Too much base

 

Personal comments

            I’m going to share here that I have regular readers of my blog numbering in the dozens and that’s on a good day. Since I have been unable to figure out how to enable comments I haven’t had to worry about trolls (thug wannabes). BTW I have checked with the help boards and I am doing all the correct settings to no avail in regards to enabling comments.

            What I have noticed on the comments posted to other people that I follow is the level of outright threats made in addition to all the name calling. I follow both conservative and liberal posts, Conservatives without a doubt own the low ground when it comes to threats, intimidations, thuggishness and all around ugliness. The same holds true with email that I have received over the years when I circulated in conservative circles. During the Obama years the amount of outright racist email that I received was phenomenal.

            So, why am I sharing this now? Whenever I mention Putin Russia shows up in my tracking statistics. (Probably a bot.) I’m too small potatoes to mess with. My following isn’t big enough and my writing isn’t strong enough.

             And yes foreign governments are active and involved in our country with China and Russia both being very active—especially when Trump was in office.

            I waver when it comes to doing things that will boost my readership. Why invite the ugliness of the world in? This is especially true as we observe daily the purges the Republican Party enacts against anyone that speaks out against glorious leader and his policies of hate.

            Given the seriousness of what’s going on in the world though I will probably continue to ‘write out’ from my little corner of the internet.

            Now on to a hodge-podge of comments.

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Grab bag

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Bullseye

            There is an article from The Atlantic titled “The Bad Guys Are Winning” by Anne Applebaum. The piece is probably behind a paywall so the link won’t do much good. It’s an excellent article. Here’s the link just in case. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/ It’s a well-researched, well-thought-out half hour read.

            The gist of the article is about authoritarians being on the rise worldwide and that it isn’t by accident. Men like Putin, Lukashenko, Xi, Maduro, Erdogan, Un, Burmese Junta, MBS, Santos, Akhundzada, Bolsonaro, Khamenei, and so on. The list would be waaaayyy too long for my purposes. I didn’t bother listing their country by their name. Keep in mind that these men are just the tip of the iceberg. They are supported by a cabal of wealthy, make that ultra-wealthy, elite. They “govern” through fear, intimidation and acting upon their threats by those that benefit through their association with them.

Ex-President Trump seeks to join this crowd.

~~~

Fascism

            Before WW2 there was a pro-Nazi movement within the continental United States. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/americans-hold-nazi-rally-in-madison-square-garden

They’re back.

~~~

SAP PAC!

            Know what SAP stands for? It’s Trump’s PAC. It stands for Save America PAC. It’s a profit center started by Trump to funnel SAP money into his pockets. His family as well but mostly his.  Trump supporters have a wonderful opportunity to be SAP donors.

Can’t make this stuff up.

~~~

Defeat from the jaws of Victory

            It’s kind of amazing really. Democrats manage to do this on a regular basis. Replace a megalomaniac narcissistic wannabe dictator that staged a coup with a good decent honorable man and then fight amongst themselves gaining all the negative press that they can right before critical elections and take a drubbing at the polls.

            President Biden managed to tank his favorability rating after saving countless lives through his handling of the pandemic and get negative ratings for his handling of the pandemic at the same time while Republicans do everything within their power to make the pandemic worse.

Impressive.

~~~

Practice test

            Remember in school when we would be given a practice test to help us prepare for the real test? The current pandemic (with its relatively low mortality rate) was like the practice test, except that there were, are, and will continue to be real world consequences. It’s a test that has cost us 770,000 lives so far and we still have a ways to go. We could hit 800,000 by the end of the year. The real test will be a really bad pandemic with a high mortality rate.

We have already learned some things though:

            Vaccines work.

            Masks work.

            Social distancing works.

            Ivermectin doesn’t work.

            Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work.

            Drinking bleach doesn’t work.

            Ignorance knows no bounds.

We failed this test.

~~~

Hail Mary Vaccine

            I watched a video of an ER nurse saying that she wasn’t going to take the vaccine because she felt that it was rushed too fast. She said that after witnessing deaths from Covid 19 firsthand.

            One of the reasons if not the main reason that so many vaccines were developed so quickly is that the corona virus was already well known and studied. Several breakthrough technologies have been developed over the years that made rapid development of effective vaccines possible.

Science.

            It also helps that a couple of billion vaccine doses have been administered with adverse reactions kept to 4 decimal points. Not unusual results for a vaccine. We were fortunate to have enough months available for vaccines to be tested in target populations. This wasn’t fortunate for all those that died while waiting for the trials to finish.

            These weren’t ‘Hail Mary’ vaccines. Such a vaccine is what would be necessary for a virus moving through a population so quickly affecting everyone exposed and that acted fast enough to kill people within hours. The kind of virus that has people dropping dead in the streets. A virus that didn’t leave enough time for testing other than in a lab. A virus that violates non-existent constitutional rights.

A species-ending virus.

