Saturday Night Radio Drama Returns - Gar Fitzgibbon - The Four Faced Liar

 The Four Faced Liar

It's part of the lore of Cork city that the four clocks on the four faces of Shandon Steeple rarely agree on the exact time - hence the nickname: The Four-Faced Liar.

In this play each of the Four Liars has a voice, and with our narrator, they guide us on a journey through the night world of Cork, through the hidden streams that flow under the city and through the dreams and desires that flow through its people, whether past or present.

Narrator - Andrew Bennett

The Four Liars - Dawn Bradfield, Orla Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Moynihan & Norma Sheahan

Cast Credits

Dawn Bradfield (Muriel, Dora)

Orla Fitzgerald (Aifric, Katelyn & Keelin Shorte-O’Carroll)

Elizabeth Moynihan (Barbara & Gussie’s Wife)

Norma Sheahan (Emer Foley & Garda Karen Crean)

Denis Conway (Gussy Barrett & Bertie Murphy)

Alex Murphy (Ryan & Garda Dan Considine)

Gary Murphy (Morgan O’Carroll & Dada)

Tatiana Ouliankina (Micha)

Other roles played by members of the company

Original Score on soprano sax: Brian Wynne

Sound Supervision and Sound Design: Ruth Kennington

The Four-Faced Liar by Ger Fitzgibbon was directed by Charlie McCarthy

Producer: Kevin Brew

Series Producer, Drama On One: Kevin Reynolds

Extra Production Support: Gorretti Slavin.

This reminds me of Under Milkwood but darker and less whimsical.   I really like the music, for a change. 

Brian Raphael Nabors - Piano Trio

 

Caitlin Edwards, Violin

Sterling Elliott, Cello

Jessica Evotia Andrews-Hall, Piano

Listening to this I thought this guy is on the same level as Aaron Copland now I think he might actually be better.   I haven't been this excited by a composer I wasn't aware of in many years.   It's excellent having the score on screen, it helps hear the details I might otherwise miss.  

Brian Raphel Nabors - Piano Sonata No. 2

 

Joseph Williams, Piano

Do I ever wish I'd come across this composer and this performance before now.   I'll be posting more of his music because this is very fine music,  the kind of music that manages to be familiar and totally original at the same time. Excellent playing, too. 

The U.S. Constitution Has Failed By Its Own Criteria

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It took one month for Musk-Trump to destroy that after the Supreme Court made presidents despots immune from the law. 

It wasn't "We the People, it was a bunch of slave owning, shady businessmen and aristocrats who then rigged the confirmation process, in some cases obviously rigging elections in the process.   And now it is undeniable that what they produced can be rat fucked for fascism as fascism for Black People, for Native Americans, for unpropertied white men, etc. was woven into the thing from the start.

We need a modern constitution that a. removes the Marbury usurped powers from the Supreme Court so that b. a really egalitarian-democratic constitution can be protected from their pro-oligarchic tendencies.  

Will Susan Collins Be Concerned That Her Troll Fur Covered Fuhrer Has Threatened Maine?

SUSAN COLLINS will certainly try her dumb little girl act, that no one could possibly have understood how dangerous her capitulation to Republican-fascism has been, pointing to the few instances when she made a pose of not voting with Republican-fascists when she and they knew it wouldn't have made any difference, voting with them when it does make a difference.

Susan Collins has no moral center other than her partisanship and her devotion to the one thing she really cares about, her career as a Republican first, second, third . . . in the U.S. Senate.   She's no better than her voting record when you take what I said about how she strategically makes a pose of opposing the worst when she knows the worst is going to pass the Senate.   She knows the Maine media, from the overt-Republican-fascist Sinclair stations to Maine Public Radio will have her back every time.   They are beneath contempt, too. 

Follow Up To The Last Limerick I Posted Here

The blog upon which his invective, 

And tantrums and logic, defective,

Are posted quite daily, 

And thus aged quite stalely 

"Buy ME things!", its basic directive. 

Wish I'd Said This First - Comment Seen Elsewhere

"I’d rather have Zelensky as our president than Donald Trump"

Orrin Evans Live All Over the Place

 

Outtake from the Orrin Evans Live All Over the Place DVD production, with Tim Warfield Jr., Justin Faulkner, Mike Boone and dancer Brinae Ali.

Israel Drops GENOCIDAL Leaflets On Gaza: They're Not Even Hiding It - The Israeli Govenment Is Doing What The Nazis Did

 

'

And the Trump regime is backing them up.   Zionism is a genocidal ideology.  So is Trumpism.

Simps, It Was Your Fellow Eejits

at Eschaton who got on your case over Ernie Kovacs' racist Nairobi Trio skit.  I didn't even mention it till someone asked me what I thought about the hissy-fit you'd had over there about it.  And even then I stuck it on my throw-away blog that I relegate you to when I feel cheap for mentioning you here.  

