Rigged Capitalism
Jonathan Kirshner, in the LA Review of Books,reviews Martin Wolf ' s The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Wolf is, to his credit, a lapsed neoliberal who has come to see that the Free Market ™ is a myth, and that the capture of the polity by plutocrats threatens to doom democracy. Kirshner ' s essay is difficult to summarize, as it makes several important, interlocking points. I do think the argument is inadequate to fully explain the devolution of the Republican party into a reality denying cult, but it does at least contribute to our understanding:Economic inequality, on the rise for 50 years, has soared to ever
great...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Source material
Psalm 22* is notable because it is quoted at several points in various gospels in the story of the crucifixion, and also quoted in the Letter to the Hebrews. That some of the events of the crucifixion are actually lifted from a song written some five centuries before it purportedly happened may give believers pause. Specifically:Verse 1, " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? " is quoted in Mark 15:34 and Matthew 2:46, as words Jesus spoke while on the cross. ( אלי אלי למה עזבתני)El í, Elí, láma azavtháni. This is an important passage to Christian theologians. (Of course he would actually have...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler, husband of Moms For Liberty cofounder, accused of sexual battery by alleged menage a trois lover
Please folks, I am totally in agreement that Hamas is an unacceptable threat and that the organization must be neutralized. That does not mean that the Israeli military has the right to indiscriminately massacre civilians. Evidently some of you support genocide, as long as the right people are being exterminated. Yes, yes, at this point it ' s only an allegation, it has not been substantiated. But the headline is irresistible, and we know this happens all the time, from Roy Cohn to Larry Craig to Ted Haggard. The harder these people thump their Bibles and persecute homosexuals, the better the odds that they are exactl...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 2, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Science
Note: I am aware that the charter of Hamas can be construed as racist. I do not defend Hamas. That is beside the point of my recent post. Psalm 19 is interesting for at least two reasons. Verses 5 and 6 were cited by the court in the trial of Galileo, for his heresy of claiming that the earth rotates, and revolves around the sun. The last verse, omitting the words " my rock and my redeemer, " are recited by the priest from the Book of Common Prayer in the Episcopal church. It may be used in other denominations as well, but that ' s the one I ' m familiar with. Psalm 20 is a prayer for victory in war, about ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 29, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Personal Connections
Of the three Palestinian young men who were shot in Vermont two days ago, one is a student at Brown University, where I am on the faculty; one is a student at Haverford College, the " sister " institution of my alma mater, where I spent two summers participating in a theater program and otherwise visited often to see friends; and Trinity College in Hartford, which I have also visited at least twice. They became friends because they all attended a prep school in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Their families thought they would be safer now that they are all in the U.S. So obviously I can relate to them. At their age I was in a ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 28, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Cut and Paste
Psalm 18 is the longest of the psalms, so it ' s the only one you ' ll get today. However, I thought of skipping it because it ' s actually copied from 2 Samuel 22. Since they didn ' t have a Xerox machine there is a word or two different here and there, but it ' s just as possible that this was the original and the song in Samuel is the copy. Anyway, you ' ve certainly forgotten it but you ' ve already read it if you ' ve been with us long enough. It ' s the usual jingoistic, exterminationist violence from the Deuteronomistic history. It ' s not just boasting of winning the civil war over Saul -- it also boasts...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Chaos Machine
That ' s the title of a book by Max Fisher. I ' m only halfway through it but I ' ve already seen plenty. Fisher documents with excruciating detail how so-called social media -- most notably Facebook, YouTube, the application formerly known as Twitter, and TikTok -- use mindless machine learning to hijack some of people ' s natural tendencies and drive them into cesspools of disinformation, extremism, and hatred. The companies that own that own these platforms know full well what is happening but they only care about money and they adamantly refuse to do anything about it. Facebook has literally caused mob viole...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
A bit more on Israel/Palestine
I ' m just going to outsource to Josh Marshall here, this is a bit he shows on his front page so no problem sharing it, although the rest of it is paywalled.In a few recent posts we ’ve discussed the question of whether one
state or two states is the most logical or possible resolution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (You can see my argumenthere.) A few days ago TPM ReaderRC sent me this AprilForeign Affairs article,Israel ’s One-State Reality.
