then I say, let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine
Adapted from the passage:
If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil;
but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.
From the essay, Civil Disobedience By Henry David Thoreau as printed in The works of Thoreau by Henry David Thoreau (Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1937).
better to have large millstone around neck and be drowned in depths of sea
I grew up in the Baptist Evangelical Church.
Church on Sunday at 9:30 am for Sunday School, Morning service at 10:45 am and Evening church at 7 p.m.
Youth group / Awana on Monday.
Tuesday After School Bible Club on Tuesday after school.
Children’s Choir and Prayer Meeting on Wednesday.
If there was one thing stressed for kids at my Church is was the love of Christ, not just for everyone, but for children, the little children in particular.
It was comforting to know that Jesus liked kids.
When I was 9, I was called in front of the assembled Church body and awarded a Bible for a year of perfect Sunday Scholl attendance.
You got a Bible your first year and a pin to wear for the 2nd year.
The little round pin had an opening to display the 2 and after that you got little gold disks to swap in the 3 and so on.
We had a drawer full of pins at home.
It seems to me that my sister Lisa was the only person anyone knew who got into double digits for years of perfect attendance. That didn’t take into account my Uncle Bud whose had perfect his attendance starting in around 1920 until something called World War 2 came along.
I still have my Bible.
It was King James English of course and it had a few illustrations scattered through its pages.
One of those illustrations was captioned Jesus Blesses the Children.
That scene in the Bible where Jesus blesses the children appears in the New Testament right after another important passage about Jesus and children.
That passage in Matthew, Chapter 18 is an analogy, a promise and … a warning.
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
The analogy is “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The promise is “… whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.“
And the warning is “If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.“
With little effort I can bring up in my mind the way my Sunday School Teachers, my Tuesday Bible Club leader and others stressed it would be better to have a millstone … a millstone … A MILLSTONE … around your neck then to have harmed little children.
The point they were making was that Jesus loved children and that meant God loved children.
We were children and we were loved.
And BEWARE anyone who harmed any child.
Now there are those who will say I am misapplying the meaning of the verse but let me tell you something, that with a millstone around my neck being on the line, I will err on the side of caution rather than the idea that I can explain my way out of a millstone around my neck by citing chapter, verse and my notes on biblical application.
A point of view is one thing.
A millstone around my neck is another.
I had no problem visualizing a millstone.
Back in the day on lazy Sunday Afternoons, we would pester my Dad to take to downtown to the old Grand Rapids Public Museum.
The one on Jefferson Street that is now the Grand Rapids City Archives.
When we went, Dad would always park on Washington Street and we would go in by the back entrance.
Along Washington Street were these large round planters … or what I took to be planters as they were giant round stones with a hole in the middle and plants growing out of the hole.
But these planters had a plaque mounted on the side.
It read something like First Millstones brought to Grand Rapids by Louis Campau in 1845.
That isn’t the exact wording but they were the first millstones ever used in the City and the Museum just parked them outside.
I mean, who was going to steal them?
The must have weighed a ton.
I remember one time Dad explained how the millstones were used, powered by a water wheel and they ground wheat into flour.
We looked at them for a bit and Dad said, “Imagine having one of those around your neck.“
He said it a tone of wonderment.
He needed no further explanation.
He had also grown up in the Baptist Church.
And when we heard those stories about millstones, we knew just what Jesus had in mind.
So that leads me to today.
For myself, the warning is pretty clear.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.“
Seems pretty cut and dried here.
So I have to ask?
Who would sign up for this?
When you are looking at a situation where it is better to have a millstone around your neck is offered and directions to the nearest boat is pointed out, who says, ME FIRST!
They are looking at a choice for themselves where the millstone IS the good choice.
I look at the picture above and I can see millstones around the necks of all those officers.
How can they not see it?
How can they participate in a scene like that and sleep at night?
I cannot understand that for the life or me or for the life of those officers as well.
Where do they find these people?
I will also point out that there is further warning in the next verse.
Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble!
A warning for all people, including me for letting such a world exist.
crises happening contemporaneously their effects pile up
Reading the Guardian this morning, I came across this headline, “We are living in a time of polycrisis. If you feel trapped – you’re not alone” and the article written by Theresa MacPhail, a science writer, medical anthropologist and associate professor of Science, Technology & Society at Stevens Institute of Technology.
