12/7/24

 Saturday, December 7,  2024

D+32

1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people

1965 Roman Catholic Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lifted the mutual excommunications that led to the split of the two churches in 1054 during the Great Schism

1972 Apollo 17 was launched, the final manned lunar landing mission where the crew took the famous "blue marble" photo of the entire Earth

2015 Time Magazine readers named Bernie Sanders their ' Person of the Year

The Blue Marble

In bed at 8:45, awake and up at 2:30.  Geri went to bed very early last night after falling asleep on the sofa, and she was up and reading her papers around 2:45, back to bed at 4:15.   I dozed off in the recliner at some point and woke up at 6:50.

Prednisone, day 207, 7.5 mg., day 22.   Prednisone at 5:00 with Irish soda bread.  Morning meds a few minutes later.

Capitalism, racism, American politics, sickness, and death.   Yesterday I wrote: "The American healthcare system is the WORST in the developed, industrialized world, and in large measure though not exclusively it is because of health insurance companies like United Healthcare."  I was responding to the assassination in NYC of the CEO of United Healthcare on Wednesday.  This morning I read the op-ed by Zeynep Tufecki, a Turkish-American sociologist at Princeton University and regular contributor to the New York Time   She's one of my favorite reads, along with Fintan O'Toole in the NYRB, Margaret Renkl in the NYTimes, and Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post. .  Tufecki's piece in this morning's paper carried the headline "The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms."

But this was something different. The rage that people felt at the health insurance industry, and the elation that they expressed at seeing it injured, was widespread and organic. It was shocking to many, but it crossed communities all along the political spectrum and took hold in countless divergent cultural clusters. . .  I’ve been studying social media for a long time, and I can’t think of any other incident when a murder in this country has been so openly celebrated.

Her essay compares America's current economic, social, and political era with its Gilded Era after the Civil War with its profound technological, economic, and social changes and its great inequality of wealth and income. 

Today’s business culture enshrines the maximization of executive wealth and shareholder fortunes, and has succeeded in leveraging personal riches into untold political influence. . .

The vast inequities of the [Gilded] era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence. In 1892, an anarchist tried to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clay Frick after a drawn-out conflict between Pinkerton security guards and workers. In 1901, an anarchist sympathizer assassinated President William McKinley. And so on 

As the historian Jon Grinspan wrote about the years between 1865 and 1915, “the nation experienced one impeachment, two presidential elections ‘won’ by the loser of the popular vote and three presidential assassinations.” And neither political party, he added, seemed “capable of tackling the systemic issues disrupting Americans’ lives.” No, not an identical situation, but the description does resonate with how a great many people feel about the direction of the country today.

I also read Nicholas Kristof's essay in the NY Times on August 16, 2023, "How Do We Fix the Scandal That Is American Health Care?" 

Cost is often the argument against expanding access to health care. But it’s hard to understand how just about every other advanced country can afford universal care and the United States can’t. And consider that 94 percent of Americans with substance-use disorder do not get treatment, even though this pays for itself many times over. Our policy often seems driven less by cost considerations than by indifference, even cruelty. (My italics added)

That led me to pull out of my bookcase Stuart Stevens' 2020 book IT WAS ALL A LIE, subtitled 'How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.'  His answer: racism.

In my first race [as a professional political consultant] I had stumbled onto a truth as basic and immutagle as the fact that water freezes below 32°F: race was the key in which much of American politics and certainly all of Southern politics is played. . .  Since 1964 no Republican presidential candidate has broken 17% with African American voters, and by 2016 only 3% considered themselves Republicans.

What happens if you spend decades focused on appealing to White voters and treating non-White voters with, at best, benign neglect?  You get good at doing what it takes to appeal to White voters.  That is the truth that led to what is famously called "the Southern strategy." That is the path that leads you to becoming what the Republican Party now proudly embraces: a White grievance party.

Why are so many White Americans against welfare measures generally and Universal Health Care specifically, measures called "Socialism" or even "Marxism" by many Republicans?  Because it takes money from 'hardworking, deserving' Whites and spends it on 'lazy, undeserving' Blacks (and Browns).  Why the tremendous Republican (read 'White') opposition to Obamacare and even greater opposition to a "single-payer plan"? It's all wrapped up in the kind of thinking that people who don't have the resources to buy whatever it is they need have only themselves to blame.  Some of that is surely true in some cases but it ignores all the social, economic, and political contributions to the unequal availability of resources throughout the society, including "the lottery of birth."  Surely no sane American with a modicum of intelligence believes the constantly repeated Republican Big Lie that the country they brag about as 'the richest in the world' can't afford Universal Health Care, a single-payer system without a need for health insurance companies while virtually all of the less wealthy nations can afford some variation of such a system.  Nicholas Kristof says "It's hard to understand" but I'm sure he understands quite well that we can afford but choose not to create such a system.  In large part, it is because of our racist opposition to general welfare programs (other perhaps than Social Security and Medicare) but also because of the powerful entrenched opposition of vested interests"special interests", i.e., the medical and health insurance interests who profit greatly from the current system.

Facebook posting today: The War that would affect my family so devastatingly started 81 years ago this date with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  I was 105 days old, 3 and 1/2 months.  My father was 21 years and 3 months old.  My mother was 19, still a teenager.  The war that started that day affected their lives and their marriage and their children's lives in ways they couldn't have imagined that day.  They had been married for 16 months.  Two years and two months later, he would be drafted into the Marine Corps.  Thirteen months after that he would be on a volcanic island in the Western Pacific Ocean, trying to stay alive, probably wetting and shitting his trousers for the first time since he was a baby, 24 years earlier.  There were no urinals and commodes for Americans on Iwo Jima.  When he came home in November of 1945, he had a bathroom and a head full of the sights and sounds and smells of Death. He was 25 years old.  His wife was 23.  His son was 4 and the daughter he had never seen before was 15 months old.  All of them carried emotional wounds from that war for the rest of their lives.  Only the son still lives and he recoils at the description of the war, of any war, as a "Good War."

. . . .  (End of post)

The photograph was taken at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (i.e., boot camp) in San Diego.  The dress blue uniform he wore was not his.  It was temporarily provided to him for the photograph which would be sent home to his wife.  He was told to smile and he smiled, like a good Marine. He was a private E-1 when the photo was taken and a private E-1 when he was discharged after service on Iwo Jima, not even a PFC, private first class.  This tells me he had disciplinary or other problems before he was discharged.  He was discharged from the Great Lakes Naval Base north of Chicago shortly before Thanksgiving, 1945.  He told me that "They didn't want to discharge me" because he 'wasn't ready' to return to civilian life.   He rarely talked of the war or of Iwo Jima.  He never asked me about Vietnam.  He had no love for the Marine Corps though I suspect he took some pride in my service and my rank, especially when he spoke of me to his friends at the VFW Post in North Port.  I'm sorry that we were so distant during most of our lives, indeed until he was 75 and I was 55.  I am thankful that we became friends in the last few years of his life.

