One of the more argued aspects surrounding the study of evil is the question of forgiveness, or even acceptance. Are there examples of evil deeds that warrant understanding in context (UIC)? It seems so. The state in which I live observed, for many years, a holiday honoring a traitor who abandoned an oath he took to protect the United States of America and, instead, elected to lead a vicious war against that country in an attempt to perpetuate the institution of slavery. If a UIC can cause us to condone the support of evil such as was employed against African Americans, what else is eligible for redemption?

What about a war against the most precious of innocents, our children?

Jacob Riis was a journalist, photographer, and social reformer during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In his classic work, How the Other Half Lives,[1] he called attention to the neglect of the poor in our country, particularly the child laborers. In his notes, he observed that child labor exists:

Wherever the street is the only playground of the children;

Wherever they are dragged into the police courts, when they ought to be at school,

There is the slum waiting to raise its head.

Wherever men sell their votes and their consciences, it is only just around the corner.

One child, under five years of age, when interviewed and asked how long he had been working, could only reply, “since I was.”

He concluded, in a famous passage, “How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?” An earlier philosopher, a follower of the same god, noted, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”[2]

Many take this as a UIC, as an admission that some forms of evil are so persistent as to justify neglect.

Others say, about an instance of evildoing, that “You just had to have been there.”

During the winter months, we often note the date of the execution of United States Army Private Eddie Slovik on January 31, 1945. He was the only American soldier executed for desertion, some say cowardice, during America’s involvement in World War Two. A month after Christmas, they led him to a lonely garden in France, placed him in front of a stone wall, in order to avoid stray bullets injuring someone, and fired 11 rounds of .30 caliber bullets into him from 12 M-1 Garand rifles. From accounts, he faced the ordeal with resolve, even bravery.

As with many, if not most things in our country, it remains a divisive issue. Some say it stands as an extreme case of cruelty, i.e. evil, to have chosen one of thousands of deserters as an example. They argue that he fit a handy profile, an admitted deserter with a former felony background, no children, and a lackluster military career. He, himself argued, “They’re not shooting me for deserting the United Stated Army—thousands of guys have done that. They’re shooting me for bread I stole when I was 12 years old.”

Others point out that Private Slovik was offered, on multiple occasions, clemency if he would return to his unit for duty. He refused. They also note that there was a feeling at the time among American soldiers that the war was almost over and it wasn’t a good time to die. Morale was lagging in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge in which a massive German counter-offensive threatened to send the war into another long period of horror for the entire world. The execution of one deserter, under clearly established military law and a fair trial, in order to instill resolve and discipline in others remains, in some minds a UIC.

The tricky point of UICs, some of which deserve detailed analysis, is that unethical forces can use their false cousins for evil purposes. The talents of Joseph Goebbels, and the efficacy of modern media sources, support the contention that a large segment of the public falls prey easily to constantly repeated entreaties by false prophets.

We need only ask the innocent victims of Baghdad, or January 6, 2021.

---

[1] Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August), 1849-1914. (1970). How the other half lives. New York :Garrett Press,

[2] Matthew 2611 NIV

 ROOTS

 Mentality Do those among us simply sit around and think up evil deeds to perform? It seems that way sometimes. Let’s look into the mental side of the problem.

The human genome includes all of the approximately three billion base pairs of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that make up the entire set of chromosomes of the human organism. It includes the coding regions of DNA, which encode all the genes (between 20,000 and 25,000) of the human organism, as well as the noncoding regions of DNA, which do not encode any genes.[i]

Researchers now know the entire sequence of the human genome. What we may never now is how the unimaginable number of connections, triggers, controllers, and inhibitors within a specific person operate. A minute transaction may control how we determine a sexual mate. Another minor transaction may determine our sense of gender. Another may control our ability to perform essential daily functions. Another may affect our inability to perform music, create art, understand mathematics, or billions of other mental and sensory results.

Could such a connection, or combination of connections, affect our sense of wrong and right? Perhaps. That is a question for more competent minds.

