Author: wtucker

by

Of Prophets and Skeptics

Jonah is probably most famous for spending three days inside the belly of a whale. A few readers may remember his ridiculous attempt to escape God by taking a boat to the reaches of the known world.  But Jonah’s most critical lesson is the failure of his faith to grow, when it is challenged to understand the mystery of God.

The story of a man with a purpose but trying to escape it.  He tries to run  from God. He’s trapped for three days in the belly of a “sea monster” and forced to confront his doubts. He decides to accept his destiny by preaching to wicked Nineveh and moves an entire city to change their way of life.  God reverses his plan to destroy the city. The man is disillusioned with the outcome, because his prophecy was negated by God’s mercy. He bitterly complains to God because his life seems pointless. A parable tells the reason for God’s forgiveness: mercy on a repenting pagan city. The story ends affirming the universal mercy of God and the bitterness of his prophet.

If you went to Sunday School you probably heard about the whale and Jonah’s  ultimate decision to submit to God’s call. The result saved a city. The featured character was the whale, more accurately translated as a “sea monster.” But there is more, that the teacher left out.

In modern biblical studies Jonah is considered a satire on the privileged status that the Jewish people claimed after the loss of their homeland (after 539 BCE). They anticipated God’s deliverance for his chosen people, but they had no concept of a universal God, who shed grace on all nations.  A few elements supply the humor in the story:

  • a prophet running from an omnipresent God
  • a sea monster getting the prophet’s attention by swallowing him
  • the prophet’s sulking after God’s mercy overturns his prophecy
  • a bush as an object lesson on the mercy of God.

Some Christians balk at a less-than-literal interpretation, but the idea of surviving the ingestion of a whale suggests it is fiction, yet no less important in its message. The whale seems more like comic relief from a desperate prophet’s rebellion.

But between the lines of satire, the message of God’s mercy to the Gentiles (non-Jews) is thematic from start to finish. It is a funny story with a serious message. Is God just or merciful? Is God selectively merciful to a chosen people? What is faith and what happens to faith when it confronts a reversal?

1But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. Jonah 4:1-3

Jonah has a static faith. He doesn’t believe in a non-partisan God who favors all nations. He doesn’t debate with God like Moses or Abraham. He doesn’t express his skepticism like “Doubting Thomas.” about the resurrection: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands . . .I will not believe” (Luke 20:25). Instead, when God calls him to Nineveh, he runs.

Jonah’s  faith is based on his judgment of the heathen. He interprets the mercy of God as undermining his prophecy.  He cannot fathom a God who does not follow through on his threats. Unlike Moses or Abraham, he doesn’t question God, he just says, “Now Lord take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

It is this brittle faith that Jonah satirizes. Jonah cannot adapt to the universality of God, of God’s mercy extended to the heathen. Rather than learn and adapt, Jonah asks to die. Even when God offers a parable about preserving the life of a bush that protected Jonah from the sun, Jonah doesn’t get it. Or we assume he doesn’t, because he has nothing more to say in this story.

What does this story say about faith? Faith needs to expand as our vision of God grows, as God reveals a nature we never knew. Faith must expand to accommodate what we are learning about God, not insist on old dogma.

This message shows the modernity of this story. Some believers are sure their faith is unchanging, because God is unchanging. That was Jonah’s problem. He thought an unchanging God meant Jonah’s understanding of God was also unchanging. He insisted that God’s mercy was only for the Jews so stubbornly that he wanted to die rather than consider it. But our understanding of God can change. The infinite, merciful God has more to teach us.

When a true believer says, “God said it; I believe it; that settles it,” that suggests that God has nothing new to say.   Jonah’s story says otherwise. It taught an ethnocentric people that the mercy of God is universal.

 

 

by

The Addiction of Dualism

Addiction: we know it’s bad for us, but how hard it is to stop! I’ve had battles with caffeine, sugar, sports ranting with relative success, but in the past month I have had to abandon all three, just to preserve my sanity.

