Rethinking The Noble And Terrible Truth Of Pain As Steps Forward On The Death of Thitch Nhat Hanh

THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH of the great and small, powerfully influential but gentlest of Buddhist Monks, Thitch Nhat Hanh at age 95 was the opposite of unexpected.  He's been living his last years in seclusion in his first monastery in Vietnam after some debilitating strokes had robbed him of his ability to communicate.  A man who had given endless instruction in meditation and morality, written many books in several languages must have found that to be quite a change to mindfully accept.   Considering he was a Buddhist, a monk in a religion that is among the most conscious of all religions about the inevitable end of our lives, he had a long lifetime to prepare for that.  His reputation might be marred by his associations with the Western Buddhism fad in its Silicon Valley-celebrity school, but it is clear from his less publicized work that he wasn't just another jet-set guru.

He and his teaching about the methodology of meditation, particularly walking meditation, had a great effect on me in the years leading up to my adult conversion.  I'd never been able to tolerate sitting meditation for long,  it just never took for me at all.  Adding the movement of walking got me started on something that worked for me far better, though I gave up his "mindfulness" objects of meditation for the sayings of Jesus, the Law and the Prophets which is the largest part of my current near daily practice.  I honor the memory of TNH, for that and for the enormous advance in Buddhism in the "Engaged Buddhism" movement which he is often credited with.  I would expect that he is in heaven, with God though, of course, Buddhism doesn't conceive of those things the way a Christian would.  I'd expect to see him there before some of the more recently canonized Catholics.  A couple of them Popes.

Perhaps it's not entirely a coincidence that his death came in the same week that I've been thinking of writing in profound disagreement with something said by another great figure of religion who has had a huge influence on me, the 4th century Cappadocian Father St. Gregory of Nyssa.  I've been reading and re-reading him this winter and I came back to his long essay On Virginity.  Specifically I'd like to go over this long paragraph from it.

But in writing this sad tragedy what will be a fit beginning? How shall we really bring to view the evils common to life? All men know them by experience, but somehow nature has contrived to blind the actual sufferers so that they willingly ignore their condition. Shall we begin with its choicest sweets? Well then, is not the sum total of all that is hoped for in marriage to get delightful companionship? Grant this obtained; let us sketch a marriage in every way most happy; illustrious birth, competent means, suitable ages, the very flower of the prime of life, deep affection, the very best that each can think of the other , that sweet rivalry of each wishing to surpass the other in loving; in addition, popularity, power, wide reputation, and everything else. But observe that even beneath this array of blessings the fire of an inevitable pain is smouldering. I do not speak of the envy that is always springing up against those of distinguished rank, and the liability to attack which hangs over those who seem prosperous, and that natural hatred of superiors shown by those who do not share equally in the good fortune, which make these seemingly favoured ones pass an anxious time more full of pain than pleasure. I omit that from the picture, and will suppose that envy against them is asleep; although it would not be easy to find a single life in which both these blessings were joined, i.e. happiness above the common, and escape from envy. However, let us, if so it is to be, suppose a married life free from all such trials; and let us see if it is possible for those who live with such an amount of good fortune to enjoy it. Why, what kind of vexation is left, you will ask, when even envy of their happiness does not reach them? I affirm that this very thing, this sweetness that surrounds their lives, is the spark which kindles pain. They are human all the time, things weak and perishing; they have to look upon the tombs of their progenitors; and so pain is inseparably bound up with their existence, if they have the least power of reflection. This continued expectancy of death, realized by no sure tokens, but hanging over them the terrible uncertainty of the future, disturbs their present joy, clouding it over with the fear of what is coming. If only, before experience comes, the results of experience could be learned, or if, when one has entered on this course, it were possible by some other means of conjecture to survey the reality, then what a crowd of deserters would run from marriage into the virgin life; what care and eagerness never to be entangled in that retentive snare, where no one knows for certain how the net galls till they have actually entered it! You would see there, if only you could do it without danger, many contraries uniting; smiles melting into tears, pain mingled with pleasure, death always hanging by expectation over the children that are born, and putting a finger upon each of the sweetest joys. Whenever the husband looks at the beloved face, that moment the fear of separation accompanies the look. If he listens to the sweet voice, the thought comes into his mind that some day he will not hear it. Whenever he is glad with gazing on her beauty, then he shudders most with the presentiment of mourning her loss. When he marks all those charms which to youth are so precious and which the thoughtless seek for, the bright eyes beneath the lids, the arching eyebrows, the cheek with its sweet and dimpling smile, the natural red that blooms upon the lips, the gold-bound hair shining in many-twisted masses on the head, and all that transient grace, then, though he may be little given to reflection, he must have this thought also in his inmost soul that some day all this beauty will melt away and become as nothing, turned after all this show into noisome and unsightly bones, which wear no trace, no memorial, no remnant of that living bloom. Can he live delighted when he thinks of that? Can he trust in these treasures which he holds as if they would be always his? Nay, it is plain that he will stagger as if he were mocked by a dream, and will have his faith in life shaken, and will look upon what he sees as no longer his. You will understand, if you have a comprehensive view of things as they are, that nothing in this life looks that which it is. It shows to us by the illusions of our imagination one thing, instead of something else. Men gaze open-mouthed at it, and it mocks them with hopes; for a while it hides itself beneath this deceitful show; then all of a sudden in the reverses of life it is revealed as something different from that which men's hopes, conceived by its fraud in foolish hearts, had pictured. Will life's sweetness seem worth taking delight in to him who reflects on this? Will he ever be able really to feel it, so as to have joy in the goods he holds? Will he not, disturbed by the constant fear of some reverse, have the use without the enjoyment? I will but mention the portents, dreams, omens, and such-like things which by a foolish habit of thought are taken notice of, and always make men fear the worst. But her time of labour comes upon the young wife; and the occasion is regarded not as the bringing of a child into the world, but as the approach of death; in bearing it is expected that she will die; and, indeed, often this sad presentiment is true, and before they spread the birthday feast, before they taste any of their expected joys, they have to change their rejoicing into lamentation. Still in love's fever, still at the height of their passionate affection, not yet having grasped life's sweetest gifts, as in the vision of a dream, they are suddenly torn away from all they possessed. But what comes next? Domestics, like conquering foes, dismantle the bridal chamber; they deck it for the funeral, but it is death's room now; they make the useless wailings and beatings of the hands. Then there is the memory of former days, curses on those who advised the marriage, recriminations against friends who did not stop it; blame thrown on parents whether they be alive or dead, bitter outbursts against human destiny, arraigning of the whole course of nature, complaints and accusations even against the Divine government; war within the man himself, and fighting with those who would admonish; no repugnance to the most shocking words and acts. In some this state of mind continues, and their reason is more completely swallowed up by grief; and their tragedy has a sadder ending, the victim not enduring to survive the calamity.