We may note, however, that we do generally accept the existence of persons who are pathologically prone to criminal or violent behavior. Many of these fall into one of two categories. They may be classified as a psychopath, generally considered to be born that way, or a sociopath, the product of one’s environment. In other words, one is, or learns to be, that way.

The DSM-5[ii] defines such antisocial personality as someone having three or more of the following traits:

·       Regularly breaks or flouts the law

·       Constantly lies and deceives others

·       Is impulsive and doesn’t plan ahead

·       Can be prone to fighting and aggressiveness

·       Has little regard for the safety of others

·       Irresponsible, can’t meet financial obligations

·       Doesn’t feel remorse or guilt

Psychopathy: Realizing the danger that generalizations represent, we note that not all psychopaths or sociopaths represent carriers of violent evil intent. Of the two, however, psychopathy ranks higher as a dangerous disorder because its representatives experience less guilt connected with one’s actions and a greater ability to disassociate from them.

A detailed discussion of these so-called anti-social disorders (ADPs) lies far beyond the scope of this modest effort at examining root causes of evil. Let us just say that some evil my flow from mental disorders that are sometimes difficult to spot, either in children or as adults.

In addition to being among those we listed in previous chapter as Supreme Catalysts, ones who conceive evil, persons listed as ADP are also likely to be what we call Takers of Advantage, or the ones who do the dirty work of evil intent. In this, many might be especially prone to propaganda or selective reinforcement. We can only conjecture as to the impact of hours spend, in an increasing state of agitation, watching or listening to propaganda spiced heavily with falsehood, inuendo, and blame.

One only needs to remember the effect of hate-radio upon the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which an estimated 800,000 were killed in a space of 100 days. Of a far lesser case of magnitude, but nonetheless disturbing to Americans, were the events of January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

It is crucial to understand the relationship between mental minefields and provocative catalysts.

---

[i] Fridovich-Keil, J. L. (2019, February 15). human genome. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/human-genome

[ii] DSM–5 is a book prepared by the American Psychiatric Association that contains standard classifications of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States.

 They were there, had we only looked: bigotry, prejudice, and racism, the monsters of our psyche, writhing and slobbering like a den of 1950s science fiction monsters.

 They were not dead, as we had hoped and dreamed. They were not even moribund. They were simply submerged, like Godzilla, or a giant spider, just waiting to be freed by a shock of super-seismic proportions. What would it take to release them upon an unsuspecting public?

 It took nothing more than the election of a president of the United States born of a white mother and African father, the very model of a modern African-American.

 That’s all it took. The “monsters from the id,” as they called them in the 1956 film, The Forbidden Planet, took control of the minds of otherwise decent people. Things changed overnight. Old friends began to greet you with, “How do you like our n****r president?” Hatemongers on the internet devised the acronym “SOS” to describe the elected leader of the United States of America. Photoshopped images of watermelon patches on the White House lawn appeared on social media. The man’s family members attracted descriptions as “gorillas” or worse. Sentiments and language that had been shoved to the bottom of our cultural sea and buried were fashionable again. Hate groups flourished and became more emboldened, as did hate media. A sense of shame settled over us.

 Campaigning against candidates of the Democratic Party in our state became simple. All one had to do was request it from East Coast PACs and they would deliver boatloads of brochures, simple ones with just a photo of their opponent facing a photo of President Obama. The stated message would be, “he/she is with him.” The hidden message would be “the n****rs are coming for your women and he/she is going to help them.”

 It worked like magic, even among citizens of our state who are alive today because of the Barack Obama’s efforts toward universal health care. The illogic of that could make a healthy person nauseated. Our state will suffer for decades.

 Now don’t get me wrong. I strongly support the rights of Americans to vote for the candidates of their choice. My only wish is that we would all vote for candidates on the basis of the principles of good government, as we see it, and not the principles of the KKK.

