About what I should be posting.
In the meantime, one cartoonist’s view of the Rapture. Hmmm, maybe I should convert.
(Social) Media Shabbat
I’m concentrating on what I’m trying not to think about for the next 25 hours.
- Don’t think about Neil Gorsuch, and how a 5-4 vote sent a man in Arkansas to lethal injection, part of the state’s planned Execution Fest.
- Don’t think about how Berkeley is playing into the hands of right-wing whack jobs by saying that Ann Coulter couldn’t speak there safely. Kudos to the Young
Assholes Sycophants Smarmy ArmyRepublicans for picking provocateurs instead of someone who would actually put together a cohesive argument for conservative policies. We now know that you don’t need to be middle-aged and embittered in to subscribe to the Fuck You School of Political Thought. - Don’t think about Marine Le Pen, and how the terrorist attack on the Champs Elysee might help her get elected.
- Don’t think about the Great Barrier Reef.
Alas, I’m marching for science tomorrow with BABAM (Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians), so I’ll have to think about the Handbasket Express at least a little bit. I’ll be there with bells on, literally (Ich spiele glocken).
He is Arisen.
And nothing says it like creepy bunny baked goods.
Shavuah Tov. Impeach Drumpf.
Back to the workaday world.
Just a few links about our ever-crumbling separation of Church and State. And I do mean Church, because it ain’t gonna be synagogues, mosques, or temples.
This from the Washington Post on repealing of the ‘Johnson Amendment, ‘ which would allow tax-exempt houses of worship to become mouthpieces for politicians.
And this from New York Magazine on the devout Christian physician
who travels the South performing abortions for women who need them, which he feels is a moral obligation.
(Social) Media Shabbat
I imagine that your mind is probably shattering at the moment, too. There are too many mental balls to juggle, and they are flying all over the place and getting dropped. Some of them have explosives in them, others are just paint balls, and others are just trite metaphors getting overworked on an unread blog.
That can only mean one thing: It’s time for our weekly break!
I’ll leave you with this thought: It’s my former wife’s weekend with the kids. They don’t hang out with me, y’know, being teenagers and all, but that sensation when I get back from dropping them at school, their presence still palpable (the humidity upstairs from the shower, the smell of whatever it is that my daughter put in her hair, the mug that I used to heat the milk for the hot chocolate my son drinks in the car), it is overwhelming and poignant, it fades all too fast.
And in other good news, it’s baseball season!!
(Social) Media Shabbat
Friday night dinner, scattered and smothered. See ya tomorrow night with a whole new set of complaints. On second thought, they’ll probably just be new iterations of old ones . 
The Story of Noah
…and Noah built a big boat, because his neighbors had boats, and he wanted a bigger one. Not to mention his wife was a crazy animal lady, always taking in more strays, even though everything they owned smelled like cat pee.
And his sons were pranksters. They put holes in everyone else’s boats.
It started to rain, and all the animals went to Noah’s boat. Anything that didn’t get on the boat, including people, was eaten by a big black cat, which is why, to this day, people are scared of black cats.
When Is It Time to Fight, and When Is It Time to Realize That You’ve Lost?
As a Jew taking the long view of history, I have come to the conclusion that it’s not wise to fight for something that can’t be saved. Fight where you can, but retreat and regroup when you’ve been outflanked. If my great-grandparents had gotten the notion in their heads that it was only a matter of time and people fighting for doing the right thing, they would have stayed in Europe, and they would have been killed. They would have lost. Forever. There’s a dignity and nobility in a Last Stand, but making a last stand where you don’t need to is pointless suicide.
I’m not saying that there is a danger of a Holocaust here. I’m not saying that the problems now single out Jews. However, the lesson of history is that sometimes things don’t get better. Sometimes they do, but it takes lifetimes and generations. But sometimes, it never happens. Civilizations fall. Societies crumble, and nothing worth living in springs from the ashes. Things go to hell and never come back.
One ray of hope is that Drumpf’s demographic skews older. One old fart funeral at a time, our country is probably getting better. I look at my kids in our and see how much more tolerant and accepting they are than we were at that age. This change is slow and it’s incremental, but it is positive.
But there are plenty of signs that we’re sunk.
