Fictional Cabinet Nominees Seem Appropriate For Trump's Fictional World

Since President Elect Trump tells more lies than truths, it seems appropriate for him to have fictional cabinet members to match the fictional world he lives in.  He's already extolled Hannibal Lector as though he was a real person.  Which got me thinking about a where Hannibal would fit in the cabinet.  And then what a whole cabinet of fictional characters might look like.  

Such a cabinet would have benefits - though I'm still trying to figure out who will benefit most.  Probably Trump, but perhaps the rest of us will too.

• These nominees won't testify in the Senate saving Trump the embarrassment of scorching questioning of his picks and saving the upper house many, many hours and saving GOP Senators the embarrassment of debasing themselves and their honor to defend Trump's picks
• Though it's possible that before long they can be recreated virtually to testify
• The nominees don't have actual records that can be dug up by journalists trying to uncover their past misbehaviors 
• Though perhaps scholars of literature and film will be called upon to write opinion pieces about them.  
• Trump can probably have them serve without getting approval of the Senate at all.  
• And none of these appointees will take actions to block Trump's will, nor will they take action to forward it.  

This is merely a list I came up with.  My grandkids helped with a few of the nominees.  A couple of friends made excellent suggestions too.  But if readers feel they have better nominees, or alternatives if any of these can't or won't serve, be sure to let me know.  

Some of these nominees, most everyone should know, or at least have heard the name.  Others are a bit more obscure.  But they all can be easily googled.  There is one that has an asterisk because more than one person bears that name.  But I'll remind you it's a fictional character and there is only one that I know of that clearly first the position.  

I would also remind readers that this blog is called "What Do I know?" and a key theme is how we know what's real and what's true.  Many people, myself included, have said that Trump's followers live in a fictional world.  We point at evidence such as climate change, and scientific research on a variety of other subjects from medicine to crime, demographics, and paleontology, to name just a few. 

But within a society, truth, ultimately, is what the vast majority of the population believes it to be. And sometimes there's a gap between the truth that people profess and the truth their eyes (and other senses) tell them.  Hans Christian Anderson's story The Emperor's New Clothes gives us that example.  

Different religions believe their holy books describe truth.  Truths which are not compatible with the truths of the holy books of other religions.  Yet hundreds of millions of people believe without a doubt the different truths of the different major holy books in the world.  

So by electing Trump, many USians have created a reality that we will all have to endure.  It's a reality in which Donald Trump is president.  A man who, in his first presidency build pieces of 'wall' along parts of the US border with Mexico, which the Mexican government didn't pay for.  

There were also over a million US residents who died of COVID, many of whom would have lived if Trump had lived in a different mental world.  And more people will die in Trump's second presidency because that's how his world thinks it should be, or because the laws of science in my world, won't bend to his will.  

Their Music Survives

A friend sent me a link to an audio program about the music of the Holocaust - music written and performed by concentration camp musicians.  The program is very sad and very inspiring at the same time.  Worth listening to.  

I don't see a way to embed the audio here, so here's a link to the website that has it:

https://www.blogger.com/u/0/blog/post/edit/30897652/6944961309403824554

Well worth a listen when you are doing something you can do while listening.  

The transcript begins:

"Mat Edelson (HOST): To be a Jewish composer or musician under the Third Reich’s reign of terror meant your next note could be your last. At first their works were banned as being degenerate, their contributions to the musical canon erased from public display. Later, as the murderous frenzy exploded in the ghettos and concentration camps, composers and musicians imprisoned there refused to be stilled. On scraps of paper they penciled their inspirations, praying that even if they died, their music would survive. Miraculously, it has. In this documentary, we’ll meet conductors, musicians and others rediscovering this lost generation of music and performing it for new audiences worldwide. They’re using this music to educate, to remember, and to correct an historical injustice. Join us now for Their Music Survives.?

 

Why Making Real Time Sense Of Israeli-Gaza War Is So Difficult -Part II

This is a truly touchy topic all around.  I'm listing here some of the aspects that I feel are critical to understand (no, be aware of is a more realistic goal).  Assume that I am torn in different directions and not pushing an answer one way or the other.  

Part I of these posts gives an intro to these posts and covers:

 1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

PART II

4.  GENOCIDE

The word "genocide" was coined to give a name to what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.   

"Seventy years ago this fall [2014], the word "genocide" made its debut into the English language, on page 79 of the 674-page Axis Rule in Occupied Europe [which you can find here in Reading 3], in a chapter called "Genocide—A New Term and New Conception for Destruction of Nations."

The writer was Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who had fled the persecution of the Holocaust and moved to the United States in 1941. A few months after his arrival, he heard a radio address in which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told listeners about the horrors of World War II. . .

[Lemkin] decided to create a name for the crime without a name. He came up with genocide, which he defined as the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. He said he created the word by combining the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). In 1948, nearly three years after the concentration camps of World War II had been closed forever, the newly-formed United Nations (UN) used this new word in the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," a treaty that was intended to prevent any future genocides."

The US Holocaust Museum defines the term in more detail 

"Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

• Killing members of the group
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

There are a number of other serious, violent crimes that do not fall under the specific definition of genocide. They include crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and mass killing."

Netanyahu would argue that his intent is to secure Israel from terrorist attack, not to kill Palestinians.  

Whether what's happening in Gaza is genocide or one of the other crimes listed probably doesn't matter too much, but I'm sure those fighting against Israeli bombing in Gaza are relishing the irony of charging Israelis with genocide.   

Since I wrote these words on genocide, the South African complaints about Israeli genocide to the  International Court of Justice has become available.  In it, starting from page 60, they quote a number of Israeli officials, in different ways saying things that suggest Israeli intent to obliterate Gaza.  Here's just one example from Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents . . . This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.  And we do remember."

"The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses."

This is the tenor of the evidence of intent that the South African complaint offers to International Court of Justice.  And as I write this, I always keep in mind the possibility that this whole document is a fake, that the quotes are fabricated.  But I don't think so.  Some of the Prime Minister's remarks are almost identical to the "Civilization versus Savages" theme  I posted above in Section 2 on Netanyahu that appeared in his 1995 book.  

But remember, these are like the prosecutor's opening argument.  It's their side of the story.  The defense hasn't yet had a chance to put things in context or to refute the arguments.  

Because I'm taking forever to write this, I can add the Israeli response.  Ha'aretz, the oldest Israeli newspaper, has this report on the Israeli response to the South African allegations.

[Being mindful of Issue #1 - Propaganda, Misinformation - the first link in the previous sentence is to the Encyclopedia Brittanica  article on Ha'aretz.  The second links to their report.]

5.  ZIONISM

This is another term that gets bandied about.  I'm not going to try to define it here, but you can see a couple of differing definitions/commentaries at the links below.

Wikipedia's treatment

The Foreign Policy Institute's take

The Promise and Failure of Zionism

Many people seem to have trouble distinguishing between Zionists, Jews, and Israelis and use two or all of those terms interchangeably to mean the same thing.  As though all Christians believe the same thing or act the same way.  People who identify (or are labeled) Jews come in many flavors, beliefs, ideologies, lifestyles.  The same is true of Israelis.  

6.  ISRAELI MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS 

After World War II much of the world was shocked to learn of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis.  (If you don't believe the Holocaust happened, don't comment here.  I'll delete it as soon as I see it.  Rather educate yourself and get past your ignorance.)  Among Jews, the campaign to create a Jewish state in historic Israel was not universally supported.  But after the war, with many displaced Jewish refugees, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, sentiment supported establishing the state of Israel.  The newly formed United Nations approved. 

