12/20/2025

 Saturday, December 20, 2025

1935 Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Ad Catholici Sacerdotii on the importance of priestly celibacy

1983 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and 4,000 loyalists evacuated Lebanon

In bed around 9:30, up at 5:30.  30°, wind chill 15°, high 37°, windy.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.

    Another National Obscenity

Alas, that I should live to see such days

Today's Predictable Headlines

Redactions and Unanswered Questions: First Look at the Epstein Files

Victims Upset About Lack of Transparency in Newly Released Files

Lawmakers Criticize Justice Dept. for Not Releasing All Epstein Files

Have I become a conspiracy theorist?  My hunch is that the main reason behind the Epstein files cover-up is that Epstein may have been an agent or an asset of the CIA or of Mossad or of both.  I may be placing too much importance on Epstein's close business and personal relationship with Ehud Barak, who was Israel's prime minister from 1999 to 2001. and who had a long, significant leadership role with Aman, the Israeli military intelligence organization prior to becoming prime minister.  He was also in charge of both Mossad and Shin Bet during his prime ministership.  He and Epstein first met in 2003.  Epstein's "sweetheart deal" with federal prosecutor Alex Acosta occurred in 2007-2008.  Between 2013 and 2017, Epstein’s calendars and emails indicate that Barak met with Epstein approximately 30–36 times at Epstein’s homes in Florida, New York, and possibly elsewhere.  Beginning in December 2015, they reportedly had monthly meetings for about a year.  In 2015, Barak set up an Israeli limited partnership to invest in a tech startup, which developed emergency-tech systems. Epstein provided a significant portion of the capital for that investment, making him a business partner in the venture.  Barak broke off from Epstein after the latter was charged with sex trafficking in 2019, when Barak was attempting a political comeback in Israel.  His friendship with Epstein was a liability and Netanyahu made much of it, though Barak has consistently maintained that he never took part in any of Epstein's nefarious misdeeds.  Was Epstein an agent of Mossad, through Barak, or at least an asset?  Was he an agent of the CIA, or at least an asset?  I suspect we will never know.  I hesitate to even mention the possibility of such relationships, especially with Mossad, since any negative suggestions about the Israeli government result inevitably in charges of anti-semitism.  Nonetheless, I wonder.

    The Epstein scandal, and the continuing, intense cover-up, can and probably has given rise to endless conspiracy theories, including the one I just wrote about.  There is an ever-present risk of innocent people getting hurt by perceptions of guilt by association.  Everyone who ever accepted one of his many invitations to dinners, parties, or other social or professional engagements is now forced to deny wrongdoing.  Just yesterday, I watched David Brooks, of the New York Times and The Atlantic, explaining on The PBS News Hour, a photo showing him and Epstein both present years ago at some affair at which Brooks had been a speaker.

    Regarding the risk of accusations of anti-semitism, I deny the charge and note my anger at those who always and everywhere conflate the State of Israel and its government with the Jewish people.  It is a favorite deceptive political tactic of Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, and of various Israel-support groups around the world.  I say Israel-support groups, not Jewish-support groups, because I refuse to conflate the State of Israel and its government with worldwide Jewry.  I believe that a good many Jews, at least in the diaspora, perhaps especially in the United States and in Western Europe, do not support the current government of Israel, though they do support the State of Israel.  Some Jews, though relatively few, don't even support the State of Israel or Zionism.  Indeed, most European Jews did not support Zionism when the movement began, perceiving it as a way for real anti-semites to rid their countries of unwanted Jews.  The rise of Nazism and the Holocaust changed everything.  The Six Day War and subsequent occupation of conquered lands didn't change everything, but it has, I think, changed the world's understanding of Zionism today.  Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned Israel's leadership not to occupy the conquered territories.  He warned against what the occupation would do to Israelis, but his warnings have been ignored for 58 years.  And for 58 years, the occupied Palestinians, the Jewish Israelis, non-Israeli Jews, and the rest of the world have been paying the price of the occupation.   Perhaps I may be forgiven and not be accused of anti-semitism for thinking that Zionism was a mistake from the start.  

The Shrinking Catholic Church.  I watched a half-hour mini-documentary on this subject this afternoon.  It seemed like a review of my life.  It used 1965 as a baseline and sometimes 1970 and compared statistics from that era to dates in this century, comparing drastic decreases in the number of parishes, the number of priests and seminarians, the number of nuns, the number of Catholics who regularly attended mass, etc.  It highlighted the effects of changes wrought by Vatican II and the effect of Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which, over the recommendation of the Vatican's advisory council, reaffirmed the Church's moral teaching forbidding artificial birth control including 'the pill,'   I wrote about Humane Vitae in my memoir: The Church, the War, and the Pill