Who can argue with any of that?   All of those venues of pain are a result of the choice to get married, to have children, to be constantly anxious for their welfare, to be constantly conscious of not only the possibility but the certainty that sooner or in the end we will lose those we love to death?   And all of the terrible things about loving others in between, the pain, injustice, being victims of intentional wrongs and accidents, seeing those we love suffer the pain of being unloved.  

We open up ourselves to all of those by making relationships and having children - those of us who have children.  I believe that Gregory was speaking from personal experience, someone once speculated that of all the Cappadocians he was the one who had almost certainly been married.   I greatly love and respect most of what Gregory of Nyssa said.

The trouble is, I don't believe his conclusions about that for a minute. 

You don't have to have sex or marry or be the parents of children to suffer from the moral and responsible choice to love them, to care for them, to experience the sorrows that come from that attachment to them AND TO KNOW THAT TO WITHHOLD WHAT MAY BE THE MOST POSITIVE HUMANE  RELATIONSHIP IN THEIR LIVES WOULD BE EVEN CRUELER and entirely selfish. 

I think from the pains of even love that doesn't expect to get much of anything in return is proof that those pains are not only worth the price, they are an irreplaceable part of why we are here, why we are living our lives.  I don't think we'd have been given that pain without there being a reason that our logical and practical calculations can't resolve and that what we are left with cannot become a satisfying statement in an argument for the supposed virtue of not having sex.  

I remember reading about the Buddhist meditation on a list of components of the human body, various organs and tissues, fluids and excrement.  It seemed to me to be designed as an aid to the practice of sexual abstinence by making you think about the body as a rather messy and unattractive object.  Only one of the commentaries warned it was one of the most dangerous forms of Buddhist meditation suitable only for strict monastics because someone doing it risked becoming hostile or, perhaps worse, indifferent to the physical pain and suffering and conditions of other people as well as themselves. 

Like people who change their gender, something I don't understand AND SOMETHING MY INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND IT SHOULD NOT FIGURE IN FOR A SECOND, I would not say that someone who chooses a life of sexual abstinence shouldn't decide that for themself.  But I think that will never be something that is for most people, most people will have sex, most people will at least be open to giving birth to children, hopefully most of them ready to take care of those children they are responsible for.  I don't think that that is in any way a less worthy thing than living a lifetime of virginity, it may be both the more admirable and the more difficult and, so, when well done, best way to heaven.   Of course, doing it badly and selfishly is far worse than if they hadn't done it, but you can say the same thing about some of those who do chastity for bad things.  I don't think the history of the Catholic priesthood after chastity was a requirement shows it's anything like a guarantee of moral superiority. 

Virginity can be as sure a path of evil as sexual selfishness and irresponsibility.   Being responsible and adult about sex and its consequences can be a lot more virtuous than chastity can be.

Virginity is also no safe guarantee of avoiding those pains Gregory of Nyssa enumerated and if you pursue virginity for that, you aren't living a life of virtue.  If it's done the right way it certainly shouldn't be pain free.  Any consecrated virgin who avoids caring for a child so they won't suffer along with the child is a selfish coward. 

"Why aren't you posting audio drama anymore?"

I'VE BEEN TAKING a bit of a break from radio drama, it's true.  It's not because I don't wish I was listening to it it's just other things have gotten in the way.  I am hoping to get back to it, soon.  Maybe I'll post a rerun later.

In related news, there are people who majored in theater who I respect and like quite a lot,  I think Shaun Johnston is a very fine actor and, from everything I've read about him, a very nice and intelligent man.  And he was a theater major.  

And thinking of him, I also think Jonathon Young is a very good actor who, looking him up out of curiosity, also was a theater major.   I remember watching a show they were both in a long while ago and the scenes between them were something I could watch over and over without it becoming tedious. 

Course, they're Canadian, I tend to prefer Canadian actors to Americans or Brits.   I don't think it's only because living where I do I've seen more of their work on TV than most Americans used to. 

While Listening To Boris Epshteyn Lying His Friggin' Head Off On Ari Melber's Show

WHY ISN'T HE DEPORTED BACK TO RUSSIA WHERE HE WAS BORN?  He's an agent of the Putin regime on behalf of Putin's puppet.  

He's yet another fine Georgetown Law School product.   Another shame of Catholic elite education. 

And while we're at it, why hasn't Gavin Mcinnes been deported back to Canada?  He should never be allowed to set foot across the border again.  I'm sorry Canada but he really shouldn't be here.  You've at least got some minimal anti-hate speech law up there, he might be less dangerous there than he is here. 

Well, Here's Another Fine Mess The Women Haters Club Has Got Us Into

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH will be reaping the whirlwind that was sown by the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI for a long time to come.  Both had a reactionary, hierarchy-centered view of the Catholic Church, Benedict XVI infamously hoped for a radically smaller Catholic Church in which those who disagreed with him would leave and leave what I'm sure he saw as "his" Church in what he regraded as a purer form than the large, messy thing he was chosen to lead by his equally reactionary predecessor.   I somehow doubt he sees his present predicament, if he's even been told about it, as the Holy Spirit telling him he was barking up the wrong tree.

Now a professional and independent legal analysis of his time as Cardinal Ratzinger shows that in at least four cases of priestly sexual abuse, he was guilty of serious, likely criminal misconduct. 

The Jan. 20 report was conducted by an independent law firm at the request of the German archdiocese. Its authors identified nearly 500 victims of abuse in the archdiocese over seven decades, and implicated Benedict and two living Catholic cardinals for what it deemed "misconduct" in handling abuse cases.

"In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct," said one of the reports' authors, Martin Pusch.

At a press conference, investigators said that they believe the actual number of cases of abuse to be far higher than what is included in the report's findings.

"Far too often, despite clear knowledge of acts of abuse, priests continued to be employed in pastoral care," the investigators said.

German Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, one of the Vatican's point persons for clergy abuse, told NCR he is sure that abuse survivors again are "devastated" and "angry" to once more hear the church's failures recounted.

The numbers of victims are "shocking and cruel," said Zollner, who added that while it is necessary to produce such reports to account for past failings, many survivors relive their pain each time a new report is published.

"Numbers are always people and behind those numbers are people whose lives have been destroyed. And the clear message is that the church must wake up and take responsibility," said Zollner, who is a member of Pope Francis' clergy abuse commission.

