FINDING GOD -- A BOOK REVIEW (OR SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN THIS SPACE)

FINDING GOD -- A BOOK REVIEW (OR SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN THIS SPACE)

In Stop Blaming Adam and Eve,  John  Foley  unveils  the truth buried in Biblical myth.  In so doing, he rescues Christianity from fundamentalism and destroys the false choice between Darwin (science) and Jesus (religion).  And though he accepts the former, he is absolutely in love with the latter.

And wants us all to be as well.

Foley is no itinerant preacher.  A Jesuit  high school and college religion teacher and philosophy professor (full disclosure – I was one of his high school students forty-five years ago), he’s what the McCourt bothers, Frank and Malachy, would have become had the Jesuits and Vatican II  gotten hold of them rather than the dysfunction that was mid-century Catholicism in Ireland.  There’s a lot of humanity in Angela’s Ashes.   But the endless tragedies that plagued the clan Mc Court make it hard to see the pony of God’s gift in what was otherwise the manure of endless poverty, alcoholism, early death and churchly neglect in Frank McCourt's Limerick. 

God’s gift of humanity, however, is Foley’s central point.

His other is that it doesn’t come gift-wrapped.  

You have to look . . . 

And care-fully, which is Foley’s  take on  that ancient Socratic maxim -- the unexamined life is not worth living. 

The examination, we discover in this "religion" book, should not be restricted to the Bible.  Foley was a student of Hannah Arendt’s at NYC’s New School for Social Research before quitting a business career (much to the chagrin of his extended family,  but with the full -- albeit singular -- support of his wife, who quite clearly is Foley’s most important muse) in favor of what became a decades long mission in teaching high school and college students at two Jesuit institutions, Xavier High School in NYC  and St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, NJ.  So, as is made plain in well-constructed asides sprinkled throughout the book, part of the reason we need not blame Adam and Eve is that we can call upon a host of thinkers – Socrates, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Husserl, Nietzsche, Sartre – along with those theologians who left us the Bible’s myths and histories pregnant with truth,  in an effort to chart our own personal relationship with God.

And that is Foley’ central point.  The human challenge of Christianity in general and Catholicism is particular is to create that personal relationship.

For Foley, the watchword of the relationship is love, essentially because that is what God is and that is what we can become.  It is the glue that makes Kantian morality possible, the reward one gets for that examined Socratic life, and cures existential despair.

Wow!

Sign me up.

If only it were that easy . . .

Because Foley's other point is that all of this is possible only if we try hard.

Which means that, at the end of the day, this short but dense book (it took me weeks to get through because I had to keep going back to re-read portions) is as much a work out manual as it is an exegesis on Biblical truth.

We are instructed in the need to recognize our own Garden of Eden (and to admit that we too have often squandered the inheritance; hence, stop blaming the original sinners); the ability and need to see the God of love in everyday life (especially in those parts of our everyday life where we confront suffering; hence, don’t blow by the homeless on the street and don’t assume, as Foley puts it, that you have to “discover Narnia or climb Mount Everest” to find God; He or She is everywhere); the redemptive power of love (without which,  Foley makes quite clear, his own life would have been a mere chimera of the rich middle class (that is not an oxymoron), Brooklyn and neighborhood based , family, extended family and friends it has become); our duties as citizens (because we are social, politics is not optional, and none of us can claim to be neutral even as all of us are required to be thoughtful); and the meaning of Biblical truths (those shepherds in the New Testament’s infancy narratives were outcasts (dirty, smelly, unsanitary and -- generally speaking -- univited in polite society), not some quaint boys who show up in the seasonal Christmas creche, and that is why they are featured in Luke's Gospel; those prophets in the Old Testament were courageous -- and often ostracized -- truth tellers, not wizened old men sililoquizing in the Bible’s version of a middle eastern Athenian agora; they condemned injustice (Amos) and immorality (the Noah story), hypocrisy (Isaiah) and paralyzing despair).

