7/31/2025

Thursday, July 31, 2025

D+265/193/1268 

1917 World War I: The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) began and caused approximately 500,000 casualties.

1961 Israel welcomed its one millionth immigrant.

1972 Senator Thomas Eagleton withdrew as Democratic vice presidential candidate at George McGovern's request after news that Eagleton had sought treatment for depression.

In bed at 9:10, and up at 5:20, with stiff, sore fingers, especially on my right hand. 64°, high of 73°, sunny, windy, AQI of 162, UNHEALTHY, from wildfires in Canada.  

Meds, etc.  I took them sometime this morning and didn't note it.  

One year ago today, I was on my 80th day of prednisone, taking 15 mg. each day, "discombobulated" by great pain in my right hip, extending down my thigh to my knee, unable to stand for more than two minutes or so.  The pain had persisted for 3 weeks, and I had another week before receiving a steroid injection from Dr. England.  The hip pain continued for some time before settling in my right knee.  I can see now, reading entries from this journal in July and August last year, what has happened to me, i.e., why my leg and hip muscles are so weak and why I am so inclined (no pun intended) to pitch forward and fall on my face.  First, I was incapacitated by pain from polymyalgia rheumatica that started on Christmas Day, 2023, and persisted and got more crippling until treated by prednisone in May, 2024.  Then, even with the daily prednisone, I developed the hip pain that prevented me from standing and walking in July and August, followed by the knee pain with the same effects.  For much of 2024, I was bed or chairbound, which must have contributed significantly to leg and hip muscle atrophy in addition to the normal age-related loss of muscle mass.  The pain has abated, but I am left with the difficulty rising from a chair, mounting even one step/stair/ stoop, and walking without the use of a stabilizing cane, walker, or rollator.  Looking back on all the journal entries about pain, and often severe pain, gives me a clearer picture of how I got to where I am today.  The year before, 2023, I was dealing with a lot of back pain, especially from the "severe arthritis" in L4-L5, L-5, S-1 vertibrae, and from bladder and pelvic pain from interstitial cystitis and lesions on my bladder lining.   The balance problem has been with me for years.  I used to think it was probably from the extraordinary number of medications I take every day.  The VA provided me with a rollator several years ago.  A journal entry on August 30, 2022, reads:  "Felt a little unsteady as I walked from the car into Sendik's, causing me to wonder whether the day is at hand or approaching when I'll be keeping Judy, my first Rollator, in the back of the Volvo.  All downhill from here."

America Second, or Israel's control over America.  Yesterday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that it will be very hard to make a trade deal with Canada, our second-largest trading partner, because Canada plans to recognize Palestine as a state, joining 147 of the UN's 193 member states who do so.  Who suffers from a trade war with Canada?  American consumers.  Who benefits?  Israel.  

We also see that Trump has imposed a 50% punitive tariff on Brazil because the da Silva government prosecuted Trump's buddy and fellow fascist Jair Bolsonaro.  Who suffers from this abuse of tariff authority?  American consumers.  Who benefits? Maybe nobody, maybe Bolsonaro, and Trump's ego and need to publicly exert power.

The truth will out.  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech yesterday (or the day before) that the so-called Trump accounts Republicans created for children in their tax and spending bill are a “back door for privatizing Social Security.”  Privatizing Social Security has long been a Republican and Wall Street goal.

Hannah Dugan and Trump's Gestapo.  I looked again at all the video from the Milwaukee County Courthouse showing Hannah and all the federal ICE agents sent to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was scheduled to appear in her court on April 18 of this year.  Dugan was indicted May 13 on charges she obstructed a federal agency and tried to help undocumented immigrant Flores-Ruiz escape federal agents at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.  She was handcuffed, arrested, and 'perp walked' on April 25 in the courthouse cafeteria, after which US Attorney General Pam Bondi, speaking of Hannah and her 'crime,' said "No one is above the law, not even a judge" and FBI Director Kash Patel issued a news post saying " "We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest." 

I know neither all the facts in the case nor the applicable law, and can't predict the legal outcome, but I note the way Hannah was arrested.  She is a 66 year old, female circuit court judge, and former career Legal Aid Society attorney in Milwaukee.  She is a lifelong practicing Irish Catholic and a member of Gesu Parish on the Marquette campus.  For 2 or 3 years, she served as executive director of Catholic Charities of Milwaukee.  From 1999 to 2000, Dugan was president of the Milwaukee Bar Association.  She was, when arrested in the courthouse cafeteria on the way to her courtroom, no danger to the public.  She was no flight risk.  The crime of which she has been accused was in no respect one of violence.  In ordinary circumstances, she would have been called into the U. S. Attorney's office, told of the crime she was accused of, and given an opportunity to explain her side of the matter.  There was no need to handcuff her, perpwalk her out of the courthouse where she served, and jail her.  Why was she treated this way?  Who ordered that she be arrested and jailed?

Hannah was arrested by the FBI.  My much greater concern is with the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.  Pro Publica published a report today by Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk titled "“We’ll Smash the Fucking Window Out and Drag Him Out,”  It is principally about the frequent practice by ICE agents of smashing car windows and violently arresting their arrest targets.  What's up with these guys?  Why are they not uniformed?  Why do they often wear masks?  Why are they so quick to smash car windows?  Under Trump's Bib Beautiful Budget Bill, ICE's budget is tripled and THOUSANDS of new agents will be hired.  What should we expect from these guys?  I increasingly think of these guys as Trump's Gestopo, answerable only to him (through Tom Homan).

7/30/2025

 Wednesday, July 30, 2025

D+264/192/1269

1945 After delivering the atomic bomb across the Pacific, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by the Japanese submarine I-58. 880 of the crew die, many eaten by sharks.

1965 US President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare bill. 

1967 'Race riot' in Milwaukee (4 killed)

1988 Jordanian King Hussein renounced sovereignty over the West Bank to the PLO, hours after dissolving Jordan's House of Representatives

2022 I wrote the first entries in this journal that is now 3 years running

In bed at 9:40 and up at 5:15 after a very discontinuous sleep, interrupted by pits stops, hip pains, and insomnia.  Rough night.  69°, high 75°, rainy day ahead.   

Meds, etc.  Morning meds around 10 a.m.  

  

Knockoff from a photo of Sarah Silverman, not good on likeness, but could be worse.  Most of it was done with watercolor pencils (gunmetal, black for her hair, pale pink for her skin) and an 8B graphite pencil worked with a blending stump for the dress.  Finished with fixative spray.

The first entries in this journal, notebook, or whatever were about Jimmy A's then impending move from Newcastle Place in Wisconsin to Silverado in Alexandria, his confusion about it, his bladder problems, etc.   

Two years ago I entered Hopkin's God's Grandeur, reflected on my long drive through wealthy neighborhoods in Mequon, recalling my life's journey and concluding with " I also thought of a metaphor I read just this morning, a writer saying he wondered whose shoes he was wearing when he felt out of place among some 'swells.'  The thoughts were all disquieting, reminding me as usual what a limousine liberal I am, about to turn 82 and still wondering whose shoes I have on."