For the first years, the world heard heartwarming stories of the "Land of Milk and Honey," of the miracle in Israel making the desert bloom  When Israel was attacked in 1967 by surrounding Arab countries, Israel fought back and quickly defeated their enemies and kept the territory they took.  Moshe Dayan was an international hero, easily recognized with his black eye patch.  

But from the beginning the story wasn't so rosy.  Jews forced Arabs to abandon their homes and land.  Many fled to other Arab countries.  Over the years attempts to establish peace were thwarted by Palestinian rejection of the idea of Israel even existing.  Israeli supporters in the West used this rejection to show the Arabs were intransigent.  But it's clear that from the Arab perspective, the creation of Israel was similar to other colonial conquests where the indigenous people were simply removed for the colonists.  Even if the colonists were themselves a displaced people.

In the last 20 years or more, Israel has increasingly been a very oppressive ruler over the occupied territories.  Israel's annexation of West Bank Arab lands to build settlements for Israelis has exacerbated things.  People began talking about an Israeli apartheid. One can easily see similarities between the occupation and the way Black Americans are frequently treated by the police in the US.  

It's clear that many Israeli soldiers treat Palestinians with disdain. There are many places you can read about this, but I would offer Colum McCann's Apeirogon as a good place to start. [I highly recommend  reading Apeirogon]  It's the story of one Palestinian and one Jewish father who have both lost teenage daughters to the violence in Israel.  They are brought together and work with a group that advocates for peace and understanding.  There are very detailed descriptions of the indignities that Palestinians suffer daily.  

I believe that this treatment comes from 

• Israelis always feeling threatened (and Hamas does its best to stir up those fears) and 
• the ethnocentrism evidenced in Netanyahu's belief they are fighting a noble war between civilization and savagery.  [See Part I on Netanyahu]

As I mentioned in the post on The Battle of Algiers, people with little or no power, dominated by another people with lots of power, have few options other than guerrilla warfare.  

I'd also mention that other Arab countries tended to not take Palestinians as refugees into their countries.  One explanation was that by making Israel the collective enemy of Arabs, they could distract the Arab world from intra-Arab conflicts, and they could distract their own citizens from protesting their own authoritarianism.  Another explanation has been they simply didn't think they could handle the influx of so many Arabs with a somewhat different history in their own countries. 

7.  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL - PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI EDUCATION

There are lots of articles about how Palestinian schools teach hate, such as this 2022 Times of Israel headline:

"UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog

Israeli organization says that rather than taking the material out of the 2022 curriculum, the UN Palestinian refugee agency has merely taken it off its public education portal"

It takes a little more digging to find counter arguments such as this one from The Palestine Chronicle by Rima Najjar:

Zionism is an insidious ideology. Its ideologues often gain traction by well-placed and oft repeated constructs – in films and TV series, in posts and comments on social media, and even in academia. So, it is no wonder that people end up having ideas about certain things, like the nature of Israel, the Zionist Jewish state, or the nature of Palestinian Arab culture and identity, or the nature of Jewish culture and identity, as if by osmosis.

One of these “memes” in the air, if you will, is the oft repeated comment by hasbara agents on social media that says Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews. This notion can also be found in numerous attacks on the Palestinian Authority curriculum with the same accusation of “teaching children to hate Jews”, when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda (see Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education – Library of Modern Middle East Studies).

My understanding is that 

"'teaching children to hate Jews', when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda"  

doesn't mean the Palestinians teach their kids to love Jews, but rather means that Israelis teach their kids to hate Palestinians.  

Michael Kaplan gave this example, in 2014, of Jews teaching their kids to hate Palestinians.  When Israelis Teach Their Kids To Hate. 

Two, more thorough, academic studies of Israeli text books suggest it's more subtle, but just as invidious.  

Here's the abstract of 2012 book by Nurit Elhanan-Peled

"The present book presents a critical multimodal study of one aspect of the Israeli-Zionist narrative as it is reproduced in school books of three disciplines: history, geography and civic studies. It consists of an analysis of the visual and verbal texts that represent the 'others' of Zionist Jews, namely Palestinians – both the citizens of Israel and the non-citizens who have been living under a military regime in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.The book shows that Israeli textbooks use racist discourse, both visually and verbally to represent Palestinians."

I only could find a few passages at the link to the publisher, but here's one to give you a sense of the book:

"... Texts present Palestine before 1948 as barren land and empty territory, abandoned since biblical times, waiting for Jews to redeem it while expunging Palestinian history and culture transforming 'Palestinian Arab students into "present absentees" as they learn about "the land of Israel"' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 24) without them. These texts are 'designed to "de-educate", or dispossess, Indigenous Palestinian pupils of the knowledge of their own people and history' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 17;Al-Haj, 2015;Mazawi, 2011;Peled-Elhanen, 2012;Raz-Karkotzkin, 2001). Textbooks construct Palestinians as 'backward, unproductive and untrustworthy; or even more negatively as murderers or rioters' while Jews engage 'in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refused to accept or acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel' (Abu-Saad, 2019: 101; Bar-Tal, 2001;Meehan, 1999). ..."

A 2020 Ha'aretz article - eight years later than the Elhanen book -  describes a Tel Aviv University study:

"Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation 'interpretive denial.'”

Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation “interpretive denial.” . . .

In most textbooks, “the Jewish control and the Palestinians’ inferior status appear as a natural, self-evident situation that one doesn’t have to think about,” he writes in an article to be published in a book on teaching history edited by Eyal Naveh and Nimrod Tal. . . .

Ben-Amos says the textbooks’ ignoring of the occupation or attempts to normalize it stem from self-censorship. In the absence of clear guidelines, nobody wants to be blacklisted and denounced, which was the fate of teachers and publishers who tried to convey a more nuanced message than the one permitted by the Education Ministry. . . .

Elhanen has continued writing articles on the subject of how 'the other' is treated in Israeli schools and textbooks.  You can see a list of books and articles here, some with links to full text.

I did find one more book- Palestinians in Israeli Textbooks (2016) - which seems to  say that it was bad in the past, but things are much better now.  

It's hard to find ways to peace when Palestinian children are regularly taught in schools and in the streets  to hate Jews and when Jewish children are given texts that either omit Palestinians or reinforce the idea that Jewish superiority over Palestinians is the natural order of things. 

Though as one Palestinian responded (paraphrasing), "Palestinian kids don't need to be taught in schools to hate Jews.  They pick that up by living under Israeli occupation."

Part III is still being written.  Here's the link.  

Why Making Real Time Sense Of Israeli-Gaza War Is So Difficult -Part I [Updated]

I've avoided posting about the Israeli-Gaza war for a number of reasons. (The one exception is this post recommending folks watch the Battle of Algiers.) 

The LA Times screenshot below articulates the thoughts behind my hesitation. 

Not that I'm either, but it does feel like people are being forced to pick a side and then attacked for it.  For many nuance is a copout.  

I've been thinking about this post since Hamas attacked Israel.  I've been writing it for about six weeks. Writing, at least the way I write, forces me to learn, to confront those statements I'm not certain about (most) with internet searches and trying my thoughts out on friends.  

The post has been growing organically.  As I write some things, later news events cause me to look up other assertions relevant to all of this.  