Quaere:  Why is it that I take great delight in looking at dead oak leaves that I picked up from the grass last month and saved and that I want to scream in finally re=reading this letter I received from our car and home insurer company?

May 06, 2024   Dear Mr. Clausen:  

We are excited to introduce an incredible new feature that adds convenience while enhancing your account security when you call us -- Voice ID. . . .  Embrace the peace of mind that comes with knowing your account is protected with state-of-the-art security measures.  Voice ID uses enhanced algorithms to analyze your unique vocal patterns.  Feel confident in the knowledge that your voiceprint and your account are in safe hands -- yours.  Opt-in now by . . .   Aaarrgh!!!

Comfort me!  Protect me from algorithms!

12/6/24

 Friday, December 6, 2024

D+31

1273 Thomas Aquinas, thought to have had a mystical experience in Naples, refused to continue his work "I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me"

1950 Pope Pius XII published encyclical Mirabile illud

2013 Pope Francis gave his assent to a proposal to create a permanent post on the Pontifical Commission on cases of sin and sexual abuse of minors

2017 US President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, announcing plans to move the US embassy there

In bed at 9:10, awake and up at 5:30.   

Prednisone, day 206, 7.6 mg., day 21.  Prednisone at 6:10 with Irish soda bread.  Trulicity injection and morning meds at 8:10.  

Life without Lilly will take some getting used to.  As I sit in my chair looking toward the TV and the fireplace, I notice how empty the space is where her mattress used to be.  Geri put it in the back of her car when we took Lilly to Blue Pearl and I think it's still there, but in any case, it's not in the middle of the TV room floor.  Every time I walk by the space in the kitchen where her food and water bowls used to be and I see empty space, the bare floor.  In the early mornings when I am up and alone, I hear 'things that go bump in the night' and think it's Lilly coming out.  I haven't teared up today as I did 4 or more times yesterday.  I'm in the "last things" phase of life: last house, last car, last this,  last that and now last Lilly, last dog, last pet.  I started out with Freckles 70-some years ago when we were still living in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald and I was an altar boy, 11 or 12 years old.  I cried when he was hit by a car chasing after me on my way to serve a benediction at St. Leo.  I still feel the guilt of waving at him as Kitty was taking him home after walking me to 74th Street.  He bolted away from Kitty and ran toward me, running in front of a car.  How much time should I get in Purgatory for that, or am I in it now, remembering my part in Freckles's death?  Then there was Cookie, our cocker spaniel with her pseudocyesis and piddling on the kitchen floor whenever she got too excited, which was when my mother came home.  Ralph, Bear, Ruby, Alley, Moosie, Blanche, and Lilly.  Last night I said to Geri, "I can't get used to Blanche's food and water bowls being gone," meaning Lily's.  We were blessed with Blanche for 17 years and with Lilly for 15.

The assassination of United Healthcare's CEO brings out truth about the American health care system.  In this morning's NYTimes there is an article headlined "Torrent of Anger for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing" with a subheadline of  "The shooting death of a UnitedHealthcare executive in Manhattan has unleashed Americans’ frustrations with an industry that often denies coverage and reimbursement for medical claims."  Excerpts:

“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.” 

On TikTok, one user wrote, “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

The dark commentary after the death of Mr. Thompson, a 50-year-old insurance executive from Maple Grove, Minn., highlighted the anger and frustration over the state of health care in America, where those with private insurance often find themselves in Kafka-esque tangles while seeking reimbursement for medical treatment and are often denied.

United Healthcare is a "publicly-traded" company, which is to say, it is a corporation whose primary purpose is to make money for its shareholders, not to provide assistance for its insureds.

Mr. Thompson was chief executive of his company’s insurance division, which reported $281 billion in revenue last year, providing coverage to millions of Americans through the health plans it sold to individuals, employers and people under government programs like Medicare. The division employs roughly 140,000 people.

Mr. Thompson received a $10.2 million compensation package last year, a combination of $1 million in base pay and cash and stock grants. He was shot to death as he was walking toward the annual investor day for UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare’s parent company.

In the hours after the shooting early Wednesday morning, social media exploded with anger toward the insurance industry and Mr. Thompson.

“I pay $1,300 a month for health insurance with an $8,000 deductible. ($23,000 yearly) When I finally reached that deductible, they denied my claims. He was making a million dollars a month,” read one comment on TikTok. 

“The ambulance ride to the hospital probably won’t be covered,” wrote a commenter on a TikTok video in which another user featured an audio clip from the Netflix show “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.” In it, the queen makes a dramatic show of faux sorrow over a death.

The shooting prompted a wrenching outpouring of patients and family members who also posted horror stories of insurance claim reimbursement stagnation and denials. 

From Heather Cox Richardson's letter on 12/5/24: 

Thompson’s murder seems to be a cultural moment in which popular fury over the power big business has over ordinary Americans’ lives exploded. Maureen Tkacik of The American Prospect noted, “Only about 50 million customers of America’s reigning medical monopoly might have a motive to exact revenge upon the UnitedHealthcare CEO.” The shooter, whose actual motive remains unknown, is fast becoming a folk hero. 

The American healthcare system is the WORST in the developed, industrialized world, and in large measure though not exclusively it is because of health insurance companies like United Healthcare.  They make their profits by maximizing premiums and minimizing claims.  In private practice, I spent about 6 months serving as general counsel for the Wisconsin Education Association Insurance Trust, a nonprofit insurance company created by the Wisconsin Education Association, the state teacher's union. Even though it had no shareholders, and was created to serve its insured teachers and public school employees, it denied many claims, some of which I reviewed.  Its management, like managers of commercial insurance companies, was interested in "the bottom line" and in having an excess of premium revenues over claims payments and administrative expenses.  Insurance claims managers get mightly legalistic when deciding claims, naturally wanting to please the CEO whose eyes are on "the bottom line."  The same is true of American hospitals and their management.  Though it undoubtedly would have many problems and even inequities, a single-payer system like that promoted by Bernie Sanders is preferable to the corporate, profit-driven system we have now.  The Republicans cry "Socialism! Socialism!" and do everything in their power to maintain the present system despite its manifest flaws.  They also want to 'privatize' the VA health care system because, after all, it reeks of "Socialism! Socialism!"  Alas, with Trump in power and the Republicans in control of the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, perhaps they will succeed in the next couple of years.  Can there be any doubt but that VA benefits will be on the chopping block of Musk and Ramaswamy, neither of whom of course is a veteran of military service.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address 