Last year, I wrote about the anniversary of the "riot" in Milwaukee in 1967, Medicare's 59th birthday, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, and the death of William Calley, including these thoughts:

What struck me in reading the story was the similarity between My Lai and Hamas's actions in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. but also what has been happening for the 9 months thereafter in Gaza, i.e.,, the killing of women, children, and elderly noncombatants, although on an industrial scale in Gaza.  I was also struck by how, by the beginning of 1968, less than 3 years after the 3rd Marine Division landed in Vietnam, the military was so hard up for leadership.  Calley was about 5' 3" tall and 130 pounds, child size.  He had to repeat 7th grade.  He graduated in the bottom quarter of his high school class.  He flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College after which he worked as a hotel bellhop and a restaurant dishwasher.  With that background, he was selected for Officer Candidate School where he graduated 120th in his class of 156.  What is most striking about Calley and his men and the My Lai massacre is that these American soldiers were ordered to kill hundreds of Asian civilians - women, children, and old men - and they did it.  They did it, much like the Hamas "terrorists" did it on October 7th, just like the Russian soldiers did in Bucha, north of Kyiv, in 2022, much like the Marines who killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, did it in 2005 - men, women, elderly people and children as young as 1-year-old.  Many thoughts are darting around my brain as I reflect on the military and war and what they do to people but I'm too tired and in too much distracting pain at 6 o'clock this morning as I write to say much about it except for one thought: I wonder how many civilians of all ages were killed or wounded, incinerated or poisoned, by the thousands of air missions we kept track of in the TACC during my time there.  How much did we think of them?  What did we think of them?  How connected to them, spiritually, and emotionally, as nominal Christians, Jews, and people of the Book, were we as we lived behind our barbed wire fencing? I think the honest answer is "Not at all."  What does that say about us?  About me?  And finally, what are we to think of our government's, i.e., Joe Biden's, providing 14,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel since Hamas's October massacre, knowing their immense destructive power and knowing that they would be used against Palestinian civilians in one of the world's most densely populated areas? 

Would You Pay $20,000 to Try to Live Longer? - At longevity clinics, people are shelling out for exhaustive medical tests and treatments like plasma exchange and peptide therapy. How much does it benefit them?  This is a feature story in this morning's NY Times by Dane G. Smith.  When I saw the headline, I immediately thought I would gladly pay $20,000 to try to live less long.  On most days, I think I'm ready to go now, though perhaps I'm kidding myself.  I think again of Ezekiel Emanuel's 1974 article in The Atlantic, Why I Hope to Die at 75.  He wrote it when he was 57; will he feel the same at 73? 74? 75?  My big fear is not death, but continuing to live with chronic pain, the likelihood of falling, decreasing mobility, and increasing dependencies, inability to take care of myself, cognitive decline if I'm lucky, dementia if I'm not, inability to live at home, and worse.  No thanks. 

JJA's Facebook post & my comment yesterday.

Is it conceivable that he would pardon a person guilty of such heinous, life-altering, sex crimes against hundreds of young women? The January 6th pardons give us a clue, but I think also of his pardon of his son-in-law's father, Charles Kushner, who hired a prostitute to ensnare Kushner's sister's husband and had the video tape sent to his sister. Chris Christie described it as the 'most loathsome crime' he prosecuted while US Attorney, Our president saw fit not only to grant a full pardon to Kushner, but also to appoint him American ambassador to France. If he succeeds in obtaining the desired trump-exculpating statements from Maxwell, perhaps he will not only pardon her, but name her our ambassador to the UK, where her father embezzled between $900 million and $1.2 billion from his employees' pension funds before drowning himself (presumably.) The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. Pardoning Maxwell might test that theory, but I suspect he's shameless and arrogant enough to try it.

David Remnick's Letter from Israel, July 27, 2025, in The New Yorker.  Excerpts:

Since the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the rise of the second intifada, the activist left has almost vanished. Labor, the party of Yitzhak Rabin, is a shell of what it was, holding just four seats of the Knesset’s hundred and twenty. The other left-leaning parties barely register. Public debate, especially on television, is often marked by racist and reactionary rhetoric. 

“Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence,” George Orwell wrote after fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. “Unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen.”

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians,” Ehud Olmert, a former Prime Minister, wrote in Haaretz. He said that his country was guilty of war crimes. “We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.” 

In the seventeen years that Netanyahu has been Prime Minister, he has waged a culture war against those to his left and transformed Israel’s political climate. Backed by secular conservatives, Russian émigrés, settlers, religious nationalists, and the ultra-Orthodox, he has been the main force behind the creation of right-wing media outlets. He has pushed to diminish the Supreme Court’s power and has forged a ruling coalition with the help of far-right zealots. Above all, he has postponed any reckoning with an occupation that has lasted fifty-eight years. Netanyahu and his circle speak maga fluently—“deep state,” “wokeness,” and “fake news” have all made their way into political Hebrew—while his son Yair, an Israeli version of Donald Trump, Jr., rails against “post-national, globalist” leftists and lauds Viktor Orbán, Nigel Farage, and Jair Bolsonaro. Netanyahu’s outlandish obeisance to Trump, from posing with a “Trump Was Right About Everything!” cap to nominating him for a Nobel Prize, underscores the alignment. 

It's a very long report, and provides no reason for hopefulness, indeed quite the opposite.  I read all of it and I''m glad I did, among other reasons, because it introduced me to the short-story author Etgar Keret.

A world of kindness?  I am remembering this morning the man who held the door for me at the downtown post office  He was a stranger and he went out of his way to get to the heavy door and hold it open for me when he saw me approach it with my cane, waddling and shuffling and concentrating on maintaining my balance so I wouldn't 'take a header.'.  As I always do, I said, 'Thank you, sir.  Thank you kindly," as I thought there is a lot of kindness in the world, our everyday world.  The frailer I become, the more I am a recipient of it.  I'm grateful for that and thankful that, if our roles had been reversed, I would have held the door for him.  Am I a kind person?  I think of myself as one, though I know I am hardly perfect in that regard.  I need to think about this; perhaps it would make me feel better about myself, something I could use now and then.

Geri and Micaela are having a girls' night out at Harry's tonight.

7/29/2025

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

D+ 263/191/1270

1921 Adolf Hitler becameleader of the National Socialist German Workers Party

1993 Israeli Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of John Demjanjuk 5-0, stating there was insufficient evidence he is Concentration Camp guard Ivan the Terrible

2016 Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for President

In bed by 9:30, up at 5:45.  70°, high of 85°, cloudy/sunny

Meds, etc.  I took them this morning, but made no note of it.    

Facebook comment to JJA's post this morning: 

It's hard to disagree that the overwhelming support of white evangelical Christians for a man with Donald Trump's horrendous character and history contributes to some people rejecting Christianity, though there are surely other contributing factors, not the least of which is clergy corruption. As Sinclair Lewis allegedly said, "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." It's mostly the religiosity of Trump's avid followers that makes them so dangerous. With God on their side, they feel free, indeed required, to engage in any kind of depredation to accomplish His (God's and Trump's) purposes and goals. As Bob Dylan wrote in "With God On Our Side," " The land that I live in has God on its side" and "Ya never ask questions, when God's on your side."