This is the same Cardinal Ratzinger who played a role in the response to the developing scandal when pedophile priestly abuse was coming to the head, when it fully broke open under JPII  in the Boston Archdioceses then led by Bernard Law, who was allowed to flee certain legal action to compel him to provide evidence in the certain to come legal cases he was responsible for, his elevation to an honored position within the Vatican, etc. etc. etc.   He did, I will admit, try to somewhat chart a more responsible course after JPII's death,  JPII was truly the worst Pope of my lifetime which extends back to the time of Pius XII.  But Benedict, for all of his academic brilliance as an academic theologian, was never good at any kind of administrative job I'm aware of.

It is almost certain that the glacial pace of Vatican movement will assure that Benedict XVI will be allowed to die rather than any action farther than this being taken.  He is nearly 95 and, since his use by his fellow reactionaries to attack Francis last year, even more isolated than he had been.   

It is a scandal that he is still allowed to style himself "Pope emeritus," something that survivors said he should be stripped of.  And it is certainly a bad idea for his long-time secretary, the conniving Bishop Georg Ganswein to have control over access to him and what comes from him.   Though at this point removing him is probably not going to be done for what will be considered humane reasons.  Ganswein is reportedly saying that they will take time to go over the 1,000 page report, no doubt he's hoping that his claim to fame will also die before that review is done.  I don't know if his association with Ratzinger goes back that far, I'd very much like to know if it does. 

I love Pope Francis but I'm well and truly fed up with this stuff. 

So there is  another article I read this week, a Woman Religious asking why Women Religious in the Catholic Church are still tolerating the same patriarchy controlling their activities.  It's a good question.  I have enormous faith in the good intentions of Pope Francis and in his judgement but he has what might be an impossible task, to hold together the Catholic Church as it is now, a church with an enormous number of members, MOST OF WHOM ARE NOT WHITE AMERICANS FROM NORTH AMERICA.  

He has to contend with the legacy of reactionaries in the hierarchy appointed by his predecessors, a number of well financed billionaire back schismatic factions who can cause something any Pope hopes won't happen on his watch, a serious schism.  I think that's probably unavoidable because if it's not going to come from the billionaire financed astro-turf "trads" it's going to come from those who actually do the work of the Church such as women religious.  And they have a large number of lay Catholics with them in the same basket. 

If there were some effective means of Roman Catholic Women Religious to mount an independent supporting structure independent of the control of males,  I'd certainly donate to that, just as I donate to the Roman Catholic Women Priests.  I think an independent, entirely Woman managed, Woman determined order of Woman religious would be welcomed by even more People.  Sisters have always been more popular than bishops and, as JFK pointed out, there are more of them (and, as was his point, they tend to vote Democratic even as the bishops tend more Republican).

And a slight ray of light, here's an article about the current state of affairs for LGBTQ Catholics and some of their supporters.   I have to say that Sr. Jeaninne Gramick is a lot more charitable to the man who persecuted her, Joseph Ratzinger, than I'm feeling.  Maybe that's the difference between having lived a life dedicated to the Gospel of Jesus than the kind of life I've led.   I am not capable of that level of forgiveness as of now.

A Long Answer To An Ambitious Objection - Yeah, I Can't Give Up Answering The Hate Mail

 

THAT DARWINISM, the theory of natural selection, is not, as promised, an explanation of how new species arise isn't something I made up, it's something that's obvious if you take a serious look at just the currently known issues involved in the change to a new species would involve UNDER THE TERMS SET BY THE DARWINISTS. 

 The evolution of organismal form consists of a continuing production and ordering of anatomical parts: the resulting arrangement of parts is nonrandom and lineage specific. The organization of morphological order is thus a central feature of organismal evolution, whose explanation requires a theory of morphological organization. Such a theory will have to account for (1) the generation of initial parts; (2) the fixation of such parts in lineage-specific combinations; (3) the modification of parts; (4) the loss of parts; (5) the reappearance of lost parts [atavism]; and (6) the addition of new parts. Eventually, it will have to specify proximate and ultimate causes for each of these events as well.

Only a few of the processes listed above are addressed by the canonical neo-Darwinian theory, which is chiefly concerned with gene frequencies in populations and with the factors responsible for their variation and fixation. Although, at the phenotypic level, it deals with the modification of existing parts, the theory is intended to explain neither the origin of parts, nor morphological organization, nor innovation. In the neo-Darwinian world the motive factor for morphological change is natural selection, which can account for the modification and loss of parts. But selection has no innovative capacity; it eliminates or maintains what exists. The generative and the ordering aspects of morphological evolution are thus absent from evolutionary theory.

Muller, Gerd B. (2003) Homology: The Evolution of Morphological Organization. In Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Development and Evolutionary Biology.

A lot of that listing of what is involved in the change in a line of organisms that would result in the development of a new species from older ones would have been unknown or incomprehensible in the early years of Darwinism, Darwin, himself, would not have suspected some of it.  Some of his closest colleagues, Haeckel would have rejected the orthodox view of genetics that became a foundation of the "canonical neo-Darwinian theory" because the "Modern Synthesis" that was taught as evolutionary dogma before the turn of this century and is still the prevailing concept of evolutionary science today when it, as well, is known to be inadequate.  Haeckel, with the approval of all of the Darwinists I checked, said that Darwin and he agreed on the inheritance of acquired traits in line with Lamarck, something that almost to a person current champions of Darwin claim he didn't believe in, though he, himself, published a theory in line with that.  Darwinist's must be some of the most lax readers of their hero in the history of ideological warfare.

I have been reading and thinking about an article by the evolutionary scientist  David Sloan Wilson that is a good example of how all hell breaks loose when biologists claim a permission for them to break all the rules and extend the results universally.   

After an apt and justifiable criticism of Walrausian 19th and 20th century economics coming up with a superficial and rather stupid attempt to make economics into a science like the then prevailing Newtonian physics was, he wants to substitute the very problematic and far less scientifically founded dogmas of Darwinism in its place.*

But, before you read it, read the quote I started with to consider how it fits in with the claims made below. 

Evolution might have a role to play in filling this theoretical vacuum but, first, it’s important to acknowledge that evolutionary theory is not at all like Newtonian physics. Newton could provide a complete mathematical description for the movement of physical bodies because their properties and interactions are relatively simple. When interactions become more complex, our ability to describe them mathematically breaks down. You can see this dynamic at play in complicated, non-living systems such as the weather, which can be very difficult to predict. But it is even more the case in biological systems or economic systems, which are not only complex but change their properties and interactions over time. No matter how alluring to the 19th-century imagination, the project of devising a ‘physics of social behaviour’ was doomed from the start. But that’s OK; a theory needn’t resemble Newtonian mechanics to be successful.

