Life And Its Pervasiveness In Popular Culture

 As late as 1921, the [Henry Ford owned] Dearborn Independent still proclaimed: "The motion picture influence of the United States -- and Canada -- is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind." The publication asserted that "the picture business, on its commercial side, is Jewish through and through" and that "the American Public is as helpless against the films as it is against any other exaggerated expression of Jewish power." It concluded that "When the people know who and what is this intangible influence we call the 'movies,' the problem may not appear so baffling."

The Anti-Defamation League

AN APOLOGY TO THE READERS is, perhaps needed because yesterday I let Simps go on a bit because I knew from experience he'd say something stupid and I'd get a post out of it.  Really, I generally count on him saying several stupid things at any given time, all based on the current  tropes on the stupid and so most influential part of American pop culture.  I had the feeling the first times I saw him do that that I could predict where he would end up because that's what that kind of non-thinking is, IT ALWAYS ENDS UP IN THE SAME STUPID PLACE.  It was especially satisfying for me because he did one of the things I suspected he'd do, parrot one of the most enduring of modern American antisemitic tropes.  

As it developed he claimed that the author and film critic Neal Gabler wrote a book saying "Jews control Hollywood."  I, like Simps, haven't read Neal Gabler's book about the early days of Hollywood because, unlike him,  I've had more than my fill on the topic.   Hollywood loves, just loves to talk about itself and I don't especially enjoy reading about it.  Though I confess I did think Scotty Bowers'  "Full Service" was entertaining and, in its exposure of the lies the lives of the biggest stars was . . . well, satisfying.  

I have, in the past, enjoyed some of Neal Gabler's writing about more than just movies and respected his thinking so I was certain he never said such a stupid thing.  Looking around to find out if  Gabler had said that's what he said I found something much better, an article that a Hollywood film writer Malina Saval wrote in which she started this way:

Several years ago, a non-Jewish film producer turned to me and announced, casually and with an air of arrogance and ignorance reserved particularly for bigots, “Jews control Hollywood.”

He assured me this was a compliment, as many antisemites are wont, trotting out Neal Gabler’s seminal text on the subject, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” as evidence. But it was clear that said producer had either never read Gabler’s book, or missed one of its key points entirely: the founding producers of the film biz were Jewish, most of them Eastern European immigrants, excluded and ostracized from virtually every other industry in America.

William Fox, Carle Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer — they created Hollywood out of collective necessity, a decidedly human desire to realize the American Dream. They were not wanted anywhere else. But if these pioneering studio heads were Jewish, the majority of directors, writers and actors were not. Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawkes — these were the artists largely shaping early 20th century cinema in the U.S.

In short, there is a core etymological difference between invent and control.

This was not, of course, the first time I’d heard uttered the weary and delusional trope that Jews, who comprise roughly 0.2 % of the world’s total population, are somehow at the totalitarian helm of an industry that, per the U.S. Dept. of Labor, supports some 2.6 million jobs. Growing up Jewish in post-Holocaust America, I’ve experienced antisemitism in all its various nefarious forms, from violent physical assaults to passive microaggressions shrouded in the guise of woke intellectualism.

But, for whatever reason — aside from the well-documented epigenetic trauma, antisemitism can breed introspection in its objects of hatred — said producer’s assertion that Jews dominate decision-making in Hollywood prompted me to examine the years working in the film industry in which I, a Jew, had zero decision-making power. 

For the record, this was written in 2021, fresh off of Trump I.   I have a feeling that given the abuse of the term in the past four years, she wouldn't have used "woke" here in the same way.  I like to think someone who can think, as she clearly can, would have learned that, though she does use the term more subtly than it has been generally used and distorted by Trumpzi-fascism.

Risking violating fair use,  I'll let Malina Saval have the say in the rest of it, demonstrating how her and other Jewish People working in Hollywood with little power AND THE CONTENT OF HOLLYWOOD'S PRODUCTS, prove that Jews do not control Hollywood.   And supporting my contention that if they did, the content of Hollywood films would be far, far different from what that crap is now.   I will note that she touches on one of the things that I am on record as having noticed and said, How so many, especially secular Jews, seem to have internalized the perhaps not yet pervasive but all too common antisemitism that really hates Judaism and constantly reassures other People that they're not "like 'those' Jews."  

