Perspective

A few weeks ago, I speculated on who might be Anonymous. After the last few weeks, we know that neither Trump or Mulvaney could be Anonymous. Both are bad actors and idiots.

Today's McGahn ruling has people wonder if Bolton will testify (likely) or Mulvaney (No). Mulvaney will take the 5th on every question. He is one of the targets, not a witness. Pompeo too. Lev should be considered one as well. Lev works for Firtash (and Putin). Rudy works for Lev. Mulvaney, Pompeo & Nunes (and Pence) work for Rudy.  Trump is a Patsy. They are all traitors. Some did not start out that way, but once in, there is no way out.

SCOTUS may be days away from a Per Curiam decision rejecting Certiorari in Mazars,  trashing absolute immunity and the OGC memo and lifting all stays. One affirmation of U.S. v. Nixon ends all appeals. Anyone who thinks that they would support Trump over country should feel ashamed of themselves. Moscow Mitch will never let all the damming information come out. It is idiocy to spin any narrative that says otherwise.

GOP Senators do not care what voters think. They care that donors may fund an air war against them. Donors also see the writing on the wall. At any one time, in each party, there are 16 Senators that want to be President. Trump is so close to being ousted that they can smell it. One of them will be the nominee, not Trump. Timing is everything.

Any Democratic candidate who does not think also think Trump is out soon should end their campaigns. They don't have the instincts for the job.

Late news is that the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations is resigning. If Daniel Walsh is the person who made sure the trains ran on time, then his exit means there is no saving this White House. He is smart enough to see what happens next with SCOTUS. Anyone he was protecting by writing Anonymously is already gone. The Steady State has left the building.

The days of creation

This essay was brought on by a posting in Facebook on the U.S. Politics Catholic Discussion group sponsored by America Magazine. The posting was about packaging extra school lunches for the homeless.

As someone who has been, and still is, an object of public charity because of my disabled status I am grateful for food assistance. Until my benefits began, I received both Food Stamps and meals at centers for the homeless.

I am still eligible for a monthly box of food from a local pantry, although nowadays I don't take advantage of the benefit, nor for meals on wheels. Without children at home, I do not have to, but I can testify on the quality if the food provided. The frozen meat can be quite good, although shelter meals tend to be low on meat content and the vegetables are often on the verge or past spoilage.

Canned food tends to be what others, including, have discarded because they are not particularly attractive options. Like fruitcake, some of It may go from Church to pantry to back to Church.

Not to sound ungrateful, but the relevant scriptures are Matthew Chapter 25, the last judgment and Genesis Chapter 4, Cain and Abel. In Matthew, when we feed the poor, we feed Jesus. In Genesis, Abel offered the first fruits and his sacrifice was accepted. Cain did not and his sacrifice was rejected, causing him to murder his brother.

If we actually believed we were feeding the actual Christ, would we serve leftovers or spoiled food. Is our giving a condescension, althoughthis is better than giving nothing at all.

Both should be seen as part of the obligation of hospitality in the desert culture of the time (although not much has changed for Palestinians and Syrians in today's Middle East).  Both stories were written down in the period between the Babylonian exile and the occupation of Rome.

There continue to be Christian writings, from the early writers and Desert Fathers though the Great Councils in Asia Minor and the modern Councils from Trent to Vatican II, none is given the status of scripture.

Today is the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Latin Church calendar. Next week is Christ the King, marking the completion of all things in the kingship of Jesus. Before kingship comes Apocalypse, although we know that Jesus was probably talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Diaspora, not the end of time.

John of Patmos was a post-Diaspora Jewish Christian hoping for a resurrection of Zion in a New Jerusalem as a center of Christianity, rather than pagan Rome. He wrote well after the execution of St. Paul, who founded Gentile Christianity. John's side lost the debate.

In the current epoch, both St. Malachy and Our Lady at Fatima, the city of Rome is due for its own Apocalypse. In a very real sense, the sins of a misogynistic clergy who coddled the abuse of minors is its own Revelation. The Church cannot die, but it must change. It is an act of supreme hubris to think that this would cause the universe to collapse at this time.

All creation myths in the ancient world go from some imagined beginning to the current day. The Jewish tradition is based on the Sumerian/Babylonian story, which has each day of creation ruled by a God who killed his parents. On the seventh day, man was created to serve the gods, including the god kings of the ancient world.

The Hebrew version was monotheistic as written during the exile. In Canaan, the time of the judges began with the escape from pharoh and the time of the Judges, who ruled Canaan after the overthrow of the god king of Salem.  So what day are we in?

If the Seventh day was the Sabbath, are we still in it or did the Axial Age mark the start of the Eighth until the fall of Rome, with the dark ages being the Ninth day or the night between the days. If course, the world was not a backwater in those days, just Rome. The Tenth day would then be the high Middle Ages until the Early Modern Era. That puts us in the Eleventh day. Whether that age has ended and we are in a new age is yet to be seen. The reality is that we have made up the whole thing anyway. We will one day know if our current crises will continue or a new day is dawning. Are we in the 12th Day? The future will know, if there is one. Happy Apocalypse.

Just another Friday

I listen to the quotes from Anonymous and the latest transcripts from Fiona Hill and wonder whether Donald J. Trump is competent to hatch a long term plan to trade Aid for Dirt. Hill and other witnesses indicate the Mick Mulvaney gave the orders, claiming presidential authorship. Really?

