For Crying Out Loud!

When confronted with the character flaws of the person she supported for president in the 2024 election, one person I know replied that we are all sinners, all flawed. Equally flawed? Does character not matter then in elected officials? Do past acts committed not matter? Then anyone might as well be considered “qualified,” and we might as well draw names at random to fill government offices. Why bother with campaigns and voting? 

Several months into the administration led by one of us flawed sinners, we now have unidentified men, masked and armed, abducting people off the streets in the name of the United States government and transporting them to prisons and/or detention facilities without due process. We are told that these men must be masked to protect their identities because threats have been made against their lives. By this logic, state governors, members of Congress, governors of states, judges in courtrooms, journalists—there is no end to the people whose identities should be hidden because threats have been made against their lives! 

People who go into law enforcement or into the military choose careers that involve risk. If we are to know and trust them, we need to know who they are. We need to be able to see them--as fellow human beings. And they need to see others as fellow human beings, also. Do they? 

A friend retired from law enforcement downstate says he cannot imagine how the public would have reacted if he and fellow police officers had initiated traffic stops wearing face masks rather than badges. A certain public person objecting to the new practice (and sorry, I can’t remember who it was) said the ICE officers looked as if they were setting out to rob liquor stores. Sure does! And it makes sense that people doing that want to hide their faces. 

Bank robberies, liquor store robberies, etc. are “traditionally” performed with faces hidden. Are these government employees and their bosses all too well aware that they are the serious law-breakers?

"Look what they're doing!"

What are the current aims of the administration in our nation's capital, and what was your first clue? How about this? Anything you hear them accusing their opposition of doing is exactly what they are doing.

"Rig" an Election? The 2020 election was run and won fair and square, but can the same be said of the 2024 election? Certain remarks made by the president raise doubts. "Rigged" if you lose, not if you win? Hmmm....

"Weaponize"? Yep, that's just what the current administration and its Congressional supporters are doing. An impartial justice system, one that would punish those who break the law, is not what those determined to abolish laws desire. Hence the epidemic of "firings" (purging would be a more accurate term) of long-time government employees loyal to the Constitution and the laws of the land. 

"Witch hunt"? Again, yes! Those petulant whining and cryings from the White House about "witch hunts" are another instance of accusing your opposition of exactly what you are doing. Ever criticize the current president? Ever disagree with him on anything? And if you are a Democrat--well, that speaks for itself! "Out with the witches!" is the Republican yell today.

[Note: Republicans, not Conservatives. It is not conservative to undermine the rule of law and abandon the nation's ideals.]

"Hate"? No, the opposition to the administration does not "hate" America! Far from it! We love our country and its ideals, and if we hate anything it is the current authoritarian agenda that is dragging us into the mud and would throw those ideals out the window. But just listen to the spewing from the hater-in-chief! Accusing, blaming, name-calling. Plenty of hate in that quarter.

The psychological term for accusing the other guy of what you yourself are doing is projection. In the world of psychology, the finger-pointer is not consciously aware of what he is doing, but can the same be said of Republican finger-pointers today? In a few cases, perhaps, but I am more inclined to think it is, in general, a very conscious, intentional strategy, a pre-emptive move designed precisely to put the opposition on the defensive. I guess you might call it smart. I call it evil.

Reminder Found in a Book

 

How I See It Today

👀

 

Two things: 

 

(1)       The latest Supreme Court ruling. Okay, my idea is that depriving those born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents should be retroactive through the generations, making descendants of those landing on the Mayflower, who were not citizens (there wasn’t even a United States then) also noncitizens. Even Native Americans (since there was no U.S.) would not be U.S. citizens today. The only true “Americans” would be naturalized citizens, i.e., those who had learned enough civics to pass an exam—which would pretty much empty out the White House and many state capitol buildings. Voting lines would be way shorter, too. A friend I floated this idea past asked if naturalization could also be retroactive, and I told her I haven’t worked out all the details. In fact, I am unlikely to bother. This is, after all, in case you haven’t guessed, what philosophers call a ‘reductio,’ short for reductio ad absurdum. How would such a small number of naturalized Americans get along with groups of indigenous Americans, say the People of the Three Fires? Maybe better than the historical track record thus far.

 

(2)       On a completely unrelated topic, the older of my two credit cards recently had its credit limit drastically lowered. The reason given (I could appeal but won’t bother) is that I “have not been using” enough of my credit available. In other words, I am not deep enough in debt to be worthy of as much available credit as they thought for years I should have. In fact, I pay off my balance every month, so I am not building debt and not making the company any money. But in my not-so-humble opinion, the company’s thinking is short-sighted, because if I were ever desperate enough to max out my available credit, there is no way I’d be able to pay it back at the end of the month, and they would have me hooked. Now that hook, should it ever be set (God forbid!) will net them much less than it might have otherwise.

 

Your thoughts? 

Explanation (NOT POLITICAL!) For My Friend

Or, Still Stage-Struck After All These Years

Last night I texted a friend out West that I am currently obsessed with “The Phantom of the Opera” (which I also mentioned in my recent “Books in Northport” post). She texted back that she never saw the show, doesn’t know the story line or setting, and is not crazy in general about drama, though she did acknowledge that the music and costumes and set in the link I sent her (“The Music of the Night”) were beautiful. 

