Pseudo Shaming, Self Righteously

THE ESSAY "Hiding Racism In a Glass House" seems to have engendered some degree of controversy. The controversy derives from a single allegation: that this website allegedly used the Martin Luther King holiday, his approximate birthday, to attack Donald Trump and to attack conservative ideology, and that there is something shameful about this. Actually, this website used the occasion to attack racism, particularly the widespread hatred of King among conservatives when King was alive and the blatant racism displayed by Donald Trump throughout his life. What better occasion to attack racism than on King's day of commemoration? In point of fact, this website vigorously criticizes both Trump and the conservative movement in general nearly daily, and hardly needs to take advantage of any particular occasion to do so, and therefore does not. This website is perfectly willing to criticize Trump and conservatism in general on anyone's birthday, indiscriminately. Arguably, it was Trump himself who took full advantage of the King holiday to perform a gesture of admiration of King; anyone who wishes to may honor Dr. King on any day of the year. The article here was about racism, Trump, and conservatism, not King. It could further be argued that the United States of America, and by extension everyone in it, takes advantage of King's birthday; for a three day weekend. Rarely does the King holiday actually fall on King's true birthday, January 16, or something, and then, only by sheer chance. Heaven forbid that we should celebrate King annually on his actual birthday, which every year falls on a different day of the week, often in the middle of the week or on weekends, thus forcing us to forego our three consecutive days off work. Methinks those who protest any "shameful exploitation" of King's holiday doth protest too much, by protesting at all, and it has a hollow ring of self righteous, feigned outrage. One particularly prideful complainer pointed out that he can name several conservative who in fact respect King, and for that he presumably deserves the congratulations he seems to seek for his ability, to quote Jefferson in another context, to extract diamonds from a pile of dung. Doubtless there are many conservatives, even millions of conservatives, somewhere, who respect and cherish King's memory today. While King was alive, there were not, and all hatred of King, then and now, derives from within the conservative community, which enjoys considerable membership. as does racism generally, which was the actual point made in the previous essay. Goethe said that nobody is sufficiently fortunate to escape either praise or blame. Martin Luther King was blamed and hated far too much while he was alive, and has been praised far too lavishly since his tragic, premature death, like Abraham Lincoln, like many people. Such is human nature. King, like millions of other good people, embraced and stood bravely for a just and noble cause, the cause of human dignity and equality. It is that cause which we should celebrate and commemorate, not any particular individual. In the spirit of that noble cause, let us replace Martin Luther King Day with "Racial Equality and Justice Day". It is possible that King would agree. He was a humble man, not given to feigned, self righteous praising, blaming, nor complaining.

Smiling Too Closely

THE PHOTOGRAPH HAS BECOME, and presumably shall long remain, what we often refer to as "iconic" in the vernacular of the day. It went "viral", in the vernacular of today. Two gentlemen, evident strangers, standing uncomfortably close to one another, one an elderly gentleman in native American attire, the other, a young gentleman, a teenager, with an almost stereotypically modern American appearance, handsome, seemingly intelligent, alert, wearing a facial expression which on the surface is a warm smile, yet with something implied, something beneath the surface, an expression not of warm, friendly acceptance, but rather, a smirk of derisive condescension, the dismissive smile of contempt, with which everyone is familiar. We've all seen that smirking smile on the faces of prize fighters as they stand toe to toe, much too close to each other, in the center of the ring, just before trying to kill each other in mortal pugilistic combat. The two gentlemen were too close to each other, for strangers, well within each other's personal space, "too close for comfort", as the cliché goes. The older gentleman gives the impression of determination to not be interrupted at his task, to ignore the other man, or to proceed with his activity as if not at all troubled. His activity, his purpose was to present for public viewing a sacred native American ancient ritual, in celebration of his cultural heritage. What was the young gentleman's purpose? Why was he there? Which of the two approached the other, and got inappropriately close? Amid all the emerging controversy concerning camera angles and points of view, there seems to be no disagreement that in fact the native American man and his colleagues did not approach anyone, but merely occupied their own space in displaying their ceremony. The young man, and his high school colleagues, approached the elder - and got uncomfortably close, as if forcing his attention on the Indian banging on his drum. The young man at no point attempted to introduce himself properly, courteously, nor did he extend his hand in an offer of handshaking friendship, not did he evidently attempt to engage the old man in friendly conversation. Apparently, he just stood, close, and stared, derisively, as the iconic photo indicates. His defenders claim that he really "didn't do anything", or "say anything". Arguably, walking up to a perfect stranger and "getting in his face", as we like to say, meets the criteria for "doing something". That he didn't say anything is the problem; proper courtesy requires that when approaching another person, words be spoken, a hand extended in friendship. There is universal agreement that the young must show proper respect for their elders at all times. The young man, and his family, insist he has nothing to apologize for. The media is reminding us that the situation was far more complicated, and involved more people doing more things, than is shown in a single photograph. That may be true, but perhaps irrelevant to the issue of common courtesy. Regardless, the young man and his friends had from the beginning the option of not approaching the native American group, but instead remaining at a safe and respectful distance, and, as we like to say, "minding their own business". With regard to apologies, for an honorable gentleman, young or old, to acknowledge his own discourtesy and to express regret for it is never inappropriate, under any circumstances.