I had to look up the cartoon band you brought up, I vaguely recall Lancelot Link because I was stuck babysitting a niece and nephew on Saturday morning and they were watching it.  I think they were something like eight or seven at the time.  No wonder you're so wowed by them.   

Juvenile to senile, tumescent to senescent without any epoch of adulthood in between, you and Trump have that in common. 

Oh, and I know the difference between a monkey and a chimpanzee.  You clearly don't. 

The Ideological Motives And The Thirst For Publicty Of Contemporary "Biblical Scholarship"

A WHILE BACK the Youtube from Religion for Breakfast video "How Scholars Are Reconstructing the Lost Gospel of Marcion" came up and I listened to it starting out with more than a little skepticism.  My initial reaction to it was that the attempt to reconstruct something for which there is so little actual evidence is a pretty pseudo-intellectual enterprise,  though it is typical of the kind of stuff that you can do and maintain a sort of career as a scholar these days.  

A comment the other day that a would-be fashionable, but I'd say stuck in the 00s despiser of Christianity made reminded me of it and I went back to listen to the video again.  It includes a number of the gimmicks of both that scholarly racket and the rampant religious popularizer racket so I thought it would be worth going through it. 

If you go to the bother of listening to the twenty-four minutes at the above link, I'd ask you to go into it noticing some of the things I did about it.

First, notice the premise of the entire thing, that the scholars are, supposedly, reconstructing THE "lost gospel" of Marcion of which there is no direct textual evidence apart from some alleged excerpts contained in some very ancient anti-Marcionite texts.  But of which there is no evidence of how accurate they are about the "gospel" Marcion actually is said to have produced.   

Second, the variant versions of the Gospel of Luke that are depended on by the scholars to come up with their reconstruction have absolutely no claimed connection to Marcion or his edition of Luke.  None.  There isn't even any evidence that would say that whoever wrote out the manuscripts - often only a tiny scrap of paper - which is the basis of these claims had even a knowledge of Marcion or his followers.  

I will note in relation to both of the above that any gospel that Marcion had produced would have, itself, been known only in manuscript copies of the thing and who knows how many variants that manuscript tradition produced? 

Third, some of these fragments may not be even be parts of intended copies of a Gospel, without more of the original that they are fragments of, there is no way to know if they were copies of an existing manuscript of the Gospel, maybe fragments given from memory as a part of an entirely different text or context, etc.  There isn't even any way to know if some of them were trying to quote from a manuscript of a Gospel or if they were paraphrasing what they remembered hearing.   The video makes a big deal over the variant in whether the paralytic was let down on a bed or a mat but without accounting for what the provenances of the use of those two words.  It is impossible to know that and what you can't know you can't draw reliable conclusions from.

Fourth, notice how the Youtuber  claims that variants in what the cannonical Gospel of Luke says and what Tertullian and some of the other fragments (which may or may not be related to Marcion's "gospel")

suggest that variations of Marcion's gospel are not the result of his edits they may actually reflect an alternate version of Luke that was circulating during his lifetime maybe even an older version

Notice how much work the words "suggest" and "may" are doing in that passage.  Well, why can't the same things suggest that Marcion's gospel was exactly what the his far more nearly contemporary opponents said they were instead of professionally invested 21st century scholars and Youtube hucksters on the make say they were?   Why doesn't it suggest that Marcion's gospel was exactly what they said back then, a more recent distortion of an older text?   That Luke as we have it now is a product of a local consensus reading of a number of variant manuscripts (as, in fact, just about all ancient texts published in later editions were at that time as they are now) lends absolutely nothing to the ideologically or professionally motivated claims that Marcion was more authentic a representation of the author of Luke's Gospel.   I find absolutely no reason to believe that the author of Luke's Gospel believed Jesus believed in a different God than Moses or the Prophets did. 

That the Youtuber says he relied heavily on one of the would-be reconstructionists of the Marcion version of Luke to make a Youtube on a topic he wasn't especially well versed on is a good reason that you should take everything said as representing that ideological-professionally interested POV.   Unfortunately, and this is something I only came to realize when I read the unfiltered thinking of many a supposedly educated internet using population, most even allegedly educated People will watch the movie and not ever fact check its claims or look at the actual background, especially checking out the opponents to the favored point of view, they won't even think critically about what's being claimed in it. 

In his book The Real Jesus, ripping the "Historical Jesus" industry to shreds, one of the most valid facts that Luke Timothy Johnson gave to back up his arguments was that the "Historical Jesus" scholars hadn't come up with anything like a consensus agreement on "The Historical Jesus" but came up with wildly variant and impossible to reconcile "Historical Jesuses."   The same is likey as true of "The Gospel of Marcion" or "Q" or "The Community of "Q" or "John" or any of the other imaginary 2000 years on mining operations of these scholars and, in so many cases, entirely bogus "scholars" on the make.   You can find that kind of junk all over the place, most of it having more in common with Dan Brown than with any legitimate scholarship.  Johnson also pointed out that none of the "historical Jesuses" that the scholars constructed was as useful for moral guidance, spiritual uses or even intellectual interest as the views of Jesus in the cannonical Gospels and, lest anyone forget, the Epistles, Acts and even (I point out with hesitancy due to its promiscuous and flagrant abuse) Revelation.

