2/7/23

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

In bed at 9:20, awake at 3:15, up at 3:45, unable to sleep.  thoughts of Tom, Caela eulogy, Sinai, darting minnows, caged squirrels.  In my recliner 3 hours plus before sunrise at 7:00, warmest temperature of the day right now at 42, going gown all day to a late night 29, wind is already at 19 mph SSW, varying between 7 and 19 mph during the day with gusts up to 38 mph and wind chills between 21 and 34 degrees.  Sunset at 5:11, 10+11.

18 percent of U.S. adults use medication to help them sleep.  This morning's WaPo: "In search of a good night’s sleep, 18 percent of U.S. adults use some type of medication to help them snooze, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This includes those who say they take sleep medication most nights (6 percent), every night (2 percent) or some nights (10 percent). More women than men take sleep medication, and usage overall increases with age, the report finds."  Count me in on the insomnia numbers, not on the use of meds.

Lord, save us from your followers!  I've been reading a review of 3 books on Christian Nationalism in the last issue of NYRB.   The books confirm what I had argued to Kitty for years during our morning talks - that at the root of the hyperpolarity, the partisanship in our country is Race, White Supremacy, Black inferiority, nativist disdain for immigrants, especially Hispanics, Blacks from Trump's 'shithole countries', but also Muslims from all over, Hindus & Sikhs & Muslims from India and Pakistan, Buddhists from Asia.  The review mentions Christian Nationalism's deep roots in American history, reaching back to John Wintrhop's speech aboard the Arabella before the first Puritans reached New England.  The deep and common roots sustaining Christian Nationalism a/k/a evangicalism, explain the Right's emphasis on 'originalism' in interpreting the Constitution, the insistence on the existence of 'voter fraud' despite the lack of supporting evidence, the widespread belief in the Great Replacement Theory, etc.  Noteworthy excerpts;  (1)  According to a recent Pew Research poll, 60 percent of Americans believe the country was founded to be a Christian nation, and nearly half (including 81 percent of white evangelicals) think it should be one today.  (2)  Most of Christianity’s symbolic capital has been seized by a segment of the population committed to ideas about the Bible, the family, and civics that most other Americans reject.  (3)  White Christian nationalists sincerely believe that whites and Christians are the most persecuted groups in America.  (4)  Seventy percent of white evangelicals believe the Constitution to be divinely inspired; constitutional and biblical literalism thus go hand in hand.   (5)   It may seem simplistic to interpret Republican hysteria over voter “fraud” as a dog whistle about too many of the wrong people voting, yet it’s nearly impossible to interpret it any other way.  (6)   In a 2021 survey, the authors asked people to identify the groups or ideas they found most threatening. The response given by those who scored highest on the white Christian nationalism scale was unexpected: they saw the greatest threat as coming not from atheists or Muslims but from “socialists.”  (7)  Evangelicalism created a safe harbor for white people who wanted to be counted as Christians without having to accept what ecumenical leaders said were the social obligations demanded by the gospel, especially the imperative to extend civil equality to nonwhites.  (8) Sehat examines the Court’s valorization of “privacy” and offers a fresh analysis of the fallout from grounding the reproductive rights rulings, beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), on a right to privacy. Griswold, in his view, did more than recognize a right to birth control, which by that time was already legal in all but two states. He sees the decision’s significance as endorsing, albeit implicitly, a “political philosophy” of individual autonomy that’s separate from religious norms, just as Roe v. Wade eight years later effectively “announced an abandonment of the role of the state in defining and defending an official morality.” Sehat’s valuable insight is that these privacy decisions were about something deeper than birth control and abortion, or even about the ability of women to control their reproductive destiny. They amounted to “a repudiation of the social significance of religion in determining moral norms at the hands of the state.” In Roe, as evangelicals instinctively understood, “American secularism reached its apotheosis.” And so began secularism’s decline. (9)   In November 2022, celebrating his reelection, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, offered up his state to Christianity. “Father, we just claim Oklahoma for you,” he intoned.  Every square inch, we claim it for you in the name of Jesus. Father, we can do nothing apart from you…. We just thank you, we claim Oklahoma for you, as the authority that I have as governor, and the spiritual authority and the physical authority that you give me. I claim Oklahoma for you, that we will be a light to our country and to the world right here in our state."

State of the Union.  Joe Biden will deliver the speech tonight.  I suppose many will watch it; I intend to take a pass on it.  It's painful for me to watch Biden work to express himself.  It's not just his stuttering challenge, which is real enough.  It's not just his boundless capacity for uttering gaffes.  It's not just his inability to resist his predictable Bidenisms: 'my dad always told me,' 'my mom used to say,' etc.,  It's not just his tendency to just make stuff up, i.e., to lie.  It's not just the tired grudges I hold against him for Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, for the mass incarceration crime bill he authored or his protection of credit card companies chartered in his home state of Delaware in the bankruptcy reform act many years ago.  It's not just his insistence on seeking sympathy for the accidental deaths of his wife and daughter decades ago and the death of his son Beau.  It's all those things and more.  Despite his lifelong efforts to get everybody to like him, including Republicans, I'm "just not that into him" and his schtick.  And did I mention how I feel about his professed intention to run for another term at his age? 

Working on a new painting project.  I was happy that Geri agreed to hang my favorite painting, - the young Vietnamese woman holding a small bouquet - in the tv room along with my knockoff Van Dongen and Modigliani and an assortment of 5 drawings.  Removing the favorite painting from the 'Vietnam wall' in the bedroom left a big empty space I want to fill with another Vietnam  painting.  I'm trying this one for now, copied from a painting I found on the internet.  To me it symbolizes the innocents killed or damaged by our invasion.  I need to do some more work on it - having a hard time trying to decide what, if anything, to do with the sand-colored space behind the girl.