9/15/2025

Monday, September 15, 2025

D+ 314/239/-1224

1951 Pope Pius XII published the encyclical Ingruentium Malorum

1963 Church bombing in Birmingham Alabama, killed 4 African-American girls

1966  Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a letter to the United States Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1981 Pope John Paul II published the \encyclical "Laborem exercens" (through work) against capitalism and Marxism

2011 We moved into our house in Bayside

2022 The European parliament said Hungary could no longer be considered a full democracy, saying Viktor Orbán’s government has become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” 

2024 Man arrested and charged with the attempted assassination of  Donald Trump, spotted while the presidential candidate was playing golf 

In bed at 10:15, up at 5:30, thinking of and missing my birth family, my family when the children were young, Ed Felsenthal.  63°, high of 75°, sunny day.   

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9:10 a.m.  

Woody Allen, Deconstructing Harry.  We watched this 1997 movie on YouTube last night.  It's a shaggy takeoff on Bergman's Wild Strawberries with a rather clumsy nod to The Seventh Seal.  I didn't enjoy it very much, in part because I had trouble keeping all the female characters straight.  It featured a lot of familiar actors besides Woody himself: Kirstie Alley, Bob Balaban, Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal, Judy Davis, Mariel Hemingway, Amy Irving, Julie Kavner, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci, and Robin Williams.  Maybe it was its Wild Strawberries connection that had me waking up this morning with thoughts of my parents and sister, and life when my children were young.  I like Woody Allen movies and sort of like him despite his weirdness, or perhaps because of his weirdness.  I'm inclined to disbelieve the charge of sexual abuse of Mia Farrow's daughter, Dylan.  The charge was thoroughly investigated and litigated, and Allen was cleared of sexual abuse.  His marriage to Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, was odd, but Allen is odd, and I suppose Soon-Yi is odd.  It's the only one of his three marriage that lasted. Most of us are odd in some way, visibly or not.  In any event, I enjoy most of his movies, which are also odd.  I especially enjoy the music in his movies.

Soybeans.  I drove up to Saukville and Grafton yesterday in part to find a replacement spool for Geri's Toro weedwhacker.  Neither Walmart nor Home Depot carried it, but I found it in Mequon at our local Ace Hardware.  On the way back home, I drove through a rural sideroad south of Saukville with farm fields full of soybeans.  Wisconsin farmers produce a lot of soybeans, more than 100 million bushels, approaching 300 million metric tons.  Based on national data, about 20% of those soybeans would have been sold to China, but since President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in February, Beijing has retaliated by halting all purchases of American soybeans.  Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers who depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States.  

China’s reluctance to purchase American soybeans and other agricultural products were expected to be a central topic as top officials from the United States and China meet for another round of economic negotiations in Spain this week, but it looks like all they are discussing is TikTok.  Those talks are being anchored by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Mr. Trump has put in charge of negotiating and securing a favorable trade deal with China.  Bessent owns thousands of acres of North Dakota farmland, worth up to $25 million. The properties grow soybeans and corn in a state that exports most of its agricultural products to China. The investments have earned him as much as $1 million in rental income annually.  Seems like a pretty clear conflict of interest, but so it goes when billionaires own not only their own property, but also the government.

A note from the journal this date in 2022: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stated in 1896 the truth of capitalism: "One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return."  Vegelahn v. Guntner, 167 Mass. 92, 44 N.E. 1077, 1081.

America, love it or leave it.  That was a battle cry of the Right back in the 60s and 70s, when civil rights and Vietnam passions were high.    I am reminded of it by Frank Bruni's column in this morning's NY Times, where he wrote:

We’re a violent country through and through, a land where passions run disastrously high, disaffection spreads ever wider, communities are fractured, traditional support systems are crumbling, individuals are isolated and guns are everywhere.

One year ago today, I wrote this in this journal:

 Can I love America?  Heather Cox Richardson's Letter from an American today includes this: 

I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities, and I believe that American democracy could be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality.

There came a time, I'm not sure when it was, that I realized that I don't love America.  I wonder what it means to "love" one's country.  I recall my father years ago advising me not to love anything that can't love you back.  I wonder if the love of one's country is even possible, but if it is, is it a form of idolatry?  Deutschland, Deutschland über alles? I can love my neighbor, love my spouse and my children, but can I love an inanimate thing or entity in the same way?  Does love have the same meaning used in "I love Paris" as it does in "I love my wife"?  What do we mean by "my country"? The land, as in 'from sea to shining sea'?  The people?  The form or structure of government?  The behaviors of the government or the people?  Is a country's history part of what one loves?  How about its popular culture?  Its political culture?  What is it we love when we say I love America?  And how do we manifest or act out that love?  In other words, what does love of country require of us?  JFK said, "Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country."  He reminded us that love is an action verb, not just a feeling.  I love my wife by helping her, by trying to make life's challenges easier for her, by doing the dishes, by going to the store, etc.  She reciprocates.  How does one "love" (action verb: do for) America, as JFK advised?  Presumably, by so acting as to make the country better. 

Is it accurate to say that those who find our culture, our politics, and our current government deeply wanting, or even despicable, loathsome, or pernicious, "America haters"?  Or should that term apply only to those who are indifferent to American culture, politics, and government, people who don't give a shit?  I think it's the latter.  

 Is there any way in which our country has been getting better?  more humane?  more spiritual and less materialistic?  less beset by gun culture?  by violence?  more democratic?  less armed-to-the-teeth? less controlled by Big Money and by Dark Money, Big Business, Big Pharma, etc.?  more honest?  more transparent?  more generous? more compassionate?  more Christ-like?  

Another Venezuelan boat, supposedly transporting illicit drugs, was blown out of the water on the high seas today.  What is the real purpose of these attacks?  What impact will it have on the military personnel who carry them out?  What is the effect under international law, the law of the sea?  Sherlock: 'there's mischief afoot, Watson.'