 Meanwhile, can’t we work toward eliminating the monster born of bigotry and racism? Unchallenged, it will destroy us as a unified nation as surely as a giant lizard could destroy a city. The Galilean’s admonition for us to “love one another” might be that best hope for us. As they used to say in the aforementioned films of the 1950s: “It just might work!”

 It becomes more obvious every day that such healing will not come from the highest offices of government. It must begin at the citizen level.

 I’ll try. That’s what I think on July 4, 2017.

Dark Waters

While rational people in America breath a sigh of relief, I’m struggling with this uneasy feeling. I fear that the next week may be the most dangerous for this country since the first half of April, 1861. We have a huge number of elected officials of the Trump Party, including three from our state, who have decided to abandon the oath they took to protect the Constitution of the United States of America and follow the whims of their leader. In past times, we would have considered this the bottom. I fear, though, that there is no bottom for the followers of this deluded megalomaniac. There is always a next step lower for this man. Will, “Boys get your guns,” be next? Four things give me hope, on an otherwise cloud-foreboding day.

1.     The “boys” he would be talking to are a group of overweight, marginally functional, cowardly, irresponsible nitwits who would end up shooting one another more frequently than they would others.

2.     We have a military composed of fine women and men who took the same oath I did and still, as I do, honor it. It is much easier to abandon that oath as a politician without scruples than as a warrior whose comrades, as well as their country, depend on shared honor and the duty for which it calls. They are there to protect us.

3.     There is what I call “The Thomas Beckett Syndrome” in which people, like Saul on the road to Damascus, or John Newton on the decks of a slave ship, turn from evil and embrace a better life.

4.     I don’t think the political party of Winthrop Rockefeller, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Theodore Roosevelt will continue to sink into this mire.

If I have given offense, I can’t apologize. It’s that oath I mentioned. One can’t take an oath to protect his country and then forebear standing up to those who have either never taken the oath, and thus disparage it, or, worse, have taken and abandoned it. If we disagree on the facts of governing a country, you are still my brothers and sisters. I still love you. We can talk. I’m just asking that we stop this dangerous foolishness. We can save our country if we hold fast.

Stranger Danger

Lots of comments on yesterday’s post. Seems a lot of people are getting tired of seeing posts to the effect that Dr. Fauci and Barack Obama have teamed up with a group in Iran to spread a false narrative about there being a virus in America.

Are people really that misguided?

Yes.

How does it happen? I read once that the reason we see images in clouds is that our brains are programmed to form images from visual data. Maybe it’s the same with other mental data. Are we programmed to form conspiracies, with a little urging from TV personalities, that satisfy some genetic trigger? They say we even have a trigger that warns us when we feel safe that danger may lurk behind any door or tree. That was probably helpful on the savanna where a creature that felt safe was most likely the next meal. Maybe if we could figure a way to keep people in permanent fear, we could control their behavior. Say we could generate a constant stream of made-up dangers. We might even present genuine concern over real danger as a danger itself.

Imagine Olog telling Snork to pay no attention to that lioness coming their way. “It’s just an image created by the Samboolie Tribe’s medicine man wanting us to give up this territory that the Turtle God gave us. Relax. All is well. Obey our leader. Stay put and fight. The Samboolies wait in ambush. To flee would pose great danger.”

Keep them scared of their neighbors and not the lioness. If only there were a way.

Anyway, it was nice to go ahead and pull the trigger yesterday. Sorry for the firearms imagery. I meant that I hit the “unfriend” button. This action occurred from a post by someone I guess I knew in high school. Mostly, this person posts religious homilies about loving the Savior sprinkled with memes suggesting that Dr. Fauci is at best a Muslim or worse and more likely a minion of The Dark One himself.

Anyway, the meme suggested that worldwide outrage had erupted because Hillary Clinton had called the armed thugs who have been invading state capitols “terrorists.” I prefer thugs myself, but in this case, I simply commented “What would you call them?” Then I hit the button.

Boy, did it feel good. I’m going to do it again today.