Sentimental Journey.   I took two boxes of clothing down to Repairers of the Breach at 14th and Vleit Street this morning and then dropped off a bag of clothing at the House of Peace at 17th and Walnut.  I asked whether Linda Barnes was in and was told she was in a meeting, which disappointed me.  I enjoyed chatting with the staff member who accepted the donated clothing and found out from him at Al Veik still lives there.    I then took a long, leisurely, nostalgic, and melancholy trip around my old neighborhood(s), past Cross Lutheran Church across from the HOP where Pastor Joe Elwanger and his wife Joyce served their communities, and down to 25th and Vine Street where my college roommates and I lived in our senior year at Marquette   How well I remember walking several miles from our apartment in that neighborhood to the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel garage at 6th and Galena to pick up my truck for my job stuffing Sentinel bus stop boxes in the middle of the night, Sundays through Saturdays, in the often bitter cold Milwaukee winter of 1962-1963.  The neighborhood looks old and shabby now, as it did back then, but much of the inner city neighborhoods I drove through look great, with new or newish-looking homes, nothing slummy or dilapidated about them.  Nonetheless, I could see signs that these are not upscale wealthy neighborhoods like Bayside.  The pickets on top of the metal fencing surrounding some lots were sharply spiked on top to make it more difficult to climb over them.  There were "Habitat for Humanity" signs on some of the houses.  These neighborhoods are still high crime, high gun ownership areas.  I drove down 25th Street to where Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment building was located.  It was razed shortly after Dahmer's notorious crimes were discovered and the lot is still vacant, surrounded by one of those sharply spiked metal fences.  I drove past the historic Deaconess Hospital building at 22nd and Kilbourn,   It shut down as a hospital in 1995 and now is apartments.  I drove down Highland Boulevard between 27th Street and 35th Street, where Marquette had some women's dormitories including Lissette Lodge where Anne lived during her last 2 or 3 years at Marquette.  It's not home of the Hmong American Women's Association and appears to house a childcare facility.  I was pleased that a number of the grand old mansions on Highland Boulevard are still standing, like relics.  There was a tie when Highland Boulevard was home to the wealthiest families in Milwaukee, including the John family who owned Miller Brewery. The neighborhood south of Highland is known as the Concordia neighborhood, named after the Lutheran college that used to be located there before moving to Mequon.  I believe I once had a date with a girl from Concordia but I remember none of the specifics of the date.  I once dated a girl from the St. Mary's Hospital Nursing School but again I have no memories of any specifics, too long ago.  Heading home, I drove past Mount Sinai Hospital on 12th Street which triggered a memory of driving past it one day many years ago and seeing my friend Vicki Conte walking out of it.  I stopped and offered her a ride and saw that she was crying. She had just come from visiting one of the many elderly Marquette neighborhood residents whom she served.  She was a warm and saintly person and I kick myself for letting our friendship drift away.  A big loss for me.  I drove past the Milwaukee Rescue Mission at 19th and Wells, down the street from my part-time employer, J. J. Wells' Drug Store during my junior year at Marquette.  I was a clerk and a 'soda jerk' at the drug store.  I did Mr. Gates wrong when I took his part-time job when the representation that I would be able to work during the summer, knowing I had to serve 6 weeks at Marine training at Quantico.  It was wrong and I'm ashamed of myself for doing it.  My shameful conduct showed up in my FBI background investigation for my Top Secret security clearance in Vietnam in 1965.  I was advised of it by my friend, Capt. Bill "Moon" Mullen, the 1st Marine Air Wing Intelligence Officer, who was shot down over Laos in 1966.  I wrote about him and his family in my memoir.  I received the Top Secret clearance despite my perfidy with Mr. Gates, but I remain shamed by it.   I drove past the former St. Anthony's Hospital, opened by the Capuchin Franciscans at 10th and State in 1931, as a hospital where Black doctors had admitting privileges and could practice their profession since other Milwaukee hospitals denied them such privileges.  It is next door to the Capuchins' St. Benedict the Moor Church and across the street from the County Courthouse and the state's Secure Detention Facility, a euphemism for a jail/prison for parole violators.  A thousand thoughts and memories triggered by today's drive.

12/5/24

Thursday, December 5, 2024

D+30

63 BC Roman consul Cicero delivers the last of his famous Catiline Orations before the Senate on the fate of the Cataline conspirators

1955 Historic bus boycott begins in Montgomery, Alabama by Rosa Parks and other civil rights activists

1967 Pediatrician Benjamin Spock and poet Allen Ginsberg were arrested in New York while protesting against the Vietnam War

In bed at 10:15, awake at 4:30, and up at 4:40, thinking of Lilly.    

Prednisone, day 205, 7.5 mg., day 20.  Prednisone at 4:55.  Morning meds later.  Sore shoulders. 

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. 

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.  Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

. . .  painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her course as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude.

 Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime

  There are things like playing the organ or discovering the North Pole, or being Astronomer Royal, which we do not want a person to do at all unless he does them well. But those are not the most important things in life. When it comes to writing one’s own love letters and blowing one’s own nose, “these things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What's Wrong With the World 

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.  When I was younger, I enjoyed playing golf.  I didn't golf because I was good at it.  I was quite the opposite.  I golfed because I enjoyed being outdoors in a  lovely setting.  I enjoyed being in the company of friends.  I enjoyed the trees, the grass, and the sky.  I even enjoyed the color and curves of the sand traps and the wateriness of the water hazards.  I never kept score because the number of my strokes was of no importance to me.  Whenever I stroked a golf ball very well, it was a pleasant surprise for me.

