Monday, September 29, 2025
D+ 328/252/-1211
1567 War of Religion breaks out in France as Huguenots try to kidnap King Charles IX
1835 The treaty of New Echota was signed between the US government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction to cede all lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States
1890 US 7th Cavalry massacred 200+ captive Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota
1908 A patent was granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake, Clintonville, Wisconsin
1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act was signed by President Richard M. Nixon
2020 First debate between US Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden was held, widely criticized as chaotic and ill-tempered
2023 More than 50 people are killed in two suicide attacks in Mastung and Peshawar City, Pakistan, during celebrations for the birth of the Prophet Muhammad
In bed at 9, awake and up at 3:30. 54°, high of 81°, another beautiful, hot, sunny day ahead.
Another day in the VA hospital with mixed feelings, grateful to the VA and the staff for the 24/7 attention to my condition, my needs and desires (room service! good food, served hot), but also feeling a bit trapped, away from home, away from Geri and all my "stuff," except my laptop on which I am now typing which Geri brought to me yesterday. Yesterday, I lay on the uncomfortable hospital bed most of the day, unable to get both my obese body and the bed where I wanted them in frequent, futile adjustments, trying for comfort. I moved to the taller of the two chairs in the room late in the day, where it's more comfortable than the bed. I'm sitting on it now at 4:30 in the morning, hoping to be released today -or should I say discharged or sprung - all the terms carrying a sense of being set free from captivity and servitude, released from prison, discharged from the military. My left foot is badly swollen and painful to touch. I don't know whether I can put it into a shoe or a Haflinger slipper. Will this delay discharge?
Petty gripes, besides the bed, which isn't so petty: The remote control for the TV and the telephone, both attached to power cords, are located on the right side of the bed, where there is nowhere to put them but on the bed itself. The bed is narrow, especially when occupied by a big galumph like me, so these devices always end up on the floor, and out of reach. Mumble, grumble. The television carries the local broadcast channels plus CNN and Fox News, but no MSNBC. I have to wonder whether there is something sinister behind that. They carry National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, USA, TBS, A&E, ESCAPE, and GRIT, but no MSNBC. Wazupwidat?
My time here has seemed like an endless succession of blood draws, finger jabs, injections, and medications, except that I've only had one injection in the belly since the doc-in-charge told me he's discharging me today. That was to prevent blood clots from all the time I've spent on my back the last three days. Having said that, the finger-jab lady just came in a jabbed me again, with a reading of 169.
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last! (pace MLK, Jr.) Geri arrived before noon after her mammogram, and also at the same time, the nurse arrived with the discharge papers. Hallelujah! And, as expected, I couldn't fit my left foot into my Haflinger clog I wore into the hospital Saturday so I had to be wheeled to Geri's Audi.
What hath God wrought? There is a feature piece on Russell Vought in this morning's NY Times. The deadly combo: Vought heading OMB, Stephen Miller directing immigration and domestic policies in the White House, Pam Bondi heading the Justice Department, Pete Hegseth leading DOD, Kash Patel heading the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard on top of the entire Intelligence agencies of the nation. It is said that we get the kind of government that we deserve. It's also said that we are "a nation under God." What do those two notions suggest about us? And what does it suggest about God? (I think again about that Catholic chaplain who visited me here in the hospital and tried to convert me back to Catholicism, or some sort of theistic Christianity. Was he the guy God sent? What a bad choice.)
David Brooks has an interesting opinion piece in today's NY Times, titled "We Need to Think Straight About God and Politics." As I've often written in this journal, I'm not much of a fan of his, but I liked this piece, especially these thoughts:
I’d add only that a naked public square is a morally ignorant public square. American public debate was healthier and the conversation more profound when religious leaders like Reinhold Niebuhr, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Luther King Jr. and Fulton Sheen brought their faith to bear on public questions. Today morality has been privatized and left up to the individual. The shared moral order is shredded, and many people, morally alone, have come to feel that their lives are meaningless.
[An author he refers to] goes on to argue that far from being separate, spirituality and liberal democracy need and rely on each other. Human life revolves around four big questions: What is the meaning of life? What is the ultimate source of right and wrong? How can we reduce the amount of suffering and injustice in the world? How can we understand the world without resorting to magic, using reason and instead?
[He] argues that spiritualism (religion plus the other moral philosophies) helps us answer the first two questions and that secularism helps us answer the last two. He writes, “My claim is not just that secular liberalism and religious faith are instrumentally interdependent but that each is intrinsically reliant on the other to build a morally and epistemically complete and coherent account of the world.”
It seems to me that there is no "meaning to life." Life simply is, just as a rock is, and clouds are. What is the meaning of a squirrel's life? The meaning of the lives of the birds at my feeders? What was the meaning of Blanche's life for 17 years or Lilly's for 15 years? My childhood hamster, Fuzzy's? A goldfish's? We humans say we are different, but how and why? As for "the ultimate source of right and wrong", why do those concepts need an "ultimate source" different from any other individual or social concept or conceit in the sense of any product of human thought? Wasn't it thinking like this, about the "meaning of life" and "ultimate source of right and wrong", each meaning a transcendent, person God, what Spinoza rejected? These questions remind me of the long-ish discussion I had with the Catholic chaplain while I was hospitalized. I wish I had a recording of it, or that I could have memorialized it somehow; the priest's arguments seemed so simplistic and question-begging to me.
What happens when people operate without any coherent theory of how religion should relate to politics?
First, people treat electoral politics as if it were a form of spiritual warfare. A battlefield mentality prevails between the forces of Jesus and the forces of Satan. Fear replaces the traditional Christian virtue, hope: We’re under attack, and we have to destroy our enemies! That’s the easiest way to mobilize people.
Second, the process of moral formation is perverted. Instead of discipling people in the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, people get discipled in the political passions — enmity, conquest and the urge to dominate.
Third, people develop an addiction to rapture. . . Traditional hymns from centuries gone by covered a range of experiences, but modern worship music tends to hit the same emotional chord over and over again: rapture and praise. Its job is to drive your arms heavenward or to knock you to your knees. It can be a delicious and transforming experience. The problem is that politics is prosaic. Deliberation and negotiation work best in a mood of moderation and equipoise. If you want to practice politics in the mood best suited for the altar call, you’re going to practice politics in a way that sends prudence out the window.
Fourth, a destructive kind of syncretism prevails. Syncretism is an ancient religious problem. It occurs when believers try to merge different kinds of faith. These days, it’s faith in Jesus and the faith in MAGA all cocktailed together. Syncretism politicizes and degrades faith and totalizes politics.
Fifth, it kicks up a lot of hypocrisy. It’s nice to hear [Tucker] Carlson say he practices a religion of love, harmony and peace, but is that actually the way he lives his life?
Finally, it causes people to underestimate the power of sin. The civil rights movement had a well-crafted theory of the relationship between religion and politics. The movement’s theology taught its members that they were themselves sinful and that they had to put restraints on their political action in order to guard against the sins of hatred, self-righteousness and the love of power. Without any such theory, MAGA imposes no restraints, and sin roams free.
The critics of Christian nationalism sometimes argue that it is a political movement using the language and symbols of religion in order to win elections. But the events of the past week have proved that this is a genuinely religious movement and Charlie Kirk was a genuinely religious man. The problem is that unrestrained faith and unrestrained partisanship are an incredibly combustible mixture. I am one of those who fear that the powerful emotions kicked up by the martyrdom of Kirk will lead many Republicans to conclude that their opponents are irredeemably evil and that anything that causes them suffering is permissible. It’s possible for faithful people to wander a long way from the cross.
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