2/11/23

 Saturday, February 11, 2023

In bed at 9:15, awake at 5:20, and up at 6:10, brain inactive except for John Prine's Hello in There, sotto voce. 23 degrees outside, high of 41, wind chill is 11 with a SW wind of 12 mph, windy day ahead with wind speeds up to 16 mph and gusts up to 30 mph and corresponding wind chills.  Sunrise at 6:55, sunset at 5:17, 10+22.

"AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY IS DUE FOR A REVIVAL:Our society is secularizing, and Christianity seems to be in long-term decline. But renewal is possible." This is an article I am reading in the February 5, 2023 issue of The Atlantic by Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC.  It's a fairly long article and pastor Keller clearly put a lot of thought and some research into its drafting.  I read it in part because it seems rather out of place in The Atlantic, which is a secular publication, not visibly connected with any religious orientation, and certainly not noticeably Christian.  Its readership is more highly educated than most Americans and almost certainly 'lists to port' and gives a wide berth to contemporary Republicanism and its attachment to Evangelicalism.  How does an article about a coming Christian Revival find its way into this magazine?  More interestingly, the article seems to ignore what seems to me to be defining characteristic of Modern American Secularism: a lack of belief in God, if not atheism at least a deeply-held agnosticism.  Keller writes that Christianity will experience its coming revival (1) if the Church learns how to speak compellingly to non-Christian people; (2) if it learns how to unite justice and righteousness; (3) if it embraces the global and multiethnic character of Christianity; (4) if it strikes a dynamic balance between innovation and conservation; and (5) if Christianity 'offers grace and covenant' in lieu of modern individualistic, soul-less secularism.  Nowhere does he mention a resurgence in Faith, a belief in God, and not only a god, but the Judeo-Christian god reflected in the 2 testaments as elaborated over 2 millennia by Church elders, theologians, philosophers, and a wide variety of cocksure whackos.  He acknowledges that in traditional Protestantism, including his Presbyterianism,  "We are adopted as sons and daughters of God, so the cosmic ruler becomes our unconditionally loving heavenly father. And all who unite with God as father are brought into a family of faith."  All that 'unconditionally loving heavenly father' stuff is awfully hard to swallow for the millions of people who make a point of not attending church on Sundays.  I wrote in yesterday's journal entry of watching the episode of the Middletown documentary entitled "Community of Faith":  'a somewhat incoherent study of a family of evangelical Pentecostal Christians who were, to me and to Geri, simply delusional, people living in a dream world with an imaginary Friend in the Sky who has a plan for them and who died on a cross to redeem them from their sins.'  One thinks that for Christianity to enjoy a revival it will be necessary for someone to come up with a better solution to the Problem of Evil and Suffering in this world   ("theodicy") despite the supposed existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, all-benevolent God than we have seen so far over the last couple of millennia. Pastor Keller ignores this little challenge as he focuses on stuff like 'speaking compellingly to non-Christian people,"  "striking a dynamic balance between innovation and conservation, " etc.

In this morning's NYT, there is a piece on Jinger Duggar Vuolo, the sixth of the (in)famous Duggar children of TV fame,  "A Duggar Revisits Her Religious Upbringing."  Jinger has written a memoir, “Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear,”  in which she recounts a childhood in her evangelical, fundamentalist family defined by cycles of anxiety, exhaustion and guilt.  Jinger seems to have inherited her parents' love of sharing their story with the rest of the world.  In addition to the memoir, Jinger ha 1.4 million followers on her Instagram account.  While she has rejected, or 'disentangled' herself from some of her parents' whacko beliefs (e.g., no music containing any syncopation), and has become liberated enough to wear pants and shorts, she still belongs to a conservative Baptist congregation that adheres to traditional teachings on gender, homosexuality, and women in church leadership roles.  The apple may fall from the tree, but not too far.  We are indeed 'tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe."

Jehovah's Witness, Los Angeles

Photo by Robert Frank, THE AMERICANS (1955/1956)

Introduction by Jack Kerouac

For Older Americans, the Pandemic Is Not Over  For older Americans, the pandemic still poses significant dangers. About three-quarters of Covid, deaths have occurred in people over 65, with the greatest losses concentrated among those over 75.  In January, the number of Covid-related deaths fell after a holiday spike but nevertheless numbered about 2,100 among those ages 65 to 74, more than 3,500 among 75- to 84-year-olds, and nearly 5,000 among those over 85. Those three groups accounted for about 90 percent of the nation’s Covid deaths last month.  Hospital admissions, which have also been dropping, remain more than five times as high for people over 70 than for those in their 50s. Hospitals can endanger older patients even when the conditions that brought them in are successfully treated; the harmful effects of drugs, inactivity, sleep deprivation, delirium, and other stresses can take months to recover from — or can land them back in the hospital.