Caffeine was the most obvious one. I stayed up all night twice in a week, and when I was sleeping, it was the wrong time, such as during sermons and when my wife was telling me something important and when the evening news was on.  So I bought some de-caffeinated coffee, and the sleeplessness stopped. I found out the other antidote was afternoon naps.

I beat the sugar habit decades ago, but I have occasional lapses. We went on a cruise in early February, where unlimited drinking was part of the package. Since I am not an alcoholic I enjoyed trying some mixed drinks for my inexperienced palate. It was fun, but I soon began to feel like I was getting a cold. Then the cold started to go away, when I stopped the mixed drinks, and I knew it had been my old nemesis sugar taking hold. Fortunately my sensitivity allows me to drink beer.

I decided to give up “angry writing” for Lent, because it created a permanent seething in me, instead of relieving my anger. I decided to stop ranting about the Cardinals’ not signing another top-of-the-rotation pitcher. A couple of weeks ago I deliberately went on Twitter to chew out the Cardinals’ President of Operations, John Mozeliak, for being too cheap to sign Jordan Montgomery. I’m very good at spending other people’s money.

So I stopped the ranting, and it wasn’t that hard, because the baseball writing at the beginning of Spring Training is so optimistic and hopeful, it is soothing to the soul.

Now political ranting is another thing. My blogs are full of political ranting, even though I always present evidence and counter-arguments. In the last thirty days I have posted twenty political pieces, and I write only about four times a week.  I really try to write on varied topics, but my favorite theme is the political, because, when I read the Op-ed’s and listen to “Morning Joe” on MSNBC every morning, they usually get my juices flowing.

None of these addictions are bad for most people, but I can’t keep up with the Happy Hour crowd, and I have to step back when I am with the ice cream gourmets, because I know I will feel bad tomorrow.  Caffeine is like poison to me, but I spent the first 75 years of my life loving it.  Political writing has become a guilty pleasure since I retired, but I notice it feeds the beast in me. Now I have something nasty to say about the Christian Nationalists every morning.  They may deserve it, but they have become my favorite scapegoat. I don’t like that.

Political writing has stirred up my dualistic self.  Jung would call it the “shadow self.” It’s the”us vs. them” mentality, almost the definition of politics. The professional politicians know how to keep this beast under control. It is a sign of the amateurs getting into politics that divisiveness has become the order of the day.

The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. Richard Rohr.

Sports fans are a prominently express dualism. They range  from true fanatics to connoisseurs of the game, who can cheer when an opposing outfielder makes a sterling play.  It may take a home run away from the home team, but the educated fan will probably sigh and say, “Good play you f – &^%$. ” It is often said that certain cities have savvy fans, because they appreciate good play, not just plays that favor their home team.

At the other end of the spectrum are the majority of fans who call into sports-talk radio shows. They are usually provoked by the host of the show, who knows the people who listen to him. The callers are all self-proclaimed experts who disagree about everything.  Where two or three sports fanatics are gathered, there are usually six or seven opinions. Avoiding the dualist trap, I will say that most of us are on the spectrum between the connoisseurs and the fanatics.  We are fans, but we love our team, even when they are losing.

Politics has a similar spectrum of experts and self-proclaimed experts. Some want to discuss issues to understand why the opposition thinks differently. Some want to prove their party is better than your party. And all of us in between.

For me politics is complex and needs untangling, so I often want to listen. But don’t get me started about the topics I think I know about: Christianity or public education.  Then you are in for a diatribe with enemies named and scorned.  Lately my anger has waxed about Christian Nationalism. I mean it, don’t get me started.

Nothing creates bitter enemies more than politics and religion, and that is one reason I need to fast from political writing. This is the dualism that hurts others, but it hurts the provocateur as well. In religion, especially, the dualistic mind turns us into self-righteous prigs. As Richard Rohr says

 Most of us settle for quick and easy answers instead of any deep perception, which we leave to poets, philosophers, and prophets. Yet depth and breadth of perception should be the primary arena for all authentic religion. How else could we possibly search for God?