I drove to the Central Post Office to mail Geri's card to Ellis in camp.

I ordered Blink NutriTears from Amazon for almost $30 after trying unsuccessfully to buy it at Walmart in Saukville, CVS in Fox Point, and Walgreens in Mequon..

Last year's journal entries on this date surprised me, both by their length and by their thoughtfulness.  I must have spent a fair amount of time writing them.  I note that I woke up at 4 in the morning and was up at 4:30, so I probably did a lot of thinking and writing before Geri got up, perhaps before I had breakfast.  I aslo must have had some energy and mental focus, more than I have had today.  I note also how much of my attention a year ago (and two years ago, for that matter) was devoted to Israel, its government, and its crimes against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, to religion and especially the Catholic Church, and the decline of America and democracy, my emotional heath vel non, pessimism, cynicism, dispair, etc. Some excerpts (a way to avoid original thinking and/or writing today):

7/29/2023:  Pandora's Basement Boxes and Why Religion Matters.  In the several boxes I opened in the basement a few weeks ago were some books that I valued and had packed away when we moved to Bayside, among them Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters.  I started it years ago and got distracted; I have no idea how far into it I got.  In any event, I picked it up again yesterday and have started to get into it again.  It's in large measure because I am so thoroughly confused in my old age not so much about religion but about the whole idea of "God."  I know as I look back on my life that what I was taught in Catholic schools for so many years - 8 years elementary school, 4 years high school, right into 10 academic credit hours of Theology and 15 hours of mostly Thomistic Philosophy - means nothing to me as I get nearer and nearer to death.  All that 'all' stuff - all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-good, all-this, and all-that - still leaves me with the problem that has haunted Mankind for millennia: why so much suffering in our lives, so much evil and wickedness in the world, the 'theodicy' question.  It's as I said to Geri's cousin Sue and her husband years ago, if there is a God, a good case can be made that He is a mean prick, or, if He isn't, He has a brother who is (a bit of Manichaeanism.)  To the query 'Do you believe in God' I'm always inclined to ask "Which one?"  If "He" is beyond definition and beyond description, how can we deal with that in any meaningful way?  On the other hand, I was once blessed with a bit of wisdom from an old friend of mine, Vicki Conte, who when I was pissing and moaning about such matters, said to me "It's not a head thing, Chuck, it's a heart thing."  She was a lot smarter than I was and am.  But I do think that there is Something ineffable about Life, about the World, about Being at all.  Why is there anything?  I don't think I spout BS when I say, as I so often have, that the world is full of Saints and Miracles (and Heroes) though we usually don't see what is all around us.  I don't think it's just sentimental claptrap.  I think the Whatever is not in the same realm as other stuff that is unimaginable and incomprehensible to me, like quantum physics, the nature and behavior of subatomic particles, etc.  The Whatever is in the realm of Awe, of poetic apprehension, of some sort of mysticism, and thus unquantifiable, unmeasurable, unfalsifiable.  I think these thoughts are what Huston Smith's book is about and I hope I have the discipline to see it through.  Maybe I'll learn something and help my "Chaos of thought and passion, all confused." [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.]

7/29/2024 Feeding the hungry.  "There are so many people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." — Mahatma Gandhi.    Yesterday was the tenth Sunday after Pentecost and the gospel reading was the tale of the feeding of the five thousand.  Jesus was said to have fed 5,000 of his followers with 5 loaves of barley bread and two fishes.  Indeed, the few loaves and fishes he distributed produced 12 baskets of leftovers!  Brother Booker Ashe, the founder of and my predecessor managing the House of Peace had a theory about this gospel story.  He said that what really happened was that the people in Jesus' audience saw him giving away the little available food, they took out and shared the food they had squirreled away in their clothing and bags so that everybody got something to eat with much left over.  His theory was that seeing Jesus' generosity led the followers to stop being selfish and to become sharers.  I am thinking of this gospel story and of Booker's reading of it as I think of what has been happening in Gaza for the last 9 months, i.e., Israel using starvation of Palestinian civilians as an instrument of war.  Of all the genocide and war crime charges against the State of Israel, the one that is most damning is that of depriving the civilian population of food and clean water, producing famine or near-famine conditions.  Yoav Gallant, the Defense Minister, announced shortly after October 7th, "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly" and so it has been.  In his recent speech to Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu lied in saying

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tons of food, and that’s more than 3,000 calories for every man, woman and child in Gaza. If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas steals it.

It's the old story: Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?  Dp we believe the countless news photos and videos showing desperately hungry Palestinians chasing food trucks or holding plates of some sort toward servers at food distribution sites, the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, and all the humanitarian organizations striving to provide some relief to the civilian population in Gaza, and countless reporters  or do we believe Benjamin Netanyahu who also said

The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. What in God’s green earth is he talking about? The IDF has dropped millions of flyers, sent millions of text messages, made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way.

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?  Yet so many American legislators in the room stood and applauded his lies.  What does this say about "who we are"?

Perhaps the lie that most offended me was Netanyahu's attempt to identify the State of Israel and its fascist current government with the Jewish people, to equate opposition to Israeli political and military policies and practices with antisemitism.

Antisemitism is the world’s oldest hatred. For centuries, the massacre of Jews was always preceded by wild accusations. We were accused of everything from poisoning wells to spreading plagues to using the blood of slaughtered children to bake Passover matzos. These preposterous antisemitic lies led to persecution, mass murder and ultimately to history’s worst genocide, the Holocaust.

 Now, just as malicious lies were levelled for centuries at the Jewish people, malicious lies are now being levelled at the Jewish state. No, no. Don’t applaud. Listen. The outrageous slanders that paint Israel as racist and genocidal are meant to delegitimize Israel, to demonize the Jewish State and to demonize Jews everywhere. And no wonder, no wonder we’ve witnessed an appalling rise of antisemitism in America and around the world.  My friends,

Whenever and wherever we see the scourge of antisemitism, we must unequivocally condemn it and resolutely fight it, without exception.

 The greatest cause of antisemitism in the world, especially for diaspora Jews, has become the State of Israel and its fascist, criminal government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

 7/29/2024 World's second-largest religion?  Christians remain the world's largest religion at 31% of the world's population, with Muslims coming in second at 24% and Hindus at 15%.  Within Christianity, Catholics claim pride of place with about 1.28 million followers, followed by Protestantism with 920,000 unless you count the Anglicans/Episcopalians, in which case they are the largest with about 1.5 million believers.  In any case, I used to hear it said that the Catholics were the largest and that the second largest were the ex-Catholics, or 'fallen away Catholics, i.e., people like me.  Why are there so many ex-Catholics?  Why are there so many ex-Catholics with hostile feelings about their former religion?  Some thoughts:

1. I think of Sinead O'Connor and her experiences, indeed all of Ireland's experience, with the Irish Catholic Church.

2. I think of the popes and cardinals and bishops and their sorry history.

3. I think of Humanae vitae and A Syllabus of Errors and Vehementer Nos: 

It follows that the church is by essence an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.  So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end  of the society and directing all its members toward that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.

4.  I think of thousands of pedophiliac priests all over the world harming mostly boys but also girls, many for life.  How long has this been going on?  How long has it been tolerated and hidden by the Church?  How many victims have there been?  We will never know.