I am afraid that in total online popularization of scholarship is making more People less informed and more credulous.   That's especially true when there is a veneer of scientific scholarship over the soggy cardboard it's made of. 

I have my own bottom line.  Anything that detracts from the Jesus who taught the Golden Rule, that what we do to the least among us we do to God, to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that only those without sin can throw the first stone, etc.  is not only useless, it is the kind of Jesus that will be most of use to a VD Vance or Paula White or the rest of the Trumpzis.   I think the Historical Jesus-New Testament revisionist industry is more help to them than could have been imagined in the worst nightmares of the late Robert Funk or the late John Spong.  Only I doubt they ever had enough humility or self-questioning to have those nightmares.  

Intimations Of Prophetic Speech

I WON'T CALL DAVID BENTLEY HART a "great" scholar and writer because I think that word in that context has been used so promiscuously that it is meaningless.  I'll use the less institutional but more personal word wonderful because he provokes wonder and thinking and testing and exploration instead of the inferior form of belief based on authority.  I get nervous when I see a documentary about a living person, especially one who has had very serious health problems the past year as DBH has because, being Irish Catholic, it seems to be tempting fate.   I'm hoping that this isn't a summation of his life's work but an interim report.  

 

I'd recommend listening to the whole video because it is so full of that kind of wonder provoking context and, since it's his broad and rigorous and still flexible mind, over a huge range of topics.  He gives the most intelligent and interesting advocacy for baseball over goalpost sports I've encountered as well as a brilliant defense of his book which has had a huge influence on me, That All Shall Be Saved.  I'd concluded years ago that the reactionary Catholic Thomist Ed Feser was nuts but I hadn't been aware of how pathological his attraction to violence was from my voluntarily limited exposure to him.  

The reason I decided to post this video and recommendation was something he said at about 1:02:09 in the context of his relationship with those who attacked that book and the idea of Christian universalism in general but which I think is entirely relevant to our current and disastrous politics.

But the people who who have the the brains to see the problem with what they're saying but have somehow made themselves not see it out of just party loyalty,  they're the people that frighten me most because something tells me that in every every despotic regime in history.  Those are the people who actually ran things the ones who not the, you know, not the lunatics not the wounded but the ones who had the intellectual resources to know better but who had argued themselves out of the out of it.

Anyone who wants an explanation of the rational margin of the Republican-fascist caucuses in the House and Senate during Trump II and especially the Republican-fascist majority of the Supreme Court will probably find that is about as good a one as you can get.  What makes a Chuck Grassley abandon the anti-Soviet line of the Republicanism he has lived in his entire life to hand over the control of the United States to the KGB thug Putin through a morally degenerate and monumentally stupid man?   What makes a physician like Bill Cassidy cave into Trump putting the degenerate anti-vaxx-anti-medicine huckster Little Bobby Kennedy in charge of American health?*   It is the fact that for Republican-fascists their Party Loyalty is as extreme and distorting and perverting as the doctrinaire Thomists Hart addressed right before he made that remark attribute what a normal, non-pathological person would recognize as diseased and perverted human thinking to God.

Though it is one of the best and most interesting such videos I've seen in a long time I will make one criticism of it.  The choice to have banal background music during the entire thing at times was so distracting from what was being said that I kept thinking it would have been an entirely better movie if they hadn't had much if any music in it at all.   I hope they will release a version of it where that junk is removed.  

* I won't put Susan Collins in that category because there literally is nothing more to her than her partisanship and her career, once in a while voting the right way because she can dupe those who reject Republican-fascism but who are convinced by the Republican owned media in Maine that "she's different."  She has no core values apart from that.  She is entirely cold-blooded.   

It's A Busy Day For Me So Another Link To Another Good Piece

HERE IS SOME of what Digby has to say about Little Bobby and the Musk regime cutting off funding for Alzheimer's and dementia research funding.  Also how the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare are going to devastate those in long term care and their families and the long term care facilities and their employees. 

I don’t know if there is a breakthrough on the way but even if it’s a long way off this is an issue that will confront every person either living with the fear of getting it or caring for someone who does. It’s unconscionable that they would cut this program. (It’s unconscionable that they would cut any of this vital research into any diseases but that’s what they’re doing.)

I haven’t been able to find any comments by RFK Jr about Alzheimer’s but I would not be surprised to learn that he thinks it has something to do with processed food or environmental toxins (which could be true for all I know) but I suspect he will now be guiding research in those directions regardless of the scientific consensus. He’s very much a one-trick pony who has no education or expertise in any of this but that won’t matter.