But, for whatever reason — aside from the well-documented epigenetic trauma, antisemitism can breed introspection in its objects of hatred — said producer’s assertion that Jews dominate decision-making in Hollywood prompted me to examine the years working in the film industry in which I, a Jew, had zero decision-making power.

In 1997, after graduating from USC with an MFA in screenwriting, I spent that summer penning a semi-autobiographical script that would ultimately land me a deal at a major motion picture studio. Before sending it out, however, my then-agent advised me to make the storyline “less Jewish.” Could we change the Jewish characters to Irish-Catholic ones? she asked. We could, so I did. Because I was new to the biz and assumed that is what one needed to do in order to work as a screenwriter.

In truth, it wasn’t difficult. I grew up in Boston, a city with the highest percentage of Irish ancestry in the United States. I wore green on St. Patrick’s Day and sat through annual elementary school screenings of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” So, I changed the bat mitzvah scene in my script to a First Communion and switched the Cohen family to the McConnells. The essence of the script felt lost, but at least I’d scored a job.

From that moment on, the message was clear: you can be Jewish in Hollywood, but not too Jewish.

For decades the watering-down of Jewish representation in TV and film, namely in terms of casting, struck me as an annoying but not necessarily harmful casualty of Jewish life in America, one in which assimilation — not just for Jews, but for every ethnic group — has always come at the expense of subverting one’s cultural identity. But amidst a surge of antisemitism in the United States — per the FBI, 63% of all reported religion-based hate crimes in 2019 were directed at Jews, making it the single-largest category — and the fact that scant few individuals are speaking out against these crimes, it bears reminding those in the industry that, as with any other ethnic minority (Asians, Blacks, Indigenous peoples), the perception of Jews onscreen does matter. In a day and age in which a focus on diversity and inclusion is front and center, it’s a hypocrisy to affirm it doesn’t.

Are there Jewish characters on screen? Of course. From Jerry Seinfeld to Fran Drescher’s nanny and Debra Messing’s “Grace,” there are Jewish protagonists that are writ large in the American pop cultural canon. But for every Larry David, there’s a Cheryl Hines, a non-Jewish spouse, friend — foil, if you will — to offset the Jewishness. To make it more “accessible” for American society at large. (Unless the storyline is about the Holocaust; then Hollywood seems to be OK with an entire family being Jewish, especially if they die at the end.) When there is a Jewish actor playing a Jew, Hollywood effectively demands said actor to express at least slight moral disdain and psychological discomfort with one’s Jewishness. The edgy, neurotic misfit Jew has become synonymous with Jews in film and TV, from Woody Allen in every movie he’s made to every actor playing Woody Allen’s surrogate to Seth Rogen’s nebbish-y pothead slacker in “Knocked Up.”

Because, God forbid, Jews like being Jewish. Far more fashionable to be a little self-hating.

Actors ignoring or nonchalantly brushing off antisemitic comments — statements further perpetuating the damaging mythical assertion that Jews imagine the hatred directed their way —can be cast as Jews. And they are. Hollywood has no issue with this at all. Take “Mank,” for example, David Fincher’s biopic about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. Gary Oldman, who netted an Oscar nom for his portrayal of Mank, told Playboy magazine in 2014 that people should “get over” Mel Gibson’s infamous 2006 antisemitic rant. And they did, of course. Despite Gibson’s antisemitic (and misogynistic and racist) slurs, he’s continued to work as a director and actor. His status in the biz has thrived; in 2017, Gibson earned an Oscar nom for directing “Hacksaw Ridge.”

The messaging here, too, is clear: You can say and do things that are antisemitic, and still go on to have a flourishing career.

With rare exception in the way of Barbra Streisand — perhaps the singular Jewish superstar whose cultural identity, not to mention her unrelenting support of Israel, is allowed free rein across music, television and film —Hollywood seems to find an almost obsessive, near-pathological need to dilute female Jewish characters. Or erase.

