Mr Trump, Hillary played you like a fiddle / Silly me.

Dear Mr Trump,

Mr Khizr Khan, who lost his son -- Cpt Humayun Khan -- in Iraq, challenged you about your knowledge of the Constitution.

You should have known that trying to gain political traction was in extremely poor taste, not to mention impossible. You simply should have thanked the Khans for their son's service, extended your condolences for their loss, and said, 'Yes, I've read the Constitution.'

(Though I’m beginning to think Mr Khan was right.)

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Today (2016.08.05) the news is discussing President Obama’s response to Trump’s charge that the fall election might be rigged. Obama is feigning bewilderment, but after the DNC debacle that gave Bernie all the chances of a snowball in hell, and in light of quadrennial Democrat accusations of polling station irregularities in swing states like Ohio, I believe if anyone can rig them, they will.

This year I lost what little faith I had in the American electoral system. I thought it was still -- despite some tarnish -- the last great hope of an overpopulating, polluting, writhing globe, a kinder, gentler Roman Republic if you will, with a real shot at a Pax Americana.

Silly me.

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me: It's all about you, isn't it?

me: Sure it is. I don't know what it's like to be anyone else.

me: Anchorite.

me: Takes one to know one.

[2016.08.02]

New Michael Crichton Novel Due out May 2017

Dragon Teeth is a New Michael Crichton novel discovered by his widow >

The new novel centers on the rivalry between two early paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. I listened to a lecture on these two and it was more interesting than you might expect.

I’m guessing, as with Pirate Latitudes and Micro, Crichton may not have considered Dragon Teeth to be his best work. But I'm eager to read it in any case.

Crichton is one of the few writers I will read slowly, deliberately, as though to school children. You only get one chance to read a book for the first time. Others in that category for me are Truman Capote, William Peter Blatty, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I’m still hoping that the lost chapters to Capote’s Answered Prayers will be found, but despite Capote’s claims, I’m not so sure they even exist. Unlike Crichton, Capote was known to destroy manuscripts he was unhappy with.

[2016.07.31]

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Why are opinions based on consensus different from those based on conscience?

Question to Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson:

Do you think New Mexico was right to fine the photographer for not photographing the gay wedding?

Johnson’s Answer:

"Look. Here's the issue. You've narrowly defined this. But if we allow for discrimination — if we pass a law that allows for discrimination on the basis of religion — literally, we're gonna open up a can of worms when it come stop discrimination of all forms, starting with Muslims … who knows. You're narrowly looking at a situation where if you broaden that, I just tell you — on the basis of religious freedom, being able to discriminate — something that is currently not allowed — discrimination will exist in places we never dreamed of."

Source >

Hillary Clinton:

“Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

Many sources, here’s one >

Photo at right: One of 24 tattered flags that used to hang from lamp posts on Main Street in Derby, CT in August 2015. The city replaced them. Photo: New Haven Register; Source: Fox News >

Here’s a question for Gary and Hillary and anyone else who is so adamant about separating religious conscience from public policy:

Q: Why are opinions based on consensus different from those based on conscience?

The practical answer “consensus represents the will of the people” is not a permissible answer, because it doesn’t discriminate between what we usually consider good things (say, feeding millions of starving people in faraway lands) and what we usually consider bad things (say, exterminating millions of people in faraway lands).

I’d be delighted to hear a defense for social order that doesn’t rely on some irreducible principles of right and wrong that exist apart from consensus. I’d throw my hat in with the atheists running for president (Steve Hill), Methodists (Hillary), Presbyterians (Trump), or Lutherans (Johnson) who presumably have this answer, if they made a sincere attempt to explain why their beliefs are preferred to mine.

It’s not a difficult conversation to start, but I’d wager it would be discarded as eggheaded, irrelevant, or impractical.

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Should a Jewish deli be forced to sell pork? Why not? Why should I have to walk across the street to buy my pork when the Jewish deli is closer?

Same with wedding cakes, wedding photos, birth control, or anything else that falls between consensus and conscience.

The logic seems to be if you don’t change how you believe, and the majority no longer wishes to tolerate your beliefs, then we’ll simply legislate over them.

Is there an answer?

Of course there is.

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A: Matters of conscience remain legally protected so long as they don’t interfere with those of others.

It’s not rocket science. As my 12th grade history teacher at McDowell High School in Erie, PA used to remind us, "my rights stop where yours begin."

There’s a difference between banning contraception and forcing everyone to offer it. There’s a difference between legalizing gay marriage and forcing everyone to participate in it.

And it’s easy to demonstrate: Suppose a baker was asked to make a pornographic cake. It’s not illegal. But it happens to be offensive to many people, and we wouldn’t require the baker to oblige.

Or: Imagine a future in which the sensibilities of PETA are the norm. We could easily see hunting, animal farming, and the consumption of meat outlawed, especially if there were conflating environmental or financial considerations (eg, if you have limited water, growing grain feeds more people than raising cattle).

