8/16/23

  Wednesday, August 16, 2023

In bed at 9:45, awake at 4, move to BRR, and up at 4:30. 59°, high of 82°, AQI=51, wind WSW at 8 mph, 3-28/34.  Sunrise at 5:58, sunset at 7:53, 13+55.

On this date last year Geri and I took Jimmy for a drive up to Port Washington past the elk farm.  Geri and Jim took a walk at Rotary Park on the lakefront.  The date for his move to Alexandria was approaching about which I had such mixed feelings.  I miss him still although I am very glad Geri has been relieved of the very heavy responsibilities she generously carried for the better part of 4 years.

Nona is spending the day with Ellis today.  Day 2 of Nona-duty.

LTMW I notice that again this morning the first visitor at the feeding station is a little downy woodpecker and then at 6:30, there is a surge of visitors but, alas, the sunflower seed tube is 75% empty meaning all that is left in the bottom quarter are large seeds and peanuts too bulky to be accessed through the metal mesh.  Also, the orange hemispheres look pretty dried out.  I better get busy. . .  Filled the feeder and replaced the oranges.

Still thinking about delusions.  I started thinking about the famous 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Wells' adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which reportedly caused thousands of Americans to believe the Earth was being invaded by extraterrestrial aliens, 'men from Mars.'  The program was written by Wells in the form of realistic-sounding news broadcasts so it is easy to see how listeners could be mistaken in believing it was a real emergency newscast.  That bizarre and scary occurrence wasn't a case of "mass delusion" because it quickly became known that the program wasn't real, just an early example of Donald Trump's favorite terms, "fake news" and "hoax."  When the truth became known to people, the belief and fear went away.  Wikipedia describes delusion thusly: "A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence."  (my emphasis added.)  Isn't that what we see with the MAGA crowd's belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen?  That Trump won 'in a landslide'?  But isn't it also true of some, indeed much, religious belief, notably the Catholic dogma of 'transubstantiation' of the 'eucharist'?  That which at one moment all our senses tell us is bread and wine becomes at the next moment flesh and blood of one who died two millennia ago even though all the sensory evidence is that bread and wine have remained bread and wine.  Isn't that delusional? Ditto the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Assumption, etc.  [Though with these dogmas I am reminded of the turkies who believed that the farmer who fed them every day was their friend until the days before Thanksgiving, i.e., the limits of Inductive Reasoning.)  BUT, we are told that delusions are to be distinguished from dogmas, or religious beliefs.  "As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs can change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:  "The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity."  Huh???  And later in the Wikipedia entry: "Another difficulty with the diagnosis of delusions is that almost all of these features can be found in "normal" beliefs. Many religious beliefs hold exactly the same features, yet are not universally considered delusional. For instance, if a person was holding a true belief then they will of course persist with it. This can cause the disorder to be misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. These factors have led the psychiatrist Anthony David to note that "there is no acceptable (rather than accepted) definition of a delusion." In practice, psychiatrists tend to diagnose a belief as delusional if it is either patently bizarre, causing significant distress, or excessively preoccupying the patient, especially if the person is subsequently unswayed in belief by counter-evidence or reasonable arguments." (My emphasis)  In other words, excluding religious beliefs is essentially a political judgment or decision at least so long as the religious belief does not significantly interfere with the believer's ability to function effectively in his or her world.  The shrinks who are responsible for the DSM aren't looking for a fight with all the Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, et al. so religious delusions are, literally by definition, not delusions unless they interfere with effective living, e.g., earn a living, get along in society, obey civil and criminal laws, etc.  But still, with regard to 'transubstantiation', a rose is a rose is a rose, and bread and wine are bread and wine, notwithstanding the certainty and incorrigibility and impossibility of the True Believers' belief to the contrary.  For those of us 'born in the bosom of the Church', it is all explained by the reassurance that "it's a Mystery."

But I'm left wondering about the MAGA folks and their constellations of beliefs and thinking about DJT's demonic insight into pushing the right buttons, yanking the right chains, in his True Believers.  How prescient he was in January 2916 when he said "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, ok?  It's like, incredible."  What did he understand about 'his' sector of the American electorate that the rest of us did not?  What if he were to say, "I could summon, assemble, and turn loose a mob to attack the Capitol building with the senators and representatives inside, to threaten to kill my vice-president and stalk the Speaker of the House, and lead another gang to attempt to overturn a fair, legitimate election using lies, threats, and intimidation, so I could stay in power despite the results of an election ousting me, and I wouldn't lose any voters, ok?  In fact, I would gain voters."  Would we believe it?  Do we now believe it?

What is the connection between religious delusion and MAGA delusions?  How is it that so many Evangelical Protestants are so loyal to DJT?  I see that Jenna Ellis, one of the "crackpot attorneys" representing Trump after the 2020 election and an indicted co-conspirator in the Fulton County RICO case tweeted yesterday: "“The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord and I will simply continue to honor, praise, and serve Him. . . Even so it is well with my soul."  Praise the Lord!