The examples are vast, and they are also maddening. In “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Jewish heroine Midge is played by non-Jew Rachel Brosnahan. In “On the Basis of Sex,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the modern-day thinking Jewish woman’s pin-up for her groundbreaking contributions to constitutional law, is played by non-Jewish British actor Felicity Jones. And in Hulu’s “Mrs. America,” Jewish second-wave feminists Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem are played by Tracy Ullman, Margo Martindale and Rose Byrne — none of whom are Jewish. Julianne Moore (not Jewish), also played Steinem in Julie Taymor’s “The Glorias.” And in ABC’s long-running sitcom “The Goldbergs,” shopaholic balabusta Beverly Goldberg is played by non-Jewish comedian Wendi McLendon-Covey. Even Elsa, the adolescent “Jew in the Wall” in Taika Waititi’s Oscar-winning “Jojo Rabbit,” is played by non-Jewish actor Thomasin McKenzie.

It's an excellent article that tells me, someone who has more or less boycotted Hollywood since the late 1970s, that it's far, far worse and more subtle than I'd suspected.  I'm sure a very similar article could be written about People of Color, Women, LGBTQ+ (the exact same trope about queers controlling show-biz exists and is widely believed*).  You should read the rest of it, though I didn't want any of the points she made get lost to those who don't bother with links, as Simps generally doesn't.  

You should read the ADL article, too, though, being based on what can be factually stated, it doesn't have the depth and nuance that comes from the personal experience of someone who knows the situation first hand.   Simps, being a washed-up pop-music "critic" thinks about things he has no first-hand experience of working in and, like inferior critics, which is what most of them are, he thinks superficially and in stereotypes and tropes.  As I've said,  I don't do that by a reasonable and fair consideration of the complexity of reality and because my Irish Catholic parents and grandparents rejected such thinking as immoral, closely related to gossip and inevitably including the bearing of false witness.   In  short, such stereotyping, bigoted thinking and expression is a serous sin, one which violates one of the most important of the Commandments.   If such thinking is a part of modern secular culture, it wouldn't surprise me, anymore.  

*  I can't get used to using the term "queer" in that way, to start with.   And I've heard and read the parallel accusation that "queers" control show biz, not infrequently said by straight men who aren't talented and don't get work.   Sort of how a Jon Voight or a washed-up "talent" like Bo Derek claims that liberals control Hollywood and so they can't get work. 

Update:  I had a few minutes I didn't expect to have and found where I said it back in 2017. 

 What I noticed was the pains he took to describe both sets of great-grandparents as "secular," something I always feel a little uncomfortable with hearing Jewish people say, as if it is an assurance to other people that they're not all "that Jewish" or something.   

I always feel uncomfortable when people feel the need to explain away their identity or to diminish it.  When it's a Jewish person making sure that people understand they're safely secular it's worse than when an ex-Catholic (as if there's really any such thing) talks about themselves as a "recovering Catholic" because the persecution of Catholics in the United States is far more remote in time and far less likely to become as seriously bad is it has so recently in Central America and elsewhere, I guess.   
In the case of Stern doing it, it reminds me of something especially troubling, that was the talk among the Nazis of how the Einsatzgruppen, the soldier-murderers who murdered hundreds of thousands, probably well over a million Jews by shooting them, found it easier to kill religious Jews, especially those in Poland and the Soviet Union and other places who didn't look or dress so much like non-Jewish Germans or, I'd guess, others who they might think looked too much like they thought they did.   It was one of the reasons they decided to develop a "more efficient" means of committing genocide.  I'm sure that's not something Stern would think he was signaling with what he said, indicating that, somehow, "secular" Jews were .... I don't know, it comes down to superior to religious Jews in some way.   He should certainly indicate what he means by it, especially in the context of that topic. But, as I've experienced, the declaration by Jews that they are safely secular is widespread in the United States.  It's a practice which is a lot more serious and fraught with implications and danger than someone declaring themselves an ex-Catholic or ex-Protestant.  