This post isn't supposed to be answers, but rather an annotated list of things (yes, I'd like a better word than that, suggestions?) people should know about before taking a firm position on the situation.  Each item is worthy of its own book length discussion. Most of these issues are intertwined.  Separating them into discrete items makes it easier to talk about them, but can be misleading, so read with caution.  Here's the list as it stands today (January 18, 2024)

1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

4.  GENOCIDE

5.  ZIONISM

6.  ISRAELI MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS 

7.  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL - PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI EDUCATION

8.  RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS AND ISRAEL'S RIGHT WING TILT 

9.  IGNORANCE 

10.  HAMAS

11.  GUERRILLA WARFARE

12.  WHY GETTING JEWS OUT OF ISRAEL SEEMS EASIER THAN NATIVE AMERICANS GETTING EUROPEANS OUT OF THE UNITED STATES

I've 'finished' 1-8.  I've decided that this is too long for most readers, so I'm going to break it down into several posts, starting with 1 through 3B.  A version of 11 - Guerrilla Warfare - is already up offering you the movie Battle of Algiers.  

1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

Democracy requires citizens have access to information - how organizations work, who has power and how they use it - that enables us to make intelligent choices in how we lead our lives and who we vote for to represent us in government. 

Politicians and citizens have always bent the truth in their favor, but today the truth is almost unrecognizable. Trump's Republican Party realizes their ideas are outmoded and they can only win major elections by lying and subterfuge.  Right wing billionaires scheme to protect their wealth and ability to do as they please without regard to others.  Foreign authoritarian governments (ie Russia, Iran, China) have an interest in 'proving' to their citizens that democracy cannot work and destroying democracy in the US would be their greatest victory.  

Here's an Anchorage Daily News headline Dec. 19 2023 on a Washington Post story:

"The rise of AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation superspreader’"

The story it makes my argument:

"Historically, propaganda operations have relied on armies of lowpaid workers or highly coordinated intelligence organizations to build sites that appear to be legitimate. But AI is making it easy for nearly anyone — whether they are part of a spy agency or just a teenager in their basement — to create these outlets, producing content that is at times hard to differentiate from real news."

So, starting off this discussion, I'd note that from even before the Hamas attack on Israel, false information was being spread to support and attack anyone who ventured to comment on this topic.  Russia sees it as a way to peel off voters from Biden to improve Trump's election to a second term knowing Trump would much more vigorously support Russia's plans in Ukraine and the world.  

It's also a way to divert world attention away from Ukraine and onto Israel.  (This may be just a brief sentence, but I suspect it's an important factor.)

While I think today (in January) the outline of the war is clearer than it was when I started, there is constant misinformation spread in mainstream media as well as social media.

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

Before Netanyahu was ever prime minister I found a book he authored on the bargain table at Borders Books in Anchorage.  So this was before 1996 when he first became prime minister.  I read the book and was appalled.  What I remember most vividly was a sentence where he said something to the effect of "I never met an Arab I could trust."  I didn't keep the book, but I've looked on line to see what books he wrote before 1996.  Wikipedia lists Netanyahu's books.  Here are the ones published before 1996:

• International Terrorism: Challenge and Response. Transaction Publishers. 1981. 
• Terrorism: How the West Can Win. Avon. 1987.
• Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1995.

All these are edited books, with Netanyahu providing the introduction.  What I recall was more of an autobiographical work.  But I can't find any reference to such a book by Netanyahu before the 2022 autobiography.  

But I did look at an online preview of Terrorism: How The West Can Win. [click on Preview at the link].  This is an edited volume and Netanyahu introduces other speakers at a conference, so these excerpt probably cannot be directly attributed to Netanyahu.  But he has organized this conference and invited the presenters.  Netanyahu edited the book and presumably decided what went in and what didn't. [And we'll see later that this sentiments reappear in the current crisis.]  

The book ignores the idea of terrorism being the last resort of an oppressed people who have no legal way to protest their condition or change it.  Rather it is Civilization versus the Savages.  He quotes Gibbons of the fall of the Roman Empire 

Then he goes on to say that the same dynamic is happening today - civilization vs. the savages.  

This is the language that Europeans used to justify conquering non-Christian lands in the 16 and 1700s.  It's how the US government justified removing Native Americans from their land and killing those who resisted.  And one might argue, how the current Israeli government seems to treat Palestinians in the West Bank as they confiscate their property to make room for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

I don't know what Netanyahu says about the Jewish terrorists who fought against the British occupiers of Palestine in the first half of the 20th Century.  The deadly bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 was organized by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  The book preview does include the index which does list   "King David Hotel Incident on page 45", but the preview on line doesn't go to page 45. In fact it has no page numbers.  He specifically rejects the idea that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."  But what about the Colonists who threw tea into Boston Harbor, or Ho Chi Minh who fought the French and then the Americans to free Vietnam from colonial rule?  

Netanyahu has also  been the subject of criminal prosecutions and huge public demonstrations against his weakening of the judicial branch of government.  Some have argued that pursuing this war is a way for Netanyahu to distract the nation from his legal problems.

It would be interesting to know the relationship between Netanyahu and Henry Kissinger about whom Netanyahu Netanyahu said we "have known one another for 'many years,'”  They seem to be kindred spirits.  

"Kissinger believed in power and disdained abstract ideas about progress, fraternity, democracy and freedom, ideas that America disseminates around the world. In his 1994 book “Diplomacy,” he justified national interests as the desired basis of foreign policy, calling on American leaders not to abandon this even after winning the Cold War.

His approach was congruent with Israel’s foreign policy, which since the days of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion believes in force while harboring deep reservations about international institutions and norms such as human rights and weapons control. That is why the harsh criticism of Kissinger by the left as the person directly responsible for mass murder, atrocities in Cambodia, Laos and Chile, Bangladesh and Timor, and for the bloody and needless prolongation of the Vietnam War, is heard in Israel only among a small circle of anti-American leftists."  (from Haaretz)

My sense of Netanyahu is that he is an absolutist on Arabs and terrorists and sees the civilian deaths resulting from the bombing of Gaza are, in his mind, completely justifiable as he attempts to rid Israel of terrorists.  

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

I don't want to go through the history of anti-semitism here.  Go to the link if you need a briefing.  I mention it here only to say that the reactions to the Israeli-Gaza war are aggravated by the latent pool of historic anti-semitism that persists in the world today.  

Further we have the conflation of Israeli, Jew, and Zionist.  And the assumption many have of Israelis, of non-Israeli Jews, and Zionists being a unified organism that all support Netanyahu's policy of bombing Gaza.  Each of the groups has divisions and groups who support and oppose, to varying degrees, the bombing.  

It's easy for people who know little or nothing of other countries to group all the people as being united.  But just as the United States has many divisions, so do all other countries. 

I mention this because there are people with strong opinions about the war who really have little or no experience with or understanding of the many different types of Jews or Israelis, who know nothing about the history of the geography and politics of the Middle East, particularly the land where Israel is located.  

Many Jews feel - and the current tolerance on the right of Neo-Nazis verify those feelings - that anti-semitism is alive and well today in the world and that no matter what Israel does they will be vilified.  An Orthodox Jew told me once, he didn't care what the world thought, because it didn't matter what Israel did, they would always get blamed.  

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

The details in this section are a little rough, but I think the general point is valid.

The loss of 6 million Jews during WW II, seems to have stirred the world to allow the establishment of a Jewish state in what had been the British held territory in Palestine.  There was a moral high ground that Jews had.  And they managed to tell a story of a people who escaped hell on earth to create the Land of Milk and Honey and the miracle of Making the Desert Bloom.  In 1967, these survivors repelled the attack from various Arab neighbors.  Moshe Dayan was an international hero. 