Just as there is nothing wrong with drinking if you are not an alcoholic, there is nothing wrong with political writing unless it turns you into a raving dualist.  Sports ranting and political ranting are not that different. As we say, they generate more heat than light.

To replace the ranting of politics,  I will try to write more affirmative writing: inquiry, reflections, memoir, poetry, that kind of thing. My recent post on “Angry Writing” would qualify in the category of “reflections.” Probably this piece would qualify, as an inquiry into rants and diatribes.

But, to my surprise, my withdrawal from political writing has been much harder than my withdrawal from sports ranting.  Every morning I get incensed by political news and want to spout off about it.  There is evidence of addiction here, evidence that I want the Christian Nationalists to get my message, because they are sooo wrong and self-serving.  Maybe they are, but I probably will not be the one to convince them. I am too incensed.

See? I sneaked a little politics even in my “apolitical” writing. This is going to be a long Lent.

 

 

by

Sunrise

 The naked sun rises stark

 striking in singularity

 sharp circumference

commanding presence

red rubber ball.

 

The refracted sun rises

 glorifying clouds

                                                             Overtoning pastel, flamingo

                                                                    Rose, coral pink

                                                                Glowing, illuminating.

 

                                                                    Humankind

                                                           striking in singularity

                                                        lovely in gathered refraction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

Sleeper, Awake!

Well, I’ve finally humiliated myself for dozing during the day, in this case during a sermon, in this case sitting in the choir loft for all to see. The choir sits in public view on the congregation’s left in our sanctuary, so we are part of the service, even as we wait to sing after the sermon. Here I was, enacting my disregard for the Word spoken, sleeping in public.

In recent years I’ve had trouble sleeping more than six hours in a night. This is a new issue since most of my life I’ve been a sound sleeper, easily enjoying the standard eight hours a night. The result has been midday dozing, a habit that has offended Victoria, because of my checking out, taking absence, while she remains awake and alone in the living room. I’ve even faded out as she was talking to me. That, I understood, was offensive. The rest seemed to me the innocent behavior of a sleep-handicapped person.

I’ve seen a sleep therapist. I’ve taken on the onerous burden of a C-Pap gadget. I’ve taken afternoon naps. I’ve succumbed to decaffeinated coffee. I’ve tried, and still I doze during the nightly news and sometimes begin to fade while Victoria is in mid-sentence. I just check out without warning until she says, “Are you falling asleep?” with a slight edge in her voice.

I’ve also found it hard to distinguish between meditation and sleep. When I have tried to meditate in my morning devotions or respectfully during the sermon, I pass into oblivion. That is not what meditation calls for. And yet meditation is a relaxed form of prayer, a sense of peace before God. How do I convert sleeping into worshipful prayer?  Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, while his disciples dozed. How did his earnest prayer for “Not my  will, but thine?” contrast with the weary catnapping of his followers?

Until now I have felt like the disciples, just trying to recover from a long day’s labor. I felt like Victoria was unnecessarily annoyed by my innocent drifting off. I remember my father taking a siesta during the sports segment of the late night news and my mother finding him in his recliner, chastising him, “Tuck, wake up and come to bed!” Then my Dad would rouse himself and say,” I just want to hear the sports,” after he had already missed the lead story. Why can’t a man sleep, when he wants to?

I felt it was an innocent dalliance, until I missed the last five minutes of the sermon, bent over in full view of the congregation and the choir during the Sunday service. This was a full-Monty from meditation to public humiliation. I’m not sure if the pastor observed my insult to his preaching the Word, but I hope my offense was ignored or forgiven.

Now it was public and chronic. Now it was failed meditation. Now it was ignoring the Word of God,  boring or not.  The sleeper was not innocently slipping into the Land of Nod. He was obstructing the Spirit from bringing home the message.

I get it. Sleeping at the wrong time is rude. Sleeping can  say, “I don’t think you are important enough for my undivided attention.” Sleeping can even say, “Don’t bother me, God. This sermon lacks relevance.” Or to anyone, “I’ve given you enough time; let me sleep.” Sleeping is the opposite of listening.