Insuring and Saving Football, Socialistically

FOOTBALL, AMERICAN STYLE has changed considerably over the past fifty years. Linemen have put on about a hundred pounds, skill position players run the length of the football field about half a second faster, and blocking and tackling have been replaced by what is now generically called "hitting". Bigger, stronger, faster players, responding to the cultural imperative to "hit hard' has produced predictable results, which were not predicted; many more injuries, including injuries which cause permanent damage, particularly to the brain. In the eerily days of hard helmets, when dense plastic replaced leather, players continued to tackle with their heads up and out of the way. No longer. Now, the helmet is a weapon, and even with the increase in penalties for leading with the helmet, the practice continues, largely unabated. And all these debilitating injuries are taking football in a dangerous direction; towards extinction. The ordinary component allowing football, an inherently dangerous sport, to exist is the very component which makes all risk taking acceptable, the component which makes us all yawn but without which an aggressively over achieving risk taking culture would not be possible; insurance. The diminution of risk through the process by which a risk taker may pay for the privilege of assigning risk to another entity, which in turn redistributes the risk across large segments of society, is the very essence of the principle in any society in which risk taking is unavoidable to achieve economic advancement and general material progress. Football leagues and teams from pee wee to the National Football League are underwritten by insurance policies, without which sponsors and owners would never even bother to get close to the game, risking their investment money. In recent years, at all levels of competition, as the injuries have piled up, insurance pay outs have risen dramatically; the most famous example being a one billion dollar settlement by the NFL to cover the costs of care of permanently brain damaged retired players. In the United States, insurance companies write insurance policies at their own risk, at their own discretion, always and only after a thorough and comprehensive study of the likelihood of securing a profit by so doing. Nobody forces insurance companies into, or out of business, and nobody law forces them to write any particular kind of insurance. and now, the unthinkable is happening; insurance companies are taking their football and going home. All across the fruited plain, insurance providers are getting out of the game, and if the trend continues there will be but one option, an option which might, in desperation, be demanded by tens of millions of avid football fans unwilling to witness the death of their beloved gladiatorial games; government football insurance. it may comedown to exactly that. if private capitalistic, profit seeking insurance companies abandon football entirely, what other option will there be, other than the extinction of the game as we know it?

Hiding From Racism In a Glass House

PRESIDENT TRUMP and Vice President Pence paid a very brief visit to the Martin Luther King memorial today - that nice image of King standing tall, looking dignified, carved into a huge slab or rock - without notifying anyone about it in advance, and it was not on their announced schedule. Why the secrecy? Perhaps, and this is just speculation, because they were fearful that if their little charade were announced in advance, a mob of African-Americans and liberals would be waiting for them, and greet them with a howling chorus of hooting, roaring, derisive laughter, possibly accompanied by chants of "lock him up!". Normally, the appropriate response to this visit from Trump detractors would be to give credit where credit is due, and to applaud the president's gesture of racial reconciliation. So, why the cynicism in response here? For good reason. For the very good reason that the visit was quite and very obviously nothing but a show, a stunt intended to allow the president to say: "see, I am not the racist I am reputed to be by the left". Well, sorry, Donnie, but a few minutes of time in a limo, coupled with a few hackneyed remarks just doesn't cut it, doesn't erase a lifetime of often cleverly disguised yet very obvious pattern of racist words and behavior. Fifty years ago, racists were out in the open, proud of their racism. Social pressure, stimulated by legislation making overt racism essentially illegal, and especially the hard work and sacrifice of Martin Luther King and people like him, have served not to end racism, but only to drive it underground. Now, the racists are ashamed of their racism, and afraid to flaunt it. That's the only difference. The racism itself, demonstrably, is still very much alive and well in these United States of America. The president mentioned that although we still have a long way to go towards achieving racial equality (he should know, he's the expert), we have made great progress, and we must never let the dream of Dr. King die. Normally, these rods would be respected even if they are a bit cliched, but in this case, not so. It was easy to overcome racism in 1973, when trump, in his late twenties, found clever ways to exclude people of color from his father's rental properties, was charged with racial discrimination twice, and paid for it with a financial penalty. Oh, yes, the Trumps even then were righteously outraged and filed a counter suit against the Department of Justice, but that little ploy was summarily laughed of of court. Then too, there are the Trump casinos, where the very mention that Donald might drop by was sufficient for casino managers to order black employees off the floor, and into the back room, out of sight. Then, of course, the black workers at various Trump businesses, few in number, largely ignored, relegated to low status in the company. A whole host of former Trump managers will quickly attest to the blatantly racist remarks Trump consistently made in private; that's what racists do, they make racist comments, consistently, over a long period of time. And make no mistake; Trump is no former racist, no reformed racist. His racism is alive and well, thank you. More recently, Trump was fearful that he might not receive justice in one of his many lawsuits in a court with a Mexican judge. He tried to ban Muslims from the country, knowing full well that they are no more terrorists than klansmen, failed to condemn racism at white supremacist rallies inspired by him, and expressed a preference for Norwegian immigrants. And, for the piece de resistance, who among us can ever forget that eight year crusade upon which Trump embarked in utter hatred and futility, proclaiming unto all the world that Barack Hussein, forty fourth president of the United States of America, was not a legitimate president, due to the fact that hew was born, not in Hawaii, but rather, in Africa. Nothing to do with racism, you say> horse manure. it had everything to do with racism, as Trump has everything to do with racism, making his audacious appearance at King's memorial a sham, and a shame. For more strong evidence, there are a number of websites devoted to listing Donald Trump's words and actions, over a period of decades, that no one other than a racist would ever say or do. The pattern is clear, and has been made even more clear since he began running for the presidency - Donald Trump is a racist, and a quick visit to the MOK memorial simply cannot cover up the obvious.