            The Catholic Church also revealed its feet of clay during 1968.  Cardinal Spellman was spouting his murderous nonsense about ‘a war for civilization’[1] without restraint by the Vatican and Catholics were generally as resistant as any other group to much of the civil rights demands.  The big difference maker in terms of Church authority however had nothing to do with war and peace or civil rights, but with sex, Paul VI’s encyclical banning contraception, including birth control pills.  In 1963, John XXIII had established a commission to study population and birth control issues.  Paul VI appointed 15 cardinals and bishops and 64 lay experts to the commission.  The commission provided a report in 1966 saying contraception was not intrinsically evil.  The vote among the clergy was 9 to 6; the lay commission vote was 60 to 4.  One of the dissenters was Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, later John Paul II.  The dissenters feared that a change in the Church’s position would call into question the pope’s teaching authority.[2]  The report was leaked to the press in 1967 and there was a very favorable reaction among modern Catholics, who expected the pope to adopt the commission’s recommendation.  Instead, on July 25, 1968, Paul VI rejected the commission’s recommendation and adopted the dissenting position, undoubtedly fearing that any change in the Church’s position would weaken the claim to papal authority.

            The opening lines of Humanae Vitae were priceless, words that could have been written only by a celibate and childless male who had spent his entire adult life in a misogynistic power structure, i.e., the self-proclaimed Holy Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church:

To His Venerable Brothers the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Local Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See, to the Clergy and Faithful of the Whole Catholic World, and to All Men of Good Will

Venerable Brothers and Beloved Sons [quaere:  how about the sisters? daughters? mothers?]  The most serious duty of transmitting human life [humanae vitae], for which married persons are the free and responsible collaborators of God the Creator, has always been a source of great joys to them, even if sometimes accompanied by not a few difficulties and by distress.

The words of the encyclical as well as its substance were patronizing and arrogant and essentially untrue.  What happened, of course, was precisely what Paul and the Vatican conservatives (like the future John Paul II) wanted to avoid: widespread rejection of the Church’s teaching authority, especially by American and Western European Catholics. The pope and his conservative curial apparatchiks were seen as, at best, mired in medievalism, and, at worst, more concerned about the power of the shepherds than in the welfare of the flock.

            From my point of view, the United States’ position on the war in Vietnam and the Church’s position on contraception flowed from the same source.   Johnson and his advisors and Paul VI and his advisors were more concerned with institutional interests than with the lives of their “subjects.”  Not losing face, nationally and personally, was more important to Johnson than the lives of the thousands of Americans and Vietnamese who were suffering in the war.  Better that thousands should die or be horribly wounded than that the United States be seen for what it inevitably was in Vietnam, an arrogant and feckless loser.  Nixon and Kissinger, of course, had the same value system at work as they kept the war going until 1973 and indeed they were more immoral and corrupt than Johnson.  Kissinger had been privy to the 1968 peace negotiations in Paris and fed information to the Nixon election campaign that it looked like the negotiators were going to arrive at a settlement before the election.  Nixon communicated with South Vietnamese President, Thieu, advising him to boycott the peace conference because ‘we are going to win.’  Thieu refused to attend, the efforts to end the war came to naught and three days later, Nixon narrowly defeated Hubert Humphrey by less than 1% of the popular vote.  Between 1969 and 1973, tens of thousands of Americans would be killed in the war and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.  To Nixon and Kissinger and to millions of other Americans, American “honor” was more important than American lives, and infinitely more important than Vietnamese lives.  For Paul VI, the Church’s magisterium was more important than the lives of millions of Catholics affected by the Church’s teaching on birth control.  Better that Catholics, especially women, should face the choice between (1) bearing children they did not want or could not properly care for, or (2) the fear of eternal damnation (“Do you know how long eternity is, boys and girls?”) than that the authority of the boys in laces and brocades be questioned.

            1968 is still considered by some to be the worst year in American history.  Others consider it the best year, at least in some ways. The common element that dismayed the former group and delighted the latter was the widespread rejection of Authority.  Princes and potentates, presidents and popes – all were seen to have feet of clay.  The late 60s was an anarchic period, especially for the young.  No person or ism commanded respect.  Imperial capitalism and imperial communism were both seen as deeply flawed.  Religion was rejected as exploitative and practically useless.  Christianity was not able to keep Christendom from mass murders in World Wars I and II; nor was it able to keep American Christians from killing hundreds of thousands of Buddhists in southeast Asia and poisoning the earth in the mid and late 60s.  Nationalism was rejected as mere chauvinism and as the cause of wars.  American capitalism, American imperialism, American militarism, American nationalism, American exceptionalism, American religiosity including Catholicism were all viewed as interlocking conceptual systems ultimately producing personal and global oppressions.  Unlike earlier periods of social turmoil, there was nothing around to take the place of these pillars of American and Western society.  Catholicism could not be rejected only to embrace a purifying Protestantism, for all Christianity was rejected.  If any religion had any appeal, it had to be exotic and non-Western, non-deistic Buddhism or polytheistic Hinduism.  Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll replaced God, Family and Country.  Turn on, tune in, drop out

  The Church’s position was mocked by Monty Python troupe in The Meaning of Life.

Every Sperm is Sacred

DAD:

There are Jews in the world.