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You’re not allowed to tell me what to think.

Of all the things Americans agree to do because others insist they're good for us, there’s one place we all draw the line: You’re not allowed to tell me what to think.

If I want to vote based on my atheistic or hedonistic or anarchistic or Democratic or Republican values, that’s up to me, not you, and not a convention hall full of people like you.

Americans know how to handle a little ignorant buffoonery. We’ve been dealing with that forever.

What would be new to us is a leader who seriously thinks my “deep-seated … religious beliefs” need to change.

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And my personal beliefs have nothing to do with this, aside from the fact they’re mine, and just important as yours, even if you’re running for president, and even if you don’t think so.

[2016.07.29]

Even a smidgen of Christlikeness is an impossible expectation.

Christians are not to be angry, vindictive, spiteful, hateful, morose, bitter, boastful, or easily offended. They’re not supposed to take pleasure in the discomfort of others, be mean-spirited, or consider their own needs ahead of the needs of others. And “others” is everyone, those I like and who like me, those I dislike and dislike me.

I’ve failed at all those things. Some every day. Being fully Christlike is not only difficult, it’s impossible.

But we’re called to take up our cross nevertheless, for as long as we are able to carry it.

Photo at right: Father Jacques Hamel. Fr Hamel was killed by Islamic terrorists while delivering Mass at Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray church in Rouen, France. The 84-year-old priest was forced to kneel at the altar and had his throat slit. Some accounts have him later decapitated. His killers apparently also performed some sort of Islamic service at the altar. Credit: AFP. Source: bbc.com.

Sometimes life ends horribly, as it did for Fr Hamel.

Sometimes it ends peacefully (if painfully) as it did for my dad - his family at his bedside.

Sometimes it ends in the huddled terror of mass graves, floods, earthquakes, explosions.

	Photo at Left: The skulls and bones of Capuchin brothers adorn this altar in a Capuchin Crypt in Rome, Italy. Credit: Dnalor_01. Source:  Wikimedia Commons. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Photo at Right: Skulls of the victims of the Khmer Rouge occupation of Cambodia. Source:  Wikimedia Commons; License: Denne fil er udgivet under Creative Commons Navngivelse 2.0 Generisk-licensen.

And sometimes it ends in isolation - a homeless shelter, prison, a hospital bed, a car accident, a heart attack in the middle of the night - and we slip away alone.

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I recall seeing an inverted pyramid of human skulls in the Smithsonian when I was a child. The skulls formed something of a chart demonstrating population growth.

We’ve gotten so used to seeing human skulls, we barely flinch at mass graves in Cambodia, and are simply perplexed at catacombs and monasteries.

But each time I see them, I think the same thing: What had collected inside those boney shells before they were emptied? How many smiles and tears lived in there, connecting and accreting to form a unique Individual who is recognized by other unique Individuals with smiles and tears of their own?

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Notice the title of this blog. I didn’t say that Christlikeness is an unreasonable expectation, just impossible. It’s reasonable because Christlikeness is a journey, and it never ends until we put down our cross, like Fr Hamel did, like my dad did.

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There’s a Christian concept that, roughly stated, encourages us to turn our pain over to God and regard our unhappiness as a blessing. Baptists say “God never gives us more than we can bear,” or repeat the words of James to “count it all joy.” Catholics are encouraged to share in Christ’s passion and offer up their sorrows to Him.

The subtext underlying both traditions has strong elements of amends and apology.

I’m not sure I know how any of that works. I’m not sure anyone really does. Because anything so counterintuitive usually remains in the realms of faith and skepticism, which are remarkably similar since they concern themselves with the very same mysteries, just come to drastically different conclusions.

[2016.07.26]

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Wasserman Schultz is out. Is Johnson in?

CNN: The DNC chair won't speak at Dem convention following Wikileaks >
(Sun July 24, 2016)

The MSNBC pundits this morning (Sunday 7/24) sort of tilted their heads and said in essence, Wasserman Schultz wasn't well-liked and it was probably time for her to go anyway, as if she'd struck out in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded.

Establishment Democrats seem to think that if they talk loudly about something else - anything else - unflattering developments will go away, and so the Clinton campaign suggested that Trump plotted with Putin to release the emails that Wasserman Schultz resigned over. (You can't make this stuff up.)

 

Photo at right: Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico and 2016 Libertarian Party nominee for President.

 

Poll: Gary Johnson At 26% In Utah, Three Points From Overtaking Trump >
(July 23, 2016)

Glenn Beck: “I’m probably going to vote for Gary Johnson” >

Rumors Circulate About Jeb Bush Endorsing Libertarian Gary Johnson >

If you're interested ... Gary Johnson On the Issues >

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Libertarians are cool.

Gary Johnson Slogan	Linux Slogan

 

I voted Libertarian a number of years ago. I may again.

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