Matt. 25 and the cult of the individual

The religious wing of the Nazi party is out there furiously doing the dirty work of trying to absolve their government of responsibility for the poor.

Their argument goes, “Yes, Matthew 25 says to take care of the needy. But it’s addressed to individuals, not governments! Demanding that governments use taxes to help the poor is BAD. People can do that on their own.”

A few observations:

1.  Ancient Near East cultures had virtually no concept of the individual. That concept comes from the 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers, and people making this argument are reading the text through an Enlightenment filter. Hardly anything in the Bible is actually addressed to an individual, and none of it was addressed to people who thought of themselves primarily as individuals and only secondarily as group members. That mindset did not exist at the time the text was written.

2.  If you make a rule that says a Bible verse can’t apply to government unless it addresses government directly, you are excluding not just Matthew 25 but virtually the entire New Testament. And that means that governments have no responsibility to acknowledge Christmas or Easter, or the other things you like to whine about — or indeed to give Christians any special consideration whatsoever. (In fact, it’s worse than that: the role of government in both Christmas and Easter, according to the Bible, is to torture and kill people to try to thwart God’s purposes.) To cite another example, the prooftexts that are usually put forth to support anti-abortion arguments have nothing to do with government, so by this logic governments should ignore them.

It is true that only a few scattered verses in the New Testament address members of a government directly. Rather, the New Testament is addressed primarily to people under occupation by a foreign government. Its authors never imagined that Christians would become part of that government, or of any other. The New Testament does indeed fall short as a manual for governments, because governments were never expected to read it. Yet I doubt the proponents of this argument against Matt. 25 would want that same argument used against certain other portions of the Bible, even though that is what consistency would demand. 

3.  The other weakness of this argument is that ignores the many, many verses in the Old Testament that do address governments. These can be found, among other places, in the prophetic writings. It was the job of a prophet to speak truth to power, and the prophets’ books refer to the actions of governments — either the kings of Israel and Judah, or the leaders of the nations who invaded Israel and Judah and took them into exile. So if your claim is that governments can ignore verses that aren’t addressed to them, that claim no longer works when we’re talking about the Old Testament.

And guess what? Old Testament authors frequently wrote about governments’ unjust treatment of the poor. I’m personally retired from prooftexting, so a single quotation will have to do, but trust me, there are more where this came from.

“Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees,
    and the writers who keep writing oppression,
to turn aside the needy from justice
    and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be their spoil,
    and that they may make the fatherless their prey!
What will you do on the day of punishment,
    in the storm which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help,
    and where will you leave your wealth?
Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners
    or fall among the slain.
For all this his anger is not turned away
    and his hand is stretched out still.”

Mic drop.

 

Bye bye, Bill of Rights

The Cheeto Benito regime is on track to shred the entire Bill of Rights, save one phrase from one amendment — and it’s not the one you think.

First Amendment — free speech, free press, free religion, free association, free assembly? Religious freedom has been on thin ice for a while unless you’re the type who worships the Fuhrer right alongside Jesus. And today the Hillbilly Effigy gave the rest of the amendment a good lickin’ with his ol’ hick’ry stick. The regime wants to go after anyone who Said (or even Thought) the Wrong Thing.

Second Amendment — it did come as a bit of a shock to me that the regime is in favor of gun control where transgender people are concerned. But then I remembered that they are Nazis, and, as the 2A crowd will gladly remind you, the Nazis practiced gun control, at least where Jews were concerned.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but current events give the lie to the gun nuts’ assertion that the Second Amendment (a) protects all the other amendments; (b) defends against tyranny. The NRA did make a tiny peep about defending everyone’s right to bear arms, including transgender people. It hasn’t said boo about the attacks on any other constitutional right, and it hasn’t done diddly about the tyrant. 

Third Amendment — admittedly the danger here may not be immediate, but when the Fuhrer sent troops to Los Angeles with no plan for housing them, there was concern that they’d demand what amounted to quartering by, say, taking over a hotel without paying for the rooms. Deployments to other cities will create more opportunities to violate the Third, so we should keep watch.

Fourth Amendment — forget about it. You’ve had no privacy since at least the Patriot Act, and it’s getting worse, not better.

Fifth Amendment — due process is a dead duck and the extrajudicial killings have already begun. More later about this one.

Sixth Amendment — violations of this one are already de rigueur for ICE detainees, and once that is completely normalized, they’ll implement the same treatment for you and me.

Seventh Amendment — The Fuhrer certainly wanted a lot more than $20 from ABC and CBS without a jury trial. And they caved — acted as though the 7th didn’t exist and settled nonsense lawsuits out of court. Failure to assert one’s rights under the 7th surely weakens it.

Eighth Amendment — ask those ICE detainees about cruel and unusual punishment. You’ll get an earful.

Ninth Amendment — a regime that will ignore rights enumerated in the Constitution will also ignore rights that are not. The Ninth is the reason you can claim a right to privacy beyond what’s hinted at in the Fourth. It was important to Roe v. Wade, which the Nazis have already mowed down, and to Griswold v. Connecticut, which they’ll eventually get to after they obliterate Obergefell v. Hodges and Loving v. Virginia.

Tenth Amendment — this regime is all about massive federal overreach, and repeatedly tries to force state governments to give up some of their independence.

To sum up, the Third isn’t currently being violated to my knowledge, but it could easily get in the way of the regime and should not be regarded as safe. The Second and Seventh are in great danger. The others are already toast.

Except.