But things went downhill from there.  I suspect part of the problem was that Israelis wrapped themselves in the story of surviving the Holocaust and slogan "Never Again."  They used these to justify taking Arab property and forcing many Palestinians to flee as protecting themselves from another Holocaust.  And Arabs who refused to acknowledge the right of a State of Israel to exist, gave some legitimacy to this idea.  

But in refusing to become the victims ever again, they slipped into the role of the oppressors in the West Bank and Gaza.  There's enough fault on both sides, but using the Holocaust to justify their treatment of Arabs to the world and to themselves, meant that they began losing the PR war among the rest of the world.

[Update - January 19, 2024, I found this comment today in an article by Nurit Elhanan of Hebrew University:

"The only thing that unites the antagonistic Jewish ethnic groups in Israel is fear of the enemy and the quest for a Jewish national 'purity' along with the belief only a Jewish majority and a strong Jewish army can prevent another Holocaust, this time perpetrated by the Palestinians or other Muslim powers, such as Iran." [emphasis added]

So, this is the end of Part I.  Part II is now (1/21/24) up.   Part III is now done.  Still more parts will appear soon.  

New Speaker, Quick Show Of Bi-Partisanship, But Don't Hold Your Breath

 I try not to write about things getting saturation coverage if I don't think I have some insight no one else has shared.  Furthermore, I've been advised by people who care about me, not to put a target on my back by writing about Israel.  

But the House finally getting a speaker followed by an immediate, overwhelming bi-partisan vote to support Israel is too much to pass up.  [I began this Thursday evening.  Reviewing this draft on Friday, it's clear discussing Johnson AND Israel in one post, while an admirable goal since they are related, is beyond what I can expect any readers to endure.  So let's just focus in this post on Johnson's speech.] [Quotes are from the transcript at REV.com]

Johnson's speech

1.  The amount of time he spoke about religion and how he spoke about it is troubling, but given his background, not surprising.

"I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She’s not here, we [is 'we' her preferred pronoun?] couldn’t get a flight in time. This happened sort of suddenly, but we’re going to celebrate soon. She spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord and she’s a little worn out, we all are."

Truly, I have no idea if he was being serious about her being literally on her knees in prayer for two weeks or he was just being metaphorical to make his point.  At the time of the speech, I took it literally.  Now I'm not so sure.  I suspect his fellow Baptists didn't even notice anything unusual in this phrasing.

Later in his speech he said, 

"I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a matter like this. I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us, and I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment in this time."

Where to even start?  

A.  Given all the evil leaders the world has seen, this isn't much of a recommendation for God's choices.  But it would help explain why his wife might have been praying so fervently for two weeks - she was trying to get God to promote her husband.  

B.  And, of course, there's the oft pointed out contradiction between the professed beliefs of Christians and their support of the past president's thoroughly un-Christian behavior and life.  I know they would tell us "God works in mysterious ways" but that doesn't cut it for me.  Especially since those folks who display the most Christlike behavior - helping the poor, the outcasts, the strangers etc. -. are so roundly condemned by Evangelical Christians.  

A good portion of the rest of the speech also focused on God - how "In God We Trust" got engraved above the rostrum in the House chambers in 1964.  But that should be a reminder that before 1956, "E Pluribus Unum" was the unofficial motto of the US until "In God We Trust" was made the official motto, in the height of the McCarthy hearings and the demonization of the Communist Soviet Union.  These changes don't just happen on their own, but I couldn't quickly find much detail about who lobbied or who funded that lobbying, to make it happen.  But my point is that God wasn't that intimately part of our official national identity until about 150 years after the US' founding.  It wasn't with us from the beginning.  

2.  His apparent isolation from most United States citizens - isolated from other ideas about religion from his own and isolated from citizens who are not members of Congress. 

Sure, he's a member of Congress.  He talks to people who have different views from his, but despite that exposure, he seems either unaware that others might find his words jarring, or he simply believes he has an inside track on Truth and so he speaks what he thinks.  

Let's reintroduce his comment about his wife being on her knees for two weeks paying here.  

A.  While I understand there are probably millions of US citizens who might relate to this physical demonstration of one's belief in God's intervention in our daily lives, there are just as many of us, probably more,  for whom being on our knees praying for several weeks is not part of our life experience.   

I looked for specific data on this.  The Pew Trust has very detailed data on who prays daily, but it's too detailed for my purposes. I wanted something to compare religious believers who pray daily to others who never pray.  But going through the Pew charts,  I was a bit surprised to see that  Democrats pray daily almost as frequently (40%) as Republicans (42%).  That people who believe homosexuality should be accepted pray daily more (49%) than people who think it shouldn't (42%).  But I couldn't find methodology for that specific survey to find out how  'pray daily' was defined.  Was it left up to the respondents? Did it include a quick "Dear God, help me pass this test"?  Did it mean a daily prayer at dinner? A communal  ritual prayer in a synagogue, or at a Buddhist shrine, or five times a day facing Mecca, or in a church?  Or all of those things?  I couldn't find an answer.

B.  Another brief comment he made, that on the face of it, might seem benign or even a positive sign, was this: 

"I want to thank our children, Michael and Hannah and Abby and Jack and Will. All of our children sacrifice, all of them do and we know that and there’s not a lot of perks to being a member of Congress’ kid, right?"

I think thanking our children for the burdens we put on them is a very important thing to do regularly.  But when you have just become the head of one of the most powerful bodies of the US government (and thus the world)  and you're speaking to the nation, this is really an example of privilege and deafness to the rest of the population.  

"Not a lot of perks to being a member of Congress' kid."  I get it.  Their congressional parent is away a lot and always busy.  And if he were talking privately to other members of Congress, this would make sense.  But this was a speech to the world.

Lots of kids have parents who work long hours.  Have single parents.  Have no parents.  I imagine that Congress members' kids get a hell of a lot more perks than most kids get.  Especially in the current economy in the US where the divide between the very rich and everyone else has become so great.  Especially when conservatives are passing laws to require kids to bear the babies of their (often related) rapists. And when conservatives like Mike Johnson have tried to make being LGBTQ+ a crime.

That Johnson said this in a speech like this, tells me he doesn't understand how the vast majority of people in this country live. 

3.  On a more positive note, he also said this:  

"We stand at a very dangerous time, I’m stating the obvious. We all know that the world is in turmoil, but a strong America is good for the entire world. We are the beacon of freedom and we must preserve this grand experiment in self-governance. It still is. We’re only 247 years into this grand experiment. We don’t know how long it will last, but we do know that the founders told us to take good care of it."

At a time when many of us see the reelection of the former president as the end of US democracy, it's good to hear this.  But hearing it from the lips of an extreme conservative who voted against confirming Biden's election, and who has that ex-president's support, makes me question what he meant by this.  

A.  Does he define democracy the way I do?  He's a conservative Christian, former state legislature, from a state whose legislature was told to fix their gerrymandered voting districts and they refused.  It took the US Supreme Court to compel the changes. [And double checking this now, I see that all the Congressional chaos, plus the Israeli-Hamas war, has pushed to the background new developments in the Lousiana gerrymandering case -  that just last week the 5th Circuit has delayed this action further.

Does he have a different definition of democracy than I have?  Reports on his past statements tell us that belief in God is more important than the US Constitution. A Politico interview today reports: 

"Johnson has said that [David] Barton’s ideas and teachings have been extremely influential on him, and that is essentially rooting him in this longer tradition of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism essentially posits the idea that America is founded on God’s laws, and that the Constitution is a reflection of God’s laws. Therefore, any interpretation of the Constitution must align with Christian nationalists’ understanding of God’s laws. Freedom for them means freedom to obey God’s law, not freedom to do what you want. So really, Christian supremacy and a particular type of conservative Christianity is at the heart of Johnson’s understanding of the Constitution and an understanding of our government."