I have the same attitude toward painting and drawing.  I've never been good at it.  I very rarely try to draw freehand because I'm so bad at it.  I also have no creativity in terms of subject matter and composition.  I look for another painting, or drawing, or photograph or graphic of some sor and I do my best to copy it.  I take a photograph of the image, print it on a piece of 8 and 1/2 X 11printer paper,, cover the printer paper and the canvas or other surface I am working on with grid lines and then copy the photo on the surface to be painted, scaling up for larger canvases.  In my younger days, I sometimes used an opaque projector, although that was difficult because the need to stand in front of the canvas to draw on it cut off the image being projected. Duh!  I bought an expensive Lucy Drawing Tool, but I never mastered its use.  For watercolors and gouache pieces, I bought a light board which is a great assist although the heavier the watercolor paper, the more difficult it is for the photographed image underneath to penetrate the watercolor paper.  So, although I have very little talent for drawing or painting, I nonetheless have been doing both for decades, using whatever assists I can, and enjoying the process and the results.  Despite the many copying mistakes I make, when I keep at it, I enjoy the resulting painting or drawing.  Something about the finished product will be pleasing to me despite my mistakes or I won't keep it.  If there is nothing pleasing, I'll paint over the disappointing project and use the canvas for another project.  Those that I keep, I want to display on a wall or atop a bookshelf or wherever.  The keepers please me more than masterpieces by masters simply because I did them.  I spent hours of my life, perhaps days of my life, working on them, absorbed in the process, and enjoying it.  The finished product reminds me of those hours or days and of why I I liked the image in the first place.  Unlike golfing or attending a football or basketball game, I have more than a memory after the activity, I have a painting or a drawing, which, as Churchill wrote, is 'a friend' that serves "as a screen between [me] and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude."  What a lucky guy!

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Pablo Picasso

The painting I attached to these notes is a self-portrait I did in oil paints many decades ago when we lived on Newton Avenue in Shorewood,  I was presumptuous enough to sign it, something I stopped doing long ago.  I especially like it because I had stored it in a space under the basement stairs in our house outside Sakville and a mouse pooped on it, leaving an ineradicable white steak on its surface.  That mouse poop seemed somehow appropriate to me, sort of a sic transit gloria mundi thing, or a memento homo quia pulvis es thing.

"Now he was speculating whether Laurette would pose half-nude on the car seat.  The whole idea was preposterouly silly but why not?  It was no more cheeky than the idea of his resuming painting.  Part of the grace of losing self-importance was the simple question: "Who cares?"  More importantly, he didn't want to be a painter, he only wanted to paint, two utterly different impulses. . . .Clive didn't want to be anything any longer that called for a title.  He knew how to paint so why not paint? Everyone had to do something while awake. 

Jim Harrison in "The Land of Unlikeness" in THE RIVER SWIMMER 

VA Swallow Study.  I had my 'swallow study' at the VA today with the speech therapist Nicole, an MU grad.  It was an interesting process including a videoed x-ray of my mouth and throat in the act of swallowing a liquid, then a pudding-like barium substance, and then a hard cookie or cracker.  Nicole said my swallowing was 'functional' but noted that both the pudding and the hard cracker didn't go all the down my throat and some tended to divert to my epiglottis, which covers and protects my airway from food descending my throat.  Apparently, the peristalsis in my throat muscles is as strong as it should be so she gave me instructions for a swallowing exercise to do 3 to 5 times every day, 10 repetitions each,  It is very difficult for me to do so I'm not hopeful.

Hero's Salute.  While I was waiting for my appointment with Nicole, I heard an announcemnt of the PA system: "Your attention, please,  There will be a Hero's Salute on 9C, Room ----, in 10 minutes.  All are invited . . ."  Ir was the first time I had heard such an announcement and asked a staff member as I was leaving what a "Hero's Salute" was.  She informed me it was a gathering when one of the veterans at the hospital dies.  He is attended by family members, doctors and other hospital staff, and any visitor who is able to attend to salute him and pay their respects.  Also, on my way down in the elevator after my swallow evaluation, I asked another vet in the elevator how he was doing and was told he had just received the news that he did not have a feared cancer.  I shook his hand and congratulated him.  At the next floor, the elevator stoped and let in a third old vet in a wheelchair and I asked him how he was doing and he said he had trouble hearing without his hearing aids.  The vet who had just received the good news about cancer, took off his hearing aids and gave them the the one in the wheelchair, saying 'please, take these.  They will work for you and I have two.'  Another day at the VA medical center.

"Suckers" and "Losers"  From Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter, December 4, 2014:

Trump has also vowed to cut the post–World War II government far more than anyone before him has done. He has put Musk and billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE); Musk proposes to cut $2 trillion out of the $6.75 trillion U.S. budget. How he would accomplish this is hard to imagine, since most of the budget is “mandatory” spending already baked into the budget, and much of that is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. During the campaign, Trump promised he would not cut these very popular programs.

One of the things that constitute “discretionary” spending—which must be renewed every year—is veterans’ benefits, and yesterday Jeff Schogol of Task and Purpose noted “a growing chorus” calling for cuts to Veterans Affairs disability benefits after The Economist on November 28 called disability benefits “absurdly generous.” Disabled American Veterans spokesperson Dan Clare pointed out that the U.S. was at war for twenty years—in Afghanistan for twenty and in Iraq for eight—increasing the VA budget. Since Congress passed the PACT Act, formally known as the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, in 2022, more than 1.2 million veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxics have been treated for resulting health conditions. 

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

BY RANDALL JARRELL

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. 

Anniversaries thoughts.  The Catqlin3 Orations.  we translated and read some of them in my 3 year of studying Latin in Brother Birminham's class at Leo High School in 1957-58.  "Birmo" was about 150 years old and used powder snuff which he would sniff during class, some of the 'snuff stuff' dropping onto our desks as he strolled the aisles.  Quo tandem, Catalina, abutere patienitia nostra?  In the fourth year of Latin sudies, we worked on Virgil's Aenead.  Armun virumque cano.

Rosa Parks reminded the world of how, at best, demeaning Jim Crow laws were.  She was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White man.  I was 14 years old, a freshman at the all-White Leo High School, in highly segregated St. Leo parish,  in highly segregated Chicago, when the Montgomery bus boycott was occurring.  I heard nothing about it in the school or from the St. Leo pulpit.  From my memoir:

In 1960 and before, Auburn Gresham had a population of almost 60,000: 98.7% white and 0.2% black..  In 1990, the population was still just under 60,000 but with the demographics reversed: 98.7% black, 1.1% white.  In 2000, the population had dropped to 55,928: 99.4% black, 0.5% white.  Just to the north and east of Auburn Gresham was Englewood, my parents’ old neighborhood.  A look at the demographics of Englewood provides a good picture of the racial pressures on Auburn Gresham as the Black Belt expanded.  In 1930, Englewood had a population of 89,063: 98.7% white, 1.1% black.  In 1940, the population was 2% black and in 1950, 11% black.  By 1960, the population had grown to 97,595: 30% white, 70% black.  In 1970, the population was 96% black and in 1990, the population had dropped to 48,434: 99% black..  By 2000, the population had dropped to 40,222, still virtually all black.  The Wikipedia entry for Englewood is “a vacant town with buildings falling apart and 43% of the residents living below the poverty line.  Over 700 murders have occurred there in just 10 years.”  