Indeed, evolutionary theory achieves its generality in a very different way. Evolutionists have a conceptual toolkit that can be applied to the study of any aspect of any organism. This includes asking four questions in parallel, concerning the function, history, physical mechanism, and development of the trait. For example, species that live in the desert are typically sandy-coloured. How do we go about explaining this fact? First they are sandy-coloured to avoid detection by their predators and prey (a functional explanation). Second, the sandy colouration is achieved by various physical mechanisms, depending upon the species — fur in mammals, chitin in insects, feathers in birds (a physical explanation). What is more, the particular mechanism is based in part on the lineage of the species (an historical explanation) and develops during the lifetime of the organism by a variety of pathways (a developmental explanation). Answering these four questions results in a fully rounded understanding of colouration in desert species. All branches of biology are unified by this approach.

Other than the absolutely true statement that:

. . . it’s important to acknowledge that evolutionary theory is not at all like Newtonian physics. Newton could provide a complete mathematical description for the movement of physical bodies because their properties and interactions are relatively simple. When interactions become more complex, our ability to describe them mathematically breaks down. 

none of the rest of it follows anything like rigorous scientific methodology. 

Every statement he makes about the "sandy colouration" of desert dwelling species and its inspecifically claimed reproductive advantage is 100% speculative.  Every single claim made about that as an explanation of how species arise is 100% speculation, none of it is based on actual observation of the species developing, none of it is based in actual counting of examined offspring and the offspring of the next generations resulting in the generation of a new species, something which has never, once been observed, measured and analyzed with scientific methods. 

What he is doing is telling a Just-so story, which every single claim of natural selection boils down to.  And, note, he's telling us, well, yeah, "Social Darwinism" is back but, hey, this time it's a good thing!

I think that, first, the Modern Synthesis that did some careful cutting and measuring to try to fit natural selection to Mendelian genetics (an understanding of which, at the time, now seems somewhat quaint) added new complexities to the massive n-factorial problem that Darwinism is.  The current efforts to come up with an "Extended Synthesis" adds even more and more factors into the equations that measure how big a bite they are attempting to take of a largely unseeable, unmeasurable, and so unanalyzable 3 billion year plus history, which left virtually no significant physical evidence and even less in terms of what that meant in terms of reproductive success AND NOTHING IN TERMS OF FACTORS LIKE BEHAVIOR AND RANDOM CHANCE EVENTS.  

It seems to me the problem for the alleged scientific study of evolution seems to grow ever bigger by what seems to be an increasingly large number of variables with every passing decade.  The problems are ever larger not smaller and even the original problems have never really been addressed honestly by biologists with a vested interest in pretending the ever increasing uncertainty of it is actually resulting in  greater lucidity.

And now people like David Sloan Wilson want to pretend that they can use Darwinism - in their preferred extension of it into uncertainty - in something totally unlike questions of physiology and genetics, something as man-made and artificial as economic structures and behaviors.  

* I could point to the really dangerous and disturbing attempts of the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. to come up with something like that to govern not only legal theory but the working methods of judges and "justices" in a scientific administration of the law.   His theories gained little traction but if they had things would be a lot grimmer than they even now are. 

Update:  I should add that since the theory of natural selection began in Darwin's reading of the putrid class-based economic theories of Thomas Malthus, the attempt to turn Darwinism into the basis of economic theory seems to risk the original assumptions of Malthus, supporting an even more putrid "enlightenment" scientific articulation of the artificial, late-feudal extension of the British class system ever onward into the future.  Natural selection is often criticized as a tautology of "survival of the survivors" with the assumption that because they survived the survivors were better, but if what I said here was true, its tautological character is even more than just a danger to logical coherence but to any kind of decent life.  The popular literature of Darwinism and its extension into fiction bears that out nearly uniformly.

McCoy Tyner And The Latin All Stars - Afro Blue

 

Direct link to video

    McCoy Tyner - piano
    Gary Bartz - saxophones
    Claudio Roditi - trumpet, flugelhorn
    Steve Turre - trombone
    Dave Valentin - flute
    Avery Sharpe - bass
    Ignacio Berroa - drums
    Johnny Almendra - timbales
    Giovanni Hidalgo - congas & percussion

"which I think is the Right of every free-born Subject to make, when the Matters so published can be supported with Truth" - Two Issues

AS I RECALL THE CASE of Peter Zenger the issue successfully argued with the jury was that THE TRUTH was an absolute defense against a corrupt accusation of libel.  His landmark defense in the case that his lawyers made TO THE JURY, NOT TO THE CHIEF "justice" who was an appointed puppet was absolutely in line with what I said. 

I mean in putting Mr. Attorney [the prosecutor] upon proving, that my Client printed and published those Papers mentioned in the Information; yet I cannot think it proper for me (without doing Violence to my own Principles) to deny the Publication of a Complaint, which I think is the Right of every free-born Subject to make, when the Matters so published can be supported with Truth; and therefore I'll save Mr. Attorney the Trouble of examining his Witnesses to that Point; and I do (for my Client) confess, that he both printed and published the two News Papers set forth in the Information, and I hope in so doing he has committed no Crime.

That was what ANDREW not Alexander Hamilton, by the way,  argued, the reason that the trial was a huge step forward for the principle that publishing the TRUTH is a right that must be protected.  Publishing a lie was never something he or his lawyer supported.  So bringing him up in this supports my point the lies should be punished AND THAT THERE IS NO RATIONAL OR MORAL CASE TO BE MADE FOR PROTECTING LYING AS A RIGHT. 

The novel idea that was introduced by the Supreme Court in 1964 was that there was a right to lie that turned the vague, hastily written, ill considered First Amendment language into something it hadn't been, a permission for the mass media to lie with impunity about public officials, about many private citizens, it had always been allowed to lie about entire groups of People, members of races and nationalities, of members of religion in ways that fomented violence, murder and oppression.  Until the blockbuster, bombshell issuing addicts of the Warren Court did that it was possible for a politician who was lied about to sue.  The results of that have been the downward descent of our politics into the sub-gutter level they're at now. 

---------------------------

Though I haven't read nearly enough about the frequently vilified and notorious Alien and Sedition acts signed into law by John Adams, they were clearly a freakout by the Federalists over the Reign of Terror in France FOR WHICH A NUMBER OF AMERICANS, FOREMOST AMONG THEM THOMAS JEFFERSON, WERE WILDLY ENTHUSIASTIC.   

The extent to which the friggin' founders were all beginners at this self-governance by representatives stuff should never be forgotten.  The concepts of "democracy" such as they conceived of it were untried on the scales they proposed.  At the time of John Adams' presidency the foremost example of that other than the fledgling United States was Revolutionary France and things there went to fucking hell in a way that I'm sure they could well imagine happening in the United States.  