You won’t agree with everything Foley says.  I didn’t.  On politics, he appears captured a bit by the au courrant false equivalence that blames liberals and conservatives equally for the sorry state of today’s polity; my own view is that, while the America left has often been thoughtless in the past, the American right is thoughtless today.   And on the Catholic Church he loves,  he is uncharacteristically quiet on some of the hot button issues (e.g., the all-male priesthood, gay marriage), even as he spares no church hierarchs (or anyone else who is culpable) on the abuse of children.

None of that, however, detracts from the overall worth of this fine volume.

Because Foley, like the Jesus he loves and worships, is a bit of “nudge.” 

He makes you think.

About western philosophy, the Bible, its authors, context, history and message . .  .

But mostly about ourselves and how to relate to that person . . .

We call God.

STOP BLAMING ADAM AND EVE

JOHN P. FOLEY

WEST BOW PRESS, 2018

MEGHAN AND HARRY -- HOW THE OLD WORLD CAN SAVE THE NEW

MEGHAN AND HARRY -- HOW THE OLD WORLD CAN SAVE THE NEW

Winston Churchill  never admitted defeat beforehand.

He did, however, contemplate it.

"We shall go on to the end," said Churchill to Parliament on June 4, 1940, as the last of the   British Expeditionary Force retreated back to England from Dunkirk. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . ."

But . . .

"[I]f," he warned, "this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

Churchill did not have to suffer the subjugation.  

The Japanese and Germans helped him out. The former attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941;  the latter declared war on the United States four days later.

And the New World sallied forth "to the rescue and liberation of the old."

Something of the opposite, less martial but perhaps no less significant given the sorry state of the present day American polity, may have happened a little west of London today . . .

Where the Old World was rescuing the new.

Americans and the British have many things in common.  The structure of their respective heads of state, however, is not one of them. 

Great Britain is a constitutional monarchy.  The head of state is the Queen.  She is apolitical but not by any means uninformed or uninterested.  For sixty-six years, she has represented the United Kingdom and the British commonwealth of nations.  If she faltered, she never did so meanly or rudely, nor was she ever vulgar or dishonest. And when she faltered, perhaps most notably in her initial reactions to the death of her former daughter in law, the late Princess of Whales, she recovered with grace and even an uncommon-in-royals touch of humility.  She never chose to be Queen.  She did, however,  choose the dignified manner in which she has exercised her royal warrant.

The United States is a constitutional republic.  The head of state is the President, who is also the executive officer in the government.  We have had forty-four of them and are now on our forty-fifth.  Unlike the Queen, he is not apolitical, and while that may explain in his mind the rest of his character, it by no means justifies it.  

For he is mean, vulgar, graceless, dishonest, undignified and uninformed . . .

More or less on a daily basis and as a matter of committed habit.

Some subset of American public opinion has applauded this exercise in boorishness.  They view it as authentic. 

Meghan Markle is not one of them.  She is a mixed race American actress, was born in Los Angeles, was baptized Catholic and is divorced. She graduated from Northwestern University with a double major in theatre and international studies.  She is a feminist.

Today she married His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales.

The Prince -- Harry to the world -- is Diana's second son.  Though sixth in line to the British throne, he is grounded.  He served with the British military in Afghanistan and founded the Invictus Games for wounded, sick or injured armed services personnel when he returned.  He is also quite obviously crazy about his wife.    

The wedding was broadcast to the world. The couple held hands throughout.  The Kingdom Gospel Choir sang "Stand By Me". Later,  nineteen year old cellist and wunderkind Sheku Kanneh-Mason played "Ave Maria" while the newlyweds signed their registry. 

The Most  Rev. Michael Curry, Chicago's Episcopalian bishop, preached.  His thunderous sermon on the "fire of love" quoted Dr. King and the French Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin.   In it, the black preacher unveiled the power of agape to conquer the world's most pressing crises, and brought wry smiles to a host of sitting royals unaccustomed to exuberance in, of all places, a church.  "When love is the way," he said, "poverty will become history [and] the earth will become sanctuary." 