The Catholics in the Auburn Gresham district belonged to St. Leo parish and St. Sabina parish, just west of St. Leo.  The two churches were only ¾ of a mile apart; Mapquest’s estimated traveling time is 3 minutes.  Yet the number of Catholics in that neighborhood was ample enough to support two thriving parishes each offering at least 4 Sunday masses, often standing room only (unless Monsignor Malloy was cramming the pews.)  St. Leo had Sunday mass in the church every hour on the hour till noon and every hour on the half hour in the high school chapel.  

To white Southsiders, the expanding Black Belt was a metastasizing cancer.   When blacks moved in, whites moved out.  There were efforts to foster integration, but they all eventually failed, usually quickly.  A neighborhood was going to be either black or white, never both, at least not for long.  One black family moving in was like one cancer cell taking up residence in an organ.  Hence Monsignor Malloy’s crusade to “keep out the undesirables.”  What he saw coming was his entire parish of urban Irish and German Catholics evacuating, being displaced by poor rural Mississippi blacks almost none of whom were Catholic.

What Malloy saw looming at the parish level, Cardinal Stritch saw at the archdiocesan level.  Catholics in the path of black expansion were abandoning their parishes by the thousands, leaving Catholic churches and schools struggling to keep their heads above water in a tidal wave of black Baptists, African Methodist Episcopals, Church of God in Christ folks, and assorted evangelicals, pentecostals and ‘holy rollers’ of all sorts.  Storefront churches popped up like dandelions, with self-appointed pastors renting spaces formerly occupied by small white retail and service establishments.  This presented Stritch with many challenges.  What to do about the old churches and schools and rectories and convents and devalued real estate in the newly black neighborhoods?  

 

The protests against the Vietnam War were occurring in New York and across the country as I started law school.  It was, to say the least, a difficult time for me in more ways than one.

 

 

12/4/24

 Wednesday, December 4, 2024

D+29

1674 Father Marquette built the first dwelling in what is now Chicago

1943 MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and former MULS dean announced that any baseball club may sign Negro players

1961 MOMA hung Henri Matisse's picture "Le Bateau" right side up, after a visitor noticed it was displayed upside down, the first of 116,000 people in 47 days to notice 

2014 US authorities promised a "fair" investigation into the death of Black Eric Garner after a White NYC  police officer who held him in a chokehold faced no charges

I was in bed by 9:45, awake at 1:30 thinking of Lilly, and up at 2:10. I lit a log in the fireplace by 2:30 and loaded the dishwasher around 4. 

Prednisone, day 204, 7.5 mg., day 19.   Prednisone at 4:30 with peppermint vanilla cream tea.  I see Dr. Cheng at the VA PM&R Clinic this afternoon about my shoulders, back, and hips.  Morning meds at 4:45.   

Dog's Death by John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.

Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn

To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor

And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.

The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.

As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin

And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed

And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.

We found her twisted and limp but still alive.

In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur

And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.

Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,

Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,

Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame

Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor

To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism?   There was a story in yesterday's WaPo about a Vietnamese court sentencing a Vietnamese national for siphoning $12 billion from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she controlled, into shell companies.  How is it that in a Communist nation,on one can own a private bank with sufficient assets to permit the embezzlement of $12 billion?  As in the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party runs the government and does so with an iron hand, but what about the economy is "communist" as opposed to "capitalist" if private citizens can acquire massive wealth and own and control private enterprises?  When the Communist Soviet Union dissolved, the vast assets or wealth of the country promptly ended up in the ownership of private oligarchs.  How so?  According to Forbes Magazine, in 2022 China had 607 billionaires which put the country second in the world, after the United States (735).  With only 5 billionaires, Vietnam is a piker compared to China, but nonetheless, I wonder how it is that there is so much private wealth in these supposedly communist nations.  In terms of economic systems, how do Vietnam and China differ from Hitler's fascist nation?  Both China and Vietnam are one-party states, but so are Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Nicaragua.  So was Nazi Germany.  Are there essential differences in these economic systems?

Both Geri and I are feeling sort of stunned today after losing Lilly last night.  We're not sure it has really sunk in.  We haven't told anyone yet, not wanting to talk about it.  I've started to tear up twice today, including now as I write about it.  I can't help it; having her "put down," "put to sleep," or euthanized seems such an act of betrayal.  I need to remember her distress while unable to stand, during her seizure, thrashing about helplessly, Geri down on the floor with her, comforting her.  I'm getting teary again, remembering it, and remembering her on the gurney at the animal hospital, wrapped in a blanket, looking out from under the blanket.  I need to stop now. . .  two or three more welling-ups after my appointment at the VA.  We had dinner at McDonald's tonight.

My PM&R VA appointment with Dr. Cheng was uneventful, except for the enjoyable chat we had our many Jewish friends, many of his Jewish friends encountered during his schooling at Albert Einstein Medical School in NYC, associated with Montefiore Hospital.

 Nasty snow this evening with lots of blowing snow.  Wind advisory tonight, gusts close to 50 mph, sustained winds close to 30 mph.  WeEnergies reports power outages in Mequon.

 

12/3/24

 Tuesday, December 3, 2924

D+28

1965 For the first time since the Vietnam War, the Marine Corps accepted a share of the then-upcoming January selective service draft harvest

2014 Protests erupted in cities across the US after a grand jury decided not to charge the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold

2019 Kamala Harris ended her campaign to be the Democratic candidate for president

2022 Former President Donald Trump called in a Truth Social post for the "termination" of all rules, including the US Constitution, to overturn the 2020 election 

In bed at 9:20, awake at 4:30, and up at 4:40.  Lilly didn't show up until 7:30 though I heard her pacing each time I woke up during the night.  

Prednisone, day 203, 7.5 mg., day 18.   Prednisone at 4:50.  Morning meds later, but not much.=

Lilly.. At 8 p.m., we got home from Blue Pearl Animal Hospital where we had Lilly euthanized.

Kahlil Gibran: On Talking

. And he answered, saying: You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape. And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand. And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words. In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence. When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue. Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear or his ear; For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

LTMW.  There is lots of action at the feeders this morning: finches, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, sparrows, and a dove.  At 10 a.m., there is a herd of 6 whitetail deer on the front lawn and a fight or courting ritual (?) involving two gray squirrels.  If it's a courting ritual, it's one that looks more like a rape.

Life and Death: Living with Lilly in her 16th year, with daily thoughts of euthanasia.    Inexorable comparisons to myself in my 84th year.  When will it be an act of mercy, when something else?  Why do we so readily accept euthanasia for non-human animals and not for human animals?  Religion and the risk that a right to die can easily become a duty to die.  