Rooting Against Jackie Robinson

WHEN I WAS A CHILD in the nineteen sixties, I was a junior news junkie, and preferred Huntley-Brinkley, although Walter Cronkite was a good option. Every night, year in, year out, 1964-1970, we watched the Viet Nam War on fuzzy black and white TV, like a deranged soap opera, and once a week we were given the body count. Usually the totals were roughly a couple hundred dead Americans each week, maybe a thousand dead South Vietnamese, and about two thousand dead North Vietnamese. I recall thinking that at that rate, we might be able to run out the clock, and kill them all, or so many of them that they ran out of soldiers, before they killed all of us. The casualties were presented on the screen, like a scoreboard, so I turned it into one. Why not? Only in 1968 did it begin to occur to me that the "enemy" would never run out of soldiers, but that we Americans would run out of patience, because after the war news came the anti-war protest news. All across America, on college campuses and in cities, the left wing hippies were unpatriotically protesting the Viet Nam war, and gaining momentum. Then came the race riots on the nightly news, and racial injustice protests on camera. American cities were being burned to the ground, as the African-Americans living in slums had finally, after nearly four hundred years of subjugation, lost patience with progress. Watching Martin Luther King walking through the streets with his fellow peaceful racial injustice protestors, being harassed and hounded by right wing white racist civilians and cops with police dogs and fire hoses was the most peaceful part of the news. I grew up in an explosive, volatile country, assuming that it was normal, and would always be the same way. In essence, I was correct. I rooted for the war protestors, and the African-American rioters, and for MLK, but only secretly, in the closet, almost like being gay, because I was surrounded by a patriotic, conservative family and circle of friends, who thought the war protestors were anti-American traitors, the negro rioters criminals, and Dr. King and his followers trouble making ingrates. The pattern was obvious: those who protested the war, and rioted in the streets, and walked with MLK were left wing, radical, outcasts, fighting for change, and those who hated them were conservative, patriotic, establishment, love it or leave it Americans, and their number included my parents, my sister, and most of my friends. Now, of course, in 2019, our right wing fellow Americans acknowledge the King holiday, and generally seem to accept that the war in Viet Nam was a huge mistake, if not an actual crime committed by the USA. Imagine that, conservatives, admiring King, or at least allowing liberals to do so without insulting them. Now all the old protesting hippies and blacks are either old or dead, but they were right then, and they are right now. History moves from right to left, from tradition to progress, from established culture to change. My father, who hated blacks, Indians, Germans, Japanese, Texans, and heaven only know who else, used to watch major league baseball with my mother in St. Louis, in the nineteen fifties, Cardinals versus Dodgers. In racist St. Louis, all the blacks sat together way out in the outfield bleachers, and they rooted for Jackie Robinson, but otherwise, for the cardinals. Daddy said he booed Jackie, like all the lilly white Cardinal fans, but not because of his skin color, but because he played for the Dodgers. To this day, I don't entirely believe that.