There's only one thing to say about that - Unsolicited Information

 

MOP HEADS

DEMOCRATS! Are The Ones Guilty of A "Heresy Hunt"? Give Me A Frickin' Break

GENERALLY I LIKE Michael Sean Winters but his piece today, one of the myriads of would be autopsies of the Democrats losses in this election is about the last straw in that for me.   He starts out with the bizarre idea asked about in my title.

The Democratic Party autopsies continue. Critically, the Democrats are now tagged as the party of the nation's cultural elite, so the changes need to extend beyond the party's leaders. The soul-searching must be more widespread. It won't be easy.

Today, and over the next few Mondays, I plan to look at some of the deeper habits of thought that have come to characterize Democratic Party leaders and that need to change.

The first deadly habit the left has to forswear is its tendency to heresy-hunt. If you are hunting for converts, you are engaged in party-building. If you are hunting for heretics, you end up alienating people whose votes you need.

This heresy-hunting tendency is found to the nth degree in discussions of sex and gender. It is pretty obvious that transgender-related issues are replacing abortion as the principal totem in our culture wars. While former President Donald Trump barely mentioned abortion during the campaign, the GOP spent millions of dollars on an ad that highlighted old video of Vice President Kamala Harris indicating her support for gender-reassignment surgeries for prison inmates, paid for by the government.

Mr. Winters, did you actually follow the  campaigns of the two parties?   I mean every one of those since Truman ran in 1948?  What the fuck has the Republican Party done for the past eighty years BUT RUN ON "HERESY HUNTING?"   Here's a list of those targeted by Republican-fascists in 2024

People of Color,  Most of all Black People and Latinos but including many others.

Women except Republican Women and by that I mean those who supported Trump and Trumpism

Liberals 

Environmentalists

Teachers

Labor organizers

Muslims and members of other religions

Literally the majority of the United States and the majority who voted didn't vote for Trump who won under fifty percent of the vote. 

Imaginary Marxists and Communists - REALLY, THEY THINK THERE ARE STILL THOSE UNDER THE BED, or they pretend to for the rubes and those whose senile dementia is triggered by those buzz words.   Which is hilarious because no American politician has ever been more in bed with commies than Donald Trump,  I mean, the KGB man Putin, Xi, KIM OF NORTH KOREA!  FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE!

When have Republican-fascists ever LOST AN ELECTION through "heresy hunting?"   If you're saying that doesn't work as well for a democratic party of inclusion, the reason for that has to be far more complex than you make it to be, for example, the widely reported on phenomenon of Latinos WHO ARE OR ARE RELATED TO OR CARE ABOUT THE IMMIGRANTS TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS TARGETED who didn't believe "he meant People like us."  

Your focus on trans-people as one of those groups the Republican-fascists have targeted the most, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PREJUDICE, IGNORANCE AND HATRED, blaming Democrats for speaking up for a group targeted, injured and murdered in heavily disproportionate numbers is to say that the Republican tactic of targeting them works and that Democrats shouldn't oppose it.   That might be easy for a straight, white male to say as it is, perhaps, for such straight white males to dismiss as important.   Such a SWM as Seth Moulton, running as a Democrat from a safe Democratic district in Massachusetts is hardly someone for Democrats living in the real world to follow.   His attempt to sandbag the most accomplished Speaker of the House in the history of that office, Nancy Pelosi, to replace her by someone more like him is about as much as you need to know about how that would work out for Democrats.  

I could go on and I probably will if you keep up your post-mortem in this way.  I am pretty much sick and tired of those in the media who do this without admitting the most salient fact in Democrats having trouble getting elected and winning majorities, THE FACT THAT THEIR OWN PROFESSION IS NEARLY UNIFORMLY IN THE POCKET OF REPUBLICANS AND THOSE WHO LIKE REPUBLICANS BECAUSE THEY MAKE THEM RICHER.   If one of your planned post-mortems isn't a realistic and honest look at that,  you should really stick to what your're good at, which is reporting on the internal workings of the Catholic Church.  You do that well,  I don't think the world needs another cookie-cutter slam at Democrats on the basis of equality and inclusion.  