"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up." is a quote anonymously attributed to Barack Obama, speaking of his vice president.  "Uncle Joe" may now be more familiarly known as "Daddy Joe" after he granted his son Hunter a full and preemptive pardon for any and all federal crimes he committed or may have committed over the last 11 years.  Biden is being criticized for this act of fatherly love by virtually all Republicans and even by some Democrats.  He is being keelhauled not so much for the pardon itself, but because he so often and so unequivocally insisted during his reelection campaign that he would not do it. "Liar!  Hypocrite!"  He is also being criticized for the preemptive scope of the pardon.  The beginning date of the pardon is January 1, 2014, a few months before Hunter joined the board of directors of Burisma Corp., the Ukrainian energy company.  Hunter hasn't been charged with any crime associated with that job, or with any of his foreign business ventures, but Trump has promised to use the Justice Department to pursue the Bidens and other political adversaries and clearly, Joe is trying to prevent that.  Hence the temporal scope of the pardon and its preemptive scope - "those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in".  Prediction: Trump's Justice Department will pursue Hunter despite the pardon, have him indicted for something, and test the lawfulness of the preemptive pardon in court.  Also, the Republican-controlled House and Senate will do their worst in pursuing Hunter with investigations and hearings.  Hunter's acceptance of the global pardon means he cannot claim a 5th Amendment privilege when questioned, except perhaps where state criminal jeopardy may exist. And the beat goes on, the beat goes on.

As no surprise, Trump called the pardon of Hunter "a miscarriage of justice."  Who did Trump pardon in his first term?  His national security advisor Michael Flynn, his campaign manager Paul Manafort, his campaign CEO Steve Bannon, his cloak-and-dagger, dirty tricks friend and operative Roger Stone, his campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, his daughter's father-in-law Charles Kushner,  and many others.  He has also promised to pardon,, "on my first day in office," the January 6th insurgents he calls "patriots" and "hostages."  

Why did Father Joe so unequivocally deny during his reelection campaign that he would pardon Hinter?  Because in electoral politics, "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."  I have never understood that quote, usually attributed to Vince Lombardi, but for politicians, winning is both everything and the only thing.  If you don't win the race and get into office, you can't accomplish anything and your opponent can.  'The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.'  Biden recognized that admitting that he would grant a presidential pardon to his criminal son would hurt his chance of returning to office, so he lied.  He was a big 'law and order', 'rule of law,' independence of the Justice Department,; and 'no one is above the law' guy, and pardoning Hunter called all of that into question.  We have to remember that Joe has a long history of lying when it suits his purposes.  I've written about that before in this journal, probably more than once.  

Do I blame Joe for pardoning Hunter?  No.  I can't expect him to leave his son prey to Trump and the likes of Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson, Jim Comer, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley.  I can't expect him to able to tolerate Hunter in prison while he and Jill live in comfort in Dover and Rehoboth Beach.  I can't expect him to live with the guilt he would feel, thinking every day how his own choices in life may have affected Hunter's.

12/2/24

 Monday, December 2, 2024

D+27

1845 US President James K. Polk announced to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, a widely held belief termed "manifest destiny"

1942 The World’s 1st self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occured in Chicago Pile-1 (the world's 1st nuclear reactor) at the University of Chicago, overseen by Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd

1954 US Senate censured Joeseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring Senate into dishonor & disrepute

1968 US President Richard Nixon named Henry Kissinger as security advisor

2014 Stephen Hawking claimed that Artificial Intelligence could be a "threat to mankind" and spell the end of the human race

2018 Israeli police recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife be charged with fraud and bribery

2020 US Attorney General William Barr said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, despite claims by President Donald Trump

In bed at 9:15, awake at 4:15, and up at 4:20.  Let Lilly out at  4:35, then the pacing. 

Prednisone, day 202, 7.5 mg., day 17.  Prednisone at 5:00.  Sore shoulders.   Meds at 12:15. 

Schadenfreude.  It's so petty, I know, but he's such a jerk.  Aaron Rodgers had another terrible performance yesterday in the New York Jets' loss to Seattle.  They lost a game they should have won and Rodgers was a big part of the loss, throwing a pick 6, missing his wide-open receiver in the end zone, etc.  The big question now is whether the million-dollar superstar needs to be benched.  Lo, how the mighty have fallen.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  Mr. I've been immunized.  

Joe pardoned Hunter.  Did anyone doubt that he would?  Did anyone believe the repeated assertions that he wouldn't were anything other than a deception meant to help him get reelected?  This is not to say that the pardon was necessarily wrong.  There can't be much doubt that Hunter was persecuted by Republican forces using the persecution as a political weapon against Joe.  My point is that Joe's lying about his intention to pardon his son, is just one of so many lies Joe has uttered in his long political life.

On a related matter, Trump has announced that he will appoint Charles Kushner, Jaren's father, New York real estate developer, and disbarred attorney, as ambassador to France.  Trump pardoned Kushner pere at the end of his first term.  Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of falsifying tax returns, retaliating against a witness, and making false statements about campaign contributions to the Federal Election Commission.  What kind of a man is our new ambassador to France?  He hired a prostitute to seduce his sister's husband, who was cooperating in a federal investigation against him and then sent her a videotape of the encounter to his sister.  He was sentenced to two years in federal prison and served 14 months before being transferred to a halfway house for 6 months and then released.  Chris Christie, who prosecuted Kushner has said "“It’s one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney.”  That is our new ambassador to France.

We oughtn't to forget Bill Clinton's pardon of the international fugitive Marc Rich, whose former wife was a big donor to the DNC, the Clinton Presidential Library, and to Hilary's New York Senate campaign.  And his pardon of Susan McDougal, his former Whitewater partner, who was held in contempt of court for refusing to testify about Clinton's own role in that land deal.  Clinton had many other questionable pardons during his terms in office.  Considering his history, perhaps I can be forgiven for my doubts about his relationship with Susan McDougal.

Back to Biden.  Jonathan Chait has a piece in the current The Atlantic online titled "Biden’s Unpardonable Hypocrisy.  Excerpts:

"When President Joe Biden was running for a second term as president, he repeatedly ruled out granting a pardon to his son Hunter, who has pleaded guilty to tax fraud and lying on a form to purchase a gun. “He was very clear, very up-front, obviously very definitive,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of one of his many promises to this effect.

Biden professed a willingness to abide by the results of the justice system as a matter of principle. But in breaking his promise, and issuing a sweeping pardon of his son for any crimes he may have committed over an 11-year period, Biden has revealed his pledge to have been merely instrumental.

. . .