Waiting For Jesus and Tornadoes

ONTO THE COMPUTER SCREENS of millions of suspecting Facebook users flashed the prescient post: "The weatherman tells us that a storm is coming, and everybody panics. The preacher tells us that Jesus is coming and nobody cares". Stipulated is that people who post pithy profundities consider themselves to be the purveyors of percipience of the most profound sort. My response was: Based on two thousand years of waiting for the fulfillment of prophecy, based on the statement of Jesus himself that he would return within the lifetimes of hos followers, with all due respect to Biblical prophecy, the prediction of an approaching storm seems not only much more certain and reliable, but also much more immediately relevant to the near future well being and survival of many people". When one considers how drastically weather forecasting has improved over the last half century, primarily due to orbiting satellites and computer projections and sustained studies of weather and climate over long periods of time, including accurate record keeping, when the local weatherman says a storm is coming, a storm is most definitely coming, and there is every reason to panic, notwithstanding the fact that it does no good to panic, but rather, to take cover, immediately. Meteorologists never tell us a storm is coming unless one is coming. the modern science of meteorology has become nearly infallible. In fact, it is arguable that within the next century the human species will attain the ability to not only predict the weather, but to control it. In a sense, it already does precisely that, but only be accident, and only with disastrous consequences. Jesus, for all his beauty, truth, and wisdom was, according to the bible, quite mistaken about his return to earth, unless of course he has already made his return, anonymously, quietly. he indicated tat he would do the opposite; not with an olive branch, but with an avenging word. Charlatans and prophets of doom have, since the time of Jesus, been predicting the end of the world, the return of Christ, and, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century , it has become fashionable to predict the imminent 'rapture' of the saved into heaven. For this give at least partial credit to the minister William Miller, who made this prediction for October, 1843, then again for 1844, after the event failed to manifest the first time. All over American people, having sold everything they owned, stood on hilltops, waiting, in the autumn of 1843. they did the same thing in 1844, as the great rapture of the second great awakening of American religious fervor faded to own up to expectations. Miller and the Millerites, like all purveyors of prophecy, faded into history, quietly, without further proclamations concerning the future, to their credit. Invariably, those who believe in Biblical prophecy claim that all Biblical prophecy comes tur, has come true, and will come true. As proof of this they offer tangled, convoluted words and twisted reasoning, combined with vague bits of scripture taken entirely out of context. No examples of prophecy, from the Bible to Nostradamus, can verifiably be demonstrated to have eventuated. Jesus has not returned, contrary to his own promise, and we await as always. In the meantime, when your local weatherman predicts a storm, your best bet is to head for the storm shelter.

Having A Knife In a Gunfight: Taking Arms Against A Sea of Troubles

IN 2002, I, like multiple millions of middle aged turn of the century dial up America Online addicts, met people in what were then called "chatrooms", and ended up forming digital cyber 'friendships:, and getting dates. I got smart early: any woman who wanted to go to the expense and trouble to fly halfway across the country to visit me, fine. feel free. knock yourself out. I wasn't going anywhere. I was damned if I was going to leave my beautiful hundred and twenty pound German Shepherd for even a few days, spend big money, hop on a plane, and fly off into the sunset to meet some woman I had only seen in pictures on a computer screen, which, for all K knew, might be twenty years old, or might be of Miss America nineteen sixty three. I reckon maybe half a dozen ladies showed up at my doorstep. Flattering, to a point, but the awkwardness outweighed the romance. People are people; we tend not to be comfortable when thrust into intimate circumstances with essential strangers. One time I hit the jackpot. A wealthy married lady whimsically sent me a plane ticket to Hollywood Beach Florida and arranged for a hotel room for me, alone, when I got there. All this because I had made some off hand remark about never having been to Florida, and kinda wanting to go, sometime. I walked into the hotel, up to the check in desk, still having not actually seen the ocean, so I asked the desk lady about it. She looked at me like I was crazy, which I might well have been, and thrust her thumb backwards over her shoulder. Out back, through that door right behind me, can't miss it. May I take a quick peek? Again, the you're crazy look. Sure, sir. Sure enough, there it was, in all its curved, endless, swaying glory. The water line wasn't more, I swear, than twenty feet from the hotel's back door. Build 'em close, pack 'em in, no worries. Over the ensuing years, what with sea level rise and all, I have often wondered how close the ocean is to that check out desk now. Getting closer, inching up, beyond doubt. I hear that now it floods every day in Miami Beach, that the ocean inundates the sewer system, that teenagers float on surfboards above coastal highways. Miami, Florida has somebody they call a "resiliency officer", currently a nice looking middle aged lady with a determined demeanor and a college degree of some sort. This office was created in 2008, a good, solid seeming civic response to impending doom, and is perhaps the answer to all our problems, but maybe not. She has her work cut out for her, or, a better metaphor, washing up towards her. All over the world, humanity is beginning to awaken to the fact that half the world's population will, within a few decades, be underwater; either that, or somewhat removed from its current pretentious position perched upon the sandy beach. Florida, a slender finer of land, a few miles wide, jutting down into the vastly outsized Caribbean, that sort of thing. the Norfolk naval base, gone, inland. Washington D.C., pumping like mad, losing ground, becoming an ocean. Since the United States government and the Florida state government currently prefer to pretend that there is no such thing as climate change, place like Miami Florida have to deal with it, ALONG WITH THE REST OF US. Somebody has to do something about these Chinese left wing hoaxes, after all. Miami, and apparently other cities around the world all plan to do the same damned thing: build elevated roads and highways, pump water like crazy, build sea walls, since walls are back in style, pray, and move back a bit. Move everything back, a bit. As if climate change and rising sea level is an inconvenient problem which can be remedied by an appropriations bill and some civil engineering. We still don't get it, do we?