That Jefferson, himself had enthusiastically waxed over the "tree of liberty" requiring a steady diet of "the blood of patriots" I have no doubt that John Adams was aware of.  I'm sure the first and only one-term president for the first four decades of the country - all the two-termers being slave holders - wondered if his good friend Jefferson would figure his blood and that of his party were a small price to pay for what France got through its revolution.   If he wanted any example of that among "friends" and comrades, he would certainly have gotten it in reports from the United States Embassy to the French Republic.  He was Vice President as that other numbskull hero of Revolution, Thomas Paine, then a member of the French Revolutionary Government was begging for Washington to save his ass from his fellow revolutionaries there.  I'm sure he was not unaware of the situation.

We should face the fact that Jefferson was way too enthusiastic for the sacrifice in blood from other veins.  He, never a soldier, never found a cause for which he ever seemed to think worth putting his own in danger.   Here's the passage from his 1787 letter letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams, in which he issued those stupidly stirring words.

I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.1 The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted. 

He was a slave holder who never wanted liberty for his human chattles, a fucking drunk and a crackpot as much as he was ever an inspired genius.  

No doubt the later attempt of Adams in the Alien and Sedition acts to prevent something like the Reign of Terror from being successfully exported to the United States was ham-handed but he, like all of the founders were total beginners trying to do things that no one had done before.   

As it turned out the bloodshed that Jefferson was so blood thirsty for was repeatedly performed, mostly on the bodies of Black People, of Native Americans, etc. and then in the horrors of the American Civil War, THE RE-IMPOSITION OF DE FACTO SLAVERY in the end of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow period the great Civil Rights struggles of the post-war period and, now, again as we face massively armed Republican-fascists who want to impose one-party, anti-egalitarian dictatorship under a Hollywood pagan strong man or a Ron Desantis.   The fertilizer recommended by Jefferson, as much as anything fed a "liberty" tree that meant liberty for the Jeffersons and other slave-holders and de facto slave holders at the expense of the freedom and equality of those whose blood was shed.

That's what we face when we take a hard and serious look at our national mythology, lots and lots of the ideas of those 18th century amateurs don't work.  Lots of them work as intended and the results are not anything like any decent person would want today.  I wouldn't copy any of them or uphold any of them without an extensive and honest criticism BASED ON OUR EXPERIENCE GAINED IN THE LAST TWO AND A QUARTER CENTURIES.  Something that none of them could have known or observed or guessed at.

You Can Always Count On Getting Angry Feedback When You Diss Sports - Maybe I Should Regularly Critique The Commercial Secular Religion In America

THE JOCK ANTI-VAXXERS in the news have left me with the biggest case of the "well, yeah" I've ever had.    I seldom remember the name of a Jock unless they're in the news much, generally for bad reasons,  so the ones I'm hearing about are fairly new to me.  I'd never heard of Aaron Rogers before last fall, I'd never heard of Novak Djokovic or Kyrie Irving till more recently. 

Why is it any kind of a shock that jocks, even those reputed to be smarter than the average athlete turn out to be not that bright?   I doubt that the ones I knew in my youth were atypical of the type, NONE OF WHOM WERE THE BRIGHTEST though some were not naturally stupid.  Their stupidity was cultivated.

Athletics is like ballet dancing, it is an intrinsically anti-intellectual pursuit.  It is something in which intelligence is an asset but it's intelligence about a very limited aspect of human action, the ability to perfect a skill and perform it as needed to get a result.   Time spent doing that is not time spent reading or thinking or writing to try to clarify your thoughts.  Music can be a lot like that, the time it takes to learn the skills of playing an instrument or singing can be time you don't spend on doing something else.  I regret many of the hours I spent on technique as something I could have spent on something I now value more.  

LOTS of highly skilled musicians are about as dumb as jocks and you can regularly hear some of them being that stupid, especially pop musicians and, especially, greedy rock stars.  Your movie actors, success in movie acting being a function of sexual attraction more than talent or ability, are probably an even better example in the, um, arts.  Especially those who had early movie success, got rich and then, their sexual allure being the sum total of their, um, "talent," they are left with little to do except blame "Hollywood liberals" for why the offers stopped coming. 

Though there are actors, directors and even people who work in opera who are real intellectuals and even some who go farther than that and actually think critically and clearly.   I would say that those are seldom working at the biggest venues with the biggest budgets.  In the arts small is a better bet on having something worth saying or hearing.  Musicals are probably the catch all of stupid combining so much of the worst of all of those worlds.  The history of massive and expensive flops, losing star struck millionaires millions of their disposable cash proves that the stupid and musicals being in the same place is a sure bet.  Mel Brooks got that right.

And, I have never observed stupidity being presented as a positive aspect in any of the arts.  Well, apart from the ballet.  Modern dance more encourages thought.

That is to say,  unlike the world of athletics and sports, music doesn't positively encourage anti-intellectualism and stupidity as the culture of sports do.   For many jocks being stupid is expected and more than just fulfilled, it is endorsed and encouraged.  Intellectualism is shunned and despised, coaches certainly don't in large numbers want their athletes thinking for themselves, Colin Kaepernick thought for himself and look what it got him.

It is one of the side-effects of the sexual attractiveness of people who spend too much of their time on their bodies is so often associated with stupidity, though that might have as much to do with hopes of leering lechers luring them into their schemes as anything else.  As we are also finding, a lot of sports coaches are those leering lechers such as Denny Hastert and that Penn State football pedophile or, as in the case of Jim Jordan, self-interested observers of that.  I strongly suspect that there is far more sexual abuse in sports at all levels, including youth sports, than in all of the clerical pedophiles.  Though you will never see a Spotlight style investigation of that because, unlike religion, sports are sacrosanct in America's secular piety.

On Laws Punishing Lies To Protect Egalitarian Government Of, By and FOR The People

I HAVE NEVER yet favored making it a crime to tell lies in the mass media I have favored making it possible for the kinds of people the media lies so flagrantly about to sue the likes of FOX, the New York Post, the New York Times, and all of the rest of the gutter press that lies about private citizens, public people and, yes, politicians with enough consequences for the individuals in the media and their parent companies to stop lying.   I favor that those trials be a more equal match in court, the super-rich and corporations not able to swamp their often powerless and poor victims with their stable of high-price lawyer-liars in front of judges who are too frequently all-in on that racket.

I do favor broadcast and cabloid and, now, internet media being shut down as a consequence of them lying seriously or flagrantly.  I do not for a second believe the First Amendment  myth that companies and corporations have rights, which inhere only to living beings, but privileges and there is nothing wrong with removing an abused privilege and one that endangers democracy should bring with it the ultimate sanction of corporate death. 