Shortly after the ceremony, the  American Jesuit James Martin remarked that, when an "African-American bishop quotes a French Jesuit priest at a British royal wedding, who says the world cannot change."  

Quite so.  

But this time, the change was the Old rescuing the New.

The message of love that Bishop Curry preached, and that Meghan and Harry unabashedly exhibited for all the world to see, came from the staid precincts of Windsor Castle's St. Georges Chapel. The Old World of Europe gave us respite from the new world of Trump.  For a day, we were without tweets and insults.  No one bragged about their wealth  or gilded real estate.  There were no faux castles, only a real one, and not much new money but plenty of old.  Thanks to Harry and Meghan, what could have been a mere fairy tale became a  message. 

Or, as the Bishop put it, quoting the French Jesuit, "If humanity ever captures the energy of love, it will be the second time in history that we will have discovered fire."

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Meghan Markle, now Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex, called America's current head of state  "divisive"  and a "misogynist".  Correct on both counts.  Prior to his election, she half-jokingly threatened to move to Canada -- where her TV show was filmed --  if he won.

She now gets to move much farther away. 

And can call Britain's head of state . . .

 Mom.

MR. MATTIS'S WAR

MR. MATTIS'S WAR

James Mattis, America's Secretary of Defense, attacked Syria last night.  

As part of a coordinated attack with the British and the French,the retired Marine Corps general and current cabinet member in the Trump Administration launched about 100 missiles at three targets.  The targets were thought to be research and storage facilities used by Syria to produce chemical weapons. Most of the missiles were aimed at the Barsah research center in Damascus.  The rest targeted two storage facilities west of Homs, a city 100 miles north of Damascus.

The attacks were a response to last weekend's chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government on a rebel held area in the town of Douma.  That was the second time during the Trump Administration and the third time overall that Syria's President, Basha al Assad, had used chemical weapons, which are banned by the Geneva Convention to which Syria is a signatory.  

After the first attack, the Obama Administration backed a Russian plan to remove chemical weapons from Syria and more than 1300 tons of chemical agents were in fact removed. This did not eliminate the entire stockpile, essentially because some chemical agents (e.g., chlorine) were legitimately used (e.g., for water treatment) and could not be listed and removed.  Back home, of course, this led to thunderous outcries of partisan condemnation inasmuch as Obama had announced a red line which the Syrians had then crossed, all without sufficient consequence in the minds (and lungs) of the partisans.

Enter Donald Trump.

The putative antidote to all things Obama.

Throughout his campaign and his still young but exhausting presidency, Trump has reflexively condemned and opposed anything Obama did or supported.  Exhibit A on the domestic front is Obamacare, which Trump wanted to repeal without having anything to replace it and regardless of the consequences.  Meanwhile, on the foreign policy side, his love affair with Putin and tough talk on North Korea and Syria are all meant to contrast with Obama's supposedly feckless and ineffective policies on these fronts, as is his embrace of Brexit and constant criticism of the European Union.

In the end, however, all of this turns out to be mere rhetoric.  

Trump is about to sit down with North Korea's Kim Jong-un.  He is doing so without preconditions and without having received anything in exchange for Kim having obtained a long sought seat at the table with the United States.  No administration in the past has been willing to give up that leverage, but Trump did it unasked.

He  hasn't enforced the legislated sanctions against Russia that were Congress's response to the cyber-attacks on our 2016 election.  Instead, he has criticized the investigation into Russian meddling as a partisan hoax and "witch hunt" and defamed all the investigators, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors.

And then -- or now -- there is Syria.

He has no policy on Syria per se or on the conflict itself.  He is not willing to use American leverage to help oust Assad, a war criminal, and his cat and mouse game with Putin in any case makes that impossible.  One day Putin is up with Trump, the next he is down.  A small contingent of US forces is deployed in the eastern part of the country  to clean up the remnants of ISIS. Otherwise, however, Syria has been left to the Russians and Iranians, neither of whom are willing to see Assad go.  