As Victoria has pointed out, I used to make my living as a listener. I hardly ever lectured as a college professor. I spent about 60 % of my class listening to my students. My students were future teachers. I was trying to model good listening for them, and they appreciated it. So I was pretty good at listening for 75-minute or 90-minute intervals. Not so sure about after that. I can be easily distracted, even when I stay awake.

I  need to apply some of those skills to my non-professional friends, not to mention my spouse. Actually I will mention my spouse, who has to live with this annoyance every day. I need to adopt a more alert posture. In fact I will begin with posture.

Through reading, I have been taught that it helps to stay as upright as possible while meditating, to maintain the boundary between listening and sleep. Not slumped or even bowing in the alleged posture of prayer. I have also learned to keep attention by focusing on my breathing and letting idle thoughts drift away. This works pretty well in prayer.

Could I apply this to people and TV?  Maintain an erect position and focus on the person, not on stray thoughts. This sounds a little formal, but recall this is a recovery behavior, not a casual reform. My falling asleep is so abrupt that I can’t catch myself in the act. It’s like a sudden blackout. I need a deliberate approach, kind of like abstinence for an alcoholic or an overeater.

So now, if I pretend to focus by closing my eyes, as I am wont to do, that should send an alarm to my conscious brain to straighten up and pay attention. I can try this during the news or when listening to Victoria’s sometimes rambling stories. I know, if I ask her to summarize and stop, she is very cooperative. No excuses there.

As for the twenty-minute sermon, I need to take the alert posture and turn to my left and follow the pastor as he journeys to the front of the platform and back to the pulpit.  Bowing in meditation is out for now, just as the alcoholic resolves not to take a small sip of alcohol. Maybe I’m distracted, but no one can tell from my focus, my alert posture, my portrayal of listening. As they say, “Fake it till you make it.”

Sleeper, awake!

by

Moby Dick on the Stage

To fast from strife,

from old debate

and hate;

to circumcise thy life.

(Robert Herrick,”To Keep a True Lent” )

I was surprised that Robert Herrick knew so much about our current political circumstances. How we rant and rave about issues we cannot change. Is it possible his era had some of the same provocations? Misery loves company. Thank you, Mr. Herrick.

I realize I am not alone in the cause of changing society, especially politics. I think we writers are delusional about the impact we have on human behavior, so we should all take a break and “circumcise” our lives.

 

Taking another tack, I saw an incredible theater production of Moby Dick on Thursday.

When I heard The Rep was staging a dramatic version of Moby Dick I thought, Come on, a 900-page book in a stage production? Then someone mentioned to Victoria what a great theatrical experience the play was, so we went out of curiosity.

Amazing! Herman Melville would be impressed. The adaptable set with its moving rigging and skeletal outline inside the whale,

the amazing gymnastics of climbing the rigging, the haunting music of the chorus of  Fates chanting from every corner of the stage, the lunacy of Ahab, the civility of Starbuck, the purity of Queequeg, the faithful reporting of Ishmael, the narrator. It was eerie and spellbinding.

The plot revolves around Ahab and his relentless quest for revenge on the white whale Moby Dick, who severed his leg. His obsessive rage grows with every scene. First they attack a whale with a baby nearby. The crew swings down from  the lofty masts, twenty feet above the stage.  They lower two small platforms from the rafters that serve as smaller boats that buck and sway as they attack the whale (not visible). They land the whale and the baby, which we see dismembered on the stage; an actress is suspended upside down, her layers of clothing stripped off so we can imagine the brutality of processing a whale. Don’t worry, she kept one layer on.

In another touching scene Starbuck (First Mate) shares with Ahab his desire to return home to his family with the whale oil they have secured in barrels. Ahab surprises us by recalling a wife and child he left behind. It seems he might be persuaded to return to port, but suddenly the fit of passion seizes him and he declares his determination to find the monster Moby Dick and destroy him, just as the white whale had taken his leg.

