1005

Wednesday, October 5, 2022 

In bed @ 10, up at 7, but 5 pss, 1 and 1/2 glasses of red.   Lawn service day at 7:30, dirty dishes remain to be taken care of in the kitchen, 11:30 teleconference with Jill Hansen, my 'personal' diabetes PhD pharmacist at the VA.  Otherwise, no agenda.

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Thoughts linger on Putin's, Medvedev's, others' threat of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine and 'the West.'  Thinking how I grew up with the fear of Russian/Soviet use of ballistic weapons against American cities, government fear-mongering, school children practicing defensive 'postures' to protect against blast and radiation effects - kneel under desk, hands on top of heads, now kiss your ass goodby.  And here we are again, again atomic weaponry, again the Russians, this time without the communist ideology, but the same intractable Russian nationalism and imperialism.  Same play, different cast.

Thinking of Putin (and of Donald Trump) puts me in mind of Lord Acton's letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887: "I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases.  Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility.  Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.  There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."  How curious and telling that this great English Roman Catholic historian (a rare peer of the realm as a Catholic) was writing to his Anglican interlocutor about the Catholic papacy, the Inquisition and the treatment of heretics,  and the abuse of power by Catholic popes.  Not surprisingly, he was a vocal opponent of the power-grabbing dogma of papal infallibility on matters of faith and morals issued ex cathedra promulgated by the First Vatican Council and the nasty Pope Pius IX in 1870.

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I came across a short essay about Barnett Newman's The Stations of the Cross this morning, reminding me of that religious private practice or public rite from my youth.  How deep the psychic impressions made by that compelled focus on torture and death.  Iconic images of each station mounted on the walls of the church, the priest in chasuble, etc., moving from station to station, with alter boys in attendance, the 'faithful' reciting prayers and focusing on the agony suffered by Jesus (scourging, a crown of thorns, carrying his own cross, falling, seeing his mother, stripped of his garments and nailed to the cross, death) all endured voluntarily to atone for our sins, my sinfulness.  Quite a message to imprint on the minds of children.  And to drive home the emotionality of the rite, we had the music:  Stabat mater dolorosa iuxta crucim lacrimosa dum pendebat Filius.  OMG

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Life in our  modern American city:

A 2-year-old boy is in critical condition and two other people have been seriously injured following a shooting at the 21st & Keefe Park on the city's far north side Tuesday afternoon.

According to Milwaukee police, someone fired several shots from a vehicle toward the park, located at the intersection of West Keefe Avenue and North 21st Street around 2:15 p.m.

The gunfire struck a 20-year-old man, a 74-year-old woman, and her grandchild, a 2-year-old boy.

The 20-year-old man and 74-year-old woman have "serious injuries," while the 2-year-old boy is in "critical condition," police said.

Police do not have anyone in custody. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at (414) 935-7360 or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at (414) 224-Tips or P3 Tips App.

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Thomas Edsall's column in this morning's NYT contains what I think is a pretty accurate assessment of why so many working-class whites are anti-Democrat and pro-Republican:

"Case and Deaton contend that the ballots cast for Donald Trump by members of the white working class “are surely not for a president who will dismantle safety nets but against a Democratic Party that represents an alliance between minorities — whom working-class whites see as displacing them and challenging their once solid if unperceived privilege — and an educated elite that has benefited from globalization and from a soaring stock market, which was fueled by the rising profitability of those same firms that were increasingly denying jobs to the working class.”"

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