In truth, his policy on Syria, to the extent he has one, is no different from Obama's.  Both have been reluctant to get involved, principally because there appears to be no strategy that can oust Assad and replace him with a stable government that is not allied with Iran.

Nevertheless,  Jim Mattis attacked Syria last night.

Oh, I know, Trump, not Mattis, authorized the attack.

But that was only the show.

The strategy was Mattis's.

Principally because Trump doesn't have one.  

Instead, he has tweets and bombast.   He got into a school yard brawl with Putin this week, warning the ex-KGBer -- in response to Russia's vow to shoot down any missiles fired on Syria -- that Putin should "get ready . . . because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart!'"  While, however, the kid President was playing in his twitter sand box, promising to punch the Russian bully, the adults were busy at the Pentagon fashioning a very limited response to the Syrian chemical attack that did not in any way bloody Russia.  In fact, the reports this afternoon are that Russians actually evacuated from the areas that were attacked, which suggests they were tipped off to the attack in the first place.

Will this strategy work?

Count me dubious.

As part of a coordinated response with Britain and France, it has the advantage of sending at least some message that the west is still allied against any use of chemical weapons and is willing to enforce that prohibition at some level.  The alternative is dulce et decorum est in the middle east, and that did not work out so well in Flanders a hundred years ago.  At the same time , however, last year's attack in response to the use of chemical weapons did not stop Syria from using them last week, and last night's attack is being correctly perceived as a pinprick.

We'll see if last night results in any progress.

In the meantime, we can count ourselves lucky that, for now at least, this is . . .  

Mr. Mattis's war.

FAKING LEFT AND GOING RIGHT -- THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY AS POLICY

FAKING LEFT AND GOING RIGHT --  THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY AS POLICY

Tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes, Americans will be transfixed by the porn star's story of her affair with Donald Trump.  This follows the attention paid last week to the erstwhile Playboy Playmate's story on CNN of her affair with His Hairness, and Trump's branding of both women as liars.  It also follows months during which we have been bombarded  by obnoxious tweets, daily speculation on who's up or down in our musical chairs White House,  and the endless chaos that is this child-President. 

Under these circumstances,  it is easy to forget another more important reality.  

So, for all of you who have, and most especially for those of you who want to . . .

Here's an important wake-up call.

Trump is a liar, a cheat, a con man and a bully.  But he is also a right winger.  And despite being all of the former, he is having some success at the latter.  Put differently, the office hasn't altered his character.  But it has altered his promised policies.

Begin by recalling that Trump did not run for the Presidency as a right winger.  

In fact, to the contrary, he took on and rejected some of the outworn shibboleths of the far right.  

Trump was vociferously against the war in Iraq during the campaign. And, unlike his fellow-candidates, he was outspoken in criticizing the Bush/Cheney weapons of mass destruction-led march into that quagmire.  On Medicare and Social Security, he was alone among those in the GOP field in claiming that benefits would not be cut on his watch, and on health care, he promised something better than Obamacare -- affordable insurance coverage for all without Obama's mandate or taxes. To that he added the promise not to cut Medicaid and tax reform that would not benefit the super-rich.

A year and two months in, all has changed.

The tax cut put billions in the pockets of corporations and Wall Street, with nominal reductions for individuals that will expire in ten years and the elimination of deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes that will fall with particular heaviness on large blue-state cities and suburbs.  My taxes in Putnam County, New York are going up, as are those for any who live in or near Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago or Boston.  

The tax bill also repealed the individual mandate, which will likely be fatal to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The ACA's solvency was three legged -- the elimination of insurance exclusions based on pre-exisiting conditions, mandatory participation in the insurance market to expand the number of premium payers, and state-based exchanges and subsidies for those who could not otherwise find insurance. The first and third of these legs remain, but the second has been gutted, with the likely result that companies will not get the needed expansion in premium paying policy-holders necessary for them to avoid unaffordable price hikes.  

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are now talking about "entitlement reform." For them, that  means cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.  As the deficit rises thanks to shrinking revenue, we can expect that chorus to swell. 

All of this occurred in 2017 during the first year of the Trump Administration.  

