Sunday, January 26, 2025
D+80
1920 Amedeo Modigliani's fiancé Jeanne Hébuterne jumped out of a window a day after the artist's funeral killing herself and her unborn child
1934 Nazi Germany & Poland signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty
1962 Bishop Burke of the Buffalo Catholic dioceses declared Chubby Checker's "The Twist" to be impure and banned it from all Catholic schools
1998 President Bill Clinton said "I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
2024 US Federal jury said Donald Trump must pay $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll after he denied raping her
In bed at 10 after 'tucking in' Geri with her wedge and cold therapy wrap, up at 5 a.m. 15° outside with a wind chill of 1°, high temp of 29°. Geri got up around 6:00, had a cup of coffee, read some newspaper and worked on Wordle, then went back to bed around 7.
Prednisone, day 282, 5 + 2.5 mg., day 19. 5 mg. prednisone at 5:10 and other meds at 8:35, 2.5 mg. at 9 p.m.
Predawn musings. (1) Ezra Klein's column in this morning's Times includes this: "We’ve been warned for decades that America is or is becoming an oligarchy." Is becoming? Hasn't the country been an oligarchy, a plutocracy, from its very beginning? Who were those revered "Founding Fathers" who convened in Philadelphia to publish the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution? Were they not the the colonies'/states' rich and powerful, many of them slaveowners, or some (like Benjamin Franklin) former slaveowners? Was there a time in American history, or world history, where the Golden Rule, i.e., he who has the gold makes the rules, hasn't been true? Thucydides: The powerful do what they will, and the powerless suffer what they must. Weren't both the Articles of Confederation and the U. S. Constitution drafted to create a weak, anti-democratic national government, reserving most of the power "to the states . . . or to the people:? Were the French and Russian Revolutions different? Other Communist revolutions? Was the United States different under Teddy Roosevelt's Progressivism, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and LBJ's Great Society, or were those reformers trying to preserve and protect Capitalism favoring the wealthy against predation by the super wealthy on the one hand and socialist egalitarians on the other? In any case, can there be any doubt that today without the backing of substantial wealth, gaining federal political office is virtually impossible? That Wall Street, K Street, and Silicon Valley rule Washington and not 'We, the People'?
In the 2020 election cycle, the average successful campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives spent over $2 million. However, competitive districts often see spending that far exceeds this average. For instance, the 2020 campaign for Georgia's 7th Congressional District saw total expenditures surpassing $14 million from both major party candidates.
The stakes are even higher in U.S. Senate races, where campaigns can run into the tens of millions. The average successful Senate campaign expenditure in 2020 was nearly $20 million. High-profile races, such as the 2020 South Carolina Senate race, saw combined spending from the candidates exceed $130 million, making it one of the most expensive Senate races in history.
There are three levels of every federal election: the public general election; the primary elections, which are public; and the donor-private support primaries. It is the donor-support primary that determines who can stage a credible public primary campaign. You need money to run a primary campaign, not so much if you are running for a local office, but very much if you are running for a congressional seat, Senate seat, or the presidency. Small individual contributions of $25, $50, or $100 aggregate to a great deal of money eventually, but it's the Big Hitters, the donors contributing thousands directly and more indirectly, who enable a campaign to get off the ground and ready to appeal to the small individual donors. It's the Big Hitters, the people who have or control Big Money, who have the greatest influence and it's their interests that the political campaigner and officeholder is most beholden to. As the anarchist Emma Goldman reminded us, "If elections made any difference, they'd make them illegal." He who has the gold makes the rules.
(2) I'm wondering if we all would have been better off if our parents, teachers, clergy, et al., had raised us to believe that all of us are basically selfish and inclined to take advantage of others for our own benefit, if we had been taught that man is a wolf/predator to other men. Homo hominis lupus. Fred Trump taught this to Donald and presumably, Donald has taught it to his children and they to theirs. Instead, most of us are taught that Man is made in the image and likeness of God. Similarly, would we be better off if we had been raised to believe that there is no God or at least no personal God and that we are 'on our own,' Instead, most of us have been raised to believe that we are "children" of a personal, indeed paternal, God our Father, who loves us and created each of us to live forever in perfect happiness in Heaven with Him and his angels unless we fuck it up by disobeying his rules? Catholics are taught that we are created good, but inclined to evil by Original Sin. Protestants take a harsher, and truer? View, especially Calvinists, who believe that man is "bound to Satan" or "enslaved to sin." And where did this idea of God being "loving" and desirous of our happiness come from? The God who created Hell? We, his children who act so often in accordance with our fallen nature, our enslavement to sin? How can we not be angry with such a God? Life becomes more endurable if we stop believing in God altogether rather than perpetually second-guessing Him and blaming Him. Or if we believe that God is a mean prick rather than a loving father. Or, like the Manichaeans, believe that there are 2 Gods, one good and one nasty. Or, like the Hindus and pagans, believe that there are many gods with many different qualities that change from time to time Instead we are taught to believe that there is only one God, that He is a person (or 3 persons, but in unitary way that we can't begin to understand because it's a divine "mystery"), that He loves us and that He he shows his love by giving us "free will" so as to make each of us eligible for Heaven - or Hell, depending on how things work out. So the God of our fathers is kind of like King George III in Hamilton:
You'll be back / Like before
I will fight the fight and win the war
For your love / For your praise
And I'll love you till my dying days
When you're gone / I'll go mad
So don't throw away this thing we had
Cuz when push comes to shove
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love
If there is no God, there is no one to blame for Life's shit, for evil, pain, suffering, for Putin, for Sinwar, for Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich, for Donald Trump, for January 6th, for childhood cancer and conjoined twins, for harelips and cleft palates, for hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. On the other hand, if "His eye is on the sparrow" "He's got the whole world in his hands," and "It's all in God's plan," I for one am plenty pissed, including for letting 21-year-old Jeaane Héburterne kill herself and her 8-month-old fetus. Was His eye on those sparrows? 😡
Modigliani's original
Geri seems to be better today. She showered again without a problem. I helped her with her compression socks and her outer socks. David came over and helped her with a couple of matters. I've become adept with refilling the ice-cooling device. She has been sleeping a bit more than usual but still not eating much at all and is suffering from the effects of her pain medication. Hong Anh's fried rice combo with vegetables for dinner.
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