5. But I also think of our Supreme Court with 5 and perhaps 6 of the radically right-wing justices being Catholic.  I think of Donald Trump's Catholic aides and enablers like Rudy Giuliani, Bill Barr, Pat Cippolone, Dan Scavino,  Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Elise Stafanik, Leonard Leo, Kellyanne Conway, Kevin Roberts (Heritage Foundations/Project 2025), Fox's Laura Ingraham, Matt and Mercedes Scjlapp (CPAC), and now J. D. Vance who converted in 2019.  Trump is surrounded by right-wing Catholics and Evangelical Protestants so one wonders what is the difference between the two groups.  All are, like the Church itself, conservative, reactionary, and anti-democratic.  One wonders why Vance decided to become a Catholic in 2019, the 3rd year of the Trump presidency.    Was he socially embarrassed by his prior affiliation with Pentecostalism or politically embarrassed by his prior claims of atheism?  In. Right-wing America, Catholic is cool.

6.  On the other hand, there is "cafeteria Catholicism" everywhere, condemned when practiced by liberal Catholics (an oxymoron?).  Vance supports the death penalty in some cases, wants to boost fossil fuels, wants to deport millions of migrants, and has voted against many government programs aimed at aiding the poor. All of those positions are in opposition to his church.  Also, data on the number of conversions is spotty. Polling organizations including Pew Research have long shown that many more people are leaving the Catholic faith than joining it — by more than 6 to 1.

7/28/2025

 Monday, July 28, 2025

D+262/190/1271

1915 Woodrow Wilson sent US Marines to Haiti, leading to occupation until 1934

1965 LBJ sent 50,000 more soldiers to Vietnam (total of 125,000)

In bed at 9, awake around 12:50 from a nasty dream about the upcoming surgery, and up at 1:15, unable to sleep.  I fell asleep on the recliner from around 2:30 to 3:30, then back to bed. for disjointed sleep.  Finally got up at 7:20 with aching privates.  70°, high of 86°, cloudy, heat advisory.  When I opened the Venetian blinds, I saw 4 wild turkeys strutting and pecking across our neighbors' lawn across the street, providing me a welcome boost this morning.

Meds, etc.   Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.    

Grok is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence program.  It is available online at no cost for a while.  I have used it a few times and am duly astounded by it.  Yesterday, out of curiosity, I asked it "Why did Todd Blanche really want to talk with Ghislaine Maxwell?"  The program almost immediately provided a long answer that started out with this:

The reasons behind Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s meetings with Ghislaine Maxwell in July 2025 are not fully clear due to limited public disclosure from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Maxwell’s legal team. However, based on available information, several motivations can be inferred, though they remain speculative due to the opaque nature of the meetings and the controversial context. Here’s a breakdown of the likely reasons and the surrounding dynamics, grounded in the provided sources and critical analysis:

It then provided analyses under the following headings: Stated purpose and context, with subheadings official rationale, timing and political;  pressure; Potential Underlying Motivations, with subheadings Political Damage Control, Maxwell’s Incentive for Cooperation, Unorthodox Nature of the Meetings, Potential for Selective Disclosure; and Critical Considerations, with subheadings Maxwell’s Credibility, Trump’s Comments on Pardons, and Lack of Transparency; followed by its Conclusion:

Todd Blanche likely met with Ghislaine Maxwell to address political pressure surrounding the Epstein case, ostensibly to gather information about other potential wrongdoers. However, the unusual nature of the meetings, Blanche’s ties to Trump and Markus, Maxwell’s immunity deal, and the lack of transparency suggest additional motives, such as managing the narrative around Trump’s Epstein connections or exploring Maxwell’s willingness to cooperate in exchange for leniency. While Maxwell’s attorney claims she answered all questions truthfully, the absence of corroborating evidence and the political context cast doubt on the meetings’ true purpose. Speculation about a deal or efforts to ensive protect certain individuals remains unproven but widely discussed.

and

If you’d like me to dive deeper into specific aspects, such as analyzing Maxwell’s potential testimony, the DOJ’s broader Epstein strategy, or public sentiment on X, let me know! I can also check for more recent developments if needed.

I asked the same question this morning and the response was much shorter and less detailed, though not substantially different from yesterday's response.

We have been living with much simpler variants of AI for years, including in the customer service area (Grr!)  Having at least a rudimentary sense of what variants are being developed now, I fear AI, or those who control AI, will take over the world.  Is it not frightening that Grok immediately 'understands' my question coming from nowhere, and almost immediately provides a comprehensive responsive answer based on countless news reports which it accesses and digests, or 'understands.'  Last week, this program was spitting out Nazi-flavored answers to certain questions showing it is programmable.  Is is also self-programmable?  Aren't we looking at HAL from Kubrick's 2001: "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."  "Oh wonder!  How many goodly creatures are there here!  How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world,  That has such people machines in’t."

Further to my thoughts on Israel yesterday: In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide,  today's NY Times, by Aaron Boxerman.

Two of the best-known Israeli human rights groups said Monday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, adding fuel to a passionately fought international debate over whether the death and destruction there have crossed a moral red line.

The two groups were B’Tselem, a rights monitor that documents the effects of Israeli policies on Palestinians, and Physicians for Human Rights — Israel. Their announcement was the first time major Israeli rights groups have publicly concluded that the Gaza war is a genocide, an assessment previously reached by some organizations like Amnesty International.

In a report titled “Our Genocide,” B’Tselem cited the devastating effects of Israel’s war on ordinary Palestinians to support their claim: the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; the razing of huge areas of Palestinian cities; the forced displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s two million people; the restriction of food and other vital supplies.

All together, the Israeli campaign has amounted to “coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip,” the organization wrote. “In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Amen. 

7/27/2025

 Sunday, July 27, 2025

D+261/189/1272

1890 Vincent van Gogh shot himself in Auvers-sur-Oise and died of his injuries 2 days later

1944 Thomas William St. John was born

1980 A Palestinian threw a hand grenade at Jewish children in Antwerp, Belgium, killing one

2014 Obama reaffirmed Israel's "right to defend itself" but condemned civilian casualties in Gazaeded

In bed at 9:30, awake at 5:10  with pains spread all over my torso, neck to penis, up at 5:35 with the pain situation much better.  68°, high of 84°, sunny. 

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9 a.m.

Text to Micaela:  I'm thinking of you today.💙

What are we to think of Israel now?  It's getting harder to pick up a newspaper or news magazine without feature stories about Palestinian children starving to death in Gaza, or about Palestinians shot to death by rifle or tank fire from IDF while attempting to obtain food from one of the four Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution sites.  There are some statistics available about the number of children who have died from Severe Acute Malnutrition, the medical term for starvation, but the data are misleading.  Most children who are starving die from severe diarrhea and dehydration, or some other disease that is listed as the cause of death, but it is the starvation or SAM that makes them unable to ward off the lethal effects of diarrhea or other diseases.  If they weren't starving, the children would live; starving, they die, but starvation is not listed as the cause of death.  Thus, there may be thousands of dead Palestinian children who have died in fact from starvation but are not counted, like the presumed thousands of Palestinians buried in the rubble of buildings collapsed by Israeli bombs, rockets, mortars, artillery shells, and missiles.