Hoping not to spoil too much, I have to describe the final scene, where the sailors are cast overboard when Moby Dick shatters the ship. A woman emerges from the back of the stage with a blue luminescent tissue wound around her. The tissue unwinds from her until the entire stage is encompassed with blue/violet shimmering silk, with one slit from her body to the reaches of stage left. One by one the sailors enter the billowing waves through the slit. They are swept off the stage as the woman backs away with the men covered under. The only survivor is Ishmael, who clings to the coffin containing the fallen Queequeg. By floating on that coffin Ishmael is eventually rescued to tell the story.

This kind of imaginative stagecraft saturates the entire production, staged in the belly of the framing whale structure.  The acting was moving, but the story was about the physical battle with the sea and the ominous singing of the three Fates, (evoking the weird sisters of MacBeth), all of which foreshadow death and defeat.

Spoke too soon, Moby Dick ends in St. Louis on February 25.

 

 

by

Angry Writing

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday with its unfortunate intersection with Valentine’s Day. Maybe the message was that death and love are not that far apart. For everything we abandon during Lent, we should adopt something new. We die to one thing so that the new can be born. The new should be about love.

Last year I abandoned alcohol, a trite discipline. How many others did the same? I am sorry to say there was no permanent effect on my behavior. I just went on a cruise and had a ball trying  out mixed drinks. It was a Mardi Gras abandonment of my previous discipline of one drink per day. Got a little sick, because of the sugar in the mixed drinks, but recovered as soon as I came home and stopped drinking for three days.

This year I’m abstaining from angry writing, a much more challenging discipline. I plan to take up constructive, hopeful, healing writing. Hopefully not naive, pollyanna writing, because I still want to write well. I just want to give up the righteous indignation that pervades too much of my writing.

For example,

The “Something Rotten” Conspiracy Principle” is a good example of angry writing. It is political; most of my political writing is angry. I may have a few constructive political posts, but usually my political writing has an edge.

The “Something Rotten” Conspiracy Principle*

Other kinds of writing can be angry. My baseball writing usually is some kind of  rant. Lately I’ve been complaining about the Cardinals’ lack of initiative to sign another top-flight pitcher, like Jordan Montgomery. I was so incensed I got on X (Twitter) and sent a rant to @MozekiakJohn. I doubt he was fazed by it. And sadly, I’m still angry about it.

Cardinals Alert!

That is the problem with angry writing. It does not always relieve the pressure of anger. It is a temporary relief from some annoyance, which continues to fester afterwards. Sometimes you get it out of your system, but often not.

Really there’s nothing wrong with angry writing, but in the larger perspective it does not make you a better person. So I relent. Get it? Re-Lent.

I have some experience with more reflective writing. For example, I wrote about idols yesterday, and whether Taylor Swift was one. It wasn’t really angry, but more like inquiry. What does the Bible, especially Jesus, say about “idolatry”? I concluded that Taylor Swift was not an idol, but a passion, the same as any hero worship in sports, art or history. Probably hero worship can get  out of control, especially when you  create a shrine in your bedroom and commence worshipping at it, but that was not my point.

Our Graven Images

So maybe I’ll call this “reflective writing without the edge.” If you look past my political, sports and education writing you’ll find happier topics like “Travel,” “Memoir,” “Faith Stories,” “Spiritual, “Humor,” although Humor can be edgy. Be careful, Bill.

My writing should become more hopeful, reflective, even objective. Will it last after Lent? We’ll see. There is a place for anger in writing, just not the center-place. That is my ultimate goal. Reform, not perpetual abstinence.  Stay tuned, if you can stand the hope.

 

by

Our Graven Images

A  recent assertion from a Newsmax commentator about Taylor Swift got me to thinking about idolatry:

But I think what they call it is, they’re elevating her to an idol. Idolatry. This is a little bit what idolatry, I think, looks like. And you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin! So, I don’t like that.”  [ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/greg-kelly-taylor-swift-fans-idolatry-sin_n_65b907bfe4b0102bd2d62292 ]

I know the Second Commandment warns against idolatry, but Jesus does not make much of it in the Christian Testament. There are only three passages I know of where Jesus warns against worshipping an idol, and in no case does he use the word “idol.” Yet we may learn what Jesus did not want us to worship by considering them.