There are Buddhists.

There are Hindus and Mormons, and then

There are those that follow Mohammed, but

I've never been one of them.

 

I'm a Roman Catholic,

And have been since before I was born,

And the one thing they say about Catholics is:

They'll take you as soon as you're warm.

 

You don't have to be a six-footer.

You don't have to have a great brain.

You don't have to have any clothes on. You're

A Catholic the moment Dad came,

 

Because

 

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted,

God gets quite irate.

 

CHILDREN:

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted,

God gets quite irate.

 

GIRL:

Let the heathen spill theirs

On the dusty ground.

God shall make them pay for

Each sperm that can't be found.

 

CHILDREN:

Every sperm is wanted.

Every sperm is good.

Every sperm is needed

In your neighborhood.

 

MUM:

Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,

Spill theirs just anywhere,

But God loves those who treat their

Semen with more care.

 

            For millions of Catholics, however, Humanae Vitae, was no laughing matter.  It confirmed that conscientious Catholics who exercised responsible control over the creation of children were sinners, guilty indeed of “a grave sin,” something against “the natural order” created by God Himself!  The great 20^th century Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner said of the Church’s moral theology

 

But it is a part of the tragic and irreducibly obscure historicity of the Church that in both theory and practice it used bad arguments to defend moral maxims based on problematic, historically conditioned pre-convictions, ‘prejudices’ . . . This dark tragedy of the Church’s intellectual history is so burdensome because we are dealing here, in all or very many cases, with questions that penetrated deeply into the concrete lives of human beings, because such false maxims, which were never objectively valid . . . placed burdens on people . . . that from the standpoint of the freedom of the Gospel were not legitimate.

 

Among the people illegitimately burdened by the Church’s false maxims was my mother, one of the faithful whose ‘concrete li[fe]’ was ‘penetrated deeply’ by the Church’s valuing more dearly its claim to Authority than any respect for Truth or for real spiritual and material ‘burdens on people.’  Wretches, anti-Christs!

            1968 was a very bad year and it set the country up for another bad year under Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and J. Edgar Hoover.

---

[1] The Onion’s “Our Dumb Century” mocks the absurdity of all the apocalyptic and hyperbolic rhetoric about the so-called defense of  South Vietnam in a piece with the headline U.S. Loses Vietnam War; Ford Urges All Americans to Salute Our Vietcong Rulers: ‘We Must All Get Behind New U.S. President Le Duc Tho,’Ford Says.  The story carried a by-line of “New Hanoi, D. C.,” and this text:  After nearly a decade of fighting and more than 58,000 American casualties [sic] the U. S. lost the Vietnam War.  President Ford officially announced an unconditional surrender Wednesday in a formal ceremony in Haiphong, North Vietnam, then ceded full control of the U. S. to its Communist foes. ‘We are defeated,’ said Ford, bowing before Vietcong military leaders.  ‘The United States of America is now under your control, O valiant conquerors.  On behalf of the American people, I salute you. . . .  Ford rose from his desk and handed a ceremonial key to the White House to his successor, new U.S. President Le Duc Tho.  President Le then ordered members of his elite Red Guard to shackle Ford and remove him from the White House.  Ford is believed to have been taken to a North Vietnamese POW camp.  Numerous other key members of the Ford Administration have also been relocated to camps, including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Treasury Secretary William Simon and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.”

[2] “If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubi was promulgated) and in 1951 (Pius XII’s address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). 

“It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half a century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now he declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved” [Emphasis added by me.]

[3] Cardinal Wojtyla’s warning took root in Paul VI’s thinking, for in the ensuing encyclical, Paul wrote:  “However, the conclusions arrived at by the Commission could not be considered by Us as definitive and absolutely certain, dispensing Us from the duty of examining personally this serious question.  This was all the more necessary because, within the Commission itself, there was not complete agreement concerning the moral norms to be proposed, and especially because certain approaches and criteria for a solution to this question had emerged which were at variance with the moral doctrine on marriage constantly taught by the magisterium of the Church.”  

 

 

12/19/2025

 Friday, December 19, 2025

1946 War broke out in Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacked the French in Hanoi

1971 Stanley Kubrick's cult classic "A Clockwork Orange," based on the book by Anthony Burgess, premiered

1988 Unexploded WW II bomb found in Frankfurt, Germany - 5,000 evacuated

2024  Human Rights Watch accused Israel of committing "acts of genocide" in Gaza by damaging water supply infrastructure and depriving civilians of clean water.

In bed at 9:15, up at 5:25.  15°, w/c -8, high 23°, low 14°.  Wind gusts up to 37 mph.  

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9:30  a.m.  Trulicity injection at 10:15  a.m.