I know something of the history of Israel and Palestine.  I have made a point of studying that history and of learning from sources on both sides of the historical conflict.  I have known (and loved and admired) many Israel-loving American Jews and a few Palestinians, former students of mine, especially Othman Atta.  I have never discussed Israeli-Palestinian relations with any of them because it is too hot a topic, tending to arouse deep emotions and frustrations.   For much of my adult life, I've had a pro-Israel bias, influenced by my Jewish friends, by Leon Uris' Exodus, by admiration for early Israel's socialist politics and economy based on kibbutzim, by official U.S. support, and by opposition to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the unattractive-in-so-many-ways Yasser Arafat, and terrorism.  I was duly impressed by the dashing Moshe Dayan and Israel's stunning victory in the Six-Day War and again, though less impressively, in the Yom Kippur War.  My enthusiasm for Israel began to diminish with Israel's turn to the right with the election of Menachim Begin in 1977 and the ascendancy of the Likud Party.  It nosedived in 1995 with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the rise of Netanyahu.  I have long thought that the assassination of Rabin ended any realistic hope for peace between the Palestinians and Israel, and nothing that has happened since has changed that judgment.  If there had been even an iota of hope for some accommodation between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it was dashed by the formation of the coalition government between Netanyahu's Likud Party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party and Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, which was sworn in on December 29, 2022.  282 days later, Hamas staged its genocidal attack in southern Israel.  21 months later, Israel is still killing Gazans daily, some with bullets, many by starvation and disease.  Throughout those 21 months, the United States has been Israel's main supporter and supplier of weapons.

The war started with Hamas's genocidal attack, but it was immediately followed by Israel's defense minister saying, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.  We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”  Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible."  Netanyahu's reference was to the Book of Samuel, where the Israelites were commanded by God to destroy Amalek completely, men, women, children, animals, and possessions.

Where are we after almost 2 years of relentless warfare?  From this morning's New York Times: 

No Meals, Fainting Nurses, Dwindling Baby Formula: Starvation Haunts Gaza Hospitals

In several of the hospitals still functioning in Gaza, nurses are fainting from hunger and dehydration. Managers often cannot provide meals for patients or medical staff. Doctors are running low on formula for newborn babies, in some cases giving them water alone.

And at least three major hospitals lack the nutritional fluids needed to properly treat malnourished children and adults.

Those scenes were described in interviews starting Friday with seven doctors — four from Gaza, and three volunteers from Australia, Britain and the United States. All of them worked this past week in four of the territory’s main hospitals.

After months of warnings, international agencies, experts and doctors say starvation is now sweeping across Gaza amid restrictions on aid imposed by Israel for months. At least 56 Palestinians died this month of starvation in the territory, nearly half of the total such deaths since the war began 22 months ago, according to data released on Saturday by the Gaza Health Ministry.

As starvation rises, medical institutions and staff, already struggling to treat war wounds and illness, are now grappling with rising cases of malnourishment.

Weak and dizzy, medics are passing out in the wards, where colleagues revive them with saline and glucose drips. Persistently short of basic tools such as antibiotics and painkillers, doctors are also running out of the special intravenous drips used to feed depleted patients.

After all we have seen over the last 21 months, after all that has been reported, what are we to think of Israel?  of the United States? of Judeo-Christian morality and ethics?  of our species?

I have written before about the following bit of wisdom from Ezra Klein that he shared during his interview of Kathryn Schulz in the New York Times on May 30th of this year, but I'm prompted to advert to it again in light of what I wrote above, and also in light of what I wrote yesterday about being so often miserable and wondering whether I'm going crazy.

One of my most inconvenient beliefs about the world is that we now know too much about it. And that the human mind is not meant to be stretched over this much threat and danger and tragedy at all times.

I work in the news. My show is part of this dynamic I’m about to describe, but the news can sometimes be an engine for finding and bringing you whatever is going to most upset you that is happening literally anywhere on Earth at that exact moment.

It’s not that it’s not, on some level, good to know — I don’t want to go to the point where we never know about it — but I often think that probably the healthy medium was to be able to pick up a newspaper once a day and find out about terrible things happening elsewhere and important things happening elsewhere and sometimes, but less often, wonderful things happening elsewhere.

As opposed to being with your kids in the park, and your phone buzzes, and it’s just something terrible that you cannot affect. Not even happening to anybody you know. You definitely don’t have power over it. But somebody somewhere thought it would grab you to know about it.

And it’s strange. It both makes you aware of suffering, but also it has some other quality, some numbing and exhausting quality that is not healthy.

I repeat also what I said of these thoughts back on May 31:

I think of that Vietnam veteran I chatted with in Senkik's yesterday and his complaint or bewilderment over his nephew who kissed off living in America and moved to New Zealand.  He didn't say where in New Zealand he moved to, whether an urban or a rural area, nor how the nephew was supporting himself there, or what it is about life in America that he found so intolerable, but it wouldn't surprise me if at least part of what he wanted to escapte from was what Klien described, constant exposure to terrible news about which one can do nothing.  There is much more about curent American culture, including politics of course, that can make one feel like the man on the bridge in Edvard Munch's The Scream, but Klein has put his finger on a significant cause of modern misery, the daily awareness of human suffering, of death and destruction, about which we can do nothing.  Klein says it tends to make us numb and exhausted, but I suspect it's even worse.  It coarsens us and makes us indifferent to the suffering of others. After a while, it becomes boring.  We can become like Donald Trump when he says of the Ukraine War or the Gaza War, as he did before professing to be concerned about the slaughter in those places, "it's not my problem."  Or, as J. D. Vance said to Steve Bannon during his campaign for the Senate, "I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another."  The hard question, for Ezra Klein and the rest of us, is what to do about this dystopian situation we live in, especially we relatively highly-educated, highly-informed individuals who religiously follow 'the news.'

Perhaps I should say that they are the fortunate ones who become indifferent to the suffering of others, especially the incredibly widespread suffering of children in Gaza.  Indifference = no personal suffering over the suffering of others, no pain, no anguish, no shared or empathic suffering. "Not my problem.'  Jesus directed his followers to 'love your neighbor as yourself.'  Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote, 'love, love changes everything,  days are longer, words mean more.  Love, love changes everything, pain is deeper than before."  Love hurts.  To love is to open yourself up to hurt, to pain, to suffering.  One cannot love the children of Gaza, or the adults of Gaza, without deeply hurting.  One cannot love the Israelis without feeling their pain, their fears, their anxieties from lifetimes of constant threat from enemies, and without understanding their wrath over the slaughter of innocents on October 7th.  There is no lack of arguments and theories justifying Israel's war on Hamas, but I see no way of justifying Israel's total war on the Gazans, especially the children.  I'm way past quibbling over the legal definitions of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.  The International Court of Justice will tell us at some time whether it holds Israel guilty of legal genocide.  Our eyes and consciences tell us that it is guilty of moral genocide.