I have never favored the ability of the rich and connected to bring frivolous lawsuits,  THAT IS SOMETHING I DO THINK SHOULD BE A CRIME, to use the legal system and the courts that way, and it should have ruinous financial consequences that would not only prevent them from being tempted to try it but which would make certain they didn't have the means to do it.  I favor it being made a serious consequence for lawyers who file frivolous lawsuits of any kind on behalf of their clients.  I'd say "on behalf of their RICH clients" because I doubt lawyers on the make do such things on behalf of the destitute a number of times worth making law over. 

That said, we can only favor laws we can imagine and imagine consequences for and the never ending industry in lawyer-liars, those in prestigious law school faculties theorizing on behalf of the rich and powerful,  those who become judges and, especially, "justices" on supreme courts, looking for every way to corrupt the written laws and constitutions, and it is never safe to assume you can imagine all of what those lawyer-liars will cook up.

I can well imagine that things could get so bad that there are circumstances under which I can imagine limited and seriously watched over forms of criminally administered seditious libel laws for the protection of egalitarian democracy, self-government by an unlied to population encouraged to be of good will.  Our media lies and encourages cynical, selfish bad will.  Good will is routinely mocked and derided and driven out of power in the United States, comedians have had a huge hand in that, so has entertainment media.  Cynicism is a cheap substitute for creativity, it is an even cheaper substitute for humor.

If the choice is between the possibility of continued egalitarian democracy, self-government by a people of good will and whatever dangers that protecting that from lies intended to destroy that, I will go with taking the chance of protecting it against the attempts to destroy it we are seeing conducted by billionaire gangsters who despise equality and democracy and who have nothing like good will.   The tiny handful of billionaires of good will, if even that many, are probably more likely to screw things up royally like George Soros seems to have done.  I can see no evidence that his efforts to improve things have been anything but a serious miscalculation.  Look at his boy in his home country if you want all the evidence you can need that even as smart a billionaire as he can show so little understanding of what is needed.  Bill Gates may be another example but he was a little too close to Epstein, his ex-wife would seem to have better instincts in that regard.  

The rest of the billionaires, I would doubt you could find one who was even as good in effect as those two.  Most of them are thick as thieves with the Republican-fascists and such mobsters as run Russia and China these days.  I favor the leveling of billionaires and millionaires to the extent they cannot corrupt government as they do through the mass media.  I am a leveler, bringing down the billionaires and bringing up the least among us.  At the cost of the billionaires, not those closest to the destitute.

Old Gay Man Rant

I WILL NEVER GIVE UP MY absolute right to call Lindsay Graham, Chuck Gassley and Kevin McCarthy "sluts" or the New York Times The Great Gray Slut.  

You don't like it, I don't care.

Somewhat Random Thoughts On the Republican Murder of Democracy Facilitated By Manchin and Sinema

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS with the idolatry and absurd romanticism surrounding the cult of the Constitution is, as I mentioned, all human creations have flaws in them, both unintentional ones and those inserted intentionally for evil purposes.  The United States Constitution has both and, in abundance, those intended for evil and to thwart democracy. 

That is a fact of history, the representatives, a large majority of the fetishized "founders," fully intended to protect the basis of their wealth, slavery as an evil institution that they feared democracy would endanger.  The Southern states, of course, were the primary locus of that though slavery was present and not insignificant in Northern States as well, most of that slavery practiced by the very class of rich, white men who comprised the ruling elite, including the "founders". 

Every single attempt at progress, the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of Women, workers rights, etc. has been a struggle against the flaws embedded in the original document and the accretions of laws and court rulings and Supreme Court decisions that have been far from a steady march of progress towards equality and equal justice, economic, social and legal.  And working against that progress there has been a steady and constant and well financed body of lawyers and law scholars who have as a profession sought to exploit every flaw, intended and unintended in that document and as enabled by further laws and court decisions - the legal  being a potentially lucrative profession, the larger part of lawyers and law professors and - yes, judges and "justices" have been hirelings to bend the law for those who pay the best.  Like it or not, as practiced by many if not most lawyers, it is nothing more than a form of intellectual prostitution, one which unlike that using the bodies of women, children and vulnerable men, has carried little personal risk and no generally respectable opprobrium and legal consequence for the pro. 

The United States is in a crisis due to the decisions of the Supreme Court and the corrupt institution of the Senate, for the most part.  Without the Supreme Court permitting the media to lie with impunity when it lies about Democratic politicians and other figures, a line of decisions starting with "liberals" on the court for the benefit of the New York Times and the porn industry - or Hollywood and Broadway  - as if there's a signficant difference among them.  

Yet due to the sacralized language of the Constitution, though everyone acknowledges democracy is being murdered with lies, everyone holds that there is nothing to be done about that.  Which is among the most widespread of insanities and mass delusions afflicting modern life.  Remember that today as you hear the Rachel Maddows, the Stephen Colberts, etc. use the until recently forbidden "L" word, both of them and all others in the media knowing that there is a total and absolute ban on any rational criticism of free speech absolutism - something which I assure you will never be allowed under what we are coming to if any speech in any way endangers Republican-fascist unitary rule.  I recall the shock and surprise when the gray old slut herself allowed the calling of lies lies during the Trump regime. 

And that is only one of a myriad of such forbidden ideas, including one that notes that it is exactly those things embedded by the slave power along with their Northern financier allies into the structure of the United States government, the absurdly lauded "balance of powers" and the enumerated as well as the self-created powers of the United States Supreme Court which is destroying even the semblance of democracy as something to realistically aspire to under the Constitution.  

We are reaching crisis point where states with a majority of Republican voters are making sure they will be a permanent minority one-party state and, with them, the United States no matter what a majority of Americans want and that will, I guarantee you, force facing the evils embedded in the Constitution at the start.  The unequal, anti-democratic Senate, the abomination of the Electoral College, the rigging of congressional, state and local elections in the various states, the dictatorial anti-democratic and elitist nature of the Supreme Court.  Those crisis comprise the real underlying history of the United States, the real thing in which real People have had to struggle against the Constitution and, with the terribly written First and Second amendments, the most ridiculously sacralized parts of it, in the hastily written Bill of Rights.  

No document should ever be worshiped as that document is, no group of vastly imperfect and often dishonest and self-serving men should ever be deified as those who wrote the Constitution have been.  Our crisis is founded in the worship of false gods under a secular religion as absurdly ahistorical and calculatedly dishonest as the worst of 20th century European nationalism.  A lot of that religion is based squarely in cheap entertainment of the kind George M. Cohan cynically formalized to save many a bum show.  