There is still the conversion and indoctrination of the young to the selfish and jingoistic mindset of tRump, especially those who are seduced by the idea of American Exceptionalism. (Who wouldn’t want to be exceptional, especially if to be exceptional requires merely the luck to have been born in the right place at the right time?) We are far too militaristic, especially in a country where so few people serve. The pious sanctimony surrounding our armed forces prevents any useful discussion of how they should be used. We are far too religious. Religion as a double-edged sword that too often gets sharpened on only one side. We have denigrated science and research to the point where other countries will equal us and surpass us in the ability to do cutting edge innovation and investigation. This is a race where you can’t make up for lost time. The changes to our environment–caused by those who still subscribe to the antiquated idea that the highest and best good is determined solely by ascertaingin that which brings in the most money–have launched us down a dangerous road, and we can only slow that movement, not turn it back. We have large parts of the population who believe that gun ownership, not debate, not reason, not commitment to each other, is the most important foundation of a society. The USA is not the Last Best Hope of the World. We can be a leader in the way forward, but not without a commitment to see where we’ve gone off course. Currently, those in power do not have that commitment.
Today, a Pseudonym-ed Commenter Told Me to ‘Go to Hell’
The comment was in response to my last post, where I said that #45 had bugged the phones of anyone who ever tweeted ‘#notmypresident’, and then snidely remarked that there is no way anyone can disprove it. It’s the laziest and most obnoxious form of argument in the world (that was my point), because it’s impossible to disprove a negative.
The post was in response to #45’s completely unsupportable and absurd tweet that Trump Tower was bugged by the Obama administration. The tweet appears to be more a child’s lashing out than a well-founded accusation based on evidence.
Someone on WordPress found the post, and told me, simply, to go to hell.
I have to admit I was, and am still disturbed by this. A total stranger, someone who knows neither me nor my friends and family, wishes me dead, ostensibly for having a strong opinion that he or she doesn’t like. Hardly anybody reads this third-rate blog. It serves mostly as what I think of as my Walt Whitman space, but far less eloquent, poorly reasoned, and if it were on paper it would be guilty of the old insult, “not worth the paper it’s printed on.” (Let it be said in its favor, it does have bad pictures to go with it.) Yet someone found it, and then was so incensed by what I wrote that s/he wants me to not only die , but suffer in eternity as well.
I didn’t approve the comment for publication under the post for the simple reason that there are plenty of places on the internets where people can hurl invective at each other; it’s not my responsibility to provide more.
But I do have to admit: I am disturbed by this and wonder what the something is that’s happening here.
To the person who expressed the nasty sentiment: I have little doubt that I am–at least according to the criteria listed by many of the world’s residents–going there immediately upon my demise.
Mass(achusetts) Hypocrisy
I live in the progressive paradise of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There are great things about living here, like a great educational system, quaint New England villages that get covered with amazing fall foliage, and zero-deductible windshield replacement with your car insurance.
There are some things that are incongruous, though. We just recently got rid of blue laws. Some of the most racist public actions in recent history were the Southie anti-busing protests of 40 years ago. We have low unemployment, but close to the worst income disparity in the nation.
Driving home from taking the younger one to middle to school, I saw this on the car in front of me.
Point 1: Since when is it OK for the state to promote partisan political and religious views on official material?
It’s been around for 7 years already, so I guess the answer is since 2010. Let it be said in favor of the Commonwealth’s residents that I have driven around for this period without encountering this license plate. Either there aren’t a lot of these plates on cars, or I’m too busy texting while I drive.
Point 2: The statement “Choose Life” is being co-opted and misused whenever it refers to abortion.
The phrase “choose life” comes from Deuteronomy 30:19. The Torah here is talking about the consequences of not living a life according to its laws. It reads:
This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses [that I have warned] you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live;
If someone really believed in “choosing life” as specified by the Bible, that person would be keeping the Jewish dietary laws (say ‘goodbye!’ to lobstah and chowdah), observing the Jewish Sabbath, putting mezuzot on the doorways of their houses, and not mixing wool with linen.
I’m not expecting a massive rush to buy a second set of dishes by everyone who is anti-choice. It’s bad enough that the quote is a misuse of religion. But, hey, speech is free. Say what you want. The real problem with the license plate is not that it the people using the “Choose Life” phrase are being ignorant (willfully or otherwise); it’s that it just doesn’t belong on a form of vehicle identification that is supplied by the state. It should go.
The Meta-Bug 