Let me break in here to remind you that when Senator Elizabeth Warren gave Little Bobby the chance to pledge that he wouldn't make any money off of litigation by his law firm in the areas he is now in the position to aid his law firm by fudging the science,  Little Bobby pretended she was telling him he couldn't sue when she was only asking him to pledge he wouldn't be taking his customary 10% of the booty.  I would bet that there is a lot that he's going to be screwing with that he can figure out how to profit from on this job.   I think that's what he's always been about, he is a lawyer, after all and lawyering, apart from a very, very few eccentric low income types, is all about making money for the lawyer.

Oh, and by the way, Trump just endorsed the House budget plan which appears to cut at least a billion dollars from Medicaid. What do you think pays for most elderly people with Alzheimer’s in assisted living and nursing homes? Yep.

The Gospel Shows How We Can Oppose Musk-Trump's Shock And Scare

I DON'T HAVE THE TIME to write any commentary on it but this article, again from the NCR, is too important to miss:

Among the apparent aims of this barrage of action is the instillation of fear and the resultant panoptic effect on these populations. In time, those in power do not need to issue specific threats or deploy explicit coercive techniques, because the oppressed will self-censor and preemptively behave in a manner they believe is desired by the powerful. This is to let fear prevail over justice and moral fortitude.

We are seeing this increase in fear in many sectors today from leadership in higher education and religious congregations to major corporations and media outlets. There is a chilling effect that haunts many institutions and organizations across all corners of our society today, which has led to preemptive policy and title changes, website scrubbing, program cancelation and the laying off of personnel. 

So, what can be done?

Drawing on the biblical witness of Jesus Christ in the gospels, Thurman emphasizes the importance of facing fear directly and developing an authentically Christian spirituality. The proposal is simple, but the cost may be great. It starts, Thurman says, with embracing one's identity as a beloved child of God. This is the beginning of rightly ordering one's perspective and relationship to other people, especially those deploying power in harmful ways.

Thurman explains that if a person reorients themselves to reflect the gospel call to trust God and embrace justice and peace, then one "recognizes at once that to fear a man, whatever may be that man's power over him, is a basic denial of the integrity of his very life. It lifts that mere man to a place of pre-eminence that belongs to God and to God alone."

In other words, to give these bad faith actors this much power is to commit a form of spiritual idolatry by giving to them what ought to be reserved for God alone. As true as this is, it does not mean it is easy or without cost. Thurman continues:

    To the child of God, a scale of values becomes available by which men are measured and their true significance is determined. Even the threat of violence, with the possibility of death that it carries is recognized for what it is — merely the threat of violence with a death potential. Such a man recognizes that death cannot possibly be the worst thing in the world. There are some things that are worse than death. To deny one's integrity of personality in the presence of the human challenge is one of those things.

Indeed, there are many people who are tempted to surrender their integrity out of fear for what the consequences might be for standing up, speaking out and doing what is right and just. 

Read the whole thing, it's always better to act than it is to just wring our hands.   Realizing that you are eventually left with nothing to lose except your soul is the first step to finding it.

I'm Getting Sick And Tired Of The FAFOs Who Are Whining About Getting What They Voted For

I AM NOT SORRY to say that if I hear another Trump voter on an interview or Youtube or Instagram or Tic-Toc whining about them or their loved ones GETTING WHAT THEY WERE AND STILL ARE OK WITH HIM DOING TO SOMEONE ELSE I'm inclined to find it gratifying only wishing I could say what I'm about to say to their face as I point out they have still not learned a thing from their own personal experience.

IF YOU WERE OR STILL ARE OK WITH TRUMP DOING IT TO SOMEONE ELSE, YOU ARE GETTING EXACTLY WHAT YOU DESERVE.   If your loved one who is getting shafted by Trump, whether a worker losing their job, whether it is a person dependent on federal funding, whether it is a legal resident or the stranger among us was OK with Trump doing it to someone else BUT NOT THEM,  I have no pity for you.

On the other hand, I'm not OK with some of the blanket condemnation of Latinos, Arab Americans, . . . right down to "cis-gendered straight white men" based on Pew or other bulll shit pseudo-science surveys showing that a majority or a sizable and crucial margin of them voted for Trump.   I'M ONLY SAYING THAT THOSE WHO SUPPORTED AND VOTED FOR TRUMP AND ENCOURAGED OTHERS TO VOTE FOR HIM DIRECTLY OR BY VOTING FOR THE PUTIN-REPUBLICAN-FASCIST ASSET JILL STEIN AND WHO GET BITTEN BY THE ANTI-CHRIST THEY'VE UNLEASHED DESERVE WHAT THE INNOCENT WHO OPPOSED HIM DON'T DESERVE.

I have yet to hear a FAFO Trump supporter who is in the finding-out stage shedding their tears for themselves  also shedding them for the totally innocent victims of Trump.   As I said before,  FAFO FOAD.   I'll shed tears for you when the innocent victims of Trump have gotten my tears,  I doubt there will be any left over for you. 