It was written by three scholars at GW and another at the University of
Maryland. The piece was interesting to me because it illustrates a lot
of what the one st...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 23, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Straw men
I got a few comments on my post about gun safety that I didn ' t publish because they attack a straw man. I explicitly, and loudly, at the very beginning, said that I did not have any problem whatsoever with people owning guns. In fact I ' m all for it because the deer population here is out of control. This is also true of the approximately 80% of Americans who favor gun safety laws that are quite similar to the Swiss laws, which are not generally in effect in the U.S. and which the Supreme Court would probably rule to be unconstitutional. The Swiss ban large capacity magazines, automatic weapons and many non-firearm weap...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 22, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Specificity
The next four psalms -- 14 through 17 -- are particular reminders that these were mostly written for specific occasions, in response either to the writer ' s perception of current events, or his personal situation. Actually I don ' t know if any of these might have been composed by women. While it ' s likely that the priesthood had a monopoly on literacy during the time most of these were composed, priests could have served as scribes for others. I note that in Exodus, Miriam leads a female choir and implicitly was the composer of their song. Some are more general assertions of what the writer values moral...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 22, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Okay, Israel and Palestine
I ' ve been circumspect about this, because people hear what they want to hear or think they ' re hearing about it, instead of what people actually say; and they believe what they want to believe. Furthermore, certain truths may not be spoken. ButFintan O ' Toole has said what needs to be said (registration required, though I have a subscription) succinctly and clearly enough that I ' ll take his essay as guidance. First, I ' ll quote his setup:If war is supposed to be the continuation of politics by other means,
Israel ’s assault on Gaza seems to be the continuation by other means of
the absence of politics. It does n...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 20, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: A few shorties
We have some mercifully short psalms on the menu for today, so we can plow through a few of them and work toward getting this over with. These mostly seem to have been written in response to the composer ' s personal circumstances or experience, so they may be theologically suspect. Sometimes God seems to misbehave or get moody.Psalm 10 is the longest of today ' s offerings. It seems to have been written in response to someone -- a chieftan, perhaps, a landlord or a plutocrat of some sort -- oppressing poor people. The writer is essentially complaining that God is allowing this to happen. (My advice: Don ' t waste time com...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 19, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Gunz
It ' s rifle season for deer here in Connecticut, so I ' ve heard at least three or four gunshots today from the woods around my house, two of them followed after a few seconds by another, which would of course be the kill shot. (My property is embedded in state forest, and I ' ve also signed permission for a couple of people to hunt on it.) One thing that these are not, however, is semi-automatic rifle fire. Digby gives a free link to a WaPo article about the effects of AR-15 type weapons, including photos from mass shootings. Many people have chosen not to look at them. It ' s up to you, but the Post is ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 17, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Flunking the vocabulary test
Psalms 7 through 9 contain a few words of uncertain meaning. This serves to remind us that, of course, everything we read is a translation from a language that was long dead at the time the translation was made. Note that modern Hebrew is an attempt to resurrect Biblical Hebrew and of course that means it is also a kind of translation -- what the words mean today cannot really be what they meant in the 5th Century BC because the context is entirely different, and of course many words had to be invented for things that didn ' t exist then. Conversely, many things that did exist then no longer exist, so the words have either...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 15, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Putting people in boxes
I just finished readingThe Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, by Meghan O ' Rourke. She lived for many years with a debilitating illness that went undiagnosed. She ultimately concluded that she had chronic sequelae of Lyme disease, likely complicated by autoimmune and other manifestations that may have been triggered by Lyme disease or possibly just co-occurring coincidentally. In her desperation to find relief, or at least answers, she saw innumerable physicians and other practitioners, ultimately resorting to people with, shall we say, unorthodox ideas who many people -- I included -- would classify as quack...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 13, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