Hannah was found guilty of obstruction.  After six hours of deliberations, jurors in Milwaukee found Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of obstructing law enforcement, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, but acquitted her on a charge of concealing a man wanted by immigration authorities.  I had expected a hung jury and was surprised and disappointed to read the headline this morning.  It seems that Hannah was, as the Irish say, 'too clever by half.'  Unless the verdict is rejected by Judge Adelman, which is unlikely, or overturned by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is probably also unlikely, this result is a devastating loss for Hannah.  She will be a convicted felon and will be removed from the bench, losing her $175,000 per year salary and generous benefit package.  I assume she would be entitled to some pension and health care benefits after 9 years of service as a circuit court judge and wonder whether they may be forfeited as well.  She spent her life working for the Legal Aid Society and for Catholic Charities, not pursuing more lucrative employment.  She never married and lived in an upper flat of a duplex on West Wisconsin Avenue, which she may or may not have owned.  In any event, she is 66 years old, single, and not a wealthy person.  Losing her ample salary and generous fringe benefits, along with being labeled a federal felon, will be a major setback in her otherwise commendable life.  The crime of which she was convicted also carries a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment, though I can't imagine Lynn Adelman sentencing her to prison.

    Hannah, Geri, and I were pretty good friends for several years.  Judge Patricia McMahon and Lynne Oehlke, who ran St. Catherine's Residence of Women, for whom I did some consulting work during my House of Peace days, were close buddies of Hannah.  Lynne retired from St. Catherine's in 2013 and died from cancer two weeks ago.  Pat McMahon retired from the bench in 2010 after 25 years on the bench.  I noted that Tom Barrett was called as a character witness for Hannah in her trial, and I was reminded of a Christmas holiday party at Pat's house in the Washington Highlands neighborhood.  Barrett was one of her guests, as were Geri and I.  Tom was Milwaukee's congressman at the time, a locally very famous and well-liked guy.  When he left, he waved goodbye to a small group, including Geri and me, and I warmly replied, "Goodbye, Steve."  What a doofus.

Epstein documents disclosure: diamonds in dungheaps and scrambled eggs.  We are, as expected, hearing complaints from journalists that the Epstein file disclosures are incomplete and unsearchable, in violation of the Epstein File Transparency Act, and redacted up the wazoo.   I am reminded of Louis, the police chief in Casablanca:  “I’m shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”  My Facebook post one month ago today:

One of my proclivities that I’m not proud of, that indeed causes me some shame and embarrassment, is pessimism.  I don’t know when I developed this trait, perhaps in childhood, perhaps when at age 19 I returned from a couple of months of active duty in the Navy to learn that my One True Love had dumped me, but surely by the time I served in Vietnam and the time I returned from Asia to experience culture shock from my own homeland.  Pessimism and its related attitude of cynicism provide some measure of protection against bitter disappointment.  It is an outgrowth of fear, an unadmirable psychological defense mechanism, but one that I confess to having.  As George Will has written: “The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.  I think of my idiosyncrasy as I witness the celebration over the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405).  A warning: First, we must remember that the legislation provides many reasons for non-disclosure of information, including identification of victims, records that depict or contain child sexual abuse material, information that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution,” materials that include “images of death, physical abuse, or injury,” information that is “specifically authorized … to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,” and is “properly classified” under an executive order.  Each of these grounds for non-disclosure will require some level of interpretation and implementation by Kash Patel’s FBI, Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice, Marco Rubio’s State Department, the CIA, and Donald Trump’s White House.  Knowing what we do of Trump and his loyalty-based political employees, I cynically and pessimistically suggest that (1) the most incriminating or embarrassing materials may already have been purged from the files, deep-sixed, and (2) we would be foolish to expect good faith on the part of the FBI, DOJ, CIA, State Department, or the White House in deciding what materials to withhold on the basis of the grounds authorized by the EFTA and how expansively to swipe the blackout Sharpie.   The legislation ended Phase 1 of the Trump team’s gamesmanship and started Phase II.  We have years of gamesmanship, cover-up, obfuscation, and litigation ahead of us.  Don’t expect any reasonableness or good faith or cooperation on the part of the Administration.

Big Basement Day.  Geri and I spent part of the afternoon moving stuff out of the storage area and the workroom in the basement back out to the finished area.  Tomorrow, Andy and Peter will come over to move the heavy butcher block table.  Then, we'll (mostly, I'll) have to deal with the more difficult and time-consuming job of deciding what to keep and what to finally discard, and where to put whatever I/we keep.

 

12/18/2025

 Thursday, December 18, 2025

2023 Pope Francis allowed priests to bless same-sex couples, though not when connected to a civil or same-sex union

In bed at 9:30. up at 4:30, 39°, w/c 28°, high 45°.   

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 6:45 a.m.    

Trump's prime time address to the nation.  Angry, pathetic old man shouts at a television camera, cites a mass of false or dubious statistics and references to Joe Biden, and snarls at the nation: "Get off of my  lawn!"

- claims he is the greatest president in the history of the United States, and perhaps of the world

- blames Joe Biden for the Arctic cold snap that plagued much of the nation and for the abolition of USAID

- the pointlessness of the speech revealed Trump's desperation and anger at the public that refuses to praise and adore him.