And now, on foreign policy, Trump has moved in lock-step.

The big news last week was the firing of Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster as Trump's National Security Advisor (NSA) and the appointment of former Ambassador John Bolton to that post.  

Bolton is an unrepentent hawk who never met a war he was unwilling to send others to fight (he himself avoided the Vietnam War via a stint in the National Guard).  He defends the Iraq War to this day. At the time, he was a full-throated proponent of the  claim -- since refuted -- that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. 

On North Korea, Bolton has come out in favor of the President having a right to strike preemptively.  His theory is that Kim Jong-Un's possession of nuclear weapons is itself an imminent threat and thus eliminates any legal need to go to Congress before striking militarily.  Bolton takes over at NSA at a time when the State Department  has been gutted of under-secretaries and seasoned diplomats with deep experience in regional issues.  And in the wake of that gutting, another war hawk -- the current director of the CIA -- will replace Rex Tillerson as Sectretary of State, and Gina Haspel will take over at the CIA.  Haspel ran a secret CIA prison in Thailand after 9/11, and detainees in that prison were waterboarded.

In the Bush II Adminstration, Vice President Dick Cheney was the author of the 1% doctrine.  Under it, a 1% chance of nuclear or biological war warrants a full-on military response -- along with enhanced interrogation techniqes, i.e., torture -- on the grounds that the harm itself would be utterly catatrophic even if the likelihood was remote.  The caution of real soldiers like Colin Powell is either ignored or greatly minimized.  Back in W's Administration, while Cheney had Bush's ear, Powell was sent out to tout the flawed WMD story.

Bolton, Pompeo and Haspel are Cheney cubed.

Expect Defense Secretary Mattis -- who like Powell understands that wars have unintended consequences -- to be sidelined along the way.

To sum up . . .

We now have a domestic policy, the principal feature of which is a tax cut that guts revenues in order to set up an assault on our already weakened safety net, and a foreign policy, the principal feature of which is likely to be a shoot-first-ask-questions-later resort to guns and the death of diplomacy.

In the Nixon Administration, conservatives bemoaned the fact that, as President, Nixon would regularly fake right and go left.  He was after all the author of liberal gems that included the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  The former helped clean up our polluted air and water and the latter made workplaces safer.  

In the Trump era, however, the opposite has occurred. 

On the campaign, Trump faked left.

In the White House, he has gone right.

Trump even does this on issues where he has been right wing all along.  On immigration, he wants a wall.  To try to get it,  he overturned DACA, Obama's executive order allowing childhood arrivals to avoid deportation essentially on the grounds that they were innocent victims of someone else's illegal conduct.  The idea was to bribe Democrats into funding the wall in exchange for legislation protecting childhood arrivals.  Trump even claimed to favor DACA recipients and told the nation he would sign a legislative DACA if Congress passed it.  The Democrats then blinked; Sen. Schumer okayed a wall for DACA exchange.   Trump then did nothing to get his party to pass a bill.

The same has occurred on guns.  In the wake of the Parkland massacre, Trump faked left  in a televised round table, telling the assembled bi-partisan Congressional delegation that the law should "take the guns first, go through due process second." He also told GOP Senators at that meeting that they were afraid of the NRA but he, Trump,  wasn't.  The next day, the NRA visited the Oval Office and there was no further talk of taking guns off the street.  Instead, Trump now wants to "harden the targets" that are our middle and high schools and arm teachers.  The vast majority of teachers, however, do not want to be armed, and the kids want to go to schools, not prisons.

Ditto on tariffs.  Trump's original proposal was music to the ears of those old economy workers in Ohio and western Pennsylvania but it was anathema to conservative economists.  The result is that Trump's initial announcement was followed by implementation that literally eliminated its impact. In the end, the vast majority of imported steel will not be tariffed. The duties will fall principally on China.

Trump has the lowest approval ratings since Nixon.  He also has Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller breathing down his neck.  He routinely threatens to rid himself of that prosecutor, labelling the investigation a "witch hunt"  and encouraging his seconds in Congress and on his legal team to "work the refs" by calling for an immediate end to the investigation.  In all this, he is channeling Nixon, the author of the famous Saturday Night Massacre during Watergate.