Being Proud

ON FACEBOOK APPEARED THE POST: "I'm proud to be an American, proud to be a "Christian", and I'll bet everybody is scared to share this". (quotation marks placed by the author of the post). In the comment section, I responded: "I am grateful to be an American, and to have a good life, content with my religiosity, but I avoid pride, because pride is a deadly sin, and can lead to arrogance." I was happy with my comment, but probably not as proud as the proud American-Christian. Verily, pride is among the seven deadly sins, for good reason, although the seven deadly sins I would describe as "personality traits to be avoided or mitigated, as they can lead to harm." Patriotism, said Goethe, corrupts history. So it does, when it motivates large numbers of citizens to behave aggressively in nationalistic fervor, led by demagogues who stoke the passions of patriotic sycophants for their own diabolical interests. A healthier approach might be to love one's country, to appreciate what is offers one, but to not allow pride to blind one to the need and opportunity for national and personal improvement. To be proud of one's religion seems a bit more inexplicable, unless one associates one's religious beliefs with membership in good standing in a discrete, organized group or institution. We might do well to remember that all religious sentiment resides within the mind, and association within a large powerful group is not being religious, it is merely being in an organization of people with certain religious beliefs in common. When a person decides to embrace certain religious beliefs, then becomes a member of a church with similar beliefs, pride seems misplaced; isn't "pride" usually best associated with accomplishment, achievement, or endurance of great difficulty? When one merely chooses a religious belief, then seeks the company of others with similar beliefs, precisely what does one take pride in, other than fundamental mental and social exertion of the most common kind? The most puzzling part of the post is the assertion that people are likely to be "scared" to share the post. Scared of what? Reactions from other people? Oh, come now. To be an American, and to be a Christian is to be associated with two of the largest, most powerful organization sin the world, indeed in human history. Isn't that sufficient peer support to make any fear of exposure nonexistent? The person who posted this comment must think his or her fellow Americans and Christians to be extremely timid, cowardly, even paranoid. By definition, proud people do not tend to be afraid to reveal their source of pride. Rather, they tend to be all too eager to show and share it. Why would anyone be "scared" to reveal pride in American citizenship and membership in the Christian church when surrounded by American citizens and Christians? To people who post such shallow, simplistic platitudes, questions of this nature are beyond comprehension, and therefore irrelevant, and might even be construed as an act of aggression rather than mere disagreement. To find fear, they might be better served to look within.

Trump Being Trump, Being Petty

NANCY PELOSI TRIED to get the president off the hook. By merely suggesting that he postpone the annual state of the union speech until such time, if ever there is such a time, as the entire federal government is back up and running, open for business, and nearly one million hard working American government employees are no longer struggling to feed their families and survive. It certainly sounds like a reasonable proposal, at least on the surface, and indeed it is, with a little deep digging. The purpose of the state of the union report, which can be either spoken or written or both, is to inform the nation of its current state of health. With twenty five percent of the federal government inoperative, that state is obviously not good, and the president would have, will have to portray a rather negative picture. It is, however, a picture which could change in a heartbeat with a little compromise, reopening the government, restoring the country to wholeness, so to speak, and providing the president the opportunity to wax glowingly. Instead, he will doubtless use the occasion to spread blame like a shotgun scattering pellets, aimed mostly at Democrats. However, polls indicate that we the people aint buying it, and won't buy it, particularly when we hear it from the pursed lips of the great prevaricator. Polls consistently indicate that we the American people largely blame Trump, not congress, not the Democrats, for the currently unfortunate of affairs. Try to do Trump a favor, nd what does he do? obviously oblivious to his own impending humiliation, thinking he can turn any situation to his advantage, which he certainly cannot, Trump took Pelosi's kind offer as an attack, or some sort of slight, and promptly cancelled her planned trip abroad, even as she and her congressional delegation were heading towards the tarmac. In response to a mere suggestion intended to help the president, the president reacts by torpedoing a foreign policy initiative, a good will tour by members of congress. This, my fellow Americans, is about as petty, spiteful, vindictive, and down right low as it gets, even in Washington, even by American standards. In all fairness to the president, Pelosi and the rest of the congressional delegation are perfectly free to travel abroad - on their own dime. Even the president can't prevent that without good cause legal recourse. Only, they can't use government lanes, and travel at government expense, as they had planned, says the gangster if chief, as Mr. Trump and all other presidents routinely do. Pure spiteful pettiness. The president seems to be doing his dead level best to impersonate a fourth grader impersonating a mob boss, and doing it credibly well. Trump's approval rating, always historically low, has lately been tanking, largely because we the American people blame him for the government shutdown. This is appropriate, since Trump took full credit for it, before he didn't. Aside from that, it may be that the constant cascade of blatant, outrageous lies emanating from the White House, and Trump's persistent pattern of childishly vicious behavior is beginning to wear a bit thin among independent swing voters, as most Americans are. More significantly, there has been, according to recent polls, an erosion of support from among his base, consisting mostly of white males with not much education, and evangelical Christians. This should be especially alarming for the president, because if these two groups of people are starting to see the light, the rest of us are awash in illumination.