As I write these words, I am aware of how arrogant and judgmental they are.  Judge not, lest ye be judged.  But we must make judgments in life, certainly with respect to the act of our own government, which claims to act on our behalf, and of the acts of other governments and other human actors.  Our entire legal and regulatory systems are grounded on  judgments.  Our moral and ethical choices in life are grounded on moral and ethical judgments.  God knows (in a manner of speaking) that the United States has been guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.  Our history is full of wrongful conduct by our government, done with or without the approval of the majority of our citizens.  God knows that the Marine Corps, of which I was a volunteer member, has been guilty of war crimes.  God knows that the Vietnam War, in which I volunteered to serve, is viewed by many, perhaps by most as a horrendous crime against the Vietnamese people.  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.  But what is the alternative to forming a judgment against Israel over its actions in Gaza (and the West Bank for that matter)?  And against the United States over its deep and enabling complicity with Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and their allies?    More death, more destruction, more children starved to death, more lives ruined, and an implied acquiescence in the acceptability of these actions and consent to their continuance.   How can that be acceptable?

7/26/2025

 Saturday, July 26, 2025

D+260/188/1273

1948  Truman issued Executive Order No. 9981 to desegregate the US armed forces

2023 Sinead O'Connor 12/8/55 - 7/27/23 

My attempt many, many years ago to paint a portrait of Sinead O'Connor, perhaps after her frontal assault on the Church and the Papacy on Saturday Night Live on October 3, 1992.  I drew the undersketch largely freehand and failed completely in terms of likeness, but I liked the painting nonetheless and have it hanging on my bedroom wall.  Although it doesn't look at all like her, it reminds me of her and of her troubled journey through life.

In bed at 9:30, awake at 1:30 for a pit stop, unable to sleep with some bladder/urethra pain/discomfort and some anxiety over upcoming surgery, or rather, post-surgical pain/burning/stinging.  Been there, done that.  At 2 a.m., I heard a loud clunk from the back of the house, where Geri was sleeping.  I took my flashlight and went back to check, but saw nothing fallen or appearing to be out of place.  From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night, Good Lord, deliver us!  66°, high of 80°, cloudy, rain this morning.  I was back in bed at 4:30 and slept until almost 9.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 11:30 a.m.  

America's Draculas.  I read Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula many years ago when I went on a monster-story binge: Dracula, Mary Shelly's 1818 Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I enjoyed all of them, Dracula perhaps most of all, although that distinction may belong to Jekyll and Hyde.  In the current POLITICO, there is an essay by Dan Brooks titled "The Epstein Conspiracy Is the Horror Story of Our Age."  Brooks writes 

As a vehicle for our worst fears about the 21st-century United States, Epstein is our Dracula. You are probably familiar with Count Dracula, the blood-drinking aristocrat with a taste for virgins who is vulnerable only to holy water and garlic. . .  It doesn’t take a degree in folklore and mythology to notice that the count, who leaves his castle only to drain the life from peasants and corrupt young women, and who persists unnaturally from generation to generation until he is stopped by the power of the church, says something about how medieval Europeans saw their titled aristocracy. His parasitic relationship with working people, his rivalry with priests, and his infamous horniness all reflect the anxieties of the late 19th century, when hereditary landowners vied with industrial capital and religious authority for control of Europe, and ordinary people exercised little power in proportion to their number.

The conspiracy version of the Epstein story [circle of superrich pedophiles, a client list,  blackmail, murder, immunity] expresses similar anxieties about power and who wields it in the 21st-century United States. . . This narrative, like the Dracula story, says some obvious things about how our culture understands its ruling class. The most powerful figure in it is not an elected politician or celebrity but rather a financial adviser, a guy whose money and connections make him the real force behind the facade of representative government and impartial law.

The Epstein conspiracy theory describes two Americas, with two sets of laws and standards: the one most of us live in, where you have to go to work, abide by public morals and wait on hold when you call your congressional representative, and the one rich people live in, where statutory rape is an open secret and presidential candidates put aside their differences to hang out on tropical sex islands. In this world, the law, public opinion and party politics have power over ordinary people, but money has the power to transcend all of them. Financiers run the whole thing, literally and figuratively seducing political and cultural leaders in order to control them, while the various rules we democratically agreed on don’t apply to anyone involved — as proven by their successful murder of the only guy with the secrets to bring them down.

The Epstein conspiracy theories are unproven, but you don’t have to say the words “hyoid bone” to read the Epstein story as a fable of how power works in the 21st-century United States. The non-conspiracy version of events says just as much.

This story of institutional failure should be familiar to anyone who has been to a VA hospital or worked somewhere that got bought by a private equity fund. It’s the story of a system that prioritizes low taxes and high profits over how well anything actually works, cutting costs and squeezing wages at the expense of long-term success. In other words, it’s the story of a country that runs according to the interests of Epstein’s clients: wealthy people who get their money from rents, investments and inheritances and therefore have a material interest in nothing changing, not this month, unless it’s a lower tax rate. It’s the story of finance taking over the economy and money taking over politics, the story of a system that doesn’t do enough to restrain the power of those few Americans who live well without working, even as the rest of us are supposed to rule by majority. In other words, it is the story of vampires, whose existence is defined by exemption from the rules that determine the shape of ordinary people’s lives.

That is a story of the world we actually live in, and millions of Americans believe it. The conspiracy theory is just the simpler, more dramatic version, and if it gets the facts wrong — which it almost certainly does — the important parts are still true.

I posted this essay on Facebook with this comment:

This is an essay on America's Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.  It's also a 'red pill/blue pill' tale, addressing "the facade of representative government and impartial law."  If Trump's ascension to the epitome of national and global power has done no other good, at least it has made clear who really runs the country and the world, and it's not us.  Bernie Sanders has tried for years to address this problem.  We see how far it has gotten him - and us. 

Days like this make me question my sanity, or at least my mental health.  When I am not reading something, or writing something, or working on a painting, engaged in a conversation, or doing something else that requires focused attention, thoughts flitter around my brain like my favorite metaphor for them, minnows in a bait bucket.  The thoughts are not invited (or are they?) or welcome.  They are often complaining, unhappy, dissatisfied thoughts about my health, or more specifically, my muscle and joint aches and pains all around my body, my bladder, urethra, perineum, the persistent desire of my body to pitch forward and fall down, my upcoming surgery, cognitive decline, etc.  Or, they are despairing thoughts about my country or about my species, homo hominis lupus, Trumpism, and all that.  My usefulness is not zero, but approaching it: I do the dishes, try to keep the kitchen clean for Geri, take out the garbage, go to the food store, and occasionally provide a ride to Andy or one of the grandchildren.  What does the future hold?  Dementia, a wheelchair, dependency, loss of autonomy - who knows, but it's nothing good.  I'm such a wimp, like the lyrics of the old classic blues tune, Why was I born, why am I living.  SNAP OUT OF IT and all that, but to what end?  I hate writing this and hate even more thinking and feeling this, pissing and moaning, feeling sorry for myself, whining, Micky the Mope, Sad Sack.  Pathetic way to live.