If Trump has the attention span of a cicada, I can't see it unless Trump is really Anonymous and his presidency is a false flag operation to kill the Republican Party. If I were writing this as a work of fiction, it would be the perfect end of the story, except for the sadism on the southern border and Trump's past history of incompetence. It is more likely that he both senile and bipolar, given his grandiosity and sexual and financial histories. Sadly, this American tragedy is all too real.

Could Mulvaney be Anonymous? He has certainly been in the Trump orbit long enough. Could Aid for Dirt be his way of disposing of Trump where Mueller (who should have had Trump arrested) failed?

Is Mick a conservative ideologue in a candy store, killing everything he touches from the OMB to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the White House? Worse, are he and Vice President Pence simply idiots. They certainly gave that impression when they were in the House together, fighting against the poor in the name of deficit reduction. Are they clueless about the harm they cause and so inept that they had to be caught eventually? Either option is awful for America.

We will know soon enough.To think that at some point, Republican Senators will let congressional hearings continue to the detriment of the Party is a failure of imagination. Once the Supreme Court denies Certiorari in the Mazar's case, the dominoes will fall very quickly. Tuesday's primary results in Kentucky have to be sending a chill up Moscow Mitch's spine.

In today's other news, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has entered the Democratic race, ostensibly to keep Warren out of the nomination because that would give the election to Trump.  If he and Tom Steyer are so worried about Trump, they would run as Republicans. The GOP likes billionaires.. Either of their campaigns would bring sanity back to the GOP, and with it, the nation. To not see that Trump will not survive until election day is a big reason that neither is qualified to be President. No instincts.

If the Republican Party dies as the party of MAGA and Leningrad Lindsey, the Democrats will likely split into rival camps with the Neoliberal Clintonites on one side and Warren and Sanders Socialists on the other. If that is the case, Mayor Mike would be the ideal Neoliberal leader. Biden has a 2024 problem. So does Sanders.

The Practice of Suffering

This should not be something we need to practice, since most of us come to it quite naturally.

The Buddha taught that life is suffering, with that suffering coming from attachment. Enlightenment is achieved by detaching from our mortal attachments.

Traditional Christians believe in redemptive suffering, the cosmic sufferings of Jesus before an angry God. Catholics practice penance, particularly abstinence from meat, on Fridays, especially during Lent, to share in Christ's sufferings. Redemptive fasting is practiced as an offering to God for all kinds of things, from personal redemption to ending abortion. Opus Dei adds self-flagellation. Shia Muslims practice this as well.

Why was animal sacrifice required in ancient times, or even human sacrifice to Baal (who is also linguistically Allah and Elohim) or to the Aztec gods. Why fast for the month of Ramadan or for Yom Kippur?

The Five Pillars of Islam and the Eight Precepts of Buddhism all seek merits. Meritorious living is the way to Paradise or to achieve Nirvana.

Luther saw no merit to Catholic self-mortification, teaching that we are saved by faith in the sufferings of Christ (leaving out the rest of the verse in Romans that states that our works are a sign of this faith). Evangelical Protestants take this to a whole new level, claiming that accepting Christ into your heart forgives all sin, past and future. Many call this cheap grace, but weekly Catholic confession, a minor penance and seeking indulgences (which Luther rebelled against) seems just as cheap.

Is faith a ticket to Heaven? Must we do works to merit salvation? Did Christ die because God demands pain for seeking pleasure or for disobedience, both personal and inherited as original sin through female sexuality from Eve?

Why must we seek pain out, when it comes to us so easily?

The answer is that we don't. Jesus did not come and suffer because God desires it but so that as God, he could experience the inescapable suffering of our humanity. He came because we suffer, not force us to.

Why practice self-mortification? Why abandon attachments? Why seek forgiveness? Why give alms or practice charity, both private and public?

Feeling guilt or demanding vengeance are both self-inflicted wounds, but to give up one, you must give up the other.

Self-mortification need not be practiced by all. The poor find adequate suffering without it, as do those who suffer from alcoholism and addiction. Those who already suffer can identify with Christ as the suffering servant without seeking additional pain.

Self-mortification is only necessary for the comfortable. Its purpose is to seek the despair common to the human condition that they have escaped. Such suffering is a way to feel the vulnerability that the poor and afflicted face daily. Luther simply missed the joke.

The Prosperity Gospel is taking the joke too far the other way. It is like Brahmanism, which sees comfort as a sign of Divine favor or past good deeds. This is going beyond a healthy enjoyment of life to seeing it as an entitlement for themselves alone. It is others who must suffer for some past sin or character flaw (or from being born the wrong color).

Pleasure is not intrinsic evil. Seeking it at the expense of others is, from feudalism to capitalism. Fasting was not originally for self mortification but for shared sacrifice. It is a natural way for a population to survive the scarcity of winter (including and especially the laborers and slaves). Abstinence from meat was to finally a way to keep fishermen solvent when other food became available.

Eco-socialism is the new common sacrifice to save the biosphere (the planet itself does quite well, with or without us). Doing without, whether it be paying carbon taxes or taking the bus, is a sign of solidarity. Equality recognizes the dignity of each person, rather than seeing good fortune as a sign of Divine favor or some imagined superiority.

Seeking self-mortification, then is a recognition of common humanity of those whose lives of those who already suffer. It is the first step in making them whole and seeing them as holy. Christ is found in those who suffer and justice is raising them out of their suffering, not just individually but systemically.

If we are saved by God, we must do God's work, even if that means paying higher taxes so that all children are provided for and welcomed into this world. No child is more entitled to basic needs than any other child due to accidents of birth. Until that happens, we all suffer a loss of our humanity.