He Shot Two Israelis... Thinking They Were Palestinian

 

Read how screwed up and hypocritical the rampant anti-Palestinian bigotry is when it's the motive in a gun attack on Jews on vacation in Florida.   And it's not just in the U.S. it's all over the place. 

Slightly Expanded Comment From Elsewhere

Universal suffrage starting with white men without property,  abolition of slavery,  Women's suffrage,  true equality for all, the rights of workers and economic justice, environmental protection, . . .  for crying out loud CHILDHOOD NUTRITION AND HEALTH CARE have all, ALL had to struggle against the Constitutional order and the "rule of law" as ministered by the courts and that most corrupt of all branches of the government, the Supreme Court.    It has been an oligarchy by design of the framers, all else, the best thing about the United States has been a struggle against that oligarchy. 

"Your Beef With Simels"

WELL, I'M A VEGAN so I wouldn't call it a "beef" and since it's Simps, at best it might be beef tea.   Weak beef tea.  I don't generally address Simps until he says something about me, generally at Duncan's blog though at times in things he wants me to post here.   If he didn't say anything about me I wouldn't bother.

You Might Not Think This Is Important For You But You'd Be Wrong

THE RECENT LETTER OF POPE FRANCIS openly, though diplomatically, opposing Trumpism and the pseudo-Catholic "trad-Catholic" looking out for #1 presentation of charity by VD Vance has led to an interesting piece by Michael Sean Winters comparing Pope Francis's letter which tells American Catholics to remember what is good about the American tradition to the infamous letter of Pope Leo XIII that condemned "Americanism" as heresy.  The history is interesting in that it presents how a polemical French translation of an American biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulists, and especially the polemical introduction to it by the French progressive Abbé Félix Klein and the false claims of French reactionaries using that distorted view of Hecker found in a ractionary diatribe using the already somewhat distorted translation and introduction .   You might say that late 19th century "trad-Catholics" were the basis of Leo XIII's conception of "Americanism."  That despite the fact that just about everything in the "trad-Catholics'" case was false if not a fabric of lies.   I think that one of the most salient features of today's "traditional Catholicism" is that it is similarly riddled with blatant lies, many of them told by Bishops and Cardinals of the USCCB. 

It's interesting in itself, showing, I'd assert, how damaging the self-imposed sealing in of the papacy in the wake of the loss of the Papal States was to Catholicism for generations.  Another is the damage that the Euro-centrism of the Vatican has been and how until very recently the Vatican has been at the mercy of often dishonest ideological parties - generally conservative - in its understanding of the world.   If you intentionally cut yourself off, you only have yourself to blame when you don't understand things outside of your chosen sphere of influence.

The Unfortunate Consequences Of Calling Very Different Things By The Same Word

I would disagree with the article by Michael Sean Winters about one important thing, American liberalism - WHICH MUST ALWAYS BE DISTINGUISHED FROM EUROPEAN LIBERALISM - isn't a product of Madisonian theory, it's a product of People who took the radical egalitarianism of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus seriously.  American liberalism can't be divorced from the major issues that comprise it, abolitionism, Womens' suffrage, the rights of minorities, the rights of workers and none of those are the product of either the thinking of Jefferson or Madison, they certainly are not derived from the Constitution which is the very thing against which those movements have had to struggle and still do, today.  

Marilynne Robinson's theory that American liberalism is a product of People who took the commentary on economic and social justice in the Geneva Bible seriously may be a bit exaggerated - I think the very early non-Calvinist anabaptist calls for the abolition of slavery are a major part of that history - but she is much closer to what really happened than the common received POV that American liberalism  was an "enlightenment" product.   And I think that really is a major and important issue in the continuation of the American tradition of liberalism and its possible prospering into the future.  And it is an issue in the repeated failure of "liberalism" of the European kind in its failure to deliver economic and social equality. 

The 18th century European, largely French construction of "liberalism" in laissez-faire economics and libertarian liberty - as opposed to morally responsible freedom in the traditional American meaning of the word - is something that really is very  important to whether or not those issues that comprise that American liberal tradition succeed.  I think one of the major failures in American politics of the past 45 years is the European style liberalism of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as opposed to a more traditional American style liberalism of Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter.  That Clinton and Biden were a product of the Ivys and, in Clinton's case Oxford is, in fact, important.   Biden and Carter aren't a product of those training grounds so congenial to oligarchy and its precursor supposed "meritocracy." That the corporate media went far harder against Carter and Biden - which resulted in them having single terms - is, I hold a product of their far different and humane liberalism, though, of course, other issues impinge on that as well.  I think the role of Biden's disastrous and, in the end, morally indefensible support for the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the State of Israeli are one such major issue that is unrelated to what I'm talking about here.   I think that the role that foreign entanglements, largely encouraged by economic elites and Euro-style "liberals" in the failures of Democratic presidents radically egalitarian domestic programs going back to LBJ is a major and woefully understudied phenomenon.   The role of the Republican-fascist abandonment of Ukraine is another issue, altogether, due to the Republicans' benefiting from the patronage and aid of Putin, as the Roberts Court opened up our politics USING CLASSICAL 18TH CENTURY NOTIONS OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH-PRESS to that in major ways after they were warned about the consequences of doing so.   Those "justices" who voted for Citizens United have the blood of the Ukrainan People on them.   Several of them including Roberts "trad-Catholics."