The article had the sub headline, “I hadn’t fully grasped how the idea of a better future sustained me – now I, like many others, find it difficult to be productive”
Ms. MacPhail quotes a Dr Hal Hershfield, a psychologist and professor of marketing and behavioral decision-making at UCLA.
“What feels very different in the present moment,” Hershfield said, “is that it feels like it’s coming from multiple fronts. It’s everything from political uncertainty in the US and elsewhere, health insecurity from the very fresh memory of a global pandemic, job insecurity from AI, geopolitical insecurity, to environmental insecurity.”
And Ms. MacPhail writes:
All these crises are happening contemporaneously, and because they interact with each other, their effects pile up. Social scientists refer to these stacked crises as a polycrisis. During a polycrisis, radical uncertainty becomes rife.
The lack of predictability creates more doubt about the future, which blocks our ability to imagine ourselves in it. In a recent study, participants were asked to write down as many future possible events for themselves as they could. Those who were reminded that the future is uncertain produced 25% fewer possible events than control subjects and took much longer on the task. They also rated their thoughts as less reliable. Just thinking about uncertainty made it more difficult for them to remember all their hopes and plans.
Just thinking about uncertainty made it more difficult for them to remember all their hopes and plans.
All these crises are happening contemporaneously, and because they interact with each other, their effects pile up.
Social scientists refer to these stacked crises as a polycrisis.
During a polycrisis, radical uncertainty becomes rife.
Radical uncertainty.
Created by leadership based on buffoonery.
NO KIDDING.
For me, the good news is that I AM NOT ALONE.
Even for those who somehow find it in themselves to support this administration the radical uncertainty is no less real.
For all of us, all these crises are happening contemporaneously, and because they interact with each other, their effects pile up.
To hold out a ray of hope, Ms. MacPhail closes with:
As a new year begins, it’s good to remember that we are more resilient than we think.
“People are not the fragile flowers that a century of psychologists have made us out to be,” Gilbert said. “People who suffer real tragedy and trauma typically recover more quickly than they expect to and often return to their original level of happiness, or something close to it. That’s the good news – we are a hardy species, even though we don’t know this about ourselves.
For myself …
I stand on the beach and I am remined of Mr. Thoreau when the essay Cape Cod, he wrote:
The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world.
Thinking of that, watching the tide come in, all the polycrises in the world cannot stop it.
Twice a day that tide is coming and anything in its path will be wiped away.
It happened the day after creation, twice a day.
It will happen twice today.
And it will happen on the last day when ever that is.
say yes, we will be appreciative, or say no we will remember
The Haiku is based on a quote from the leader of the free world [sic] speaking to the World Economic Forum, an international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland.
According to Wikipedia, the forum’s stated mission is “improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.”
Leaders from across the world meet once a year in a conference organized by the World Economic Forum to talk about what might be done to improve the state of the world.
This feller currently in office gave a speech and Bret Stephens, an opinion columnist for the New York Times was there to hear it.
Mr. Stephens, a conservative of the pre-trump era, discussed the speech in a back-and-forth article with liberal opinion columnist, Frank Bruni.
Is this meeting of world leaders, coming together to discuss improving the state of the world, Mr. Stephens writes:
And then there was Trump’s speech, for which I was in the audience. It was like a geopolitical version of a Mafia shakedown. “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember.” That was Trump’s message to Denmark on the subject of ceding Greenland. It was like watching a scene from “The Sopranos.”
He also terrified. Going into the speech, I was almost sure that what he really wanted was to gain some control of Greenland’s mineral resources. Leaving the speech, I was absolutely sure he means to take the whole island, and that his negotiating tactic will be to tie Danish cession of the territory to America’s continued participation in NATO.
Mr. Stephens is younger than I am.
He referenced the TV Mafia show, The Soprano’s.
I had another thought from another Mafia movie.
And the line that came to my mind, as this feller stood in front of this meeting of world leaders, coming together to discuss improving the state of the world, was this feller was making the rest of the world … an offer they couldn’t refuse.
I like to tell the story of my first day in kindergarten at Grand Rapids Crestview Elementary class.
Another kid, and this was 60 years ago, I clearly remember it, came up to me in the play area of the classroom, introduced himself and then to establish the pecking order, slugged me in the ear.
This, I said to myself at age five, is upper education?
I didn’t know it at the time, but that is exactly what it was.
I was skinny, always about 20lbs under weight for a kid my age and wore glasses.