You might as well have suggested Democrats follow the tactic that has worked the most for Republicans, no one in our history more than Donald Trump, LYING AND BEARING FALSE WITNESS.  Your profession has that as a standard operating feature, these days.    

An Excellent Image Found At RMJ's

 The Fall of the Broman Empire

Giving Up On Cosmology And Looking At The Fungi Instead

SINCE THE BEGINNING of my concluding that the then "new atheism" was an important source of danger for the possibility of gaining and keeping an egalitarian democracy,  I've looked at the dodgy-at-best practice of arguing the question of God's existence from the physical sciences, especially the dodgy science of cosmology which goes from ultimate extreme to ultimate extreme in predictions about the unseeable future hundreds of billions or, really, jillions of years into the future on the basis of what is known and, really, sorta known now by a tiny fraction of one percent of one species on one small planet in the universe.  And, if that tenuous relationship to science isn't vanishingly unlikely to yield secure knowledge, they go back on the other end to the beginning of this one and only universe way beyond where present day physics can actually observe anything much about even the relatively young universe to make sweeping declarations about the beginning and absolute nature of the universe on the same basis. 

In looking at both I was struck how a single paper of untestable theorizing could sway the professions of cosmology and physics around like seventeen year olds trying to keep up with the latest early 1960s dance crazes or even younger ones on social media going from worshipful enthusiasm about some demigod to them being universally held to be scuzzy on an even more ephemeral basis. 

In short, I did something I've been doing less often these days,  listening to Sabine Hossenfelder on the topic.   Yesterday it was on a paper debunking the "anthropic principle" on the clever basis of not declaring the conclusions of the likes of Fred Hoyle exactly wrong but in claiming that "life permitting universes" aren't nearly as rare as the antropicists (if that's the word for it) figured.  That isn't real universes,  that is theoretical life permitting universes existing only in the calculations of the cosmologists, not real ones.  One of the things Hossenfelder and I both think it is that all the multiverse nonsense of the past seventy plus years is nonsense.  There is literally nothing but that sci-fi written in equations to base a belief in "other universes" on. 

She began this way:

Today I have good news. We can finally  lay to rest the idea that our universe is somehow especially hospitable for life. It  just isn’t. I think it’s good news because this argument has sometimes been used as  support for the existence of a creator and, worse, for the idea that we live  in a multiverse. Let’s have a look. The Anthropic Principle at first sight seems to simply be a tautologically true statement. We can only observe laws of nature that allow  for the existence of observers. It sounds like a joke a 5-year-old might make, but naïve  truths can be very revealing. The Anthropic principle is not entirely useless because the  observation that the universe is hospitable to life gives us constraints on the laws of  nature: They need to be so that we can exist.

I will note that the anthropic principle being used "as support for the existence of a creator" was a response to the far longer use of cosmology by atheists to argue against the existence of The Creator, something which goes back pretty much to the beginning of the written record of atheism in India and Greece and probably in other places.  I will also note that I have always held that arguing for the "existence" of God on that basis was foolish because cosmology is such a dodgy business to start with and, at least for the Jewish God which Christianity and Islam believe is the closest human conception of The God Who Is, is removed from any such use by the first few lines of Scripture.  God created the heavens and the Earth,  God who, as the Creed says, Created all things seen and unseen.   As such, God cannot be discerned on the basis of how the universe is or isn't but is intrinsic to any way that the universe is.   

As a merely practical matter, spending a lot of time mastering current cosmology so as to make extended arguments about such matters entirely bigger and wider than cosmology is almost certainly time not very well spent because of the propensity of cosmologists, a. not agreeing with each other in the most drastic of ways, quite capable of writing papers supporting their points of view of ultimate radical disagreements, b. changing their minds as drastically, turning in another direction on a dime and, c. having their favorite ideas temporarily overturned by this or that observation which will be instantly and, almost certainly, superficially declared to show this or that or that or that or that . . .   

Some of that quickly becomes apparent as Hossenfelder accurately describes the use of mostly atheist-materialist cosmologists and others within science. 

