7/18/24

 Thursday, July 18, 2024

Like sands through an hourglass, . . .

1870 Pius IX and the First Vatican Council proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility

1984 Walter Mondale wins the Democratic nomination in San Francisco

Today, I renewed my driver's license until 2032😱

Lights out at 1 a.m., up at 5 a.m. I slept much of the morning, dozing on and off.     

Prednisone, day 67, 15 +5 mg., day 3.   I took my 15 mg. at 5:55 and breakfast of Whole Grain Cheerios w/ blackberries at 6:10.  No significant decrease in hip pain.  Today marks two full weeks of persistent hip pain.  Today the pain is extending down my right leg, about halfway to my knee.   I worry that although it's clear from the ER tests and imaging that the pain doesn't come from an infection or fracture, it may also not come from a relapse back to PMR.  I have about a week's worth of daily journal hard copies that I want to take to my desk in the basement but I'm afraid that, if I do so, I won't be able to get back up the basement stairs.  My birdfeeder has been empty for a few days.  I can't do my kitchen chores or cook my breakfasts without considerable pain and a need to sit down in the middle of the task.

I got the Volvo back from Andy this afternoon and drove up to Saukvill and renewed my operator's license at the DMV.  I was glad to get that accomplished.  I drove home down CTH "O" through Grafton and Cedarburg, just for the pleasure of driving our old path to the Senkik's to the border between Grafton and Cedarburg.  I stopped at Sendik's in Mequon and replenished my supply of berries, cottage cheese, and yogurt, but forgot to pick up some more pickled herring.  My hip pain was much better.

I took my evening 5 mg. pill at 5 p.m.

Hillbilly Elegy.  We watched the film on Netflix last night and then watched J.D. Vance's acceptance speech in Milwaukee on YouTube.  Geri is persuaded that the Democrats are doomed come November.  I  have felt that way at least since Trump was shot last Saturday and rose to pose for the iconic photographs with his bloodied face mouthing "Fight!  Fight!: and his defiant upraised arm and fist, but really since Joe Biden announced he was running for reelection on April 25, 2023.  He was 80 years old when he announced and would be 86 in the last year of his second term.  From that day forward, his age and increasing frailty, feebleness, debility, (pick your word,) became the dominant issue in the race.  Even as Donald Trump became increasingly deranged and unfit himself, Biden's age was at least as big a concern, and increasingly bigger.  His performance at the debate on June 27th, 14 months after Biden's announcement, demonstrated to all the world, except for Biden himself and his insulating inner circle, that he is currently unfit for the high office he holds and will only get worse with the passage of time.  His performance was a self-inflicted wound from which he can never recover.  

Some thoughts:  (1) I can't help but notice the similarities between Vance and me, coming from a blue-collar background with a parent with a drug abuse and PTSD problem, joining the Marines and serving overseas in an unwise war, going to college on a government scholarship and then to law school on the GI Bill, marrying his wife whom he met in school.  Each of us wrote an autobiography/memoir, his published and mine not.

(2) He is very intelligent, more so than Trump.  He doesn't strike me as a knee-jerk Republican.  He can defend his positions with rationality if not great values.

(3) He gets high marks for defending his mother, his grandmother, and his friends and neighbors in Kentucky and Ohio.  It's easy to say he threw them all under the bus in his autobiography and I suppose a case can be made for that, but I think it may be somewhat facile.  One nonetheless wonders why anyone with the kind of family background he had, both with his mother and with his grandmother, would write an autobiography for publication if not simply to magnify himself.  I wrote my memoir for my two children, gave a copy to each of them and one to my sister, and kept one for myself.  For whom did Vance write Hillbilly Elegy and why?  In this connection, . . .

(4) He seems smug and self-satisfied, maybe a bit self-reverential, and narcissistic.  He's a bit too happy for me.  I distrust such people.  Bumper sticker wisdom: "If you're not outraged (or angry, frightened, anxious, or depressed), you're not paying attention."  "Even at my best I’m a delayed explosion — I can be defused, but only with skill and precision,” Vance wrote in Hillbilly Elegy."  But you would never know of his hidden rage from seeing him in public, at a lectern, or being interviewed.  Of course, his life has turned out well for him, exceedingly well, both personally and professionally.  He used his Yale Law degree and connections to become a venture capitalist and is presumably rich, as he would have to have been to run for the Senate in Ohio a couple of years ago.  He is clearly aligned with the capitalist interests who run Silicon Valley and the country ( he who has the gold . . .) like Peter Thiel, for whom he worked and who backed his Senate campaign.

(5) He was baptized Catholic in August of 2019.  His wife Usha is a Hindu.  In his youth, he had been a Pentecostal, what we used to disparagingly call, a "holy roller," one of those who spoke in tongues and handled snakes to demonstrate their Faith.  I recall hearing some "holy roller" services on the radio in Eastern Tennessee when I drove down to Florida to visit my Dad.  Now that conservative Catholics so dominate Republican politics and government (witness the U.S. Supreme Court and Donald Trump's White House staff), one may wonder about the political utility of Vance's conversion from Pentecostalism to Catholicism, but of course, we can't read his mind or soul.  One may wonder too about his shifting positions on abortion in light of his fealty to Catholic principles and his fealty to Donald Trump.

(6) As fellow former Marines who served in two of America's unjust and unwinnable wars (Vietnam and Iraq), I can understand his resistance to America's involvement in foreign military adventures.  He has said he doesn't care what happens in Ukraine and perhaps he doesn't, but since Ukraine was the victim of a clearly illegal, unjust, and indefensible, imperialist invasion by Russia, it's a bit hard to square with his professed Christianity.  (I think I can say the same thing about what appears to be his harsh position on 'illegal' immigrants.)   On the other hand, I think he sees clearly that the Ukraine war will end probably with a truce or treaty that cedes to Russia the Donbas, Crimea, and the rest of Eastern Ukraine that Russia already occupies.  Regarding continuing billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine, I think Vance has a more rational position than Ukraine's supporters.  He argues that we can't continue to supply both Ukraine and Israel in their wars with our limited manufacturing capacity, as became crystal clear when Joe Biden authorized the transfer of cluster artillery to Ukraine because the U.S. was running out of 105 mm. and 155 mm. conventional shells.

(7)  Dana Bash of CNN remarked after his acceptance speech that parts of it could have been delivered by Bernie Sanders at a Democratic National Convention.  I thought the same thing, especially when he bashed NAFTA and other global trade deals.  It was corporate America that pushed for those deals and 'new Democrats' like Bill Clinton who enabled them.  Labor unions of course opposed them vigorously and for good reasons.  Vance's attack on outsourcing American jobs to Mexico, China, and Vietnam is hardly popular among traditional, business-oriented Republicans.

(8) Vance told "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan that the U.S. "could learn from" some of Viktor Orbán's controversial policies, including how to eliminate what he views as a left-wing bias at American universities.  This is scary.

Anniversary thoughts.  (1) Ah, the dogma of papal infallibility.  More happy horseshit from the boys in brocades laces, and clown hats.😀  The best thing that came out of the 1st Vatican Council was the letter Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) wrote to Archbishop Mandell Creighton on April 5, 1887, in which he wrote:

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 [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers' lifetimes]. 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. 

(2)  Forty years ago the Dems tried their luck with Waler Mondale.  What I remember from that race is attending a fundraiser at the Milwaukee Athletic Club downtown, standing near the bar with Tom St. John as Mondale was leaving the room.  As he walked out, he looked over at me, gave me a big smile and pointed his finger at me as if we were old friends, and winked at me.   Tom and I would laugh about that feigned recognition for years afterward.  More happy horseshit.😀