And in faking left and going right on policy . . . 

He is channeling Nixon's jujitsu on that front as well.

He's just doing it in a different order.

Why?

Part of the reason is that Trump is dishonest and does not care much about policy in any case.  

The other, however, is that he is buying impeachment insurance.  

So long as there is either a majority of GOP members in the House or  less than sixty-six Democrats in the Senate, he will not be impeached and convicted, no matter how terrible the outcome in the pending sexual harassment suit against him or how unseemly -- or graphic -- the porn star's story turns out to be.  

Faking left helps him with those old economy working class white men  who want tariffs and affordable health care. 

But going right gives him a House and Senate that, he thinks,  avoids impeachment and removal.

GOD IS NO EXCUSE

GOD IS NO EXCUSE

In high school in New York City all those years ago, the Jesuits taught me that I should pray as if everything depended on God but act as if everything depended on me.

Republicans and conservatives have turned that advice on its head.

They now pray as if everything depends upon God but act as if nothing depends upon them.

And today, fourteen high school kids and three adults are dead in Florida as a consequence.

There are many places to go on the gun control debate in this country.  The Congress and the Courts are two of the obvious ones, and over the course of my lifetime, they have been well plowed.  The results, however, have been dismal.  You can pretty much draw a straight line between the rise of pro-gun Second Amendment decisions by the Courts, pro-gun legislation from the Congress and the states, and America's tragic (and unique) rise in --  in fact, acceleration of -- gun violence and what are now clinically referred to as "mass shootings."

The litany is numbing -- Sutherland Springs, Texas, 26 dead and 20 wounded; Las Vegas, 50 dead, 500 wounded; Orlando, 50 dead, 53 wounded; Emmanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC, 9 dead;  Sandy Hook, 27 dead; Virginia Tech, 33 dead; Columbine, 15 dead.

And yesterday in Parkland, Florida -- 17 dead and the number is likely to rise.

These mass shootings have many common features.  All of them involved the use of semi-automatic weapons, most with large clip gun magazines, that allowed the shooters to kill multiple victims in seconds. Six of the eight occurred after the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, held that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to bear arms regardless of that Amendment's clear text making the right subservient to the need for a well-regulated state militia.  All but one occurred after the federal ban on assault weapons was allowed to expire by a Republican Congress in 2004.

And, in all of the cases, politicians in hock to the NRA reacted by calling for . . .

Prayer.  

Yesterday was typical.

President Trump offered "prayers and condolences" in a tweet in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.  Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that yesterday was "a day you pray never comes."  The state's governor, Rick Scott, called for "thoughts and prayers" as the news of the shooting emerged. Colorado's Republican Sen. Cory Gardner was "praying for first responders" as the tragedy unfolded, and Ohio's Rob Portman sent "prayers to the school, the community and the victims of this tragedy."  Louisiana's Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy was "praying for the students, teachers and first responders affected by the tragic shooting in Florida."  And North Carolina's Thom Tillis offered "thoughts and prayers," as did a host of other Congress people, as well as the chair of the Republican National Committee.

Prayer, of course, is a perfectly appropriate response to tragedy.  It reflects our inability to comprehend the incomprehensible.  In this case, it reflects our inability to get our heads around the fact that a human being was moved to eliminate children in a senseless act of violence.  Ultimately, it is a cri de coeur,  searching for meaning within meaninglessness, recognizing that we may never know.

So we ask God.

And that is fine.

Unless it is not . . .

Which is the case when your only reaction is prayer.

In his Inaugural Address in 1961, President Kennedy ended with these words: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America  will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally,  whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." 

In the years that have followed, the opening lines of that peroration  have never been forgotten.  In fact, "Ask not . . ." has been chiseled in granite monuments throughout the world.

But they weren't Kennedy's most important words on that cold January day.

Those came at the very end.