The most famous use of the anthropic principle  was when the physicist Fred Hoyle predicted the properties of the nucleus of the carbon atom.  His argument was that life on earth needs a lot of carbon, but carbon wasn’t produced  in sufficiently high amounts in the early universe. So where does it come from? It must be  produced in stars by nuclear fusion. And this can only work if the carbon nucleus has a particular  property which he predicted. And he was right.

In all fairness, Hoyle’s argument didn't  have much to do with life in particular, but just generally with the observed abundance  of some chemical elements. But in the end, it doesn’t matter all that much just how  physicists get their ideas, so long as they work.

If anything Hoyle's calculation of the improbability of life being possible in other universes was incredibly naive because he based it on such a relatively probable thing.   Probability mathematics is a human invention to make things seem more understandable or comprehensible to us but I think sometimes, often, it is treated as if it shows us some absolute aspect of physical reality when it doesn't necessarily do that.   How can you come up with a range of probabilities of something existing on the basis of the one and only thing you can observe?  Carbon being what carbon is and having its physical and chemical characteristics and that being amenable to how Earthly life uses those features.   I don't see how that can be known to be any less than 100% since that's how it happened in the one and only instance we know of it happening, the very thing that gives rise to the ideas and concepts about any of this, from the physics and applied mathematics of reality to the grotesquely speculative probability mathematics that such cosmological speculation is made of, to the far, far more complex and ultimately greater improbabilities involved in the actual construction of living organisms from non-living material on an entirely lifeless Earth.  I doubt anyone who thinks about it even a little could conclude from that last range of improbabilities that what happened on Earth lies within the far, far more probable the range of probabilities that go from Hoyle to the ones who wrote the paper that Sabine Hossenfelder was talking about.   

I would guess that the actual range of the probability of what did happen on Earth, giving rise to and the successful sustaining of life, giving rise to intelligence (which I think we have good reason to believe exists in many bacteria) up to that which produces a Hossenfelder or a Hoyle makes the ten to the hundred thirty-eight or whatever look tiny.   And I don't think you can rely on the so-far entirely elusive finding of "other-life" to lessen those odds by much.  It seems to me that such atheists who rely on that make the same mistake that idiots who buy two or a hundred lottery tickets thinking they double or triple of centuple their chances of winning.  Two to one in ten to the hundred-thrity-eight isn't much better odds than one in ten to that enormous number.   I can understand the idiot who I see buying multiple tickets who probably couldn't add up their convenience store tab making that mistake,  I am floored by physicists and cosmologists and other professional scientists and philosophers who do.  

By the way, notice I admitted that was a guess, which it is.   Which is what all of that other calculated probability babble is based in.  

I believe in God because of other reasons, not because of what some cosmologist says in some paper.  I will say that I think the only reason anyone ever believed in the multiverse was that purely ideological reaction to the evidence showing that Lamaitre and some others who said that 20th century physics pointed to an absolute beginning of the universe.  They knew that such an idea would lead many to conclude that, at least, the first lines in Genesis got that right as opposed to the then current leading atheist-materialist model that held with a steady-state universe.  Indeed, many of the more well-known cosmologists, Hoyle to Sean Carroll are still engaged in making some kind of steady-state model seem plausible and it's no accident that all of those I've ever heard of are what Rupert Sheldrake calls "militant atheists."   I have noted many times how that one ideology is introduced directly into the literature of science to absolutely no notice even when it is the explicit motive of the scientists who do that.   And it isn't just in cosmology, it's pervasive.  Atheism is the religious ideology that is most pervasive in both the culture and literature of science, and it has an extremely distorting presence there.  

My brother has told me he read Merlin Sheldrake's book about fungi and another book he followed up with on the current science in the properties and uses of fungi to make life better, here and now.   I think I've wasted enough time on cosmology and abiogensis and "exobiology"  and such related sciency bullshitting and will concentrate on that kind of science in the future.   Sabine Hossenfelder and others rightly go on about the crisis in science, and science like politics and journalism are in a crisis, the world is in a crisis.  I think those who are engaged in studying fungi are more likely to pull us farther from the brink than the cosmologists and other ideologues are.   They're a waste of time, any money going to the Lords of Creation And Ultimate Doom should go to something like finding out how to make sustainable materials out of fungi, especially as a means of carbon sequestration and replacing oil and other extraction industry produced materials.   I can't think of anything more important for science to be doing than that, right now, and you could ignore the ideological pollution of other sciences to do it.