Brainstorming

Bill O’Reilly had the answer: "Many people who are dying . . . were on their last legs anyway," the disgraced former Fox host told Sean Hannity, himself pretty much as disgrace to the human race. They were discussing the Covid 19 crisis and how to sacrifice the elderly to allow their conservative friends to get back in action.

“Guess that’s one way of doing it,” said the gardener while watching two praying mantises making love.

Know what it reminds me of though? Way back in the 1980s, the countries of Iran and Iraq were locked in a bitter war. As an aside, if I remember correctly, the Reagan Administration was aiding and supporting both sides. It’s a wonder it didn’t make those folks hate us.

Anyway, finding heavy minefields between the opposing armies, the Iranians developed a model scheme. They told young kids and their parents that the youth would to straight to Paradise if they would only charge across “no man’s land” to clear paths for the attacking troops.

So we could let the elderly go. They require a lot of care and don’t offer much in return. Here’s one reason, among others, why I don’t like the idea. Click here.

One wonders whether if the virus was particularly deadly to the young, our country’s current leaders might think of a way to use the kids effectively, say by ordering the re-opening of the schools or beaches.

Oh wait …

Unleashing the Monster

Maybe we all need to pay closer attention to things. Oh, and maybe we need to calm down in the process. Donald Trump is playing us all “like a rusty squeezebox.” I say “us,” and I mean it, but the press in particular is falling for his ploy like kids chasing the Pied Piper. Myself, I don’t think he is saying these dreadfully bizarre things because he is dumb or crazy, be those as they may. I think he is saying them simply to make us angry, angry enough to hate whomever. It’s an old pro-wrestling trick, and we’re falling for it.

Angry people are malleable people. Ask the Germans. Ask the Rwandans. Ask the James Jonesians. Ask the Branch Davidians. Anger is a passion, not a calculated conclusion.

If Donald Trump can generate the passion, i.e. the anger, the Fox show, the meme generators, social media, and the Russian trolls can produce the objects for that passion. Leading up to the 2016 election, it was Hillary Clinton, the Obama Family, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic National Committee. You remember it. That’s the group that had the unmitigated audacity to prefer a member of the Democratic Party as its presidential nominee. That highly publicized predilection and the directed anger it produced convinced a group to sit out the normal processes of a free democracy. The results of that non-participation are apparent now, if we take the time to look beyond the daily news cycle.

It’s happening all over again. Work folks into a rabid frenzy and they’ll go anywhere you want them to. Targets change. Passions don’t. Prior to both World War One and World War Two, many parents were angry, and the object of that anger was the idea of their young sons being sent to die in a European War that seemed to them simply to be the latest production of a never-ending play. Young men directed their anger toward the draft and a military that would interrupt their jobs and dating schedules. Young women were angry that their lives would change for the worse.

It only took persuasive, but manipulative, politicians, a willing press, and (in the case of WW II) a few Frank Capra films to redirect that anger toward Germany. Then, due to an unmitigated act of stupidity (one that included one sovereign nation’s attacking another sovereign nation that had never done it harm, hmmm), that re-directed anger gained a dreadful and terrifying legitimacy. Justified? Of course it was, but justification doesn’t produce action. Ask our African-American brothers and sisters.

So, my fellow Americans. We don’t need to be angry. We need to be afraid. Very afraid. And we need to be aware, very aware. Most of all, we need to be resolved. Very resolved.

The Tragic Stretch

Sometimes I think of American decency as a rubber band. That is to say that once it is stretched to the limit, it may never go back to its original shape. And sometimes it might not go back to any recognizable shape.

At other, more positive times, I think of our more decent moral foundations as rocks along a wild seashore. Flood tides may cover them, but comes the ebb and they break the surface and stand again in all their strength and glory.

For example. It was my luck to have served in the United States Navy during the high tide of disdain for the military. Having lived through it, I figured, at the time, that it was a permanent trend. No, the tide receded following America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and a long period of respect has followed. Of course, feelings come easy when, for more than 99 percent of Americans, serving your country during war or peace is merely a vague and fuzzy abstraction. It is something that other people and other people’s children do for us.