Dolan's out as New York's archbishop!  Confession: I have never liked His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, or, as I prefer to think of him, Mr. Joyboy.  He was dubbed an auxiliary bishop of St. Louis by Pope John Paul II in June 2001 and archbishop of Milwaukee one year later.  Pope Benedict XVI promoted him to archbishop of New York in 2009 and to the rank of cardinal in 2012.  The fact that he was a favorite of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI is no surprise, since Dolan, like them, is very conservative, a traditionalist and an institutionalist.  He had wanted to be a priest from his early boyhood, which tells us something about his personality.  In August 2020 offered the opening prayer for the 2020 Republican National Convention.  He called Charlie Kirk "a modern St. Paul."  He was and is a real jerk.

Change of Life?  As if the completion of the basement rehabbing isn't enough, Geri and I switched places in the TV room: she moved to my recliner and I moved to 'Lilly's couch.'  It is a major adjustment and I don't know whether we'll stick with it, but we are trying it.  I'm losing my view of all the bird feeders, except one.  Will this be OK?

12/17/2025

 Wednesday, December 17, 2025

2012 10 girls collecting firewood are killed by a mine blast in east Afghanistan

2024  Turkey was building up its forces along the Syrian border, raising fears of a possible ground invasion on territories held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

In bed at 10 and awake at 3:30 to move to LZB until 5:20, resting but not sleeping. 34°, wind chill 19°, high 38°, low 32°.  

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  ?a.m.   Kevzara injection at 5 p.m.   

I second the motion.  From The Atlantic, "Trump's Inferno of Hate is Intensifying," by Peter Wehner, December 16, 2025.

Trump’s malignant narcissism is the most essential thing to understand about him.  Heraclitus taught that character is destiny. In Trump’s case, his sociopathy is destiny. His narcissism; his lack of conscience, remorse, or empathy; his pathological lying and grandiosity; his sense of entitlement, impulsivity, and aggression; his cruelty, predatory behavior, and sadism—these are the forces that drive him. If we don’t understand that, we understand almost nothing of importance about him. And beware: When a man with Trump’s personality feels caged in, when he feels besieged and abandoned and begins to lose control of events, he becomes more desperate and more dangerous.

Trump’s personal flaws have seeped into the MAGA movement he leads, which now controls the Republican Party. . .

[Rob] Reiner showed empathy and compassion for a murdered political opponent, Charlie Kirk, and extended grace and praise to Kirk’s widow.  Donald Trump, conversely, showed a level of viciousness toward Reiner in death that we rarely see in anyone, and have never before seen in an American president.  And yet Trump is president mainly because of the early and undying support he has received from white evangelical Christians and fundamentalists, not all of them but most of them.  They stand with him to this very day, to this very hour, to this very second—not on his every utterance but on the moral arc of his presidency.

Many of the people who claim to follow Jesus are instruments of a merciless leader and a merciless movement. They have chosen their political loyalties over their faith, even while using the latter to validate the former. There is something morally twisted and discrediting in this. [Emphasis added.]

One of the most elevating features of Christianity is the concept—and it is not only a Christian concept—of imago Dei. It is the belief that human beings are created in the image of God and valued because we are loved by God. Every person has inherent dignity and worth. Out of that conviction should arise compassion and empathy, including a solidarity with the poor and weak and wounded. It is the way of Jesus—and the way of Jesus, and the person of Jesus, has won our hearts.

Friederich Nietzsche “thought that if a culture was clutching calcified truths, one needed to sound them out relentlessly,” the historian Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen has written. Nietzsche identified himself as a “philosopher with a hammer,” spending his career “tapping that hammer against Western ideals turned hollow idols.” He challenged the notion of eternal truth, of absolute morality, and of God, whom he declared dead.

But “from time to time,” Ratner-Rosenhagen wrote, “Nietzsche put down his hammer as he tried to imagine a world after moral absolutes. Even he wondered what would happen once every article of faith had been shed and every claim to universal truth exposed as a human construct.”

It is a supreme irony that so many American Christians have now picked up the hammer that Nietzsche put down, as if to finish the work he began. 

############################################ 

I read just about everything Peter Wehner writes for the New York Times and The Atlantic.  He is a thoughtful guy and a decent human being.  I have come to think of 'decency' as the attribute I most hope for in any human being, perhaps mostly because so much that I see coming out of my nation's government - White House, Congress, and Supreme Court - is so indecent.  Wehner is not the kind of guy I would normally be attracted to, since he was a principal speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and for former Secretary of Education William Bennett.  He supported "W's" disastrous invasion of Iraq.   He is a strong supporter of Israel in its war on Gaza and of US support for Israel.  He is a serious, practicing Christian, a member of the Presbyterian Church, and a moralist, though he disputes that Jesus's teachings apply to governments as they do to individuals.  I suppose I am so drawn to his writings because he is so strong in his condemnation and opposition to Donald Trump, and to Evangelical Christian support of Trump, as the article I quoted from demonstrates.