B.  Is this all a well rehearsed performance to appear to be the polite new leader who will welcome all to work through our issues?  Or is it just a cover for a far right religious radical who is now the leader of the US House of Representatives?  

I'm inclined to think it is just a cover.  But while Johnson has managed to keep out of the spotlight up until now, all the world's spotlights are shining brightly on him.  And the internet means everything he's ever publicly said in the past will be blown up and examined in detail.  It's already begun.  

And if the Republicans had a rare show of unity Wednesday when they elected Johnson to be Speaker, is it going to last?  The rules that allowed one member to call for ousting the Speaker are still in place.   One objector with four other GOP supporters could overthrow Johnson the way Gaetz overthrew McCarthy.  But for the moment the GOP house thugs appear happy with Johnson.  

The Democrats will clearly make Johnson a poster boy when they campaign to put Democrats back in the majority of the House of Representatives.   

Overall his speech, was just under 20 minutes and you can watch and listen to it here. 

 

"It's been two months since I blogged. Considering that I am . . ."

From Ursula LeGuin's No Time To Spare:

"It's been two months since I blogged.  Considering that I am on the eve of my eighty-fifth birthday, and that anyone over seven-five who isn't continuously and conspicuously active is able to be considered dead, I thought I should make some signs of life.  Wave from the grave, as it were.  Hello, out there!  How are things in the Land of Youth?  Here in the Land of Age they are rather weird."

While for me, it's only been four days, and I still have daylight between now and 85, I am over 75 and don't want to be considered dead yet.  

For years and years I blogged pretty much daily.  And when I'm engaged in an important story (say Redistricting) blogging does take front and center in my life still.  But I've also given myself permission to take days off.  But don't want to have too many blank pages here.

So here's a list of other distractions:

1.  Technical - Getting photos from my phone to my laptop stopped working

I thought I'd conquered this, but the AirDrop stopped working again and the original fix didn't stick. Photos are an important part of this blog (at least for me).  Monday, when we went for a hike, I took along my bigger Canon so I could use the memory card to get the pictures onto my MacBook.  After two photos the battery stopped working.  

So I reverted back to the phone.  I'd find a way.  I figured I could upload the pictures to Blogspot (the blog site I'm using) on my phone. Easy Peasy.  But I couldn't.  I googled.  Here's what I found on google support::  (Google bought Blogspot long ago as well as other independent apps I've used for the blog)

"If your photo is on your phone, it is probably in Apple Photos. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no direct upload from Photos to Blogger. You must therefore export the image to your phone as a jpg. Then you can upload it into Blogger using the "from device" option in the Blogger post editor.

I do not know how to export the image to your phone as a jpg. But once you copy it into Blogger, you can delete the jpg file."

Or on Apple discussions

"iPhoto pictures no longer upload to Blogger with Mojave 10.14.6 update installed"

I've been thinking I might need to get a more current iPhone and even upgrade my laptop (it's about nine years old and the letters on six keys are no longer readable), but I have pulled out my old Canon Powershot and I'll use that until then.  It has a memory card I can insert into my laptop.  But as I think about it, I'm sure the newer laptops no longer have a spot to insert a memory card.  

2.  Other things - Reading online

Twitter and Spoutible - Despite everything, Twitter still alerts me to important items of (I hate to use this term because it's so overused) 'breaking' news, particularly Anchorage and Alaska related things.  Mainly because I've been careful to pick who I follow, I don't get a lot of garbage tweets. But as Twitter goes X-tinct,  Spoutible is getting more 'useful' Spouters (useful here meaning people who put up things I want to hear about) but I'm still getting too many "Hope you all are doing great this morning!" Spouts.  There's nothing wrong with them, but that's not why I'm on Spoutible.  

Spoutible also got its Android app up and then a couple of weeks later the IOS app was ready.  I downloaded it, but I couldn't type in the login info.  My keyboard didn't work.  Their announcements had said that the iPhone 7 still had some problems, so I deleted it.  When I downloaded it again a few days ago, I could log in.  But the keyboard doesn't work when I try to reply or to Spout.  

I've put Twitter and Spoutible under Reading.  I spend way too much time on these apps.  They were supposed to give me tips for blog posts (and they do) as well as back up information I can use to support my arguments on the blog.  But they are also addictive.  It's like fishing or slot machines, you're always hoping the next one will be good, and enough are, that you keep casting or putting more money in, when you should just walk away.  

3.  Other things - Reading books

I've got the following three books that I'm actively working on:

Boy, I didn't realize how relatively poor the images are on the Canon Powershot compared to my phone.  Demon Copperhead is for my September book club meeting (but I thought it was for August so I started it because it's long). No Time to Spare is the August book.  It's essays Le Guin wrote late in life (as the quote at the beginning of this post suggests) and so far it's focusing on being old.  She's not sugar-coating things.  Blowback is by Miles Taylor, a Republican who worked as a high level Homeland Security appointee in the Trump administration and is using the book to warn people about how crazy Trump is and the kinds of things to be expected in a second Trump administration.  Because Trump wanted to do them (and in some cases did) during his presidency.  But this time, Taylor warns, Trump and the conservative interests that back him, are better organized to make them happen.  Basically like establishing a Fascist regime supporting the wealthy and making life harder for everyone else, particularly those who aren't white, Christian, heterosexual men.  

As I figure out ways I can contribute to protecting democracy in the 2024 election, books like this give me facts to convince non-voters why they need to vote. Non-voters are the key.  But I'm not giving up on Trumpers either though that's time spent doing more work for smaller gains.  

But while people say the hard core Trump supporters are a cult, immune to reason and reality, I know that people leave cults all the time.  Cult-Escape is just one of many websites (not necessarily the best) for people thinking about getting out.  I also know that the Trump cult is reinforced by trolls who spew out misinformation at high volume, whether they do it on their own, for money, or with the support of foreign governments.  They exaggerate the number of people who support the Trump world of lies.  

There are several other books, newspapers that tempt me away from the blog (all in the guise of keeping me informed and giving me material for the blog.)

3.  Other things - local events

I listened in on the Alaska Board of Education hearings on a policy to ban transgender girls from girls sports. (You can find the written testimony here, here, here, here, and here.) While I have lots to say, the anti-ban crowd made many good arguments I don't have to duplicate.  

But what no one mentioned (while I listened in anyway) was the fact that the Board began the meeting with a Christian prayer that ended with "in Jesus' name."  

Here's a government board, holding a public hearing on a policy that is being heavily pushed by Christian Nationalists (and other Christians who would legitimately reject the Nationalist part) and beginning with a Christian prayer, that excludes those who are agnostic or atheists, and members of religions that do not worship Jesus Christ.  I can only think of two reasons for this:

1. To show their power to add their religion into their governmental function - that they can get away with this
2. Because they are so sheltered from the non-Christian world that they don't realize how offensive this is to people who don't see the world the way they do.  

(A PEW Trust study copyrighted in 2021 found that 37% of Alaskans identify as in religions other than Christianity or no religion. That's more than 1/3.  Under 

"Frequency of participation in prayer, scripture study or religious education groups among adults in Alaska"

fully 69% responded "seldom or never.")