Knowing History

ALTHOUGH YOU MIGHT NEVER know it from reading the essays on this website, my favorite class in high school, and the one which benefitted me the most over my life, was typing. Without learning how to type, college, grad school, and my subsequent career would have been nearly impossible. In graduate school, my favorite class was "historiography", the study of how history is written, how information is gathered and research done. The historians themselves are also studied, as graduate students in history examine the lives, motivations, and experiences of many of the great historians throughout history, learning how we have managed to accumulate the vast treasure trove of history knowledge that we have, limited, ultimately, though it is. As much history as we have and know, we would love to have and know more, trust me. One of my favorite words within the historical profession refers to my least favorite kind of history: "hagiography". This term originally referred to biographies of Catholic saints, or any ecclesiastical person, and was almost always written from a respectful, even venerating point of view. How else would one treat the life of a saint? Over the centuries, the word "hagiography" has evolved in its meaning, as have nearly all words, and is now often used to refer to any history, whether a biography, national history, or history of a group of people or a certain period of time, which is written from a perspective of admiration, with total and complete respect and veneration for the subject matter. In most cases, the respect and veneration accorded the subject matter by the author is considered excessive, inappropriate, or entirely misplaced, and critics are always ready and able to clearly delineate the reasons why the subject matter should be treated with far less respect. Thus the term "hagiographic" has taken on a negative denotation. Some of the most hagiographic history ever written has appeared in American history textbooks, and forced down the throats of public school students, for centuries, ever wince the advent of these United States. American history hagiography has been so blatantly dishonest - and that's what true hagiography boils down to, distortion, dishonesty - that in recent years a movement has been gaining momentum to dispense with the blatant lies and exaggerations of America's greatness, and just tell the truth, which in the case of American history, is often not only not pretty, but downright ugly, if not vicious and cruel. The rejection of hagiographic American history has predictably aroused the ire of many a patriotic conservative, to whom the glorified but innacurate account of American history is far preferable, and far more comforting. When I was in school, in the sixties and seventies, the extermination of millions of native Americans was glossed over, and described as "westward expansion", and "the conquest of the wilderness". slavery was almost altogether ignored as a mere sideshow, an inconvenience, a small aberration if even that. Every nation on Earth wants to believe the best about itself, and wants to teach its children to believe in national greatness. The problem with this attitude is,, history becomes nothing but patriotism, and historical writing nothing but hagiography. Finally, in our age in which information is available as never before, and all poorly written history can be challenged by any historian, we are starting to understand that there is no substitute for truth, that fake history can always be weeded out and discredited, and that it therefore serves no lasting purpose to hide our own historical ugliness from ourselves. Painful as this process of honest awareness can be, in the long run, its worth the effort, as truth is always worth the effort.

The Christian Right, Sticking With Trump

CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES, especially white evangelical conservative Christians, were overwhelmingly responsible for electing Donald J. Trump, and remain his largest and most loyal support base, amazingly. Amazingly, because for all intents, purposes, appearances and reasons, this would be the least likely demographic to support someone like Trump, considering who someone like Trump really is, does, and stands for, and considering what evangelical Christians supposedly believe and stand for. For that reason alone, among many others, this is my least favorite demographic, personally. An amazingly high percentage of the Christian right voted for Trump, and still support him, which became especially interesting after release of the Access Hollywood tape, about which the Christin right ostensibly gives not a fig. The subordination of women, misogyny inherent in Christian tradition are possible partial explanations. People are who conservative and religious were raised to blindly follow authority, rather than question it. Trump supporters must at some point find a way to deal with his constant pathologically outrageous lies, and they seem to have done so very effectively; by ignoring them, or at least pretending to. This makes summoning the moral courage to reconsider support of Trump, and to reconsider what the teachings of Jesus are, and whether they are compatible with supporting Trump, a difficult undertaking requiring detailed self examination, unnecessary. There is little if any evidence that the Christian right is abandoning Trump, in the face of his decidedly unchristian behavior. They seem determined to sink or swim with their choice, a choice which appears poised to come back and bite them, as the Trump presidency begins to fall apart under the weight of lies, corruption, scandal, investigations, and unpopularity. With regard to the Christian right demographic, its most outstanding characteristic is its age; a high percentage of evangelical conservatives is over fifty, and in their sixties or seventies, and among the younger generations, there is no sign of any sizeable support for extreme politically right wing Christian faith. With each successive generation, membership in this demographic is less. The Christian right is aging out, fading away. In the election of 2020, Trump's base will have shrunk, possibly too much to reelect him, and by 2024 the Christian conservative community will be considerably smaller as the baby boomers begin to die off, and the millennials and their children, much less religious and more progressive, move into positions of social leadership. the bad news is that, for the time being, we are stuck not only with Trump, his craziness, and his insane policies, but that we are also still stuck with the strange, twisted, confused, contradictory demographic which elected him. The good news is that this is inevitably going to change, and the sooner the better.