The point is that our perspectives and attitudes seem to change with time, or do they? I think it was Thomas Hobbes who said, “Our passions don’t change. Only the objects of our passions change.” If this is true, does it mean that our passions are consistent, but guide us toward changing goals? That may have some kinship with the beliefs of William James, the so-called “Father of American psychology.” He was reported to have said, “We don’t sing because we’re happy. We’re happy because we sing.”

This makes me tend more toward the rubber-band theory of moral and ethical behavior. America, it seems to me, is governed at this time by a large group (actually a modest but consistent percentage) of political scoundrels led by a man without a shred of social decency, moral compassion, or ethical underpinnings. Has he stretched our sense of propriety to the point from which it may never return? I fear so.

In the 1950s and 1950s, we discriminated against minorities and women, blew up recruiting centers, assassinated our leaders, destroyed legally constituted political conventions, bombed countries that had never made a threatening gesture toward America, illegally sold arms to a country that had, and murdered college students, among other disdainful acts.

These seemed, in most cases, to have sparked some sense of moral outrage. That had begun to create positive change. Then a likeable old presidential contender chose to announce his candidacy in the southern city where four civil rights workers have been murdered by racist thugs. The message was tragically clear: “Hey, vote for me. I hate the same people you do.”

Out passions—our ugliest passions—perhaps did not change as much as they were legitimatized. We didn’t change immediately. But our moral high-water mark was the election of an African-American president. Passions that stank like rotten garbage rose like Sci Fi monsters of the Cold War films. That led us to the current situation.

Where is the moral outrage this time? It’s there. Those passions for morality, ethical behavior, compassion, peace, love, and harmony are there. It just seems that the power junta has figured out new methods of neutralizing our outrage. They have done it and continue to do it. Our band of righteousness is being stretched beyond its limits by greed, avarice, misogyny, bigotry, and an unquenchable thirst for power.

I question whether we can snap back from it this time.

Approbatio silentium

A poet once predicted:

“This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Watching the rabid crowd of fake protesters, rounded up by supporters of, and possibly by members of, the current administration, one wonders. The participants weren’t whimpering. It was more like drooling snarls, the type of behavior our parents warned us to look for when we suspected a dog was mad from rabies.

Where do they find these people? I suspect it isn’t hard. If one publishes a list of those they hate, I can see hordes of like-minded people joining them. No, it’s not a good way to select friends. It is a good way, however, to form a mob. These individuals represent the most heinous forms of cognitive malfunction. To please the rich and powerful, they are willing to subject each other, and their own families, to destruction.

A Latin phrase comes to mind: “Acta est fabula plaudit.” It means roughly “The play has been performed; applaud!” It was a common ending to ancient Roman comedies that let the audience know that the play had ended. Suetonius in “The Twelve Caesars” claimed it to have influenced Augustus' last words. They have gone down in History as “Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.”

I can only trust that the actions of the imbeciles I saw on TV and in the newspapers this weekend don’t spawn, for America: Acta est fabula plaudit. Can we yet save her? I just don’t know.

Erasmus, we are told, said “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” That, if true, would offer hope that, in a land of the morally blind, a person with half a brain could prevail. A story I read in high school, however, disputed Erasmus. A sighted man showed up in “the land of the blind.” Low and behold, he not only didn’t prevail, he was judged disabled by the inhabitants and sentenced, in order to be a worthy citizen, to be blinded. I worry that the members of the mobs I saw, have brown uniforms at home and are waiting for the call to meet, while we remain complacent.

Their actions could not win if faced with organized resistance. Most are probably cowards, unmanageable anarchists, and dependent upon monetary compensation for their outrage. Their actions could prevail, however, against indifference. 

That’s why I’ve created a new slogan for these musings. It is from Latin as well and would read, “approbatio silentium.” I hope that translates into “Silence is approval.” Maybe Erasmus would agree.