I think American academic habits which Winters demonstrates in the article share something of the late 19th century Vatican in the conventional thinking about America, in that they accept too readily that European definition of "liberalism" when the distinction between that amoral and ultimately anti-egalitarian and so anti-democratic ideology - the ideology of most of the media "liberals" - is destructive of the egalitarian-democratic basis of traditional American liberalism.   That a number of neo-fascists in American have styled themselves as "classical liberals" is an important thing to understand.  

I do think this is important for non-Catholics as well as Catholics to understand.   

If, as I fear is likely, the papacy of Francis is about to end, it's especially important who replaces him.   You might not think it does but it is of major importance in the world.  Any future Pope who is on the side of the Gospel, the Law and the Prophets will have to deal with the heresy of American style "traditional Catholicism" a major force in American fascism and the spread of fascism around Europe and countries in the Americas.  But I can't go into that much right now.

An elderly pop music critic, 

His columns, all copies, eidetic,

When seeing alternative

Thoughts, new, not derivative

Became quite unhinged and splenetic.

More On Kendrick Lamar's Half-time Show

I HAVE WATCHED the video of Kendrick Lamar's halftime show three times and, apart from the use of the "N" word which I don't think I have a right to get used to,  it's among the most remarkable pieces of live theater I've seen documented on video.

The complexity of the music alone, largely due to the complex structure and content of the text, would make a live delivery of it from memory a remarkable artistic and intellectual accomplishment.  The non-stop top speed of something that complex would make one number remarkable and it was one after another for the duration of it.

On top of that is the complex choreography with a huge cast of dancers-performers, some of them singers as well,  that those two aspects of it came of on such an enormous stage, live, is proof of the high intelligence, great talent and discipline of all involved.   And I haven't gotten into the extremely complicated intellectual content of it.  The mix of history, politics, morality, sociological ideas, as well as things like the feud between Kendrick and Drake - which is an extremely complicated thing, all in itself - was clearly understood by the major performers, Kendrick Lamar, Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, Serena Williams, and others whose name I haven't caught yet and, I'd imagine, most if not all of the chorus and dancers.   Samuel L. Jackson a mainstream actor took an enormous career risk in playing a malevolent Uncle Sam urging and threatening Kendrick Lamar to toe the mainstream line was extremely brave, especially as what I'd guess will be a new Hollywood blacklist is about to start.  Big media is certainly falling in with Trumpian fascism just as it did during the red scare.   I don't think I'll ever think of Uncle Sam in any other way from now on.   I was also extremely impressed with Serena Williams' performance.  

That Kendrick Lamar, his cast and his team came up with what was extremely subversive art one month into Trump II, with the entire mainstream, corporate media falling all over themselves and burning democracy not to mention equality to cinders is courageous.    I hadn't paid that much attention to the reaction to it, and the positive reaction is entirely more interesting than the predictable white-supremacist reaction (including a surprising number of Black media hacks.)  But now I can begin to understand what the excitement is about.   

That such an amazingly impressive performance of such a complex theater piece was created and performed by an All Black Cast is a blast against the Republican-fascist-media attack on Black People under the new "N" word, "DEI."   That the cast of drooling idiots in the Trump regime are being applauded by the mostly white corporate media - making a fool of the White Supremacist John Roberts with his lie that America is post-racist and so didn't need the Voting Rights Act anymore - are a complete contrast to the brilliance and excellence of the creators and performers seen by a record audience.   I think that's the reason that a remarkable number of People around the world are copying the moves they saw,  white People as well as People of Color.   I've seen commentary about how a remarkable number of white Women online have taken it to heart.   Certainly anyone who has been victimized by the same game that Kendrick Lamar and his cast  took on in the show would feel it spoke for them as well.  

I should have waited till I watched the actual thing several times before I commented on it.   I may not listen every day but I can say that I'll do what I hadn't done before, click on videos as they appear on my side bar because I want to keep up a bit.   Something I don't generally feel at all about pop music in general.  

Trump Secretary faces MASSIVE scandal DAYS after confirmation

 

Israel Is A Terror State Zionism Is An Evil Ideology

 

The Israeli Army is full of war criminals, it is led by war criminals who regularly commit crimes against humanity.  The majority of Israelis have kept fascists in power in that country for decades, now, its public relations have always been lies. 

Someone Apparently Thinks I'm Younger Than I Am

I'VE BEEN ASKED what I think of Kendrick Lamar's performance at the Superbowl.  Well, asking me that assumes I'd have watched the Superbowl which I am morally opposed to existing though I'm not opposed to the half-time acts, at least as a matter of general principle.   I'm more likely to listen to his than many of the previous acts, I'll forego going far into my anecdote of when my two young nieces who had been forced to sit through the thing with their maternal grand-dad thought that it was hilarious to see old men jumping around like rock stars when Mick and his old Stones did it.  And that was a long, long time ago, now. 