The first idol is “Mammon” in the passage from the King James Version:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (wealth) (Matthew 6:24)

The word “mammon” is usually translated as “money” or “wealth.” In the Middle Ages it was personified as one of the seven princes of hell, giving it more of a personal identity.  In any terms, the concept of serving or worshipping is built into the conflict of God vs. mammon. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon ]  Christians usually understand “serving wealth” as an uncontrolled desire for riches to the extent that faith in God is compromised. Where we cross the line of using money for the security to an obsession is never obvious, as would be true for most of Jesus’ teachings. But turning money into an idol is a violation of the Second Commandment.

The second idol is tyrannical government. We can assume that Jesus rejected the notion that Caesar should be worshipped as a God from the example of paying taxes.

   “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. (Mark 12:16-17)

What belongs to God is reverence and worship. Paying taxes is the duty of every citizen, although many of Jesus’ contemporaries would have disagreed.  Maybe our contemporaries, too. Since Caesar represents tyranny, it follows that modern tyranny should not be worshipped as well.  What constitutes tyranny in the modern sense is debatable.  I suppose leaders, who imply that loyalty to them supersedes the worship of God, would be considered idols. Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses have argued that they should be exempted from government requirements that contradict their religious beliefs. The law has upheld that argument. What if those rights were taken away? Would the government then become an idol that demands they violate their beliefs? Tyrannical government can be an idol.

The third idol could be those who represent themselves as the returning Christ.

Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. (Luke 21:8)

Cult leaders could fall into the classification of an idol. They may call themselves “Christ” or claim their words come straight from Christ, but Jesus warns that they are part of “latter day”events. Who these “Christs” are might be controversial, but they are potential idols when they contradict what Jesus taught, while representing themselves as “the anointed one,” the meaning of the word “Christ.” Those who attempt to represent Christ, but fail to live by his example, might be considered idols.

In none of these examples are the commandments against “idolatry,” but rather objects of worship that might replace God. These objects might not represent idolatry to some, but Jesus’ laws are never as clear cut as we would like them to be.  Idolatry, in the modern sense, represents the disposition of the heart, not a legal definition.

Jesus warns about many other things, like “the leaven [legalism] of the Pharisees” or the “hypocrisy” of those who practice spirituality in public, but such behaviors are less than worship and not focused on an object of worship, so I don’t think of them as idols. Jesus did not expand much about idolatry per se.

Is the ardent following of Taylor Swift “idolatry” ? Perhaps, in a figurative, adolescent way. But then how do we distinguish “idols” from “heroes”?  Many adults have sports heroes, music heroes, historical heroes that don’t rise to the level of idolatry.The passion of teenagers is not so different from the devotion of adults.  So why quibble?

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them” Exodus 20:4.

It is dangerous to think of the Second Commandment  as irrelevant today, because there are modern equivalents, such as money and cult leaders, as Jesus has reminded us.  But let’s not get carried away and claim any passion or devotion is an idol.  It’s all right to be fans and followers, if we recognize our limits. Isn’t that what morality about?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

The “Something Rotten” Conspiracy Principle*

As far back as 1950, when Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) insisted—without evidence—that the Department of State under Democratic president Harry Truman had been infiltrated by Communists, Republicans have used official investigations to smear their opponents. Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, February 10, 2024.

When the House Republicans began an investigation into the criminality of President Joe Biden, I wondered what criminal behavior they could possibly reveal that was not already known? I truly wondered if the President could be hiding some dangerous behavior.

Two years later, the sound and fury of the investigation continues, yet the Judiciary Committee has uncovered nothing but unfounded accusations and generated some negative press for the President.  I finally realized that the point was not to uncover evidence, but to create the illusion that evidence was forthcoming and to make something stick to the reputation of the President, whether it was true or not. Heather Cox Richardson calls it a “smear” campaign. I would call it a campaign to distract from the bad behavior of the President before Biden or the “Something Rotten” Conspiracy Principle.