If the Board is so out of touch with people who are not devout Christians that they can open this public meeting with a Christian prayer, imagine how out of touch they are with transgender youth!  This is not a representative body of Alaskans making this decision.  Even the Alaska legislature rejected this and the Governor has now asked a body that he's (mostly) personally appointed to do what the people's elected representatives wouldn't do.  

OK, so that by itself is a synopsis of a blog post I've been thinking about.  

There was also Juneteenth and Gay Pride which I didn't post about because I couldn't easily get my photos up.  

4.  Other things - biking and the garden

I took my bike in for a service yesterday.  There's a regular clank sound every time my right pedal is forward. It's been about four years and I've ridden it a lot (for an old man anyway) each summer. As of yesterday I've biked 762 km (473 miles) since April.  Last year my goal was 1000km which I passed and I'm well on my way to doing the same this summer.  I put it down here only because it takes up about five or six hours a week.  But mentally the biking is good for my blogging.  

Reviewing this before posting I realize I left out the gardening part.  I'll just say my favorite gardening book is No Work Garden.  Much of the hill in our backyard is natural - birch, alder, high bush cranberry and other local fauna.  We've focused on perennials which come back on their own. And the front lawn, much to the chagrin of our neighbors (though they've come to accept it over the years) is clover right now along with rock garden perennials along the sidewalk.  Gardening enthusiasm is highest in the spring when the snow is gone and things start poking out of the earth.  I have put in hours of weeding and thinning, and I do just enjoy wandering the yard to see all the daily surprises.  

5.  Other things - Netflix

We're currently juggling The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, Suits, Friday Night Lights, and random other movies or short series that some variety.  After watching several seasons of Suits I've concluded we would all be much better off if we had script writers to help us with our day-to-day interactions.  

Netflix takes a toll in my blog writing time.  

6.  Other things - Tutoring English

One of the more delightful activities this spring and summer has been tutoring a Ukrainian refugee in Ketchikan in English.  His English is good enough to communicate what he needs to say, but we're adding vocabulary, pronunciation (both sounds and sentence rhythms), grammar, and cultural nuances.  We were paired by Catholic Social Services' Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service (RAIS) and it's a great match, pedagogically and personally.  We tend to have a good time even though I work him hard.  Planning lessons and actually doing the lessons take up four to eight hours a week, depending on if we meet once or twice a week.  Twice a week is the norm.  

There are other things as well - the general maintenance people have to do in their lives, paying bills, getting things cleaned and repaired, getting and preparing food (fortunately, my wife has done the lion's share of this in recent years in part because she's not that excited about my cooking), and I'm sure you can add to the list.  

But I'm committed to writing here on important topics.  But I must say, that the local political and legal events I spent so much time on in previous years are being better covered by others now.  Twitter has been a big addition there as well as more local reporters covering events.  That just wasn't the case back in 2006 when I started blogging.  And it took me a while to jump from more mundane blogging to more public affairs blogging.  

Have a good weekend.  We're having more sun and warmth than we did earlier this summer.  But compared to much of the world, the weather has been very comfortable and the air quality good.  

AIFF2022 - Saturday Review - Big Crow and White Crows and More

[After sleeping on this, I've added a few thoughts on Crows are White.  They are [bracketed]].

Got to the museum a little late (gave up trying for the 10am Children's program) and there was nothing showing in the auditorium.  They'd had a glitch and so we got to see most of Big Crow.  A lot of amateur footage, but it was edited together to tell a powerful story about a young woman who took her Pine Ridge reservation team to win the state championship.  Her death soon after brough lots of folks together and inspired lots of improvements for the reservation and relations off reservation.  Sad but inspiring.  

I was going to post a few short posts, but then the wifi no longer worked.  (Later I found out I could get it in the museum, but it was spotty in the auditorium.  

And I got hijacked by Crows Are White and I want to focus on that movie, but first a quick overview of the rest of the day, which all took place in the museum. 

The woman collecting the audience ratings of the films said that the morning kids program, really was very dark and the only thing kid about it, possibly, was that it was animated shorts.  

Big Crow I wrote about above.  I liked it.  

Then came three shorts made in Alaska.  The first Sabor Artico: Latinos en Alaska was about Latinos in Alaska.  Interesting, but not exceptional film making.  

Safe Enough  was a about the Sitka summer arts camp and highlighted a number of the young artists attending.  The theme seemed to be that this was a safe space where these artistic teens could actually be themselves and explore who they were.  It was safe, unlike the world they binomially live in.  It was uplifting, except that this escape only lasted two weeks.  I couldn't help thinking that it shouldn't be so hard to envision communities where people who had unique talents could feel comfortable.  And then I thought about how most people are just better able to conform, but that they too are denying who they really are to fit in.  A film that stimulates you to move your understanding of things further is, in my book, a good film.

And the third short in this program, Kakińiik was by Patrick Hoffman whom I spoke to and whose video I put up before I went to bed last night.  It's always tricky when you interview someone before you see their film.  Sometimes the film doesn't work for you and you have this connection, albeit short, with the film maker.  But that wasn't a problem in this case.  This was a beautiful film, made up of a series of talks by women getting traditional Inupiat tattoos and how the tattoos connect them to their ancestors and their culture.  There are also a couple of vignettes by the tattoo artist - talking about the styles of tattoos, traditional food and its relation to doing tattoos, and her own thigh tattoos.  Each vignette is preceded by a stylized screen, which confused some of us in the audience the first time who weren't sure if this was the end.  It wasn't.  And we weren't fooled the next time either.  It was like a book with several chapters separated by this artful page.  

Then we got to Crows are White, which swept me away.  Spoiler Alert:  I'm going to write about the film in ways that assume the reader has either seen it or won't be able to see it.  But in another way, it's the film itself that is what is so enjoyable and thought provoking and what I write shouldn't change that experience.

This was a film done in the style of a This American Life piece, with a narrator outlining the project and how things proceed throughout.   The filmmaker, Ahsen Nadeem, narrates in a voice and tone not unlike Ira Glass, but the story he's pursuing, turns out to be his own. There are so many aspects of this film that are both amazing and bizarre.  People who are noble and flawed.  The photography was exquisite as was the music. 

Crows AreWhite refers to a story someone tells about a monk who tells his disciples that crows are white, and while they all know this isn't true, they cannot contradict the monk.  They must say, yes, crows are white.  

My take is that the film is about people being forced to deal with contradictions to their understanding of how the world works.  Ahsen's basic contradiction is that he's fallen in love with a non-Muslim and he knows his parents will disown him if he marries her.  But we don't know this until after we've been set up to believe there are more general spiritual issues he's pursuing rather than answers to his very personal dilemma.  [A film version of the guy climbing the rocky mountain to ask the monk on top the meaning of life.]

Another contradiction is that as a Muslim, he searches for answers from a Buddhist monk.  But he learns that the head monk, Kamahori, he wants to pose his questions to has taken a vow of silence.  And these monks are the ultramarathoners of Buddhist monks.  They take a vow to walk a certain distance every day (something like 20 kilometers) and they have to do this until they've walked the equivalent of walking the circumference of the world.  And part of the vow is that if they miss a day, they have to commit suicide. 

Ahsen himself comes across as sincere and disarming not unlike ira Glass. But when you think about it, he's also so full of himself that he thinks he has the right to interrupt the lives of monks in this Japanese monastery with his film crew and persistence in trying to meet with the head monk.  He gets kicked out when his cell phone rings during a secret ceremony they've allowed him to film. [But you can also ask why did the monks give him permission to film them in the first place?  They are supposed to be focused on enlightenment and to not care about what others think. To indulge him?  To spread Buddhist wisdom? To get publicity for the monastery? To increase their income?]