I think I had heard the name Kendrick Lamar before  but I hadn't ever heard his music so I had to go to Youtube University to listen to it and it's good that it had subtitles because it goes so fast I wouldn't have caught a lot of the words.   I had to look at another Youtube that explains Drake vs Kendrick to white People to understand some of what it was about.  And I heard other names I really should check out but there are lots of names I should check out that I never get around to checking out.    Obviously this entire area of music is something I'm unqualified to understand because I haven't been listening and so much of it is based in insider information.

First, obviously I'm not Kendrick Lamar's target audience,  the use of the "N" word lands on an old white-male egalitarian's ears differently than I'm sure he intended it.  I generally don't think it's a good idea to use the language of the enemy but, after many years of hearing it used by LGBTQ+  People,  I finally could get used to using the word "queer."  Though I still don't like it.   But that's only that word, the political content I could discern I generally agree with though I think the irony and sarcasm and satire (I think he is one of the rare artists in the English language who seems to understand satire) blunts it.  Like most art of the type it seems to be a lot heavier on documenting wrongs and criticism but is light on suggested responses to wrongs.  But it's art and not a political lecture.  

As for his catfight with Drake, it's more interesting than Betty Davis vs. Joan Crawford - it seems to be about issues instead of just show-biz -  but I don't care about either of those brawls.   

As far as listening to it regularly, probably not.  I think he's got musical ability and talent and even some inspiration - a lot of that more as a song track to the theatrical video that his music is presented in - I wonder what it would be like to have heard his music without seeing the videos first.   I don't think it's primarily about the music,  hip-hop and rap seem to me to be more a species of recitative than real songs, recitative has always been primarily a vehicle of texts and meaning not melody.  I think it would be more substantial to deal with his text which is the substance of it.

I can say that anyone who can piss off the people Kendrick Lamar pissed off by appearing at that corporate-pagan Mammon Circus Fascisimus is OK with me, in that, at least.  I read online that the NFL regrets asking him to perform which is probably to his credit.

I wish him well, I hope he contributes to positive change.  

Watching Some Mid-Western FAFO White Farmers

who supported Trump and are now finding out that they're screwed because of their guy and his billionaire owner the druggie white-supremacist from South Africa  I wondered if there will ever be a Daniel Patrick Moynihan who does a sweeping supposed academic study of America's white racists.   They should because it's not only us non-racists who the racists are costing so much, they cost themselves at least as much, the difference is they never seem to learn anything from the hardest of experience. 

America has never had a "Black problem" it has always, ALWAYS had a racist problem.  There would have been nothing problematic about the presence of Black People, Native Americans, etc.  without the racism of the racists - certainly the victims of Racism understand that that is the source of their added burden of problems but academia, once lily-white and hegemonically male but still carrying the cultural and proceedural vestiges of that, has never really focused on the cost to us all of this, our indigenous fascist movement. 

Racists are our predominant fascist power as macho-males (male supremacists) are our predominant criminal class and that fact is invisible to academia, the mid-brow untelligentsia in our society, the media and, certainly, the law.  

As I mentioned here the other day there are entire states in the United States which have always, every year of their presence in the United States been ruled by white supremacy, that is racists.  Alabama, Mississippi, I would argue the original states of the slave power, perhaps excepting a few years in Virginia and North Carolina.

But I would guess I'm right that there has never been a single state which has entirely escaped having been governed under a racist regime at some time, including Massachusetts, New York, the New England States, including my own.

 Yet I am unaware of any great movement among historians to study that fact as a basic fact of our Constitutional order, a major force in our law, a major force in our institutions and society.   I AM UNAWARE OF ANY EXTENSIVE STUDY INTO THE ENORMOUS COST, IN DOLLARS AND CENTS AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, not just for the victims of racism but for poor whites, middle-class whites, even the less affluent affluent whites, including the very racists themselves.   I have mentioned that this fact first came to my attention when I was thinking a lot about the Bush II-Cheney invasion of Iraq which was costing us trillions of dollars and the part that the racism of Bush II and Cheney and the neo-cons who expected - against every indication in history and the present - that the Iraqis were going to welcome the great white father as their liberators.   If you need a reminder of that, here's one from a useful website:

Assurance #1: The Iraq War won’t cost a lot of money

•     RUMSFELD:  The Office of Management and Budget estimated it [the cost of war] would be something under $50 billion dollars.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Outside estimates say up to $300 billion.

RUMSFELD:  Baloney.

 
•     Testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, March 27, 2003:

WOLFOWITZ:  There’s a lot of money to pay for this.  It doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money.  And it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people... We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.

 
    The war has exceeded $500 billion in costs as of 2008 – and probably in excess of a trillion dollars when all costs, such as caring for wounded soldiers over time, are included.