President Trump was impeached twice without a conviction. If the Judiciary Committee could threaten to impeach Biden even once, the score would be even, in the minds of Jim Jordan and his gang of eighteen Republicans. Their plan was to churn out innuendoes that something was rotten in the Oval Office, and they  were going to get to the bottom of it. They tried the same strategy with Alejandro Majorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, and the House refused to impeach him this week, with four Republicans refusing to buy the product.

So it is not so much a smear campaign, but a campaign of “Whataboutism” i.e. the trick of turning any argument against the opponent.  When faced with accusations of corruption, they claim the entire world is corrupt.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism . That’s why it was necessary to campaign against two Democratic officials together– to balance the scales against the considerable corruption of a man with two impeachments on his record.

The former President made the template for “something rotten,” when he pursued the charges of election fraud in 2020 through 62 lawsuits with only one discovering even a minor infraction. Still he pursued his claims just to maintain that uncertainty about fair elections in the voters’ minds. Apparently it worked, because one-third of Americans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen. These beliefs are based on innuendo and unproven accusations.

Republicans renewed Trump’s “something rotten” strategy with the impeachment campaigns against Biden and Majorkas without uncovering any substantial evidence. By merely investigating they have kept suspicion alive that something sinister (“rotten”) must be happening in Washington,D.C.  Certain citizens love “something rotten” theories,” and investigations add odor to something rotten when it is past its expiration date.

I have to concede that attributing sinister motives to the House Judiciary Committee is a conspiracy theory of my own. And maybe, as House Speaker Mike Johnson claims, the President truly believes the election was stolen from him.  I can only point to the facts of no substantial evidence in any of these cases and the persistence of the former President and the Republican cohorts of the Judiciary Committee to believe what they cannot prove. This dogged pursuit of mere suspicion suggests a mentality favoring suspicion over facts. Suspicions are what keep voting citizens off balance, even turning suspicions into personal convictions.

Americans need to remember the principle that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, even during House investigations.

Certainly the former President remembers it. It has kept him alive through 91 indictments, which rely on more than suspicion to stay fresh in the legal system.

*See Hamlet, Act I, Scene iv: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” [a suspicion, not yet a fact]

 

by

Cardinals Alert!

@MozeliakJohn

Sign Jordan Montgomery! His market value is down, but his value is high. He was the best pitcher the Cardinals had last year, and you let him go. But you can bargain for him now and make up for that.

The Cardinals cannot survive on false hopes as they did last year. The average age of their starting rotation is 35. Each one was on the injured reserve list in 2023. Three had losing records.  You can’t depend on full performance from any of them.

If any of them fail, there is no insurance policy to salvage the season.
by

The Caribbean – Days 9-10

Cruising

Infinite horizon:  pastel pink

Sweeping gray waves,

sun popping up round, splitting

A spherical fission.

Brisk, warming breeze

     From bow to stern

                                                                                  Layering the sweeping tide

                                                                                Sliding aft-ward

Day Nine, the last day of cruising. Already we are gathering our luggage to set out by nine tonight. Ten days hurried like waves past our balcony.  The last three days slowed the pace by keeping us on board, the churning waves keeping us from Grand Cayman.  I regret missing the island,  because it was part of my reason for taking this particular cruise. But with the driving pace of days after our stop at the Panama Canal, it was a relief to spend three days relaxing and letting time expand, instead of gravitating from one event to the next.

Waking up with radiating sun and a delivered breakfast, choosing a movie, a lecture, an entertainer for the day, made it feel more like a vacation and less like an itinerary.  Enjoyed a cocktail hour before a leisurely, four-course dinner. Nothing like our life at home, even the life of retirement with fewer demands on our time.

Cruising was all I hoped it would be. Settled in a cabin for the duration.  Constant movement and at rest. New port waiting in the morning.  The athletic, singing trombone player. The synchrony of the Vivace violin duet.  The three-course, four-star dinner menu.  And the dawn breaking over our balcony.

Fort Lauderdale again.