You know it’s nice to see democrats get to the polls in increasing numbers, independents siding with more progressive politics, and even some republicans leaving the party behind, but just making the switch doesn’t quite do it for me. I want to see some contrition. Serious crimes against humanity have been committed. A lot of damage has been done to many people, and it requires more than just doing the bare minimum. I’ll wait.
Even after Republicans seriously underperformed last night in an off-year election, they are trying to spin it as “It’s not a big deal, the blue states would have won anyway.” The strategy appears to be full steam ahead, in denial of a problem with voters. Suit yourself.
A recent comment by Johnson tipped me off to the real strategy, though. When Johnson quipped that the government might stay shut down until the first of the year, it occurred to me that he knows something about Trump’s health that we don’t. There are several posters on social media, some doctors who specialize in stroke patients and cardiology, who are speculating about Trump’s failing health. Between the jaw drooping on one side, the pee bottle in the leg, and the cognitive decline, something is clearly wrong. Some give him 4-6 months, or less. This is why I read past all of the posters who get their undies in a bunch over him running for a third term. Ain’t gonna happen.
I think Johnson is privy to this and is holding out for Trump’s failing health to force the issue on the 25th Amendment, at which point, Trump’s name in the Epstein files won’t matter as much because he’s not President anymore. It’s a brilliant strategy if it works, but risky. He’ll be taking the heat every day he doesn’t reopen the government. Democrats are wise to let healthcare premiums skyrocket and SNAP benefits disappear in the meantime, because until red state voters feel the pain in a very personal way, they are likely to continue to support Trump.
In my upcoming book “It’s Complicated, Isn’t It?”, there’s a chapter on Religion and Politics where I delve into the absurd positions that “Christian Right” Republicans hold on immigrants, trickle-down economics, the social safety net, and guns. With the news of Catholic Cardinals casting their ballots for Cardinal Robert Provost to be the next Pope, the same group of Republicans are losing their minds. Oh great, now we have a “woke” Pope.
Republicans have been faced with the challenge of twisting the messages from the New Testament to fit their caste system for decades now, and the election of Pope Leo XIV is going to make it considerably harder.
Contrast these two points of view.
You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
— JD Vance (A Catholic) on Fox News
Republicans using gymnastics to twist the message of Love Thy Neighbor is nothing new. We’ve been witnessing Olympic Champion levels of deceit in the halls of Congress for decades, but this is potentially a powder keg of anti-Trump messaging waiting to happen. And I am here for it.
On Thursday, I attended Dan McClellan’s book signing event at the Duniway Hotel in Portland. If you are unfamiliar with McClellan, he is a biblical scholar with a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter in Theology and Religion and a robust social media following (Twitter, Instagram, et al.). He also co-hosts a podcast called “Data over Dogma” with Dan Beecher.
McClellan is a somewhat controversial figure in religious circles because he frequently and unapologetically discredits religious myths and dogma posited by the far right. He does this very unemotionally and intelligently, presenting irrefutable facts and scholarly research to the conversation. Watching him in action has been both educational and entertaining.
Dan’s new book is titled “The Bible Says So — What We Get Right (and Wrong) about The Bible’s Most Controversial Issues,” The book delves into provocative subjects such as whether or not the Bible is the inspired word of God, its inerrancy, Creation, Slavery, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and whether or not the Bible says women need to cover up. True biblical scholars like McClellan add historical, cultural, literary, linguistic, and theological context to the conversation. In doing so, he tries to understand Biblical Texts as their authors, editors, and earliest audiences understood them. From McClellan’s introduction:
Many people approach the Bible as authoritative, maintaining boundaries regarding what it is and isn’t allowed to say. Allowing the Bible to transgress those boundaries can raise doubts regarding deeply held beliefs people don’t want to see subjected to scrutiny. They are not beliefs that people adopt because they’ve been convinced by data or evidence. They’re beliefs that people choose to accept because doing so is required or incentivized within the social identities that are important to them. Sometimes these beliefs are supported by data and sometimes they are not, but what is true of all of them is that they’re not negotiable. I call this type of belief dogma.
McClellan’s presence on social media frequently intersects with people who assert dogmas such as biblical texts as divinely inspired, inerrancy, and univocality. You’d have to read the book to get all the details, but in a nutshell, McClellan rejects these assertions. He asserts that these beliefs arose over time as people contemplated the implications of different approaches to the Bible and constructed perspectives that made the scripture most useful to their structuring of power, values, and boundaries.
Perhaps the most eye-opening takeaway from McClellan’s message is from a linguistics perspective — that the Bible is a collection of texts without inherent meaning. Meaning comes into play when we attempt to interpret the text, so at the end of the day, it’s whatever you make of it based on your own experiences. We are never just extracting pure and unadulterated meaning. We’re continually constructing it ourselves. We end up guessing the original authors’ needs, circumstances, values, and goals. Why? Because the needs, circumstances, values, and goals of authors and editors two thousand years ago are wildly different than those of today.