What the president fails to note in his self-pitying statement is that Hunter Biden for years engaged in legal but wildly inappropriate behavior by running a business based on selling the perception of access to his father. The only commodity Hunter had to offer oligarchs in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere was the belief, or hope, that he could put in a good word for them with his dad. 

 It would be tempting, but unfair, to draw a simple equation between Joe Biden’s situational ethics and that of his successor. A willingness to evade the rule of law is the foundation of Donald Trump’s entire career in business and politics, not a nepotistic exception. Still, principles become much harder to defend when their most famous defenders have compromised them flagrantly. With the pardon decision, like his stubborn insistence on running for a second term he couldn’t win, Biden chose to prioritize his own feelings over the defense of his country.

There is plenty of evidence to support the opinion is Hunter Biden is a bum, a nasty, self-centered guy.  I have written elsewhere in this journal of my hunch that Papa Joe played a role in Hunter's unfortunate character development by his favoring of son Beau over son Hunter.  I don't know whether my hunch is accurate or not and in any case, Hunter turned out to be the adult he is and has been.  Now his slate is wiped clean of any and all federal offenses he may have committed over an 11-year period, thanks to Dad, the crumb bum, no-account saved by the big hypocrite. 

"Genocide Joe" Chris van Hollan has an op-ed in this morning's WaPo " History will judge Biden harshly on Gaza."  Excerpts:

Nothing will haunt President Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy as much as his failed policies in the Middle East. His ineffective approach, coupled with Donald Trump’s election, now sets the stage for an unprecedented deterioration in our efforts to secure a two-state solution and address the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Time and again, the Netanyahu government has ignored President Biden’s calls — including those for increased humanitarian assistance for starving Palestinian civilians, stronger precautions to mitigate civilian casualties, a cessation of illegal settlement activities on the West Bank, a meaningful commitment to reach a cease-fire and the return of the hostages, and a plan for the “day after.” It is in this pattern of repeated brush-offs from Netanyahu — coupled with the continued Biden blank check of bombs and other offensive weapons — that we see the president’s failure to use our leverage to ensure that our taxpayer dollars are being used in line with our interests and values.

Now, with President-elect Trump coming back into office, the Netanyahu government will be further emboldened to achieve its messianic vision of a “Greater Israel,” denying the Palestinian people access to their land and closing the door to a two-state solution. We’ve already seen Netanyahu announce the appointment of Yechiel Leiter — an avowed proponent of West Bank annexation and a former member of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, deemed a terrorist organization by the FBI — as the next Israeli ambassador to the United States. What’s more, Smotrich recently declared that Trump’s presidency presents an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samara.”

For too long, President Biden has been unwilling to uphold our values and enforce our interests in the Middle East. And without taking a stand, the United States is fated to remain mired in this conflict for generations to come.

Is there any way to look at Biden's policies in the Middle East as anything other than a huge failure, making the United States knowingly complicit in Netanyahu's genocidal actions in Gaza, a co-conspirator?  How are we and the rest of the world, outside of Israel, to understand and forgive this?  We have blood on our hands from Vietnam and, having learned nothing from that bloodbath, we got more blood on our hands in Iraq.  Now Gaza.  Hitler had Speer and the Krupps.  Netanyahu, ben Gvir, and Smotrich had Biden and the U.S.

LTMW this morning I take note of what I'm not seeing: the birdies.  It makes me think a predator is hanging around, a kestrel or Cooper's hawk, perhaps a falcon.  By 10 a.m., the temperature is up to 22° with a wind chill of 10° and I would expect to see many visitors to our feeding station, but not this morning.   By 11:30, it's business as usual with beaucoup birdies and two white-tail across County Line Road.

Packrat Clutterbug.  I have become especially conscious of my neurotic holding on to things.  It is obvious in its most neurotic form in my clinging to containers of all sorts, from ordinary cardboard boxes of all sizes ('What a great box! You know how much this would cost st UHaul?), to the styrofoam boxes in which my refrigerated Trulicity injection pens are shipped, ("We could use this for something"), to shoeboxes, and even glass jars of all sorts that I hold on to for painting projects.  I have a collection of heavy Kirkland cognac bottles and would have more if I hadn't stopped drinking alcohol a year ago.  I also hold on to clothes neurotically.  "I will use this again if I put weight back on" and "I will use this again if I lose weight."  I hold on to medications long after I have stopped taking them for some malady.  So it's no surprise that my bedroom has become a repository for all sorts of stuff that serves no purpose other than collecting dust and taking up space in my closets (I have 2) and dressers (I have 2.).  Today I started sorting: one pile for Repairers of the Breach homeless shelter, another for St. Vincent de Paul or the House of Peace, another pile for stuff I'm going to keep (for now at least), and finally a construction-strength garbage bag for stuff to discard,  I'm embarrassed and a bit ashamed of myself for letting so much stuff accumulate because of my neuroses and neglect.  😰

Some anniversaries thoughts.  I have a fuzzy memory of learning about America's "Manifest Destiny" at St. Leo Grammar School.  It was as if all those White, EuroAmericans had no choice but to go to war with Mexico in 184 and to settle and exploit all the continent west of the Mississippi River after the middle of the 19th century and especially after the Civil War.  It was almost as if God or Fate had decreed that the superior White people must round up, segregate, and dominate the less 'developed" people occupying the Frontier.  In a way, it was true.  Given human nature, it was inevitable that the richer, stronger, better-armed Whites would take control of all the land between the two great oceans.  The concept of "Manifest Destiny" let them do it with less guilt than they might otherwise feel if it weren't for 'Manifest Destiny."  We didn't want to do it, but it was our Destiny.  A form of Flip Wilson's Geraldine protesting "The devil made me do it."

The first sustained nuclear chain reaction occurred under Amos Alonzo Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.  I remember walking past a marker on the outside of the stadium in 1958 or 1959 referring to the accomplishment when I was sent to the U of C libraries on research paper assignments by Brother Coogan.  He also sent us to the great private Newberry Library at "Bughouse Square" off Clark Street downtown.

Joe McCarthy, a graduate of MULS, another "Marquette Lawyer."

Nixon and Kissinger, a murderous psychopathic combo.

Steven Hawkings was right.

Netanyahu, a psychopathic criminal, just like his sometimes buddy, Donald Trump.

William Barr, based only on real evidence, refuted the Big Lie.  Millions still believe it.  So it goes.

 

12/1/24

 Sunday, December 1, 2024

D+26

1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama

1958 Our Lady of Angels School fire killed 92 students & 3 nuns in Chicago, Illinois

1994 Jim Bakker, American televangelist and convicted fraud was released from jail

In bed at 9, awake at 5, and up at 5:10.   