Entertainment has been the primary vehicle for delivering the lies that are destroying democracy.  It was during the late 1970s with the falsification of the war in Vietnam the deification of fascists such as Dirty Harry and the rise of what I started calling "fascist chic" as Hollywood provided us with the first president it provided, Ronald Reagan.  I said that I thought it was an intentional promotion of fascism under Republican rule then, I have seen nothing to dissuade me that it has been anything but an attempt to bring us further down the road to fascist hell, the second Hollywood president, Trump being installed by the lies of the New York Times and other media against Hillary Clinton, the sleazy conventionally pious head of the FBI, James Comey and the goddamned Electoral College. 

We change the Constitution to get rid of those tools for destroying democracy, including that permission to lie and the permission for facists to amass an extremely dangerous arsenal or democracy is not even going to be the plausible false front that it has been for most of our history as a country.   The Republican-fascists are doing without the facade that is there only to cover up for the queasier members of the media and the college-credentialed who still spout the old pieties of a dead religion.  

And lots of us will be killed in the modern form of civil war which may make the old one look orderly and polite by comparison.  The United States as we have known it will not survive the shit show that is coming with no one really stopping it. 

Jackie McLean - Condition Blue

Direct link to video

Jackie McLean, alto saxophone 

Blue Mitchell, trumpet 

Walter Bishop Jr., piano 

Paul Chambers, double-bass 

Art Taylor, drums

The Radicalism Of King Is Buried By Those Who Control His Words

THE REPUBLICAN-FASCIST use of Martin Luther King jr. has been aided and abetted by those who have kept his words behind a rigid pay-wall, something that I've criticized for a long time.   In the absence of the real Reverend Martin Luther King jr. a white-supremacy friendly puppet using one and only one quote from his most over-played speech to bury what was a far more complete and complex and important figure.  There are a few instances where that pay-wall doesn't extend, things that were published, to which his children do not own the rights to it being said such as the interview Alex Haley conducted which was published in Playboy Magazine, of all places.  I assume that is why I found this refutation of the Republican-fascist, white-supremacist friendly puppet online:

Alex Haley: "Do you feel it's fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group?"

 Martin Luther King jr. : "I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages--potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races."

In the few minutes I have between power outages - we're having a winter storm right now - I see that part of the same interview he noted that Poor-Whites were in the same boat as Black People, which has always been true.   The oligarchs and power elites have always used Black People and the racism promoted in the media and general culture to deprive both of their natural allies in seeking the common economic and social justice that all of them need.

I would say that another part of that was the myth that college was the answer to all that ailed both groups when it is and always will be the truth that most People won't go to college and get an education and that those who are deprived of not only a living wage BUT AN INCOME THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO HAVE A DECENT LIFE have a right to them no matter what their work or lack of work is.  The Reverend Martin Luther King jr.'s martyrdom came when he was working on behalf of economic justice for garbage collectors and other low-wage blue-collar workers.   And it's clear from what he said during that last campaign of his life that he knew he was about to die.  One of the greatest dangers to the white power elite is the fact that The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. died for the least among us, not the Hollywood picture of those who had been to college, were doctors and lawyers and had brilliant minds and characters not in need of redemption.  I think those words in that speech were not some of his greatest but some of the most uncharacteristic and problematic.  At best they don't move things on, at worst they are the tools of his enemies, something which might be better known if his words were not silenced now in a way that his enemies could only dream of, rarely carved in stone instead of engraved on the hearts and minds of living People to inform their deeds and beliefs.

 

I Think Pope Francis Needs A Pet In His Life

I LIKE POPE FRANCIS who has been so much better a pastor and moral figure than his pastorally disastrous immediate predecessors,  a Pope who has tried to implement the non-centralized view of the Catholic Church that JPII and Benedict XVI thwarted as they sought to centralize power in the Vatican and the hierarchy staffed with their hand-picked hacks and sycophants.  

I especially like the Encyclicals of Francis, especially Laudato Si which, if we have a future, may be the most important document ever issued by any Pope in the history of the papacy.  And Fratelli Tutti

But I profoundly disagree with parts of what he said about people who have pets who don't have children.  For a man who never married and who, presumably, has no children and who, likewise, administers a bureaucracy where married parents have little to no position or say, I don't think Francis was speaking out of his experience gained expertise on the topic. 

In one way it reminds me of an old friend of mine who died last year, my last direct link to anyone with a remembered experience from before WWII, who used to assert that People who cared about their pets didn't care about People, that pets used up all their concern.  My experience of pet owners is the opposite, I think people who care about animals are MORE LIKELY to care about People as well.  I think People who are indifferent to animals are more likely to be indifferent to People, too. 

I liked this article chiding Pope Francis on the issues of those who have animals as friends, suggesting that he might benefit from taking an animal into his home.  You're never too old to learn.   One of the things cited to back up what the author of the article says would be familiar to Francis. 

 One of the great insights of his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si' is that the natural world exists as an end in itself, a source of delight to its creator. It is in extending ourselves to care for the nonhuman other — yes, even dogs and cats! — that we enact a care for creation that celebrates the creator. "Each organism, as a creature of God, is good and admirable in itself," Francis wrote, and for some of us it is easier to start to come to that spiritual awareness with the nonhuman companions with whom we share hearth and home.

It is ironic that the first, perhaps only Pope to take the name and example of the great Saint Francis to have made such a wrong step on the topic of caring for animals.  He made the statement at a general audience on January 5th, I don't know if it was part of a planned statement or if it was a spontaneous thought that went through his head and out of his mouth.  I suspect it was unplanned and I would bet that if he had a chance to either take it back or to make a more nuanced statement he would have said it better and no such article would be needed.  I hope he makes friends with a cat or dog or some other animal soon, I think he needs a friend like that.  I've learned a lot from both species, as well as the others I've lived with.   People have a lot to learn about morality and fidelity from dogs, our moral superiors in almost every way.  Those I live with taught me more about both than at least three of the Popes of my lifetime.

An Answer To A Complaint That I Said The Struggle For Civil Rights Has Lost Everything Through An IllConsidered Compact With Modernism

FIFTY YEARS after the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s and 70s, I think it's telling that the predominant prescribed role of women in literature, in movies, on TV, online, in popular culture and not in a little of the garbage that is considered science is as sex objects.   The decay of second-wave feminism in the face of the porn-industry financed "sex positive feminist" accommodation of the use of women as sex objects is typical of 20th and 21st century secular modernism.  