My interest in these topics stems from the fact that I am writing a book myself, “It’s Complicated, Isn’t It?” For most of my adult life, I’ve been interested in engaging in discussions with others (if it can be done intelligently and unemotionally). It’s a frustrating endeavor because, in the age of social media, you’re more likely to run into people so steeped in misinformation that they instantly refute your point with lies and propaganda. There’s no moment to pause and stop to actually think things over. They just immediately pull out some parrotted talking points as a rebuttal (usually half way through your sentence). I’ve taken on Republicans in debate forums where Biblical quotes are weaponized in many different ways. In the twenty first century social media landscape, I appreciate guys like McClellan who are out there pushing back on misinformation in an educated way.
I briefly met Dr. McClellan at the book signing and later followed up with a question about the origins of ethics and morals. I was delighted to have him confirm one of the basic hypotheses of my book—believing that ethics and morals originated from the Bible is a fallacy. Ancient philosophers contributed more to framing ethics and morals than the Bible. Most early Christian ethics writing was based on Greek philosophy anyway when the Bible was translated from Aramaic to Greek in 200 – 250 BCE.
It feels good to get validated once in a while.
The following is an excerpt from my book “It’s Complicated, Isn’t It?”
As a pre-teen, I remember being able to be laser-focused on an activity — so tuned in that I couldn’t fathom anything outside being present in that moment. My brain was completely locked. I would be so zeroed in on my mission that I wouldn’t have noticed Raquel Welch right next to me in a string bikini. I might ignore a bowel movement for as long as was physically possible… and then some. This level of concentration presented a problem for my parents and the mandatory Church requirement.
Living in the burbs of Southeast Portland, we didn’t have any place to play hardball in the immediate neighborhood. That would have meant a trip to the park or nearby field. This prompted my friend Scott to devise an ingenious innovation — a masking tape whiffle ball. Scott was younger than I by a year, but we shared a love of baseball and were both very competitive.
One Sunday morning, with nothing better to do, I wandered down to the neighbor’s house to find Scott experimenting with wrapping some masking tape around a whiffle ball. Depending on how the ball was wrapped, you could get the ball to curve about 3 feet from pitcher to batter. It turned every pitcher into Bert Blyleven faster than you could say, “I whiffed yo ass.” There were no special seems to grip, no wrist turning, nothing. All you had to do was throw the whiffle ball at the batter, and it arced like Halley’s Comet. It might even drop a foot or two. It was magical. And with the extra weight of the masking tape on the ball, (if you manage to make contact), every batter was now Jim Thome. That thing would sail across the sky in a trajectory so beautiful, it sent visions of grandeur as an MLB cleanup hitter through my mind. That is IF I could connect with the ball.
The game was pretty simple. A home run was awarded for hitting the neighbor’s driveway on the fly. Extra points if you hooked one up on their roof. Each time you hit one short of the driveway, that’s a strike. The batter racks up home runs until he strikes out. Then it was the next guy’s turn.
We had to keep a supply of whiffle balls handy because every half hour or so, we’d have to do a roof climb and retrieve our supply of whiffle balls. The old man next door didn’t like us climbing up there, but that never stopped us… we just learned to use stealthier tactics. But he didn’t like it one bit. I think we got away with it 99% of the time because his recycling bin was piled high every week with wine bottles. He and the old lady were obviously day drinkers because when he did come outside, it was usually in his bathrobe, and he clearly hadn’t shaved or showered for some time, and he sounded like Foster Brooks.
We had our favorites when it came to whiffle balls. The taping of the balls became a science lesson. Two wraps this way. One that way. Some balls would break better than others, so we used those first. There was one ball that broke so well that we got into a fight over who wrapped it.
Scott and I are deep into a whiffle ball competition, and I am into it big-time. One of the draws of the game was being able to humiliate your friend by throwing a curve ball so nasty that they looked foolish swinging and missing by a mile. Expecially if it was strike three. We could get each other to slam the bat down in disgust after missing a pitch that was flailing across the yard like a butterfly with no particular destination in mind.
If memory serves, the score was close, and I was ahead. I had worked hard at developing a set of pitches that bamboozled Scott and left him pissed off at the thought of being defeated at the game he invented. Then my sister showed up two houses down and yelled, “Time for Church.”
This simply could not be. There was no way my luck could have run so afoul that I would have to exit doing what I loved so much for the prospect of changing into my “slacks” and dressing up for an hour of church. I was dumbfounded. What did I do to deserve this? I hated the Church rule more than a toddler hates nap time. I was furious. Incensed. Fuuuuuuuuck me! But there was no way out. That was the rule.
In writing my book” It’s Complicated, Isn’t It?” I wanted to gain insight into people’s religious experiences, past and present. I’d love to hear from you if you’re up for it. Here’s a link to the survey. It should take between 5 and 10 minutes to complete. No information will be shared with any outside organization. Thanks so much.