The one phrase in the Bill of Rights that’s in no danger of going anywhere is the best-known part of the Fifth Amendment:

“nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

Members of this regime could burn up the entire Constitution (and given time, they’re likely to do just that), but when in the end they’re put on trial and called to account, they’re still gonna want to plead the Fifth. So, three cheers for what’s left of the Bill of Rights.

A Cistercian Sister

On the circumference of a cistern
A Cistercian sister sits.
She’s cheerfully chewing chokecherries
And spitting out the pits.

On a stringed Celtic cittern
She assiduously strums
Whilst wistfully she wishes
That the chokecherries were plums.

She’s schlepped out to the cistern
From her Cistercian cloister,
Where the sisters step in silence,
Not a whisper nor a roister.

Taciturnity disgusts her,
So she’s clambered through the brambles--
Now she looks a tattered slattern,
Her skirts a shameful shambles.

Fifteen ferrous frets she fingers
And so stridently she sings
That the bitterns flee her cittern,
Wrens and warblers take their wings.

Any humans within hearing
Would certainly have hissed her,
This Cistercian cistern-sitting
Celtic cittern-strumming sister.

Suddenly she ceases singing
And she gasps in consternation:
A chokecherry she was chewing
Has fulfilled its appellation.

Were the cloister somewhat closer,
Then those nuns who won’t palaver
Might hear two successive splashes:
Chordophone and then cadaver.

This unfortunate, stentorian,
Chokecherry-chewing sister
Sinks with her cittern in the cistern
With no one to assist her.

So mind the maestro’s maxim:
It’s unbearably uncouth
To sing, in choir or solo,
With something in your mouth.

Messin' with the kid

Since my Facebook account went poof ... 

Someone used my Amazon account to order a couple of Apple watches to be sent to an Amazon locker in Bremerton, WA. 

Someone changed the phone number on my eBay account and used it to list both a Ford F150 and a John Deere mini-excavator for sale. 

Someone changed the language setting on my LinkedIn account to Chinese. 

I've performed virus scans on all my devices including my phone and come up empty. I admit I'm guilty of using the same login information on multiple sites, so my working theory is that someone obtained that login info from a data breach and tried it in multiple locations. The effect thus far is more on the prankster/annoyance level than the serious cybercrime level. But still. 

I spent some time the other day changing passwords that Google told me were "weak" and trying to make sure the stolen password is no longer in use on any of my accounts. 

But all of this makes me think there's a chance the same person got into my Facebook account and posted something untoward that triggered the algorithm to shut it down. And that goes far beyond the annoyance level. 

I've sent email to three different Facebook addresses to try to get a human being to look at the account. Thus far, crickets. 

A lesson in humility

 If something goes wrong, assume it was your fault. It saves time.

The Obsolete Man

 

What happened to blogging? Facebook, that's what. Facebook is certainly the reason I've barely touched this blog for 15 years. 

But now Facebook has disabled my profile and it certainly looks as though I won't get it back. Fifteen years' worth of images, memories, thoughts and discussions have been wiped away. 

Might have to start calling it Erasebook. 

Why my account was removed is anyone's guess. Officially, I got a message saying it didn't meet Community Standards for authenticity and account integrity. What might I have done to make Facebook think I wasn't really me? I haven't a clue. 

The same thing happened to an acquaintance from Chicago, Jon Trott. Jon has been able to start a new account. Thus far I haven't. 

After what happened to Jon, I did reflect on just how much of my Facebook content wasn't saved anywhere else. I thought about backing up my whole profile, just in case. Did I follow through with it? No. 

If you're reading this, back up your Facebook account now. If they did this to me and Jon, they can do it to you. I can't tell you how to avoid my fate because I don't know why this happened. But I can tell you that if your Facebook content is important to you, then you should keep a copy of it somewhere besides Facebook.

Speculatively it's not hard to imagine that my outspoken political opinions pissed somebody off, and that person decided to report my profile to Facebook to get me in trouble — and somehow succeeded. But still, plenty of people express outspoken political opinions on Facebook without being erased. I have no idea what makes me different. 

And this is one of the ways Facebook contributes to tribalism and echo chambers. Should I return there I'll be less inclined to engage with people who don't share my opinion, since I would wish to avoid having them weaponize Facebook's profile-reviewing algorithms against me. Naturally I want to engage with people who think as I do; yet I don't wish to be cut off from those who think differently. But the instinct for self-preservation will likely result in limited interaction.

Also, even if I do manage to establish another account, I doubt I'll be taking Facebook's side in any future arguments about social media censorship.

My situation may not be quite as dire as Burgess Meredith's in "The Obsolete Man," but it does feel as though some totalitarian entity has declared me obsolete.  

So I've been trying to recall what I did before there was Facebook. Of course there was this blog, and there were the online discussion boards that preceded Facebook. But I also played my instruments a little more than I do now, and occasionally composed music. Like the Meredith character, I read the occasional book. Eric Larson's The Demon of Unrest sits on my desk; it had already hit its library due date before I even cracked it open. Perhaps now there will be time. 

Words for Will

Anon, it is sweet Shakespeare's day of birth,
And--which is more, and most convenient--
Upon this day was he return'd to earth;
The same day that he came, he also went.

Prithee, let iambs fall from every tongue,
In number, five; thus shalt thou form a line;
It is the sweetest rhythm ever sung;
With words thus build we Shakespeare's perfect shrine.

A measur'd word can scarcely go to waste;
We'd banish rancor, foolishness and spite
If all our words were chosen, form'd and plac'd
With all the care that poets take to write.

Rhyme if you can, or leave your verses blank,
But speak the speech--it's Will you have to thank.