Going Overboard In Biology

ALMOST ANYTHING can happen in a high school science classroom, especially chemistry and biology, with physics not lagging far behind. Personally, I most fondly remember the match stick fights in chemistry; you can flip a match off the box, lighting it, then a split second later sending it flying across the room to start a fire wherever it may happen to land. One nightmarish day in 1972 a buddy of mine fired one straight at a beautiful, sophisticated girl with long thick hair; you guess it; the flaming match landed right in the thick of her hair, and a blaze commenced so quickly that it could have killed her, but for the fast acting quick hands of a couple of nearby students, who smothered the flame in their hands, preventing any real damage., miraculously. She could have lost her hair, her face, or her life. I remember how bad the culprit, a good friend of mine, felt about it, but bad enough, but bad. He was most apologetic to the girl, who was, all things considered, remarkably forgiving. I took biology junior year, willing to dissect a frog, but not advanced biology senior year, unwilling to dissect a cat. I recall the moral dilemma, and solving it through scheduling. I still have the same dilemma today, and would not dissect a cat. At some point, I realize, somebody has to dissect something. A few weeks ago a high school teacher caused a national and even international uproar by feeding a live puppy to a snapping turtle, in the classroom. The episode went "viral", as we say in our science fiction world on 2019, and the PETA came out in force. If memory serves, the teacher either lost his job, or was subjected to intense scrutiny and review, before defending his action on the bases that the puppy was terminally ill, and would not have lived long in any event. if memory serves, that salient fact saved his career. I'm not sure it should have. In what way did the advantages of learning outweigh the vicious barbarity of this behavior? Nobody learned anything; the students, since whey were in high school, already knew that animals eat other animals. A terminally ill animal deserves the mercy and decency of dying a quick, painless death, does it not> isn't that as important a lesson as any to learn in high school science? the is a moral component to scientific research, whether or not we want to or have the courage to teach it in high school science classes. I would have been shocked and appalled at this, when I was in high school, and I'm sure some of the students were. Science education seems to be inadequate in the United States in general; most American's know shockingly little about science, and misunderstand what they know. Belief in fundamental scientific facts like evolution and climate change is depressingly low in America, as Americans are fond of choosing for themselves what to believe and what ro reject, as if all beliefs are created equal, as if they have a reasonable choice in the matter. Those with the least formal education in the sciences are the most stridently, forcefully certain that evolution and global warming are fake news, invented by nefarious liberals. the least educated always seem to have the strongest opinions, particularly wrong ones. We may never get to people to respect facts until we get them to respect science itself, and the miracle science focuses much of its study on; life itself.

Talking About Climate change

CLIMATE CHANGE is the most often written about topic on this website, and why shouldn't it be? Is anything more important? Is any topic as important? Compared to climate change, are there even topics anywhere near being as profoundly, immediately, desperately important? If anything is as important or more important than climate change, its news to me. Climate changes is the fact of life, the future of the world. It effects everybody, and its here now, damaging our civilization seriously, and getting worse by the year. So why not talk about it, right? For me, its gotten to the point where I really don't want to talk about much else, particularly in face to face, in person, real time conversations, where, as they say, the rubber meets the road. The one thing I've noticed, no matter where I go, no matter to whom I try to broach the topic, is that people don't seem to want to talk about it. Especially the less formally educated. In general, the more formally educated the individual, the greater the willingness to discuss climate change. At least, that's my perception, and there seem indeed to be more progressives among the formally educated, and progressives generally seem more willing to discuss the matter. But, overall, there's just not very much interest in it. As if why bother, there's nothing I can do about it anyway, so why bother, because when we're talking about climate change we're not talking about me, and I want to talk about me, me, me, a self absorbed American. Conversely, among the completely informally uneducated, and particularly among the devout fundamentalist Christian conservative types, interest in the topic is near zero. In fact, you can't even begin to engage in a conversation about climate change without these people bringing the lord into the conversation, as in, the lord is coming back soon anyway, so what does it matter? The lord is coming soon, so what does it matter. That's the attitude which puzzles me the most. Aside from the obvious fact that the uber devout, including Jesus himself, have been predicting the lord's imminent return for nigh on to two thousands years, and that it hasn't happened yet, and shows no signs of happening, despite all the humorous attempts to conflate current events with omens of lordly approach. Aside from this inconvenient truth, what, one might ask, does the alleged soon to occur return of the lord have to do with climate change? Rather than assume that the lord, upon his return, will either fix the problem or render it irrelevant by rapturing the righteous into heaven and consigning the unrighteous to eternal torment, why not clean up the planet in honor of the most important guest ever to visit it, like a good house cleaning before receiving good company? Then, there are the semi educated folks who never took high school chemistry, which is all that is required to understand the essential facts behind the scientific fact of man made climate change, who try, nonetheless, to use their knowledge of nature to disavow human responsibility. Even the evangelicals, for whom the Earth tends to be quite young, try to offer the oft heard argument that "the climate is always changing anyway", as if that obvious fact has anything to do with human influence on the environment through mass carbon pollution, as if nature's eternal flux somehow prohibits or mitigates human destruction. Well, maybe it hopeless. Maybe your average citizen will never become interested in discussing the fate of the world they live on. But, lord willing, we will become interested in doing something about it, no matter what the lord's plans are otherwise.