~~~

Christian Sharia

            Remember when the Evangelical Party and Republicans went around states warning that Muslims were going to impose sharia law here in the United States? Just Google “Republican Sharia Opposition” and go trippin’ back to 2011. It was a totally made up threat but that didn’t stop their base from going totally off their nut about it. Republican leaders went on stages across the country declaring their opposition to sharia law being implemented in our great nation.

            Now ex-convict pardoned by Trump General Flynn has come out and said the quiet part out loud. He said that our nation needs one religion. This is what the Evangelical Party and Republicans have been saying all along. When they say they want prayer in school they mean Christian prayer. When they say “One nation under God” they mean a Christian god. They want a faux theocracy governed by a dictator. Then they can throw abortion seeking women in jail and try those that have had abortions for murder.

             Will they fulfill the desires of their black hearts?

They’re close. Very close. Too close.

~~~

The Beast

 

The Beast is awake now

For everyone

                                    to see

It sees itself as well

And admires what it isn’t

It preens.

It attracts,

it is.

 

The Beast is hungry

~~~

To the movies

            When my wife is gone I like to watch shoot ‘em ups. According to that little disclaimer that proceeds a movie before it’s watched making a copy if caught by the FBI is punishable with up to 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine. Seditionists attempting a coup by storming the Capitol and trying to overturn the election have been given zero time and a $500 fine. Good thing that they didn’t try to illegally copy any movies while they were in there.