The Great Hoisting

For years I’ve whistled by and haven’t stopped to consider the phrase “hoisted by one's own petard.” I knew it was from Shakespeare, Hamlet I thought. I somehow made the assumption that it was a bit naughty in origin, and maybe I didn’t want a complete examination. Then, for some reason, I got to thinking about the Baby Boomers. That led me finally to learn the meaning of the phrase, for I think it describes their current predicament.

Oh, and the meaning: The petard, it seems, has long since fallen out of use, but was a small engine of war used to blow breaches in gates or walls. They were originally metallic and bell-shaped but later cubical wooden boxes. They were full of gunpowder, i.e. bombs.

The phrase means to be blown up with your own bomb. How does it apply to a population cohort?

The Baby Boomers have always been a little quixotic. Statistically, they, as measurable cohort, supported the Vietnam War. Statistically, as a measurable cohort, they did not support participating in the Vietnam War. They are, somewhat unduly, credited with stopping the war. Actually, the Viet Cong and NVA had something to do with it. Trust me. In fact, the opinion of a whole slew of Baby Boomers concerning war seems to have solidified in favor of the darned things since Jan. 27, 1973.

Fast forward to the present. The cohort appears to have taken a hard course toward conservatism. Republicans they are to a large degree, as Yoda would say. Their attitude seems to be what we call the Clarence Thomas Syndrome: “I’ve got mine. Ya’ll bite me.”

Now comes the hoisting. Having helped elect Donald Trump get elected, and having watched their investments, to a significant degree donated by their parents, soar for ten years or so, the Baby Boomers leaned back from warm rooms on full stomachs, turned on the Fox show, and prepared for the comfortable descent into Valhalla. Young people were discounted as being stupid cell phone addicts. Progressives just wanted their hands on someone’s money to build bridges and sewer plants the “Boomers” no longer cared much about. Worse still, they wanted to hire teachers by raising taxes. Minorities should have never come to America in the first place. Science was as useless now as it was in high school. Life was good.

Then came Covid 19. It was a nuisance. It amounted to nothing but a hoax, their hero Sean Hannity told their other great hero. It would pass soon. Laissez les bons temps rouler. The virus will pass quickly. Prez said it would.

Well, lo and behold, it didn’t. Worse Sean is telling “The Prez” that he must now open the economy up, i.e. quit all this non-participation nonsense. Profits are falling and that is a real crisis. Let's all go out and party on.

Oh, there would be some problems. A lot of people would die in the process.

No problem. It would be the old folks. You know … Baby Boomers who didn’t have a safe place to hide or respirators to see them through. They’ve had their day in the sun. Now it’s time for their day in the barrel.

That’s what it means to hoist yourself by your own petard.

January 27, 1973? That’s when the military draft ended. You know. Baby Boomer Day.

On honoring honor …

Yesterday, a friend and I discussed the phenomenon that has accompanied death of Senator John McCain. It has been amazing, nearly causing a psychotic episode with at least one of his enemies. Overall, the outpouring of respect and admiration has been grandly comforting and reassuring. But why?

One can’t simply apply the usual explanations to this unusual situation.

We must, I think, avoid the temptation to under-symptomize our analysis, that is we shouldn’t seek one overlaying reason for the national outpouring of respect for John McCain’s life. It isn’t based on any uniform set of catalysts.

There are those who respected his military service but didn’t care for his political views.

There are those who scarcely know of his military service but resected his career as a senator.

There are those that believe he was following noxious orders when shot down but exhibited sublime heroism as a POW.

There are those who simply believe he was an orchid growing from a cesspool.

We could go on and on, and add greater complexity, but let me add a reason of my own to the mix.

First, I recall that someone once commented, I think it might have been Thomas Hobbes but I’m not sure and too lazy to research it, that “Our passions don’t change, just the objects of those passions.” Add to this my belief that our passions can either be good or evil “monsters of our Id.”