Spreading Fake News

NEW RESEARCH indicates that older people are more likely to spread fake news than younger people, Republicans spread more fake news than Democrats, and conservatives invent, disseminate and embrace fake news more than liberals. I'm not making this up, this is from an actual survey, of the sort which are usually pretty accurate. More research is undoubtedly in the works. We need to prove or disprove this survey, beyond any doubt, and find the reasons why it reveals whatever it does. If older people do indeed spread more fake news than the young, maybe its because they're better at it, have more access to media, and have more axes to grind. Fake news is simply one form of telling lies, for which we know definitely that we humans are hard wired. We are compelled by evolutionary imperative, and impelled by inherent nature, to behave deceptively. I will allow as I have heard many a whopper from the right. Do any of these sound familiar? Obama is a Muslim. Obama was born in Africa, not Hawaii. Yes, you've heard those two famous pieces of fake news, from the far Obama hating right. During the entire Obama administration, Donald Trump was repeatedly telling this outright lie, as loudly, to as many people as possible. Not long after becoming president, hew quietly admitted it wasn't true. I know people who spread the rumor that Michelle Obama was a transgender, and had adopted her two daughters. Crazy as that sounds, crazy as that is, it spread quite well among conservatives, and you could just see them undergoing their usual carnival of mental contortions, trying to find ways of believing it. Many succeeded, incredibly. Conservatives often accuse liberals of being socialists, and of deliberately keeping as many people as possible poor, to get more democratic voters, and to expand the government. That idea is, of course, absolutely crazy, but in the world of conservative fake news, crazy sells. Some of the more standard lefty wing accusations against conservative Republicans is that they are greedy, that they are hypocritical to support Trump, because Trump's behavior reveals him to be non Christian, and that they want to deregulate government environmental and economic control because they want the freedom to get richer, and that the Trump corporate tax cut was a give away for the wealthy, and did nothing to help the poor. More recently, of course, the left is circulating the meme that President Trump conspired with the Russians, that he is a criminal, that he should be impeached for being unfit to serve. If this is all fake news, these accusations from the left, fine, so be it. But are they really fake? Spreading fake news is simply lying, whether accidently or not. The telling of an untrue tale. Of the examples above, what stands out is that far right fake news is ludicrous on its face, while the left wing variety has a certain plausibility to it. Trump may or may not be guilty of working with the Russians to get elected. Time will tell. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that economic policies enacted by the wealthy are intended to serve the interests of the wealthy. But we know Obama was not born in Kenya, and we have always known it, so why bother arguing about it? You'd have to ask some extreme right wing nut case.

Creating Crises, Solving Crises

PRESIDENT TRUMP, feigning concern and alarm after the fashion of all petty tyrants, keeps claiming that a crises exists on America's southern border. There is, but not the one Trump claims, which is a vicious lie, a deliberate fabrication. Trump should know, because he fabricated it as an excuse for turning the United States into an even more hostile nation, separating and damaging desperate families merely for seeking asylum from poverty, violence, and certain death, abusing innocent people like some petty dictator with jack booted thugs.. American border policy under Trump is nothing other than criminal, entirely designed by Trump with the advice of his most right wing, racist, war mongering sycophants. This policy uses the false pretense that our border is under siege from a horde of dangerous, criminal, violent gangsters, intent on harming America, and who will, soon, unless Trump's great wall is erected. In reality, the real crises is our (American/Trump's) treatment of a few thousand hungry, terrified, desperate mothers and children. The situation on America's southern border at this very moment is not fundamentally any different, any better or worse, than it has ever been, and it always been, for the most part, bad. Trump ha and is making it much worse, rapidly. The solution is obvious, and everyone knows it, but everyone is afraid to say it. Its three parts; economic, military, and political. First, help Mexico much, using American money and investment. Make it fair for Mexico, and leave the profit in Mexico, instead of sucking it all back into the U.S., and billionaire's pockets. Then, position the American military, that's right, the American military on the border, to defend it. If necessary, amend the law to make it legal. It won't cost anything, because it will merely be a matter relocating existing military units, already paid for. This idea should please conservatives. if it doesn't, nothing will, considering how devoted our conservative American comrades are to the military, and its effective and successful deployment. For that purpose, a two thousand mile ten foot chain link fence should suffice, merely to clearly and cleanly delineate the exact border. And please remember, a military can be a friendly, welcoming force as well as an ass kicking fighting force. with the military on the border, in meaningful numbers, able to keep constant surveillance on every inch of the border twenty four seven, with ease, any policy towards Mexico that American wants to enact can be enacted..Thirdly, enact a policy, making sure that it a good one, understanding that a good policy is one which is extremely friendly to Mexico, its government and people, and helpful to those who approach the border wishing to interact in some fashion with America. Its a win win situation. Prosperity for Mexico will inevitably benefit and make its way to the United States. A reasonable, equal distribution of wealth throughout the North American economic zone will benefit everyone. But by all means, we the American people sure as hell don't need to be spending billions of dollars, or even one dollar, on some Trumped up, massive, monolithic, ineffective, steel and concrete symbolic monstrosity of a wall. A simple chain link fence and some folks to focus on it is far better. Nicer, and easier to defend.