In estimating the cost of the war, Bush officials attempted to assuage people’s concerns about the financial burden by focusing on the short-term, direct military costs (the cost of the invasion) – and by not accounting for a long-term occupation of Iraq, the possibility of an insurgency and ongoing violence, as well as significant reconstruction costs.

The Bush administration further claimed that the reconstruction costs would be mostly offset by Iraqi oil revenues, which has not been the case.

Furthermore, the lack of support from the international community for the war has placed the primary financial burden on the U.S.

AND THAT WAS JUST THE MONETARY COST OF THE INVASION.  Look at the racist, condescending, couldn't-be-more-wrong assurances that they would just love the great-white-father coming to liberate them. 

Assurance #6: We will be welcomed as liberators

•     CHENEY:  The Middle East expert, Professor Fouad Ajami, predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy...

    RUSSERT:  Do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

    VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY:  I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.

WOLFOWITZ:  These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators.

 
    Although some Iraqis welcomed U.S. troops, the reception was mixed at best.  The notion of a Western army occupying an Arab land summoned up humiliating memories of colonialism, as well as fears regarding underlying U.S. intentions.  Before long a growing insurgency took hold, which has led to more than 4 years of violence.

I maintain that it was the racism of those in the Bush II regime which led to them holding what was essentially a 19th century colonialist mentality towards the Iraqis.   But it should never be forgotten that they sold their war to an initially skeptical American public on the power of a racist ignorance of the differences between Iraqis, Iranians, Al Qaeda, etc.  Even Americans who are racist enough to not care about the lives of Brown People in the Middle East might understand the cost in money and, maybe, somewhat, in American lives that the racism of the Cheneys and Wolfowitzes have cost them.   Indeed, Trump made reference to that cost as part of his con-job to get power again, so it's something that apparent that even the massively racist Trump has some understanding of that.

But back to home. 

The racism of farmers who put Trump back in office, the racism of working class white racists AND THE LAWYER, ACADEMIC-JOURNALIST, WHITE COLLAR RACISTS who put Trump back in office, putting the drugged up South African racist Musk in the presidency from where he is in the process of stealing everything he can get his hands on, are the most expensive and wasteful minority group in the country AND NO ONE IS SERIOUSLY STUDYING THEM AND THEIR IMPACT FROM THAT POINT OF VIEW.  

One of the few things that is satisfying about listening to the whining and crying of famers who voted for Trump finding out that in and among Trump and Musk stealing the subsidies that Democrats supported providing for them is that some of them are twigging on to the fact that THEY, THEIR FARMS, THEIR INCOMES WERE THE MAJOR BENEFICIARIES OF FOOD ASSISTANCE TO THE POOR  - no doubt most of them imagining those poor People as media stereotyped Black welfare recipients - and that if those People can't buy food, that means they lose income, too.   Mid-Western and farm state Republicans in Congress, most of them as racist as can be, would never have voted for food assistance unless it benefited their constituents.  Too bad their constituents didn't understand that well enough to overcome their racism.  Now their representatives figure their bread is buttered on the Trump side.

There is no group in the United States that is suffering from a surfeit of information and intelligent understanding of the reality they are living in - media, especially entertainment and hate-talk as ersatz "news" making sure of that - so these FAFO farmers aren't unique but they're finding out that as the beneficiaries of the federal programs that Democrats have championed and supported far more than Republicans - even farm belt Republicans - just what they voted for.   

It is unfortunate that another group which is paying an enormous price for the racist-Trump voting farmers are the Democratic voting farmers, white as well as People of Color among them, who are as screwed as the ones who voted to get screwed.   See what I mean about the enormous cost that racists have been, especially to the targets of that racism?

Racists are the most costly, most destructive minority group in the United States - there's a reason that the states with the most racist histories are among the states which get the most subsidies from the Federal government.  

And I haven't gone into the enormous cost in crime and sedition and treason that America's racists have been at the center of.   What's interesting about that is the extent to which the corporate elites in the media, elsewhere and in white supremacy governed states have been banning even the study of this history, its teaching even research into it.  

The study of the history of EVERY SUBJUGATED MINORITY GROUP IN AMERICA is the study of our struggle against those who oppress us AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER WHICH HAS PERMITTED THAT OPPRESSION TO GO ON UNDER THE RULE OF LAW.    It's clear that the fact of the injustice of that has not much moved the agenda of equality much, such progress as was won with enormous struggle and sacrifice, INCLUDING SACRIFICE IN VERY REAL BLOOD, has been swept aside by Supreme Court fiat and media encouragement of a reaction against that progress.  But if it was presented to those with a tendency towards racism, sexism, etc. to understand that racism, sexism, etc. comes with a very real and decisive cost to them WITH A BENEFIT TO THE WEALTHY WHO ARE THEIR REAL ENEMIES IN LIFE, that might convince them that it's not worth it.

I Bought Me A President by Cathy Fink & Tom Paxton