Here's A Better Way To Waste Time

I HAPPENED TO just find out that you can listen to many shows of My Word! at Archive.org   I used to listen to it every week and didn't realize how much I missed it when it stopped being produced.  I expect to waste a lot of winter hours on it.

The Internet Exposes The Most Bizarre Fascinations

AFTER GOING ALL SUMMER gardening while wearing Tevas or going barefoot, I've got thick calluses on my feet.   Going to using a standing desk for just about everything must be a contributing factor.   I was told that especially for a geezer like me it's a good idea to gradually get rid of them so, naturally,  I looked on Youtube to see if how it's safely done at home without paying a podiatrist to do it. 

Well, I typed in "removing calluses safely" and found the world of Youtube callus, corn and plantar wart removal videos.  There must be at least hundreds of them if not thousands.  Some Youtube channels seem to be nothing much else than these things.  While being relieved that my feet which I thought were in pretty bad condition, were as nothing compared to what is shown.  I've always kept my toe nails trimmed and, to the extent a gardener can, clean but the horrors exposed on the videos makes mine look like the model of Venus on the half-shell's may have looked like in real life.  

A lot of these channels are owned by podiatrists and they present the harrowing movies of nightmare corn removals as providing some kind of satisfaction.  I think it's like when I found that there were many videos of Indian head massages that seemed to have something of a cult following, which I found kind of weird, but corn removal?  And that led me to see in the sidebar there is apparently a related obsession with watching blackheads being removed   I mean, how many of these things can you watch?  

I wonder if there is some urge behind these odd obsessions that is related to the people who go on comment threads all day, every day, on Twitter or other social media for hours a day.  To refer to yesterday's post.  I'm going to have to limit my viewing with Youtube,  who knows what kind of obsession could be developing from watching such things.  For now, I think I've had enough of my brief and unsuspecting exposure to what I guess is a form of pedophilia   Or at least a morbid fascination with something I just don't get at all.

Something To Keep In The Front Of Your Mind

as we enter into another catastrophic Trump regime.    Everything that has happened since he gained office while losing an election in 2016 HAS BEEN ENTIRELY PERMITTED AND HARDLY HAMPERED BY THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAW OF THE UNITED STATES.

Against my better judgement, yesterday I listened to a couple of the pundit-laywers who were reassuring us that the judicial system would save us and they were     expressing both their shock at how Trump gets away with everything even as they were still telling us we should put our hope in the law and the judicial system.   Well, I've had that faith before and it turned out to be the propitiation of a false god.   Just as I used to have faith in "journalism" and the program of liberal democracy, even as I early understood that it was hardly the same thing as egalitarian democracy.   

The Constitution of the United States INCLUDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS, AND ESPECIALLY THE FIRST AND SECOND AMENDMENTS is fundamentally and basically flawed when it isn't intentionally corrupt.  The anti-democratic features of our government, the Electoral College, the anti-democratically constituted Senate,  the unrestrained Supreme Court, etc. were put there by the dirty agreements of Northern financial interests and slave-holders, genocidalists and land stealers.   That is the real history and residual character of the United States government and, so, law.    The dictatorial features of the presidential system are coming home to roost here as they have in other countries which copied it from us.  

Remember that when the lawyer-pundits reassure us that we can depend on the courts, this time that they Supremes wouldn't enforce the ban on insurrectionists holding federal office.   The Roberts Court would have allowed Jefferson Davis to take the office.  They've allowed an insurrectionist who said he intends to wreck the Constitution and federal government even as he is a known traitor in Putin's palm.   And who is willing to sell us out to the billionaire oligarchs, foreign and domestic.   That ruling last spring legalizing post-facto bribery was custom made for the Trump clan and its associated grifters.   And every one of them who voted  for it knew what they were doing.