SuperBowl LVII - The Nation Celebrates chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  How many Super Bowls have I missed now?  5? 6?  How many Sunday afternoons, Sunday evenings, Monday evenings, and Thursday evenings have I done something other than watching NFL football?  Work on a painting?  Read a poem?  Watch a movie or a documentary?  Go for a drive in the country? Make some soup or bake some bread?  Take a nap?  Daydream? How much of my life, before 5 or 6 years ago, did I spend watching NFL players bash one another, throw one another to the ground, run into one another reminding us of the sometimes deadly equation Force=MassXVelocity?  Ingfei Chen has an article in today's online New Yorker titled "The Forgotten History of Head Injuries in Sports."  "To a great extent, we collude as consumers of violence for the sake of entertainment. Damar Hamlin’s terrifying cardiac arrest reminded viewers that N.F.L. players aren’t action figures; Tua Tagovailoa’s multiple concussions, and their consequences, have shown that the N.F.L.’s much-touted concussion protocols have left plenty of danger in the game. And yet we keep watching—and, in some cases, signing our children up to play. As Casper sees it, American society is engaging in a self-deception rooted in old attitudes about the punch-drunk syndrome. He notes that the old street slang applied to afflicted boxers—“slug nutty,” “punchy,” “slaphappy”—was largely pejorative; in surveying oral histories, literary works, and other similar sources, he has found that suffering athletes have often been stigmatized as lower-class, semi-deranged malingerers. Getting hit over the head became the stuff of jokes, as in the physical comedy of the Three Stooges." . . . "Casper is writing a book about the history of concussions, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. I asked him what he thinks should be done about football and other contact sports. He and his colleagues have called for a broader diversity of views on the expert panels that write clinical concussion guidelines, and for more transparency about industry conflicts of interest. Other advocates have argued for promoting flag football, banning American youth tackle football, or delaying the age when kids start playing it; heading has been eliminated in some age groups of youth soccer in the U.S. and the U.K. Casper is skeptical about reforming the actual practice of football: he thinks the game can probably never be “neurologically viable.” At the same time, he said, “football’s way too woven into the fabric of American culture at this point to talk about something like banning it.” USA, USA, USA!!!

What a cruel country we live in!  I am reminded of it every time the subject of Universal Health Care comes up.   Every advanced industrial country in the world has some form of Universal Health Care, but not us.  We can't afford it!  The richest country in the world, but we can't afford it?  Denmark can afford it, Canada can afford it, and America can't afford it.  I'm reminded of our cruelty every time the subject of true family-friendly social policies comes up, like governmental support for child care.  We can't afford it!  Plus, it's a form of the dreaded Income Redistribution - Socialism!  Communism!.  I'm reminded of it every time the subject of progressive taxation of the wealthy comes up or fair taxation of corporations.  I'm reminded of it every time the subject of adequate funding for mental health care comes up, or when I'm reminded of the states, like Wisconsin, that reject expanded Medicaid coverage that would provide insurance for tens of thousands of people who are marginally poor.  And it's not so much that we are consciously wishing to hurt other people with our national stinginess.  It's rather that we are indifferent to their plight, living on the margins of wellness.  Plus, we have all been infected with the myth that those who are not well off are where they are because it's where they want to be or because of some personal deficiencies that keep them on the margins of wellness.  Of course, there are many self-defeating personal behaviors that contribute to marginalization in our economy: avoiding schooling, drug and alcohol use, unwanted pregnancy, etc.  And poverty and near-poverty are in large measure heritable: the children of poor and near-poor parents will probably end up poor or near-poor themselves.  The children of well-off parents will probably end up well off themselves.  But it is a which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg situation.  Which is more causative, the lottery of birth or the self-defeating behaviors?  As William Blake put it 'Every morn and every night / Some are born to sweet delight. / Every night and every morn /  Some to misery are born. / Some are born to sweet delight, / Some are born to endless night.'  Despite the celebrity of some rags-to-riches stories, there is precious little significant social mobility in the United States anymore.  There was a period coming out of the Great Depression and World War II when The American Dream had some traction, due to America's position as the world's only great economy, the only post-war thriving manufacturing economy with unionized, high-paying jobs, and programs like the G.I. Bill that funded home ownership and educational advancement for millions of returning vets (though mainly Whites).  There was in those days a greater sense of shared purpose in the country, a sense that led to the building of the interstate highway system, the enactment of the great civil rights laws of the 1960s as well as significant environmental legislation like NEPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, OSHA, etc.  These legislative accomplishments occurred not only in Democratic administrations but also during the Nixon years.  That sense of community, of shared purpose, is long gone.  It started disappearing at its apogee during the Johnson/Nixon years, continued with Reagan's defeat of Jimmy Carter in 1980, and peaked  with Newt Gingrich's leadership of the Republicans in the 1990s, with the emergence of the Tea Party in 2010, and ultimately with the election of Trump in 2016.  And now we are where we are, probably on the road to some form of fascism.  Somehow, the brutality of our national sport, football, with its knowing acceptance of and indifference to the risk of serious, permanent, life-altering brain damage for the players, makes all the sense in the world.  Further your Rabid Ranter saith not.