How is it possible for anyone claiming to be a Christian to support Donald Trump?  In this Atlantic article, Wehner writes regarding evangelical Christians who support Trump that, "They have chosen their political loyalties over their faith, even while using the latter to validate the former", but this invites the question of what exactly is "their faith"?  Christianity is not one faith, but many, perhaps as many as there are people who purport to profess it.  I still think of myself as a Christian, tattooed in my cradle,' though I don't believe in most of the Bible, or the Nicene Creed, or a personal God, and I tend to believe in Spinoza's God, not the popes'.  I have very little in common with the Evangelical Christians, especially those who support Trump or Trumpism.  

In 1935, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a terrific book titled "An Interpretation of Christian Ethics."  I've read it once and re-read parts of it many times.  The chapters that I am most drawn to are  titled "The Ethic of Jesus," "The Christian Conception of Sin, and "The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal."  He is a brilliant thinker and writer, and I've long wondered what his faith was.  Surely it's one very different from Pat Robertson's, Jerry Falwell's, and the group of evangelicals who occasionally show up in the Oval Office to lay hands on Donald Trump and pray for his protection and divine guidance.  It's also very different from mine.  I assume he believes in a transcendent, personal God who acts in history and in some sort of Trinity, but who knows?   Was his faith like that of the curé in Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest, or like that of the "whiskey priest" in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory?  Or like Joan's in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc?  Or like any of the Catholic cardinals, princes of the Church, in the recent movie Conclave?  Isn't it more true than not that every faith is unique to the believer, that one man's conviction is the next man's hopeful doubt?  And that many persons' faith alters from age to age, year to year, or moment to moment?  As I type this, I recall the conversation I had in 1966 or 1967 with a Marine reservist who was a Protestant minister of some sort.  He told me that most seminarians are atheists, or at least don't believe in the same God that their congregants believe in.  I was 26 at the time, going through a very challenging year after Vietnam, and not a churchgoer, but I was shocked.  Now I recall the priests of my youth, the chaplains in Vietnam, my priest friends at St. Francis and at the House of Peace, especially Matthew Gotschalk and Al Veik,  and I think of the anguished pastor in Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, the one in Paul Schrader's First Reformed, the missionaries in Martin Scorsese's Silence, Robert Duval's The Apostle, and the Catholic haplain who visited me when I was hospitalized this year.  What did their faiths have in common, and what distinguished each one from the others?  

For me, even as an apostate, the heart of Gospel Christianity is the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31to 46, not the part about the Last Judgment, which I seem to be living through in my old age, but the part about the meaning of life being to help one another, especially those most in need.  Donald Trump and many of his followers would call the starving, the sick, the imprisoned, etc., 'losers', 'suckers,' perhaps 'scumbags' or 'dirtballs' or 'lowlifes.'  In what way are they "Christians"?  I include the Catholic convert, J. D. Vance. the Catholic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr,. and the Catholic Marco Rubio, and the Protestant Kristi Noem.  Jesus weeps.

Almost done.  Tomorrow or Friday morning.  Merry Christmas.  Sanctuary again?

I chose the image of Jesus falling for the first time from the Stations of the Cross as an appropriate graphic to accompany my rough thoughts on the multiplicity of "faiths" and on the un-Christian faiths of so-called Evangelical Christians.  Disputes and disagreements among Jesus's followers arose almost immediately after his death, witness the varying and contradictory accounts of his life, death, and resurrection in the 4 gospels and in the noncanonical books of early Christianity, e.g., the Gnostic gospels.  Judaism and Islam, I suspect, all religions suffer from inevitable disputes and disagreements, fights.  Niebuhr recognized this and wrote about it expansively in Moral Man and Immoral Society, asserting that factionalism is unavoidable in religions, including Christianity.  

 

    

12/16/2025

 Tuesday, December 16, 2025

1969 British House of Commons voted 343-185 to abolish the death penalty

202  15-year-old killed 2, and herself, wounded 6, at Madison's Abundant Life Christian School

In bed at 9:15, up at 7:30 after spending part of the night on the LZB because of bad lower back pain.  20°, wind chill 11°, high of 37°!!   Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9:20 a.m.  

LTMW at a busy morning on the feeders.  A female downy woodpecker is working away at the new seedcake feeder I bought at Walmart yesterday.  A gray squirrel has just leapt from the ground to the top of the squirrel baffle and now has displaced the woodpecker on top of the seedcases.  I need to move the baffle higher to prevent the incredibly athletic squirrels from eating me out of house and home.  (Can they all leap to the top of the balffle, or only Jesse Owens?)  Two mourning doves and a goldfinch flew away from the tray feeder as the squirrel mounted the shepherd's crook, replaced by a male and a female house finch.  A white-breasted nuthatch is feeding on the tube feeder while a second and third gray squirrel are searching for intact seeds among the jetsam on the ground.  Yesterday, I caught sight of a flock of cedar waxwings on our berry trees along County Line Road.  O frabjous day, . . .