 

My friend and the rest of you, I have never seen the show, either! I’ve never seen a performance of anything in the old Opera in Paris (but I have been inside the front doors to see the staircase and have seen photo images and one filmed performance from the more modern Opera de la Bastille; the opera part of the post comes after the livestock auction part). Until I began listening to the musical numbers in order, however, I had no more of the story line than you! And yes, opera is dramatic.

 

I didn’t care at all for opera when I was young, though my parents both loved it and had many long-playing vinyl 78rpm recordings of opera. But I loved music. And the stage—I fell in love with the stage at age 14 when (on the first date I had with the boy driving rather than one of his his parents) I saw my first live production. The play, not a musical, was “The Curious Savage,” with high school students playing the parts, and when the final curtain came down I did not want to leave my seat. I was stage-struck!

 

Luckily, I played violin in the high school orchestra, so for four years it was my good fortune to be in the pit orchestra for every rehearsal and every performance of each year's high school “operetta,” as we called it. The first, my freshman year, was “Show Boat.” Well before the last performance was over, I knew all the lines and lyrics by heart, and of course I never wanted that show to be over! The student who sang Paul Robeson’s “Ol’ Man River” was, for me, the star, and it is his performance I remember best, but the entire production was incredibly thrilling—and I was a part of it! A very modest, practically invisible part, but I have never forgotten it, and it still gives me shivers. 

 

There were other operettas and other stage plays, and in some of the plays I was onstage, most notably as the old gypsy woman in “Camino Real,” by Tennessee Williams, a production our high school took up through various contest levels, competing with other high school thespians, eventually to win first in state. That did it! I dreamed of New York and studying theatre and going on the live stage. But sic transit all that, and so I’ll cut ahead in time here….

 

(Opera still had not grabbed me.)

 

I sang blues in a club for a while and, in a different time period, earlier, studied voice with a private teacher, but time was slipping away, and I was studying philosophy and at the same time turning to quieter, more pastoral dreams. Then one day, making my bed out in an old farmhouse in Barry County, listening to the radio, I was stopped in my tracks and had to sit down to listen to the famous duet from “The Pearl Fishers.” Really! That was opera? Maybe I was ready to appreciate it.

 

So there are the pieces: stage-struck at age 14, four years in the pit orchestra, a role in my senior year in a play that went right to the top in our state competition, singing in a nightclub in Kalamazoo, hearing a duet that captured my heart, and finally seeing a Paris production on film, on a big screen, in Willcox, Arizona. No, there was more than that: there was a family holiday trip to Chicago for the stage version of “Camelot,” a school trip for “Oliver!” There was also our family participation in church choir, and there were my mother and sisters and I singing while we did dishes and cleaned up the kitchen after dinner. You see the influences. I could go on and add more. In general, though, music and stage, stage and music. 

 

Neither music nor the stage became my life after a certain point, but our past never completely vanishes, and I hope my heart is never so cold, soul never so dead that I do not thrill to passionate and dramatic songs from the best of my country’s composers and lyricists. Here are a few more numbers, in addition to those linked in paragraphs above, that give me goosebumps.

 

“All I Ask of You”

“The Impossible Dream”

“West Side Story” --the whole show!

(I can’t choose only one number.)

Another whole show: "Fiddler on the Roof"

I would love to see “Wicked,” but I could not put it ahead of seeing and hearing, on a live stage, “The Phantom of the Opera”--if I could survive the experience!

Recession Will Not Hurt Billionaires--Perhaps They Welcome It

Why should billionaires worry about a plummeting stock market? If stock prices go down, billionaires can buy stocks cheap and massively increase their control and eventual profits.

 

Why should billionaires worry that tariffs will hurt farmers? The more independent farmers go out of business, the more land will be available for corporations to buy, giving them increased control over food supply and prices. 

When certain crypto "meme coins" came on the market, there was a rush to buy, Big Money cornering the market and sending the price soaring--after which the “smart” “investors” sold at the high price to the gullible hordes whose “investments” promptly plummeted.

 

A little recession? Billionaires will be able to weather it easily, knowing they will benefit from it in the long run. How about you?

A day later, I'm coming back to clarify. The big take-away here is not that billionaires are insulated from recession by their wealth. As a friend of mine says, that’s always been true. What’s more important to see is that engineering a recession, however much it hurts the general population, can be so greatly in the interest of billionaires that while the general population is continually distracted by a nonstop flood of non-monetary issues, the financial rug can be steadily pulled right out from under them by the billionaires.

Believing

Belief and Knowledge (in Theory)

 

In the study of epistemology (theory of knowledge), the generally accepted definition of knowledge is “justified true belief.” That is, I know something if (a) I believe it, (b) it is true, and (c) I am somehow justified in believing it true. When you first encounter and consider the definition, that last component seems the trickiest: What counts as justification? What justifies my belief that the earth orbits the sun? Entire books have been written on the question of justification, but my focus today is different.