Kennedy was no stranger to tragedy.  His life had been regularly marked by it, both with the death of close siblings and his own near death in the South Pacific during World War II and from Addison's Disease in the years that followed.  

Nor was he a stranger to prayer.  

Long before that fateful day in 1963 in Dallas, he had been administered the Last Rites of his Church on a number of occasions, and his closest companions all report that he habitually prayed, even before an afternoon nap.  He did not by any means wear his religion on his sleeve, and his wife even remarked that it would have been a shame had he lost the Presidency in 1960 on account of being a Catholic in view of the fact that, in her mind (and --  as events have later confirmed --  in ours as well), he wasn't a particularly good one.

But he didn't hide behind God.

And we shouldn't either.

The Parkland tragedy --  like the Las Vegas, Orlando, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and Columbine tragedies before it -- was preventable.  To either eliminate those killings or significantly lessen their number, all we needed was stricter gun control laws -- bans on assault weapons, multi-clip magazines, and sales to any with the hint of mental illness; better background checks; closing gun show loopholes; a tort regime that holds manufacturers who flood low-control states with guns knowing they will show up in high-control states responsible for the ensuing death; and a Constitutional sanity that does not turn the Second Amendment into the present-day holocaust machine the Founders never intended it to be.

God won't get us any of this.

Legislators who aren't in hock to the NRA will.

The problem with Republicans who offered prayers yesterday is that this is all they offer. 

So, while more children are killed with assault weapons delivering instant death, and more families are destroyed by the preventable violence our guns uber alles culture makes possible . . .

Here's my prayer for them . . .

God help you.

.

SYCOPHANTS AND DOUBLETHINK -- HOW TRUMP SURVIVES

SYCOPHANTS AND DOUBLETHINK -- HOW TRUMP SURVIVES

All authoritarians have their yes-men, their sycophants, their specialists in the arts of disinformation.  

Some of them bathe their mendacity in the warmth of a reasonable demeanor, killing as it were with a form of kindness. In this version, disinformation is disguised on the grounds that  no one so nice could be so wrong. Others, however,  cast their mendacity as an impaling sword, slaying their opponents with fevered lies launched within insults. In this version, disinformation is disguised on the grounds that no one so ugly (or weak or little or . . . choose your ad hominem)  deserves any less.

In the first case, what is false prevails because it is made to appear true.  In the second, it prevails because the critic himself is made to appear false.

Authoritarians are not required to choose their poison.  There is no handbook on this. Sometimes, they embrace the first tactic, other times the second.

And then there are times when the sycophancy is double-barreled.  

Both tactics are practiced.

A la foi, as the French would say.

We are in one of those times now. 

As the Trump Administration enters its second year this week, the big stories are the Mueller investigation and the porn star.  The first is a continuing saga.  The independent counsel has now questioned Trump's attorney general, the FBI's former director, and assorted members of the Trump campaign. It has obtained a couple of guilty pleas, and it appears to be focusing on whether the President obstructed justice -- principally in firing James Comey but also in the now infamous Air Force One edit of Don Jr.'s account of his meeting with the Russian lawyer who was billed as having promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. 

In the meantime, the Steele Dossier has been given new life via the release of Glenn Simpson's testimoney to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Simpson is the Fusion GPS head who hired Christopher Steele, a respected MI6 operative in Great Britain, to do the dossier, and his testimony revealed extensive Trump ties to Russian money, ties Mueller is no doubt looking into as well.  The "collusion" in this case may turn out not to be a quid pro quo  where the Russians got a policy promise in exchange for their Internet campaign against Clinton (though this cannot be eliminated yet as a possibility).  Instead, it may turn out to just be a case of old-fashioned extortion, with Trump forever going light on the Russians and Putin -- and he clearly has done that -- because he knows  he is in hock to them on the financial side in ways never disclosed during his you'll-never-see-my-tax-returns Presidential campaign.

This is all serious stuff.

And then there is the porn star.

Which would be serious in any other Administration.

But is a back pager in this one.