 

7/25/2025

 Friday, July 25, 2025

D+259/187/1274

306 Constantine I was proclaimed Roman Emperor by his troops

1941 FDR banned selling benzine/gasoline to Japan

1968 Pope Paul VI published the encyclical "Humanae vitae (Of Human Life)" which rejected any artificial forms of birth control

2019 US Justice Department resumed the use of the death penalty, scheduling five executions

In bed at 10, up at 5 with waking thoughts of Epstein, Maxwell, Trump, and Clinton. 'lifestyles of the rich and famous.'  69°, high of 77°, cloudy all day, foggy morning.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 7:15 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 7:30 a.m.

  

Looking back and looking forward: Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.   I often look back on journal entries from the year before and the two years preceding the current date.  In a few days, I will be able to look back three years, if I continue journaling.  I am glad that I have at least some sort of record of having been alive and semi-functioning during these years of senectitude and decrepitude, 'proof of life' snapshots.  Last year on this date, I was on15 mg. of daily prednisone and experiencing quite a bit of bad pain, but my waking thoughts were of Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza and the West Bank, the 'two state solution,' I wrote a piece focusing on seeing the world through Netanyahu's eyes and the eyes of Israelis who had lived perhaps through the Holocaust, Israel's war of independence,  the 1967 Six Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Hezbollah wars in Lebanon, the rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon, the intifadas, the Achille Lauro, the Munich Olympics, the bus bombings, and on and on.  I also try to see through the eyes of Palestinian Arabs, the Nakba, the dispossession and occupation of what had been their homeland.  I concluded: 

I don't know where to go with these thoughts because they lead me back to the fundamental question of the wisdom and legitimacy of Israel itself as 'the Jewish homeland' on territory that had been overwhelmingly Arab before colonization or settlement by mostly European Jews, by people like Netanyahu's father, who moved to Tel Aviv in 2020 as an ardent Zionist.  The idea of Zionism has "baked into it' if not the expulsion of the indigenous Arabs in Palestine, at least their subordination to Jewish hegemony.  In his speech yesterday, Netanyahu conflated the State of Israel with Jewry but we know that not every Jew is a Zionist, much less a supporter of the modern government of Israel.  There were Jews on the streets outside the Capitol demonstrating against Zionism as he spoke.  Theodor Herzl's touting of Zionism was opposed by most assimilated Jews in Germany at the time, and perhaps even by Jews in the shtetls to the East.  The fear was that if Jews were seen to have a homeland in Palestine, they could be seen as not belonging where they were, in Europe.  And Zionism raises the perplexing problem of who is a Jew and whether there is a Jewish nation.  Yeshayahu Leibowitz argues that the only halakha that ties Jews together is the observance of Jewish law, the written law and the oral law. What does a Jew living in Singapore have in common with a Jew living in Los Angeles and a Jew living in Morocco or Ethiopia?  Not language geographical ties race or allegiance to a nation-state or customs other than halakha.  Where do secular Jews, like Netanyahu and his birth family,  fit into this taxonomy?  How about Reform Jews?  Atheist Jews?  Leibowitz wrote: "The Jewish people, as it existed in history, is definable only by reference to its Judaism - a Judaism that was not a mere idea in the mind but the realization of a program of living outlined in the Torah and delineated by its Mitzvoth.  This way of life constituted the specific national content of Jewishness or, in other words, the uniqueness of the Jewish people.  The Jew practiced a way of living that was exclusively his."  Unique dietary behavior, unique marital laws, unique butchering behavior, unique Sabbath behavior, etc.  The point is that it is the uniqueness of behavior, practice, or way of living that defines Jewishness, and that way of living is provided in halakha, Jewish law.  Where do all these thoughts take me in terms of Netanyahu and yesterday's speech?  in terms of Zionism? and in terms of the military and settler occupation of the West Bank? the war in Gaza?  Always back to the question of the defensibility of Zionism itself.  What do I make of this muddle of thoughts?  That I am not a Zionist.  That Zionism is understandable but not defensible.  That Zionism, long term, has not been good for the Jews and indeed is a leading cause of antisemitism around the world, for which diaspora Jews pay the heaviest price.  That Zionism is just another form of pernicious nationism very much akin to the White Christian Nationalism that plagues America.

Do I still think this way, or are my thoughts still hopelessly muddled? What purpose is served by wondering about the legitimacy of the nation-state, which came to be out of warfare and has been in existence and universally recognized since I was 7 years old?  I should struggle not with what Zionism meant in the 1940s and before, but with what it means in 2025 and hereafter.  I don't yet have an answer to that question, but I'm sure that I do not do what Netanyahu always does, which is to equate Zionism and the nation-state of Israel with worldwide Jewry.  I do not equate Zionism with support of Likud or its current incarnation as Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir.  What I wonder is whether most of the world will come to equate Zionism with what has been occurring in Gaza and in the West Bank under this government.  The continuing news of children and others dying of starvation, of the IDF mowing down Gazans in crowds waiting for food (like fish in a barrel), and of settler and IDF depredations in the West Bank cannot be "good for the Jews," neither those in Israel nor those in the diaspora.  It is incontrovertible that deprivation of food and clean water from the civilian population of Gaza has been the official government and military policy of Israel from October 7th onward.  I struggle with these issues because, for most of my life, my best friends have been Jews, starting with my first boss, Wally Halperin, who owned the food and liquor store at 74th and Halsted in Chicago.  They have all been faithful supporters of the state of Israel.  What have they been going through since Netanyahu's alliance with Israel's far-right parties?  Since October 7, 2023?  I don't know because "Israel" has become a topic not raised in friendly, polite conversation, especially with non-Jews.  That button has become too hot to push.

    In last year's reflection, I quoted Yeshayahu Liebowitz on the issue of Jewish identity: Who is a Jew?  What distinguishes a Jew as a member of a distinct nation or people?  His argument is that it is only observance of Jewish law, halaka, that defines Jewishness.  This view creates a problem, of course, for atheistic Jews, secular Jews, Reform Jews, and other non-observant Jews, and one may agree or not with his argument.  What can't be argued, however, was his wisdom in opposing the occupation of the lands seized during the Six Day War in 1967.  He foresaw what would happen in and to Israel and in and to the people in the Occupied Territories, and it wasn't good for the Jews.   He was right.  Gaza and the West Bank have turned out to be Israel's  Tar Babies, with a big difference.  In the Uncle Remus story, Br'er Rabbit escaped from Br'er Fox by tricking him into throwing Br'er Rabbit into a briar patch.  Israel, especially under Likud and Netanyahu, is doing everything it can to steer clear of a briar patch.  It wants to hold onto its Tar Babies forever.

Day 2 and it's turning out not as good as I had hoped, but better than I had feared.  I knew the hair would be a challenge, and it was, but it turned out not awful.  I thought the striped skirt would also be a challenge and, like the hair, it's a far cry from Renoir's original, but not awful.  The gray turned out to be darker than I had intended, and the red stripes less vivid than I had hoped, but it could be worse.  I'm also daunted by Renoir's background of lush greenery, which could be a real problem, ditto whether to add some texture or folds to her top (camisole?  chemise?  blouse?)   Then I'll have to decide what to do about her blotchy skin.  And there's that missing ear; probably better to leave it missing.  I'm wondering whether I should also just forget about the greenery in the background.  I think I probably will.  Chicken.