Today I had a dental appointment at 10 a.m. with  Dr. Neary.  My laptop calendar had it at 10, but for some reason my head had it at 11.  I no-show on my part for which I am duly abashed.  I'm rescheduled for December 30 at 10:30 a.m.😖😟😠😢

 

 

Peggy Noonan's WSJ column: Trump May Be Losing His Touch. December 11, 2025.  Excerpts:

This is the paradox of politics: Every time you solve a major problem, you’re removing a weapon from your political arsenal.  What happens when you lose your great issue? What happens when all that remains of that issue is its least popular aspect? Immigration remains in the news only because of brutal deportation practices. It isn’t “build the wall” anymore; it’s “Don’t arrest the poor guy working the line in a second job at the chicken-processing plant.” Americans don’t want that guy thrown out. The longer the deportations continue, the more unpopular and damaging to the administration they will become.

Will they?  I'm not so sure.

There is the matter of his mouth. The president’s supporters have for 10 years put up with his babyish obsession with insulting people. They think of it as the Trump Tax, the price you pay for getting someone bold and tough. But his hate-stoking now, in an era of political violence, is going to get someone hurt. In his Truth Social post Tuesday night he used criminal language about the press—news outlets and reporters are “seditious, perhaps even treasonous,” They “libel and demean THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” They are “true Enemies of the people, and we should do something about it.” Like what?

Like shoot them or burn their house.  We shouldn't fool ourselves that he would find that a bad thing.  Look at his obscene comment on the killing of the Reiners.  He only gets happy when his 'enemies' are harmed, even lethally.  The same is true for many of his followers.  Surely not all, probably not even a majority, but nonetheless many of them.  

It isn’t only inflation spreading unease. Artificial intelligence is coming. It’s going to change the entire employment picture in America over the next few years. It’s going to eat jobs, and people with imagination—and America is nothing if not imaginative—can see it coming. This is part of the background music in America: Americans who aren’t unemployed and do have a house are afraid that in the next few years they could lose their job, their security. And they’re worried about their kids.

"Worried" is too soft a word.  Maybe terrified.  What is there to give us hope about the future of this country?  of the world?  And don't stop at kids.  They're in their 50s.  What about the grandchildren?  What kind of world are they growing into?  I shudder.

He shows no sign of seeing any dark side to it, has no apparent plans to regulate it, and is beating back state attempts to impose limits. He’s given his friends the AI “broligarchs,” in Ed Luce’s term in the Financial Times, “carte blanche.”   What happened the last time Mark Zuckerberg had carte blanche? Haven’t we read about all the billionaires powering AI who have safe houses and bunkers to which to flee if and when the world they’re inventing goes under?

Mr. Trump seems alive to none of this, but regular people are, and this has more to do with our economic unease than we credit. 

From ChatGPT:  

"Billionaires and ultra-wealthy individuals are increasingly investing in secure properties that range from fortified safe rooms to large underground bunkers. These aren’t just simple panic rooms — many include luxury finishes and extensive security infrastructure.   Firms that build luxury shelters report rising interest from wealthy clients fearing geopolitical instability or global crises. Some of the buyers cited in past reports include well-known tech leaders and celebrities.  High-end secure compounds:  Exclusive projects like Aerie — a members-only doomsday bunker network — are under development. These aim to provide ultra-wealthy clients with protected environments that feature amenities and defenses against nuclear, biological, or technological threats. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought large parcels of land in Hawaii and is building an expansive compound — including a ~5,000 sq. ft. underground bunker with autonomous power and food supply — reportedly worth about $270 M in total. Workers are under strict NDAs. 

Reports over the past year have linked other tech billionaires (such as Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos) with the construction of fortified shelters or reinforced bases, though details vary by source and some are harder to independently verify. 

Does Trump give a shit?  Highly unlikely, indeed almost impossible to imagine.  He'll turn 80 this summer if the cheeseburgers and Diet Cokes don't do him in before his birthday.  The only time he shows any concern about anyone other than himself is when the other is in a position to hurt him, not when the other is himself vulnerable to hurt or loss.  I wonder whether Trump himself (or his children) has safe rooms, or bunkers, an island getaway, or arrangements for fleeing to a foreign land friendly to him, like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or El Salvador.

 

12/15/2025

 Monday, December 15, 2025

1939 "Gone With The Wind" premiered in Atlanta (Best Picture 1940, inflation not adjusted highest-grossing film of all time)

1952 Christine Jorgenson was the first known American to undergo a sex-change operation

1973 American Psychiatric Association declared homosexuality is not a mental illness

2024  More than 50 people are killed in Gaza in Israeli airstrikes as the death toll for Palestinians killed in the Israel-Gaza War surpasses 45,000 

2025  At least 15 were killed and 38 hospitalized after yesterday's attack on Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach near Sydney, Australia

In bed at 9, had a hint of a GERD attack, moved to LZB in the middle of the night, up at 6.  Geri heard the CLUNK of the LZB moving out its reclined position to upright and came in to ask if I was alright.  I was touched by her concern and assured her it was only the LZB. 12°, wind chill -7°, high 23°, low 7°.