When an ideological framing insists that people are merely rather complex physical objects of no transcendent character that surpasses the banality of material causation, there isn't anything else for them to be.  That is an issue that dominant straight, white, affluent people, especially males can comfortably ignore but it is something that anyone who is not of the dominant and comfortable class constantly has to deal with.  If they get suckered out of a belief in their own AND OTHER PEOPLES' transcendent character, not of their value but of their rightful dignity and self-determination, their right to be treated with respect and dignity and decency by the predominant culture and its media, there's no one who's going to help them.

All subjugated people have to get past scientistic, atheistic, materialistic modernism or they will never get out of where it has gotten us this far into the catastrophic experiment with it that began in the early 20th century.  

One of the major defects in our thinking is the inability of English speakers to distinguish between linguistically similar terms that are entirely different in their motives and endpoints.  "Civil liberties" of the kind that enables the Republican-fascism and corporate oligarchic reversion to old lines of racism, sexism, etc. have nothing to do with the civil rights agitation, the progress of which is dying in the total-war that the civil liberties industry and the Supreme Court under Roberts Republican-fascist domination are waging against it.  

The ACLU is one of the primary engines that gave that war some of its most dangerous and potent fuel in words that are on the mouths of neo-facists and neo-Nazis and Republican-fasicsts today.  They were champions of the modernism that led us to where we are now.   Our side should have been a lot more careful about making common cause with the materialists because they have cost us everything.

McCoy Tyner Quartet - Moment's Notice

 

Direct link to video  

McCoy Tyner - piano
Bobby Hutcherson - vibes
Charnett Moffett - bass
Eric Harland - drums

Coda

SOREN KIERKEGAARD famously said: 

If someone lives in the midst of Christianity and enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of God, the house of the true God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting upon the image of an idol - where, then, is there more truth?  The one prays in truth to God although he is worshiping an idol the other prays in untruth to the true God and therefore in truth worshiping an idol.

The answer God gave Moses when he asked what he was to tell the People, the Children of Israel which god sent him to liberate them, that he was to tell them that "I Am" sent him, that God was I Am might be the most satisfactory and accurate identification of "the true idea of God" that there could be.  The Hebrew tradition, when you think about it deeply and without denominational glasses never fails to impress.

It is certainly related to the commandment against the making of graven images of God, even the pious abbreviation of the Hebrew name of God going to far in that direction for safety.

No matter what we do as soon as we settle on a human conception of God we are failing in the way Kierkegaard warned about.  

That's as much of an answer as I can give to your objection to that point.  Living in a largely media mythical evangelical "Christian" mono-culture America or a Roman Catholic one wouldn't do much to give us a God susceptible to academic methods, scientific ones are, by plan and design, incapable of dealing with God. 

The "Christian" America was only as Christian as it put the economic justice and social justice teachings of Jesus into practice and some of the greatest proponents of that have been non-Christians, Jews, Native Americans, Muslims, etc.  Christianity as an appendage of secular republicanism and secular democracy is more likely to miss that.  You get entirely closer in the doing of it than in the talking about it or proclaiming about it or believing about it.  I don't agree with the "faith alone" stuff, I agree with the Epistle of James on that.  As I said, Jesus said his Kingdom was not of this world, it's only present in so far as God's will is done and it's not going to be one by anyone but us creatures.   Anything else isn't something we have a say in.

Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra - Four Or Five Times 1928

Direct link to video 

Jimmie Noone,clarinet.
Joe Poston,alto sax.
Earl Hines,piano.
Buddy Scot,banjo.
Johnny Wells,drums.

It's nice to be reminded what a good piano player Earl Hines was.   He was the only person from this era of jazz I got to hear in person,  when he was very old. 

I've always loved Jimmie Noone's playing and his singing.  Some people in so-called "jazz criticism" slammed his playing but he was admired by Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Maurice Ravel and he played with people like Earl Hines so who cares what John Hammond and his ilk said?   Criticism is artistic vampirism.

Noon Whine

I'LL WARN YOU, that adult-ed writing course I took last year is being offered again.  I've signed up for it.  Only if he assigns that stupid football story this time mine's going to be about how sports builds bad character.  

I got into a brawl over why anyone would figure Hulk Hogan or anyone who comes out of that industry would expect him to be anything other than a big-mouthed, ignorant, superstitious, neo-fascist ass because sports builds that far more often than not.  If he assigned a golfing story it would probably be even worse, from what I've read golfers are even worse than soap-opera wrestlers.  

Update:  I should have finished the thought, hearing recordings of the deranged musings of Herschel Walker, it's sad what football does to the brains of its players.  It reminds me of Paul Robeson's son being convinced that his father's dementia was caused by a government conspiracy against a man who, by then, had long ceased to be of any political effect in the United States when his college football playing was a far more likely reason for it.  The adulation of football doesn't only cause cognitive decline in the players but in everyone who focuses on it with a cheesy soft-focus lens and sentimental amber light.

Krysten Sinema Is A Champion Of Segregation And White Supremacy With A "D" After Her Name

I HADN'T SEEN the video of white-supremacist Krysten Sinema as she lied her friggin' head off in her anti-voting-rights speech last night so I didn't know that the allegedly former-Green, widely touted to be if not an atheist then a "non-theist" win for the anti-religion side Senator was wearing what looked to me not only like a cross on a chain around her neck but maybe even a crucifix?   I've gone looking for a closer view of her and couldn't see it.  Does this mean that as the lying, hypocritical, groovy-gal, thumbs-down on the worker-is-worthy-of-his-wage Senator has got religion as part of her ever changing, ever shifting shifty and always calculated identity?  Or is it just part of her current theatrical costuming?   She certainly hasn't shown any indication that she's gained a devotion to the teachings of Jesus so, as it generally is when someone shows they're wearing a cross like that, it's for show.

My conclusion at having watched her is that she is and always has been an amoral, self-seeking grifter who is far more interested in meeting with millionaires and billionaires to get money for her campaign fund, and, by the crooked laws of the land, herself than she is in anything she has purported to stand for.  The truth as can be heard in her 2010 season act of opposing the filibuster and contrasting that to that disgusting, dishonest speech of yesterday in which she claimed to have not been that person is the piece of crap stands for nothing except her own attention-getting gain. 

Arizona Democrats got duped by a con-artist, especially those on the left who probably thought it was groovy to have an ex-Green, pseudo-lefty, atheist as their Senator.  There are other con-artists in that vile body but she has got to take the cake among those sitting with a "D" after their names now.  

I called her speech an anti-voting rights speech and her a white-supremacist because she joins the long list of segregationist, white supremacists of the past who thwarted every civil-rights bill that was ever brought up in the past.  The results of what someone does is what they really mean, not the lying words that they say as a fig leaf covering their shame.  Only I doubt the racist piece of shit is capable of shame.