This reference to the film Forbidden Planet responds to my lifelong fascination with the science fiction films of my youth. In many, the Earth harbored subterranean monsters of cosmic threat and danger. Something (in the 1950s it was nuclear testing) unlocked these monsters, often mutations of insects or reptiles. The monsters rose to surface and threatened to destroy our way of life until some hero, often as not B-Actor John Agar, pronounced the ubiquitous phrase “It just might work.” He would then save us all from the monster-of-the-day.

In a social, but horrific, negative example, we witnessed, with the election of Barack Obama as president, such a seismic release of our national monster. We thought we were conquering the lingering rot of racial hatred. Alas, that monster only lay buried, awaiting a nuclear bomb-like explosion in the form of the election, to our highest office, of an African-American. In contrast to the movies, though, society was not united in defeating the monster and sending it back to the bowels of the earth.

No, evil people fed and nourished the monster. Worse, they set it upon their enemies and opponents, enlisting the services of a foreign enemy and the foreign owners of an influential television show. It worked. The monster grew and began consuming us. Would we survive? Where is our John Agar?

Perhaps we see hope. Can goodness lay buried in a subterranean tomb? Can some event loose it from its captivity? Can the better monster of our nature rise to fight the other?

Enter the phenomenon of John McCain’s death. Has it freed forgotten forms of decency and respect for honor that have lain buried for so many years? If so, how can we find ways to nourish it and make it grow? Can our salvation await us, birthed from the contemplation of this brave man’s life?

Perhaps it can if we realize that we are our own John Agars.

What's normal?

Okay, here goes. Seems we need to repeat this from to time.

Gender orientation and sexual preference are physiological conditions. They result from perhaps billions of impulses, triggers, and connections within our genetic makeup, any one of which may affect our final condition. One scientific premise, for example, is that all embryos start out as female. Over time, and countless genetic maneuvers, physical folding, merging, and transformations, some develop as male, although with useless breasts, hirsute shortcomings, and a dearth of nurturing synapses.

Over geologic time, the pairings of genetic types of mostly male and mostly female tend to enjoy of the evolutionary advantage of reproduction-capability. Thus the predominance of so-called, “heterosexual” genetic models. Since we don’t believe it aborting rarer genetic types, (Right?) we fully expect to share the planet with models whose sexual preference or identity lies outside the majority but who stand among us nonetheless. In short, we are all brothers and sisters within the genomic bell-curve.

It all evolves from scientific determinants.

On the other hand. Bigotry and prejudice are conditions that erupt like projectile vomit from the basest of human sources, the worst of those among us. We, as individuals, must accept or reject the venomous teaching and societally induced impulses generated by humans, even when they are fed by so-called religious sources. Actually, we should reject those in particular, as they demean and sour the acts of truly spiritual people seeking love, stability and harmony in an unpredictable world.

So there you have it. If you went to church this morning and paid attention to the minister when he or she preached love and grace, go forth in peace. Peace and understanding may yet save the planet.

On the other hand, if you listened to a drooling bigot when he urged hatred and bigotry against a fellow creature whose genetic makeup differs from yours, you need to find another source of religion.

In short, using an exalted position to repeat false witness, hatred, and bigotry to a cult audience deprived of critical-thinking skills is a sin.

Being born with a genetic makeup that differs from that of a hegemonic minority is not.

Quit trying to create a moral equivalency.

Amen. Closing hym: Just As I Am Without One Plea.

Contributions to this sermon may be mailed to my home address or to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, folks who really know how to treat kids.

??

Divide and Conquer

Sometimes Americans have a hard time understanding one another. I fear that social-media makes it worse and may lead to our downfall if we don't change our ways.

For example, I wish those among us who are liberal and progressive in their thinking (more in tune with the man from Galilee than with Ayn Rand, it is true), would consider the following.