Meds, etc.  I realized during the night that I hadn't taken any of my 16 pills and capsules yesterday.  It was the missing tamsulosin and finasteride that tipped me off.  Morning meds at 11 a.m. 

Bondi Beach, First day of Hanukkah.  How long will Jews all over the world suffer from violent anti-semitism?  How long will Palestinians in the Occupied Territories suffer under Israeli oppression?  How long will Israeli Jews suffer from deadly anti-Zionism?  How much of the Jewish suffering is attributable to Zionism?  Is the State of Israel a safe haven for Jews, or a principal cause of the suffering of Jews, especially non-Israeli Jews around the world?   Does this question have any meaning 77 years after the internationally-sanctioned creation of the State of Israel?  I suppose not; the State of Israel is a permanent 'fact on the ground' as well as a legally and diplomatically recognized sovereign nation since 1948.  It is home to more than 7 million Jews and more than 2 million Arabs, most of whom have no intention of moving elsewhere.  Approximately 5.5 million Arabs reside in the West Bank and Gaza.  I can only wonder whether, but for the 1967 war and subsequent occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, the Arabs and the Israeli Jews might have worked out some sort of modus vivendi over time, despite the expulsion of Arabs from what would become Israel, the Nakba,(and the expulsion of Jews from some Arab states).  In any case, after the Six Day War and the occupation by Israel of 'the Territories', and especially since the settler movement gained governmental support with Likud's coming to power in 1977, the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs seem doomed to perpetual hostility.  Likud’s major leaders (Begin, Shamir, Sharon, and Netanyahu) were all secular Jews, and while Likud is not a religious-Zionist party, its leaders often aligned politically with religious Zionists—especially on nationalism, territory, and settlements—without sharing their theological worldview.  The big difference was that the secular Likud leaders were willing to give up land that the religious Zionist believed was given by God to Jews (Begin returned the Sinai to Egypt, and Sharon dismantled the settlements in Gaza.)  I lost hope for Israel in 1995 when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by the religious Zionist and supporter of the settler movement, Yigal Amir.  The assassination was followed by the re-election of Netanyahu, and Israel has grown only more right-wing since, culminating with the current government, which, in the conduct of its retaliatory war in Gaza, has managed to shift the State of Israel from its broadly supported status as innocent victim of Hamas terrorism to that of genocidal victimizer of innocent children.  For a great many Americans, Israel is a pariah state and support for Israel has become morally unacceptable.  For an old Leftie like me, who grew up admiring the post-war Israel of David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, the Labor Party, and the kibbutzniks, this parallels the American transition from the country of JFK, LBJ's Great Society, and Jimmy Carter to the country of Nixon, Bush/Cheney, and now Trump.  A disaster for Israel.  A disaster for America.

Trump's response to the murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.  He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.  May Rob and Michele rest in peace."

This man won the popular vote for the presidency last year.  Almost half of the American voters cast their votes for this man.  This reveals who we are.

Walmart run this afternoon to pick up bird seed, some bird cakes, Blink dry-eyes capsules and drops, HP printer ink cartridges, and CBH.

Brown University mass shooting.  What can I say?  This was about the 400th mass shooting in the United States this year.  So it goes year after year after year.  USA!  USA!  USA!  There have been 131 homicides in Milwaukee this year and 471 non-fatal shootings.  How can anyone believe that we don't live in a dystopia???  As of early October this year, Chicago already had about 1,500 shootings and 276 homicides.  

12/14/2025

 Sunday, December 14, 2025

2008 President George W. Bush made his fourth and final trip to Iraq as president and was almost struck by two shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist during a farewell conference in Baghdad

2024  Pope Francis opens the Holy Door of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, inaugurating the church's Jubilee Year of Hope

In bed at 9, moved to LZB around 12? 1?, awakened by text message from Sarah in Thailand around 2, back to bed, not much sleep, up at 4:30 with a runny nose and bothersome cough.    

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at ? a.m.    

Earl's pecan tree reminds me of our china cabinet full of Geri's family heirlooms: her good china, her Mom's good china, their crystalware, serving dishes, etc., some delicate pieces of Beleek porcelain that we brought back from our honeymoon in Ireland, sterling silver wedding gifts.  None of these pieces are used by us, even for family holiday dinners, and none of Geri's boys or their wives want any of it.  It reminds me too of my memoir and the journal I've maintained for the last few years.  They, along with my paintings and drawings are destined for the incinerator or the landfill when I join Earl in our landfills.  Sic transit gloria mundi or so it goes.  The closer I draw to my final days, the more aware I become of the ephemerality of everything and everyone.

Spring and Fall

• 
• 
• 
• 

Gerard Manley Hopkins

1844 – 

1889

              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 will 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.

After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost
1874 – 
1963
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.