Was goofing around on the guitar
George Carlin used to joke that humans are conceited fools regarding recycling and the Save the Planet movement. Here we are, on a little ball, floating around the sun for nearly 14 billion years, and we think the planet will be saved by recycling some plastic. The planet will be fine, he assures us. We’re fucked, but the planet will be fine.
For over 2.5 million years, when pondering our existence and asking the question, “What did we come from?” Man has looked skyward for answers. Surely, someone or some thing had to have created this. It’s a legitimate question. Could it be that we’re not much closer to an answer today than we were during the Stone Age?
Even with the sophistication of our modern scientific tools, the universe is still considered so vast that it stretches beyond the limits of human comprehension. Let’s start with the speed of light, which measures distances to everything else far away. The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second or roughly 671 million miles per hour. I can maybe start to visualize 671 mph, but not 671,000 mph, and certainly not 671,000,000 mph. For starters, that’s so fast it seems instant, and, from the human perspective, it is.
A light-year is approximately 5.879 trillion miles. Our Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth. Earth’s circumference is 24,901 miles. You would have to circumnavigate the globe 3,735 times to simulate traveling the distance from Earth to the Sun. Light (at 186,282 mps) takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to get from the Sun to Earth. Those rays that are tanning your backside — they left the Sun over 8 minutes ago.
Now try to wrap your head around some of these numbers
• Pluto, the farthest planet from the Earth in our solar system, is 3.3 billion miles from Earth (0.003561 light-years).
• Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to us, is 4.37 light-years away.
• The Milky Way Galaxy is roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter. So, if you were to travel at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second), it would take you 100,000 years to cross from one side of the Milky Way to the other. (587,900,000,000,000,000,000 miles).
• The Andromeda Galaxy is ~2.5 million light=years away (14,700,000,000,000,000,000 miles)
• The observable universe — the portion of the universe that we can see — is estimated to be about 93 billion light years in diameter (546,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles). This doesn’t mean that the universe is only 93 billion light-years across; it’s simply the part we can observe given the finite speed of light and the universe’s age (about 13.8 billion years).
• There are thought to be roughly 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe and 200 billion trillion stars (200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
For all we know, the universe could be infinite. To George Carlin’s point, yes, we are an arrogant, conceited bunch of fools to think that the world revolves around us and that we have the slightest impact on anything in the big picture. Homo Sapiens have been in existence for only 5 million years. That’s a small fraction of the time we think we know about (~0.036% of the Earth’s 13.8 billion years), and we only developed the knowledge to discover that the Earth wasn’t flat a little over 500 years ago. A little perspective, please.
Sometimes, I think it would be helpful to have a map of the universe with a “==> You Are Here” arrow to show how insignificant we are in the scheme of things. Some of us think our brains are so advanced, our knowledge so deep, that we have all the answers, but a wise philosopher said it best 2,500 years ago.
“The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.”
— Socrates
There’s been a ton of complaining on social media about how they are giving Trump a pass on so many missteps. He can slur his words telling lie after lie for 2 straight hours and the MSM, especially the NT Times will run an article tip-toeing around the elephant in the room. Given the disastrous agenda of the Republican party (with special praise for Project 2025 for putting it in writing), it’s hard to understand why he gets the velvet glove treatment for 9 straight years. One can only conclude that MSM benefits financially with a crazy guy in the news cycle 24/7. Us consumers are eating it up.
Having said that though, it’s also true that the MSM has a history of tearing celebrities down just as fast as they skyrocketed to the top. Take Sarah Palin for example. She was the everyday wonder woman after her nomination in 2012. Republicans were so excited to have a woman on the ticket, that is until it was exposed that she’s intellectually challenged. The movie Game Change sums it up best, but the stories that eventually leaked about how her handlers had to educate her every step of the way on basic things like geography said it all. It didn’t take long for her 15 minutes of fame to extinguish. Her attempt to run for a congressional seat in 2022 failed and now she can’t get a washing detergent commercial to save her life.
Similar stories are associated with other once famous celebrities: Ron DeSantis, Rod Blagojevich, John Edwards, Gary Hart, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Cosby, Mel Gibson, Roseanne Barr, Kevin Spacey, Dan Quayle and Paris Hilton. One minute you’re on top, the next you’re not. Just because you’re the media’s darling for a couple of news cycles doesn’t mean it will last forever. The media likes to sell copy — and nowadays that includes digital copy (clicks). If a story will sell, they will run with it.
As people start abandoning ship from Team trump, I predict the MSM is going to have an absolute field day with his sudden downfall and it will be magnificent to watch. I’ve been predicting for a couple of years now that the Trump story ends the same way as another cult ended in Oregon — with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh wheels up headed out of the country in a private jet. Time will tell and it’s possible it could even happen in the next 90 days.
View from my PDX Window 