They’d really be in trouble then.

~~~

Reap what they sew

            I watched a video of Senator Lindsey Graham addressing a crowd of supporters where he told them that he had got a vaccine and said that they should think about getting one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i12qBRhtwEI  Hoo boy! For what it’s worth Trump got booed at his own rally for suggesting that people vaccinate.

            These people believe the conspiracy theories that they have been fed by the Republican and Evangelical Parties for the last couple of decades. They do NOT operate in the real world. They believe that they have the constitutional right to endanger and kill others in the name of liberty. They revel in their ignorance. They threaten just like they have been taught. They want to overthrow our democracy for not being in their anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-Muslim, anti-brown people anti-science, anti-government image.

            Elected officials and leaders of the Republican Party play to this base. These people appreciate the name calling thuggery. It’s why so many conservatives don’t talk about getting vaccinated willingly. They are in the minority of their party. This is why they don’t voice negative opinions about Trump or what he does. They don’t want to alienate HIS base. The Republican Party suffers from…

…too much base.

Book Review: Unclobber by Colby Martin

 

Coming out.

            Colby Martin presents insightful ways to deal with what are commonly called the “clobber” passages in the bible. He does this in the even numbered chapters of the book. In the odd numbered chapters he tells of his personal struggles in life because of his changing alignment in getting his real life to reflect his spiritual journey. He shares the personal costs and trials that his coming out of the closet theologically brought to his family and friends. It’s thought provoking and challenging but one doesn’t need to be an academic to understand what he’s saying.

             If you’re a hard core member of the Evangelical Party or your mind is already made up about LGBTQIA+ people and you aren’t about to be dissuaded this book isn’t for you. It’ll just make you mad. I made it a point to read critiques from a number of conservative reviews and they were what I expected. One day I hope that they will surprise me and deal with the world from a position of Love rather than punishment and hate.

I won’t hold my breath.

Short list.

            And what are those clobber passages? Here’s a list of those verses for folks that like lists and bullet points. (I know I do!)

• Genesis 19:1-38
• Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13
• Romans 1:26-27
• 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
• 1 Timothy 1:9-10

            It seems like if homosexuality is such a big deal, there should be more verses than that on the subject out of the over 31,000 verses that are in the bible but there you are. If you throw in marriage there would be more, but Colby Martin deals just with the issue of homosexuality in the bible.

            I have read other papers dealing with the clobber passages and they weren’t nearly as easy to read as the analyses presented in this book. Not only were they easy to read but they made sense. If your mind is open on the subject this is an excellent book to read. If nothing else seeds will be planted that things aren’t quite as cut and dried as some would have us believe. After all we’re dealing with interpretations of text from an ancient language.

It’s all Greek to me.

Book Review of I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year

Happy yet sad

            My position is that I’m happy yet sad that I read their wonderful book. It’s a well-written journalistic collaboration by a couple of well-credentialed authors from the Washington Post.

            I would like to say that I enjoyed reading this book but the subject matter makes that impossible. Since the history of President Trump’s last year is known this book isn’t a page turner. We know how it came out. The book covers what was taking place in the real world of his administration.

            At 592 pages the book also isn’t a quick read especially if you read at my retired person pace. Not to worry though, footnotes start at page 529 so you only have to read 528 pages unless you’re really into footnotes.

            The authors do a fantastic job of taking the everyday chaos of the Trump Administration at any given point in time of his last year in office and provide an accurate and clear narrative of the conversations and related events that were taking place behind the scenes of the headlines at the time. That’s a mouthful of sentence to say that they did a good job of making sense of it all. Not an easy task. There were a lot of moving parts around any given event.

            There really aren’t any heroes in this book. General Milley probably comes the closest but he was just doing his job. One point that really stands out is how much of a character television is in the book, mainly due to how often conversations with Trump were either gatherings around a TV or responding to something on TV. That may be another sign of the times.

            That’s probably enough for a book review.

I’m glad I read it.

 “I laughed. I cried. It became a part of me.” (Selma Diamond)

            We came real close to losing our democracy. Reading this book just made me sad about how people at the highest level of our government conducted themselves on a daily basis.

            My additional takeaways will be what I learned or had reinforced after reading the book. The bar for looking good in dealing with Trump was very low. The man likes to be applauded when he enters a room. No kidding. I’ve read this in other places as well.

            The bar for being known for doing the right thing for the country in regards to stopping him from committing some disreputable or heinous act was also incredible low. As in there was a guy who would play soothing background music when they knew that Trump was getting too worked up. Unfortunately he wasn’t around all of the time. The years the sycophants around him spent enabling him really can’t be undone by an act or two of conscience and/or fear.

            General Milley stands out as being a man of honorable intentions around a host of duplicitous dishonorable men and women whose personal integrity was nonexistent that spent their time telling their Emperor what he wanted to hear. Abandoning ship when it’s sinking is prudent NOT heroic.

Sad.

The round flat earth evolves

 And your point

            The earth could be round and still be flat so round earth doesn’t quite get us there.

            Up until about 500 years ago the church taught that the earth was flat.  Galileo (from 1564 to 1642) was condemned for deviating from that concept during the inquisition. There are quite a few scriptures that were used to support the flat earth position. Just for fun I’ll list a few, then we’ll move on to the firmament.

• After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Revelation 7:1 (ESV)
• He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. Psalm 104:5 (NIV)
• The tree grew and became strong; Its height reached to the heavens, And it could be seen to the ends of all the earth. Daniel 4:11 (NKJV)
  

            The firmament is where it really gets interesting. Firmament scriptures are also used by Flat Earthers as supporting their ideas.

• And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Gen 1:6
• And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. Gen 1:7
• And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. Gen 1:8
• And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. Gen 1:20

            That’s not anywhere near all the scripture related to the flat earth or the firmament but you get the idea.

            Primitive people believed the earth was flat. Science changed the minds of the powers that be in the church at that time. Super conservative religious leaders responding to science. Hard to believe I know but there you are. This novel concept should be tried out by the Evangelical Party of today since they’re still struggling with science.

            The point is that strongly held beliefs changed as knowledge was gained. The bible was believed to have said one thing and then it was decided that the bible meant something else entirely.

            What’s the point of this? The point is:

Interpretation of the bible evolved.

Back to inerrancy

            Another major point of all of the above is that for hundreds of years people believed that the bible was inerrant and taught that everything in it was true. They were taught the world was flat. There are those today that believe that the errant bible for those before they were enlightened by science is once again inerrant. (That’s a complicated sentence but I think that it works.)

            In other words people that believed in the inerrancy of the bible were told that they were wrong to believe what they had been taught and that in fact the earth was not flat and the bible remained inerrant.

            THE EARTH IS FLAT! GOD SAID SO!

            Um, science says the earth is round and not the center of the universe.

            THE EARTH IS FLAT! KILL THE HERETIC! GOD SAYS SO!

            Saying its flat doesn’t stop the earth from being spheroid. Science says so.

            THE EARTH IS NOT FLAT! GOD SAYS SO!

            Once again the bible is considered inerrant by hardcore religious believers until the church decides otherwise. How about the rest of us don’t decide to wait for the Evangelical Party to let the bible evolve some more. That could take a couple more centuries. OR we could decide now that it’s wrong to use an ancient text to justify hate and dangerous activity they support and espouse.

Science was here before Jesus.

The world was never flat.

            Five hundred years before Jesus, Pythagoras figured out the world was round (Spherical). Regardless of what anyone thought or thinks the world is as it always was. That’s the truth of the world.

            The wealthy highly political Pharisees of the Evangelical Party that claim to be the arbiter of the bible’s meaning and have told us to support their idol of the material world and the power that they seek. Theirs is a static flat world of a bygone era that they would bring back along with pestilence and the rule of oppressive Kings.

            Getting back to my point concerning the bible. It is a book of which at least 50 different versions in English alone exist. Still, it’s a book. It’s a book about an idea. No more. No less. It isn’t anti-science; it’s a book made possible by the progress of science through the ages. It doesn’t say that the world is a few thousand years old. It says nothing about intelligent design. It isn’t anti-evolution. It isn’t a book that is against vaccines or LGBTQIA+ people. It isn’t a book against progress. It’s a book that says there is more than this and that love is the primary consideration. It’s a book about humanity. It’s a book about salvation through loving people. It’s a book that has the overriding commandment that above all else to Love God. Love people.

That’s the bible.