There are brothers and sisters among us who, if asked, would say, "I've always tried to do right as a citizen of this great country. I obeyed my parents and showed appreciation for having been provided a stable home environment. I never embarrassed anyone. I may have bitched, but I've always paid my taxes in full and on time.

"I obtained an education. I served in the armed forces. I went to work and have remained employed for my entire adult life. I've never been arrested and am considered a solid member of the community. I've never looted, stole, robbed, or caused massive traffic jams while I protested what I perceived as injustice, thus alienating the guilty and innocent alike.

"I only blame others for my troubles when I perceive that they are taking my taxes in order to live large, free of work and worry at my expense.

"Now, I'm considered a deplorable citizen of some in our country because I have little patience with those I see who haven't done right and who depend, it appears to me, on governmental largess as opposed to individual initiative and hard work. You may say that my attitude enables the unworthy to gain elected office. I say I am looking out for my own."

Yes, one might observe a lack of thoughtful contemplation that would lead to one's understanding that not all people are equally enabled. These include children fathered by men who face little consequences in generating children with no intention of providing their care, and who face little stricture for such neglect within a male-dominated hegemony.

It includes the women, some who are ill-prepared for the trials, who must care for the abandoned children while struggling for a success that came so easily for me, a white male of European ancestry.

It includes the babies bred and fed into a society that increasingly cares little for their fate. I think of the secretary with whom I worked once whose husband kicked her and their two-year-old child into the street one evening so he could bring his new girlfriend over. A male judge awarded her a  child-support payment that was $12 less than the monthly cost of a day-care center.

The ex-husband's new girlfriend was from a rich family that owned stables. After "visitation weekends" the child would return home all aglow, asking his mother why they couldn't buy a horse.

It includes my brothers and sisters who served in the same war I, but weren't allow to return, marry, find a good job, and buy a home in a stable neighborhood, as was I.

Our differences lie not in morality, it seems to me, but in levels of understanding and empathy. The demands required for a successful life don't always allow time for reflection upon the conditions of others. So we misunderstand one another, blame one another, and avoid one another, except through the anonymity of Facebook or Twitter.

Unfortunately, there are politicians who eschew such misunderstanding, preferring to utilize our mutual disaffection for their evil purposes. Social media is proving to be their most effective tool in modern times. As they attract moderates such as the one quoted above, they secretly muster in the worst dredges of society, forming a coalition that appears more and more to be unstoppable. Fox News, for reasons known only to its owners, joyfully promotes distrust and deceit.

Deceitful men like Franklin Graham use perverted religious thought to separate us into groups who would despise one another for no reason whatsoever.

Divide and conquer has been a strategy for destruction since we left the savanna. It's best antidote is to, at the risk of sounding maudlin, unite, respect, and love.

May we all hope for better understanding.

The End of Truth

Yesterday we watched the segment of the film version of Band of Brothers, where the unit discovers the remnants of a Nazi concentration camp.

We find it particularly disturbing that a major political party in the United States of America is fostering a sub-cult that believes, and teaches, that the World War Two atrocities against the Jewish population of Europe never happened. The president of the United States of America has opined of the sub-cult, "Some are fine people." A sickening percentage of this party doubts the truth of the Holocaust

How can this be true? There are films. The U.S. Army Signal Corps made sure that the findings were filmed in detail.

There were millions of personal accounts by survivors and victims families.

There were remnants: stacks of shoes, eyeglasses, human hair, gold teeth, and suitcases.

There were books by survivors.

There were even trials and executions.

We knew the truth and the stench stained our nostrils.

Then came Fox "news." It became both effective and fashionable to spread falsehoods. The act itself created a profit center for the major stockholders, an Australian and a Saudi.

This was followed by an attack on education, particularly science and history. Africans captured from their homes, stacked like cord wood, shackled like animals, and shipped across the ocean were no longer slaves, but "guest workers" seeking employment in the New World.

Evangelicals like Franklin Graham began using the Holy Bible to preach hate instead of love and grace.

Truth may be dead. If so, America may pay an awful price for this.