An anniversary note re Humanae Vitae, from my memoir:

The Catholic Church also revealed its feet of clay during 1968.  Cardinal Spellman was spouting his murderous nonsense about ‘a war for civilization’  without restraint by the Vatican and Catholics were generally as resistant as any other group to much of the civil rights demands.  The big difference maker in terms of authority however had nothing to do with war and peace or civil rights, but with sex, Paul VI’s encyclical banning contraception, including birth control pills.  In 1963, John XXIII had established a commission to study population and birth control issues.  Paul VI appointed 15 cardinals and bishops and 64 lay experts to the commission.  The commission provided a report in 1966 saying contraception was not intrinsically evil.  The vote among the clergy was 9 to 6; the lay commission vote was 60 to 4.  One of the dissenters was Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II.  The dissenters feared that a change in the Church’s position would call into question the pope’s teaching authority.¹  The report was leaked to the press in 1967 and there was a very favorable reaction among modern Catholics, who expected the pope to adopt the commission’s recommendation.  Instead, Paul VI rejected the recommendation and adopted the dissenting position, undoubtedly fearing that any change in the Church’s position would weaken the claim to papal authority.  What happened, of course, was precisely what Paul and the Vatican conservatives wanted to avoid: widespread rejection of the Church’s teaching authority, especially by American and Western European Catholics. The pope and his conservative curial apparatchiks were seen as, at best. mired in medievalism, and, at worst, more concerned about the power of its shepherds than in the welfare of the flock.

From my point of view, the United States’ position on the war in Vietnam and the Church’s position on contraception flowed from the same source.   Johnson and his advisors and Paul VI and his advisors were more concerned with institutional credibility than with the lives of their “subjects.”  Not losing face, nationally and personally, was more important to Johnson than the lives of the Americans and Vietnamese who were suffering in the war.  Better that thousands should die or be horribly wounded than that the United States be seen for what it inevitably was in Vietnam, an arrogant and feckless loser.

¹“If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubi was promulgated) and in 1951 (Pius XII’s address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). 

“It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half a century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now he declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved” [Emphasis added by me.]

Reading these words today, 20 years or so after I wrote them, puts me in mind of Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, in which he argues, persuasively, that we are much more likely to sin, to act selfishly, as members of a group than we are as individuals.  His theory explains our tendency to "circle the wagons" whenever group integrity, identity, cohesiveness, safety, standing, or privilege is attacked.

 

7/24/2025

 Thursday, July 24, 2025

D+258/186/1275

1943, the RAF began bombing Hamburg, creating a firestorm and killing 42,600 people

1952 "High Noon", starring Gary Cooper and Thomas Mitchell, was released

1967 The first modern hospice was founded in London, beginning modern palliative care.

2019  Robert Mueller reported that President Trump was not exonerated of obstruction of justice and that Russia interfered in the US election to benefit Trump

2024 Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant address to a joint session of US Congress re Gaza 

In bed at 10 after LO'D's rant re Epstein's Birthday Book, up at 6:20.    

Meds, etc.  I never filled my empty pill boxes yesterday and thus never took my meds.  I'm hoping the lack of prostate meds won't lead to more difficulty emptying my bladder.  I start the day with twinges or hints of miserableness, hoping they don't develop into the full thing.  I filled the pill boxes today & took the meds around noon.  On Jill Hansen's advice, I stopped taking Jardiance to see if my peroneal itching abates.  I also stopped taking vitamin and other supplements and 325 mg aspirin, pre-surgery.

A thought I had yesterday about the ICEmen.    Admitedly, I operate on very sparse evidence, i.e,, only what I am shown on TV news programs, but it seems to me that the Donald Trump's/Kristi Noem's/Tom Homan's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who are rounding up, 'detaining', i.e., imprisoning, and deporting undocumented immigrants are pretty rough characters.  Indeed, they remind me of the NRA's Wayne LaPierre's notorious description of federal BATF agents as "jack-booted government thugs."  I reflected that Hitler could not have succeeded in utterly dominating German society without the help of the great many Germans who willingly joined his SA 'brownshirts,' his SS 'storm troopers,' and his Gestapo, or state police.  Mussolini couldn't have succeeded in controlling Italy without the brutal assistance of his thugish 'blackshirts.'  It's looking very much like ICE has become America's first National Police Force, filled with agents who are only too happy to serve as his jack-booted, government thugs, ever ready to advance the cause of their Dear Leader.  I ask myself why anyone would want to make a living doing what the ICEmen are doing every day, destroying dreams and lives, separating families, putting peaceable, hardworking agricultural and long-term care workers behind bars,

Catherine Rampell's "11 tips for becoming a columnist" in yesterday's WaPo.

1. It’s not difficult to say something interesting. It’s not difficult to say something true. The real challenge is saying something both interesting and true.

2. Always put the shoe on the other foot.

3. It’s harder to publicly break with your friends than your enemies. But you have to be willing to do it.

4. That said, your goal is not to deliberately pander or provoke. Your goal is to persuade.

5. Pay more attention to what politicians do than what they say.

6. Clear writing comes from clear thinking.

7. If readers don’t understand your writing, that’s your fault, not theirs.

8. Never conclude a column with “only time will tell.”

9. Always have more material than you need.

10. Resist the instinct to conflate confidence with competence, or certainty with correctness.

11. That said, know your immovable principles and red lines — journalistically, ethically, ideologically — and why you’re columnizing in the first place.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett.  It's recommended in the current Atlantic.  I hope to get it at the North Shore Library today.

Academia.edu tells me that I have 14 readers in 9 different countries of my law review articles, published a million years ago, and of no particular note.  Even my  1997 "Uncle Bob" tribute to my first law school dean, Robert F. Boden, has attracted clicks from readers in foreign lands.  I know these trivial facts because the Academia.edu website wants me to subscribe to their application so I can keep track of such things, which is what the application is designed to do.   Every time I receive an email from this site, it reminds me of the kind of self-adulatory data that so many academics generate and hoard as a matter of course for their faculty bios.

The Pond at Dusk by Jane Kenyon is the subject of NY Times art critic A. O. Scott's essay in this morning's Times.  She is a favorite of mine, originally because of her powerful poem, Otherwise, to which I later added other wonderful works, including  Woman, Why Are You Weeping, Depression in Winter, and Trouble With Math in a One-Room Country Schoolhouse.  Her much more famous husband (and former professor), Donald Hall, was Poet Laureate of the United States.  I've read all of his very entertaining essays in his Essays After Eighty and  A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, but I've never really gotten into his poetry, much preferring his wife's.     

Here is The Pond at Dusk with its lyrical first two stanzas and stomach-punching final stanza.

A fly wounds the water but the wound   

soon heals. Swallows tilt and twitter   

overhead, dropping now and then toward   

the outward-radiating evidence of food.

The green haze on the trees changes   

into leaves, and what looks like smoke   

floating over the neighbor’s barn   

is only apple blossoms.

But sometimes what looks like disaster   

is disaster: the day comes at last,

and the men struggle with the casket   

just clearing the pews.

The end reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop's One Art, that starts

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

and ends

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. 

An exquisite portrait of a young woman by Renoir, extraordinary hair, can I make anything out of a copy?

A rough start