The porn star is Stephanie Clifford, whose nom de guerre or stage name is Stormy Daniels. In 2006, she reportedly had an affair with Trump just after his wife gave birth to their son, and in 2016 the Trump campaign arranged through one or more shell entities to pay her $130,000 to stay silent.  This, moreover, she has done.  Her account became public only because a pre-pay off 2011 interview with In Touch magazine was unearthed. In any case, in addition to the pay-off and the affair, the soup was made more salacious when one of Stormy's fellow travelers said that she too was invited to "party" with the Donald and Stormy.

When the words "porn star,"  "menage a trois," "tidy whities," and "Donald Trump" appear in the same sentence, the picture is . . .

Not something anyone wants to see.

So, can't we just end the show, change the channel?

Last night, evangelist Tony Perkins was on the tube defending Trump on the porn star front.  Perkins is head of the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group.  In the interview, he said that evangelicals are giving Trump a "mulligan" on his past sins.  The lewdness, cursing, p**y grabbing, misogyny and porn stars of the past are being forgiven.

As long as Trump doesn't relapse.

Perkins was insistent about this last point.  Evangelicals have been labelled hypocrites for their embrace of Trump.

Michael Steele, the former head of the Republican National Committee, went so far as to say that evangelicals should "shut the hell up." As he put it, "After telling me how to live my life, who to love, what to believe, what not to believe, what to do and what not to do and now you sit back and the prostitutes don’t matter? The grabbing the you-know-what doesn’t matter? The outright behavior and lies don’t matter? Just shut up.” 

But Perkins is having none of that.

“We see right and wrong. We see good and evil, but also among evangelicals, there’s an understanding that we are all fallen, and the idea of forgiveness is very prominent,” Perkins says. “And so, we understand that, yes, there is justice, but there is mercy.”

Perkins was nothing if not sincere.

And well-mannered.

And he smiled.

Really hard to dislike.

So isn't Trump entitled to a second chance?

Or even a two-hundredth?

This is the show that has playing for the past two and a half years.  

Nothing ever matters.  Trump embraces white supremacists in Charlottesville, insults hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, labels Mueller's investigation a hoax,  belittles every opponent, calls the press the "enemy of the people," and insults female critics with age old retreats to menstrual cramps, all without ultimate consequence.  He is truly gross, and he lies with impunity, so much so that no one believes his denials (or even his promises, vide Sen. Schumer on last week's putative DACA deal) anymore. 

Except Tony Perkins. 

In 1984, Orwell defined doublethink as "To know and to not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, . . . to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself." 

Today, that passage defines many a Trump speech . . .

Or Huckabee Sanders press conference . . . 

Or Fox broadcast.

Masha Gessen has just published The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.  In it, she explains how "[w]hat Soviet people were required to believe and proclaim was counterfactual, and the requirement itself was . . .  a mechanism of control."  Trumpism is engaged in the same type of project in this country.  His crowds are bigger despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary; the economy is better despite growing inequality; the country is respected despite his Administration being held in disrepute throughout most of the world; and the Russian investigation is a "hoax" despite the fact that four intelligence agencies have concluded otherwise.  "Repudiating morality while laying claim to it," he asserts that nineteen women he allegedly sexually harassed are all lying, as is the one porn star who was reportedly paid to stay quiet, and that his "locker room talk" admitting harassment was just that and no more.

Trump has an approval rating that averages about 38%.  No one has ever gone this low this soon.  And he has been there for the better part of his first year.  Between the serious stuff in the Mueller investigation,  the seedy stuff with Stormy, and the sheer breadth of his lies,  he by rights should not be surviving.

But he is.

Why?

It's the sycophants, stupid.

And the doublethink they all preach.

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week.

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself.

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound.

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway."

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved.

Which has, of late, got me to wondering.

What for?

And the best answer I can come up with is . . .

Tomorrow.

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then.

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow.

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different.

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it.

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all.

And I have a shovel ready.

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas.

(This post was first published on Christmas Eve 2008.  A lot has changed since then. But not my view of Christmas.)