That's when he meets Ryushin, a monk assigned to greet visitors and answer questions in the monastery gift shop.  Ryushin is probably the most honest and likable character in the movie.  And his life dilemma is not unlike Ahsen's.  His father and grandfather had been important monks at this monastery, but he really would rather be a sheep farmer in New Zealand, he thinks.  But while he professes to be unhappy, he doesn't obsess on the contradictions.  Yes, he's a monk, but he takes a drink now and then, loves ice cream, and goes to heavy metal concerts.  

Another character who is relatively normal is Ahsen's girlfriend and later wife.  I particularly cheered when she questioned Ahsen's taking cameras in to film his parents when he tells them he's been married to a non-Muslim for three years.  Seems crass to her. But she understands that this is necessary to complete the film he's spent so much time on.  

This could have been a mockumentary - a fictional documentary spoofing documentaries.  [Part of me was wondering if it was while I was watching and hoping it was.] But all the contradictions and conflicts between what people ought to do and what they really do and how they reconcile it is what makes this such a good movie.  And, of course the beautiful cinematography and the unexpected but perfect music. 

Everything together works to make this an outstanding film. 

And up through this point of the festival, all the films were about people who didn't quite fit in the societies they lived in - the nomads in Friday nights Last Birds of Passage, the Lakota reservation girls gaining self confidence and pride through basketball, the Latinos in Alaska, the campers in Sitka, and the Inupiat women regaining their heritage through traditional tattoos.

A Body Is a House of Familiar Rooms

The afternoon shorts program didn't impress me.  The one film that stood out - The Body Is A House Of Familiar Rooms  - did so because of the colors and patterns that were so striking. 

Also the paper programs are now available.  Here's the Sunday schedule.

And finally, there's You Resemble Me which rounded out the night and I'm still processing that one.  My biggest difficulty was subtitles when they weren't on dark backgrounds.  A truly heartbreaking film of Arab refugee sisters put into foster homes with a disastrous result in one case.  

A Lesson In Simple People Power From Sweden, Late 1800s

The Story of Gósta Berling by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlof is the story of people in rural Sweden in the late 1800s.  People deal with evil spirits and the word of God, the beauty and the dangers of nature, and the challenges of making a living in the northern regions of earth.  There are rich people and poor, good and evil, hard workers and lazy.  

It shouldn't be surprising how much human beings then and there are like people here and now.  

The villagers have walked out at the end of the Sunday services in the local church.   Their protest is quiet and simple and effective.  A lesson for us today to think of ways to creatively make our protests known. 

This excerpt takes place in a later chapter called The Drought.  It's late summer and there has been no rain since June.  Crops are dying, forest fires are burning.  People are getting desperate.  All are questioning if it is their behavior that has caused God to withhold the rain.  

"It was a Sunday in August. The service was over. The people wandered in groups along the sunny roads. On all sides they saw burned woods and ruined crops. There had been many forest fires; and what they had spared, insects had taken.  

The gloomy people did not lack for subjects of conversation. There were many who could tell how hard it had been in the years of famine of eighteen hundred and eight and nine, and in the cold winter of eighteen hundred and twelve, when the sparrows froze to death. They knew how to make bread out of bark, and how the cows could be taught to eat moss.

There was one woman who had tried a new kind of bread of cranberries and corn-meal. She had a sample with her, and let the people taste it. She was proud of her invention.

But over them all floated the same question. It stared from every eye, was whispered by every lip: “Who is it, O Lord, whom Thy hand seeks?”

A man in the gloomy crowd which had gone westward, and struggled up Broby hill, stopped a minute before the path which led up to the house of the mean Broby clergyman. He picked up a dry stick from the ground and threw it upon the path.  

“Dry as that stick have the prayers been which he has given our Lord,” said the man.

He who walked next to him also stopped. He took up a dry branch and threw it where the stick had fallen.

“That is the proper offering to that priest,” he said.

The third in the crowd followed the others’ example.

“He has been like the drought; sticks and straw are all that he has let us keep.”

The fourth said: “We give him back what he has given us.”

And the fifth: “For a perpetual disgrace I throw this to him. May he dry up and wither away like this branch!”

“Dry food to the dry priest,” said the sixth.

The people who came after see what they are doing and hear what they say. Now they get the answer to their long questioning.

“Give him what belongs to him! He has brought the drought on us.”

And each one stops, each one says his word and throws his branch before he goes on.

In the corner by the path there soon lies a pile of sticks and straw,—a pile of shame for the Broby clergyman.

That was their only revenge. No one lifted his hand against the clergyman or said an angry word to him. Desperate hearts cast off part of their burden by throwing a dry branch on the pile. They did not revenge themselves. They only pointed out the guilty one to the God of retribution."

“If we have not worshipped you rightly, it is that man’s fault. Be pitiful, Lord, and let him alone suffer! We mark him with shame and dishonor. We are not with him.

It soon became the custom for every one who passed the vicarage to throw a dry branch on the pile of shame.

The old miser soon noticed the pile by the roadside. He had it carried away,—some said that he heated his stove with it. The next day a new pile had collected on the same spot, and as soon as he had that taken away a new one was begun.

The dry branches lay there and said: “Shame, shame to the Broby clergyman!”

Soon the people’s meaning became clear to him. He understood that they pointed to him as the origin of their misfortune. It was in wrath at him God let the earth languish. He tried to laugh at them and their branches; but when it had gone on a week, he laughed no more. Oh, what childishness! How can those dry sticks injure him? He understood that the hate of years sought an opportunity of expressing itself."

The book's copyright is long over and you can read the book at Gutenberg.org or you can listen to a Swede reading it in English at the Internet Archive here.   This chapter is Part II, Chapter XVI.

Back Home - Random Bits

Flying north to Anchorage from Seattle on a summer night is always cool.  It has been a while since we've done it.  It was dark and definitely night when the plane finally took off at 10pm.  But soon there was a distant twilight visible on the northern horizon.  

Here's what it looked like just before landing at 12:15 am.  

TSA & Masks

When we left Anchorage last week, NONE of the TSA people at the Anchorage Airport was wearing a mask.  When we left Seattle last night, EVERY TSA worker was wearing a mask.  Not sure what that means.  Is the difference the location?  Is the difference the timing?  Don't know.

Houseboats

We had late lunch yesterday with a friend who lives on a houseboat in Seattle.  It was like being allowed into some secret community hidden from the world.  I understand that other Seattle houseboat enclaves are more visible to the outside world, but this one is small and tucked away out of view from most.  To actually get down to the boats, you need a key to open the gate.  

A relatively few people in the world live on houseboats.  When I googled to find out how many, there were only two links that discussed number of houseboats at all in the first few pages.  Most seem to be more commercial posts that I'm guessing pay Google to get them to the top.  They're more on topics like "Everything You Need to Know About Living On A Houseboat" or how to rent a houseboat.  A 2014 Smithsonian piece says 10,000 Londoners live on the water.  But remember that's people, not boats, and London's population is over 8.5 million. A 2021 Seattle Met link says there are only 215 legal houseboats in Seattle.  Statista has a graph of number of houseboats sold in the US from 2004 to 2013.  There was a almost steady decline from 550 to 70.  

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we sat on the deck as we chatted and dined.  