Prednisone, day 201, 7.5 mg., day 16.  Prednisone at 5:30.  Breakfast of Thanksgiving mashed potatoes and corn.  Morning meds at 10ish.  

Left: Pope Paul VI clothed in the traditional habiliment of the Wierd Hats and Clownish Clothing Cross Dressing Brotherhood, headquartered in Rome, It.
  

The Common Good.  I started my Sunday morning reading the Wikipedia entries for Rerum Novarum, Quadragesio Anno, Mater et Magistra, and Centessimus Annus, the Big Four encyclicals constituting Catholic Social Teaching, the subject that I studied under the guidance of Father Lasance as an undergraduate student at Marquette.  I should read the encyclicals themselves but they are lengthy and even with the aid of backlighting and enlarged fonts on the laptop, my eyes can't handle that kind of reading.  Also, there is something really tedious about Pope=speak.  The encyclicals are decidedly utopian. They are all grounded on the existence of the Scholastic, Catholic God who 'has a plan' and 'acts in history.'  There is something for everybody in these writings, except for Marxist Communists.  They extol the 'transcendental dignity' of every human being and worker, every worker's 'right' to what has come to be called a living wage sufficient to support a family, and the right to form unions and to engage in collective bargaining.  On the other hand, they treat the 'right' to own private property as God-given and 'a natural right.'  The right to organize is not restricted to workers and their unions but also extends to shareholders and their corporations.  Women, or at least mothers, should work at home.  Under the principle of subsidiarity, the government should not interfere unless necessary in the workings of private societies, like families and corporations.  The Church has, and governments ought to have,  a 'preferential option for the poor', but I can see how right-wing Catholics (of which there are clearly many in the U.S.) like J. D.Vance and the Catholics on the Supreme Court, find support for their political philosophies in these encyclicals. though I'm sure that they, like I, have not read them in ipsis verbis.    

Some thoughts worth thinking about.  From an essay in the WaPo by Philip Kenncott in yesterday's WaPo titled "In grim times, art finds a way: Artists helped America process the first Trump administration. How will they do it again?"  Excerpts:

Ultimately, it became clear that Trumpism threatened the very possibility of art, not because of policy, or funding or freedom of expression issues, but at the existential, philosophical level. Art does many things, and is defined in many ways. Art connects us to each other, to the world, to community. Art refines our senses, sharpens our thinking, trains us in perception. Art helps us see both passionately and clearly; it increases our capacity for empathy and care; it is a kind of moral reasoning; it elicits emotions and tames their destructive power; it draws us deeper into ourselves, helps us sort out the trivial and ephemeral from the essential and eternal; it both consoles us and sharpens our pain.

This list is neither exhaustive, nor prescriptive. Not all art does all these things, and some of these things are contradictory and even paradoxical. But Trumpism seems opposed to almost all of these things, coarsening the country, dividing it, muddying the waters. Trump has called on his followers, and soon will call on the country at large, to harden their hearts as mass deportations begin. When he says things that are demonstrably not true, that rhetoric is a relentless assault on thinking, nuance and ambiguity — all the things that art, at its best, helps to foster.

More than anything else, the omnipresence of Trumpism became the problem in 2016, and stands to be the problem again. Creativity and clear thinking require silence, listening, receptivity and time.

Trump is the master of noise, crisis, chaos. Artists don’t just need money, they need a space apart from the flashing lights, pinging cellphones, the sirens and social media alerts, and the anxieties that Trump creates and exploits. In a 2022 work called “Cursed,” artist Jenny Holzer dealt with the perpetual onslaught of distraction by reproducing Trump’s tweets on torn fragments of stamped lead-and-copper plates, and pinning them to the wall of the Guggenheim Museum, turning the ephemera of digital pollution into a kind of memorial, a fixed, static thing, permanent and terribly sad.

“I’m most worried that this country is not what I thought it was, but someplace much more cruel and nasty and selfish,” wrote Ruth Marcus, one of The Post opinion section’s lead political commentators, after Trump’s reelection. She echoed a sentiment expressed by other pundits, and many ordinary Americans. Most art critics probably feel the same way, but with an even sharper edge. You don’t struggle to make a career writing about the arts without believing absolutely in the power of art to make the world a better place, to make people better, to do all those morally redemptive things on the long list cited above.

In an earlier age, art served power, and many arts institutions today are too closely allied with power. But most of the larger art world, including many of the performing arts, literature and the fine arts, have been in the “resistance” since long before the term took on its current meaning.

They resist meaninglessness and absurdity, naked power and raw destruction. They make and do things to keep darkness at bay, to create spaces where the “lion griefs” nuzzle rather than consume us (to paraphrase W.H. Auden’s extraordinary image). Shadowing all of this is the possibility that none of it is true, that art, too, is meaningless and impotent, that it is at best a distraction or an irrelevance. Artists have served power, have made glorious documents of barbarism, have been purveyors of propaganda. 

So, when Trumpism won the day, the disorientation for people committed to the arts may have been even more profound than that of those trying to figure out failures of messaging, demographic shifts or class realignment. It’s not just about trying to understand what happened; it’s the darker possibility that beauty will lose against barbarism, that the nation’s soul is sick, that art will never succeed in doing all the things we think it can do. 

I'm not the only one who thinks so.  From this morning's WaPo, "Former Defense Minister Accuses Israel of Committing War Crimes in Gaza. " The subheadline Is "The comments by Moshe Yaalon were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.:  Big surprise: the accused pleads not guilty. Excerpts:

A former Israeli defense minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, a rare critique from a member of the security establishment at a time of war.  The comments by Moshe Yaalon came amid mounting criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza. 

At an event on Saturday, Mr. Yaalon denounced Mr. Netanyahu’s government for its actions in Gaza  “The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip,” he said. He also said Israel was being pulled in the direction of building settlements in the territory, a notion that is supported by far-right politicians in Mr. Netanyahu’s government. 

Mr. Yaalon doubled down on his accusations on Sunday, saying on public radio that Mr. Netanyahu’s government was exposing Israeli commanders to lawsuits at the International Criminal Court and was putting their lives at risk. . . . He later said, in an apparent reference to the government: “At the end of the day, they’re perpetrating war crimes.”

He must be an anti-semite, one of those "self-hating Jews. Jews who aren't Zionists = self-hating Jews.  Jews who are appalled at the way Israelis oppress Palestinian Arabs = self-hating Jews.  Goyim who aren't Zionists = antisemites.  Goyim who are appalled at the way Israelis oppress Palestinian Arabs = antisemites.