 

Many people – probably all of us – hold some beliefs that fall short of knowledge, believes we hold on faith and/or because we have made a decision to believe. What, though, about the opposite? 

Is it possible to know something and yet find that same something impossible to believe? To see daily bits of reality as too insane to be true?

 

Okay, that’s one question, but now, for the moment, I want to set it aside and ask a different question about belief. I’ll come back to disbelief after a long detour….

 

***

 

Believing vs. Not Believing in Something,

Stated “Belief” vs. Actual Choice

 

Years ago I had a community college student, an older married woman, who “did not believe” in government programs. She acknowledged – believe me, I had not asked! – that she and her husband lived on unemployment and disability, but she insisted that they “did not believe” in such programs. She “believed” the programs were wrong and should not exist. She “believed” the money was “stolen” from taxpayers. And yet she was comfortable receiving money she considered “stolen.” It didn’t make sense to me. 

 

I could not bring myself to press her on the question in class. I would have felt cruel to do so. And yet, all these years later, I still cannot make sense of her statement. When stated “belief” and personal choice are in stark contradiction, what sense can be made of the stated “belief”?

 

(Please forgive all the scare quotes in today’s post. I can’t see a way to omit them.)

 

When people call themselves “pro-life” because they oppose abortion yet are unconcerned with higher sepsis rates in places where medical personnel are afraid to intervene during a miscarriage for fear of going to jail, I feel a similar disconnect. Sepsis, when not treated in a timely manner, can result in the inability of a woman to have children in future--or even in her death! Do these women’s deaths not matter? Is their future fertility something for others to sacrifice? I hear no concern, either, about the risks to a woman’s life if an ectopic pregnancy cannot be terminated by abortion, if a nonviable fetus must not be removed, etc., etc. 

 

What is “pro-life” in this? To me it looks more like an exaggerated and misplaced concern for fertilized eggs and a complete lack of concern for the lives of women and girls in dangerous situations. To “believe” in life and choose to risk the lives of others is, as I see it, a blatant contradiction. And yes, it would be different to me if these people simply chose to put their own lives at risk, but none of the male “pro-lifers” will ever have to face that challenge.

 

Many abortion opponents in recent elections have been single-issue voters, and they were one block of voters (among others) that helped to elect (assuming votes were accurately cast and counted) a man three times divorced and six times bankrupt … who mocked a disabled reporter, made numerous vulgar remarks about women, boasted that he could shoot someone in the street and not go to jail for it … who was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying his business records … who railed against “criminals” and bragged about supporting police and then, almost the minute he got into the Oval Office, issued full commutations and pardons to everyone convicted in the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021 (which he fomented), including those who had most violently attacked the police guarding Congress that day. He was probably right about being able to shoot someone in the street and not go to jail, because these single-issue voters were certainly willing to overlook everything else for his promise to oppose abortion. 

 

(Actually, his “promise” was not always clear, and he is not, in generally, very good at keeping promises or honoring contracts, although he does, much more consistently, follow through when he makes threats. But it isn’t the word of an established liar that concerns me today. It’s the people who call themselves “pro-life” that I don’t understand.)

 

One anti-abortion friend told me that lowering abortion numbers with education and contraception was not enough: Only the goal of zero abortions is acceptable, nothing less. How does my friend square his obviously unreachable ideal (zero) with the obvious fact that more girls and women will die, once again as in the past, of unsafe, illegal abortions if no exceptions whatsoever are to be made to a total ban? Again, these lives that will surely be lost seem to count as nothing. Pro-life? Hardly. More like pro-punishment.

 

Let’s be clear about something. No one “believes” in abortion. Unlike economic safety nets such as unemployment insurance and disability payments for those unable to work, abortion isn’t something anyone wants. Only a worse alternative makes it something a woman ever chooses. Because sometimes, more often than oversimplified, hypothetical dilemma problems acknowledge, life presents us with situations in which there is no choice that does not involve loss and/or regret. 

 

I suppose my student and her husband--that couple living on disability and unemployment checks--felt the choice they made, while bad, was not as bad as allowing themselves to become homeless and starving to death, and if my student had put it that way, I would agree. It’s that framing of “believing” and “not believing” that troubles me, that business of absolute right vs. absolute wrong, such that a person can apparently feel in the right while doing what s/he thinks is wrong.

 

Does it make sense to you?

 

If I say I believe in charity and yet live like a miser, how is my belief demonstrated, and how can it be called a belief at all? If I speak in favor of nonviolence and live a violent life…? If I vocally advocate free speech and seek to shut down voices that do not echo my own…? If I talk “law and order” but flout the law at every turn…? If I call myself a truth-teller and utter nothing but falsehood, bearing false witness right and left…? 

 

By their fruits shall you know them.

 

***

 

I know it’s true, and yet –

 

Circling back around to my opening, I return to another troubling question: Can I know something and yet find it impossible to believe? Obviously, if I can, the traditional definition of knowledge is false, since the first component of the definition is belief. These times we are living through, however, strain credulity. Day after day, events occur to which I can only respond with horrified disbelief. This cannot be happening in my country. And yet it is. I know it is.