Blogging Post Ideas I'm Thinking About

• What does 'privilege' mean?  How is it different from a right?  Are there factors that deserve 'privilege' or does it then become something other than a privilege?  When if privilege legitimate, when not?  How does the nature of the person/organization that grants privilege make a difference?  Lots to explore here.  I think because people have started using 'privilege' in new ways, so the original meaning is being distorted.  Does/should intelligence give one privilege?  Money?  Force?   If so, when and how?

• When does talking about ending democracy move from free speech rights to treason?  Does advocacy of taking way other people's rights a legitimate form of free speech?  If yes, are there any limits?  If no, why not?

• The Christian brand.  To my knowledge, there's no trademark or copyright protection for terms relating to Christianity*.  This has led to people with widely differing beliefs and behaviors claiming to be Christian.  I would argue that the Christian brand has been appropriated by various people and groups, whose words and actions are contrary to what 'true Christians' believe.  Think about the people in the United States who claim to be Christian - church leaders and followers, politicians, judges, business owners - who claim to be "Christian" yet behave in ways that are very different from commonly believed Christian values such as 

Some of the main themes that Jesus taught, which Christians later embraced, include:

• Love God.
• Love your neighbor as yourself.
• Forgive others who have wronged you.
• Love your enemies.
• Ask God for forgiveness of your sins.
• Jesus is the Messiah and was given the authority to forgive others.
• Repentance of sins is essential.
• Don’t be hypocritical.
• Don’t judge others.
• The Kingdom of God is near. It’s not the rich and powerful—but the weak and poor—who will inherit this kingdom.  (From History.com)

If there were a trademark for Christianity that was held by people whose behavior followed these beliefs, could sue people who claim to be Christians but who don't behave as Christians.   

*There is legal advice available for how and when Churches can get Trademark protection.  But would suing a Ted Cruz or a Mitch McConnell itself be a Christian thing to do?  Probably more so than telling your followers to vote for them.

• What is a reasonable amount of money for a redistricting board to spend?  Redistricting is mandated by the US Constitution (Sec 1, Art 2)  and by state constitutions (see, for example, Alaska Constitution Article 6).  But how much should it cost?  Does anyone care?  Who's keeping track?  What are the incentives to save or to spend?  

" . . . his father remembered a time when the dead person was carefully wrapped in birchbark and then fixed high in a tree."

 

I'm going to offer you the chapter "Cradle to Grave" from Louise Erdich's The Night Watchman. As I read it my body absorbed, in a new way, the meaning of the Anglo rulers rooting out the traditions, language, and knowledge of indigenous peoples.  And I realized that the GOP and evangelical Christian advocates of rooting out any mention of LGBTQ realities, women's rights, or the true history of the United States, of slavery, or even scientific truths,  rises from the same need to maintain one's own 'truths' by eliminating any competing 'truths.'

Stamping out other knowledge leads to ignorance which leads to total obedience.  Or so these would be tyrants believe. but the human mind has always  been resistant to these attempts.  Though the technology of modern marketing chips away and there are humans who would like to possess technology that controls what others know and think.  

Not only does such annihilation of ideas create obedience to "the one Truth" it delegitimizes the knowledge of the other culture.  This passage also shows us what we lose when we wipe out other cultural knowledge.  

My apologies to Louise Erdrich for quoting such a long passage.  This blog takes no ads and raises no money.  My hope is to share your wisdom and possibly get more people to read your book.  

"Thomas worked on the grave house while Wood Mountain finished up the cradle board.  They were working in Louie's barn because he had all of the tools - the saws, planes, rasps, the splitter, vise, hammer, and the sanding rocks.  Neither of them spoke.  Thomas was using a sharp chisel to dovetail the ends of the boards.  He didn't like using nails in a grave house.  He made a few rafters for the roof and then planed out the necessary shingles.  He'd seen them made with tar paper or bought shingles, but he felt close to Zhaanat as he worked - she had asked him to make the grave house because she knew he did it the old way.  Except, Thomas wondered, was this the really old way?  Biboon said that his father remembered a time when the dead person was carefully wrapped in birchbark and then fixed high in a tree.  It seemed better.  You were eaten by crows and vultures instead of worms.  Your body went flying over the earth instead of being distributed to the tiny creatures living under the earth. This grave house probably came about after they had been forced to live in one place, on reservations.  Mostly, they had Catholic burials.  He wanted to ask Wood Mountain which he thought was better, tree or dirt.  However, Wood Mountain was finishing the cradle board. 

"I suppose we shouldn't tell Zhaanat we were making the grave house and cradle board at the same time," he said to Wood Mountain.  

"You think it could be bad for the baby?"

"I'm not superstitious," said Thomas, although he certainly was.  Just not as bad as LaBatte with his fear of owls and his reading of random omens in everything.  Wood Mountain said that he'd light some sage and bathe the cradle board in the smoke to take the whammy off.

"That'll work," said Thomas. 

From the top of the cradle board, Wood Mountain was using Zhaanat's finest sanding tool - horsetail plant split and glued onto a piece of wood.  It was bringing out the narrow lines in the white cedar.  He had a jar of tea and a jar of vinegar in which he'd left some pennies for a week.  After he'd sanded the wood smooth, he painted the bottom of the cradle board with the tea, which gave it a soft brown color.  He painted the top of the wood with the penny vinegar, which tinged the wood with pale blue including the head guard.  He tied several pieces of sinew to the head guard.  sometimes he found small ocean shells while working in the fields.  Some were whorled;  others were tiny grooved scallops.  He drilled holes in them and hung them from the lengths of sinew. 

"Barnes was saying there used to be an ocean here," he said to Thomas.

"From the endless way-back times."

"Think of it.  Vera's baby will be playing with these little things from the bottom of the sea that was here.  Who could have known?"

"We are connected to the way-back people, here, in so many ways.  Maybe a way-back person touched these shells.  Maybe the little creatures in them disintegrated into the dirt.  Maybe some tiny piece from that creature is inside us now.  We can't know these things."

"Us being connected here so far back gives me a peaceful feeling," said Wood Mountain.

"That's what it's all about," said Thomas.  "And now we're putting another man in the earth.  Maybe a drunk, but he wasn't always a drunk."

"Sometimes when I'm out and around," said Wood Mountain, "I feel like they're with me, those way-back people.  I never talk about it.  But they're all around us.  I could never leave this place."

The United States would be a much healthier and spiritually  richer society today had it not been for the arrogance of white, Christian conquerors who believed they had the right to dispossess the indigenous people of their land and languages and customs.  Or the right to dispossess African slaves of their freedom and their labor.  

But that need for unquestioned power and obedience still lives among many in this nation and in this world.  I have no issue with spirituality and religions that try to guide people to experience their spirituality.  The Bible or Koran and other religious texts as allegory, as fables, that bring people comfort in times of sorrow and decency in times of opportunity, are fine.  But as literal truth to be thoughtlessly obeyed, a religion becomes the tool of authoritarian tyrants and demagogues.  

Trump, among others, gave permission to many to act on these selfish, evil impulses.  We'll get past this, but at great cost.  For those whose lives have been untouched by gun violence or climate change, or racial hatred, your escape is only temporary. Actually we've all been at least indirectly impacted even if we don't realize it.  If we don't overcome the dominance of oil wealth and drastically cut back our use of carbon based products, life will be unbearable for the vast majority of human beings.  And I worry for my grandchildren.

As the passage from The Night Watchman shows, the indigenous peoples of North America had spiritual beliefs and physical skills that kept connected to each other and to the earth for thousands of years.  Knowledge the immigrants from Europe could have benefited from if they hadn't tried to wipe it out.