That was the fall of 1965.
For the next 11 years of public education, I waited everyday for someone to slug me in the head.
Sometimes I deserved it as I had a mouth but most of the time is was because someone could.
Not that they were always bigger than me but that they had that outlook.
They could slug me so they did.
My first weeks of junior high were absolute terror as this one little kid figured out he could slug me in the head and I wouldn’t retaliate.
Never found out why, but this kid was transferred to another class and the daily confrontations went away until the next year when another little kid found it he could hit me with impunity.
I had read by then, Roughing It, Mark Twain’s book on life in the Great American West after the Civil War and Mr. Twain wrote about shootings in Virginia City, Nevada, that:
The reason why there was so much slaughtering done, was, that in a new mining district the rough element predominates, and. a person is not respected until he has ‘‘killed his man.’’ That was the very expression used.
If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was capable, honest, industrious, but— had he killed his man? If he had not, he gravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of small consequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated according to the number of his dead. It was tedious work struggling up to a position of influence with bloodless hands; but when a man came with the blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognized at once and his acquaintance sought.
Boy Howdy but I knew exactly what he was writing about.
In Grand Rapids Public Schools you were respected by the number of kids you slugged … or could slug.
Sad to say I have to admit I was not above this and I looked for my kid to slug but the ridiculousness getting slugged by me just added to the pathos of the moment.
Since getting slugged didn’t kill you, I was there as a mark for lots of other students who needed someone to slug.
It was what it was.
I tried to learn to keep my head down.
The only tool these guys had was a hammer and if I stood out, I would get hammered down.
Of course being me, I had a very hard time trying to stay quiet.
Then I got to Grand Rapids Creston High School.
It had three stories.
The bottom floor had the offices, some classrooms and the print shop, the metal shop and the wood shop.
Most of the other classes were on the 2nd and 3rd floor.
Not wanting to get into other discussions on life, but it didn’t take long to see a general sifting of the population.
The bullies in my life pretty much stayed on the first floor.
I entered the world of Latin and Physics and such and found refuge on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
I felt like I had arrived.
Or, I felt like I had escaped.
But that first year at Creston, my sophomore year, all the students had to take what was called ‘American Life‘ which was the new way to teach history.
This class was still on the first floor.
And as you had to take and pass the class, there was a certain element of students who were still taking this class in their senior year.
One day walking down the hall, two other students who had made my life what it was in junior high school were standing outside the classroom.
One of them was taking American Life for the 3rd, maybe the 4th time and the other was standing there with him to commiserate over the situation.
I looked down and tried to walk past them into the classroom and not be noticed and at the last minute the one kid who wasn’t in my class gave the door a shove so that it smacked into my shoulder hard, bounced me off the other side of the doorway and knocked my books my hand.
Before I could stop myself I looked him in the eye and called him an obscenity.
Then I stooped and gathered my books and got into class and sat down.
The teacher walked in and as class started the other kid slowly came in, glaring at me.
He came up behind me and stooped down and whispered in my ear, “He is going to kick your ass.”
I shrugged, been there done that.
And I waited.
When the class came to an end, I got my stuff together and went to door.
I looked out, looked left and right.
Just out the door was the back stairs to the upper floors and I ran for it.
And that was where it ended.
I don’t know what happened, most likely they just forgot, but I never got my ass kicked.
That stays in my mind as my last real clash with the jungle, with the world of the first floor.
Those feelings of dread and doom slowly went away from being a part of daily life.
That is …
Until now.
Bullies in high places.
The first floor is ruling the jungle once more.
And of late in these posts, I keep coming back to this.
Someone I know who defends the feller in office said that he supports him, “because he fights my battles for me.”
Gee whiz, what kind of battles did you need fighting?
Picking on Greenland?
To be a world leader in history, I guess that feller has to ‘kill his man.’
So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will always say and believe.
For myself, I like Greenland just as it is and there has to be a 2nd floor around here somewhere.
Adapted from the article in the Atlantic by Anne Applebaum where she writes:
Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.
Think about where this is leading. One possibility, anticipated this morning by financial markets, is a damaging trade war. Another is an American military occupation of Greenland. Try to imagine it: The U.S. Marines arrive in Nuuk, the island’s capital. Perhaps they kill some Danes; perhaps some American soldiers die too. And then what? If the invaders were Russians, they would arrest all of the politicians, put gangsters in charge, shoot people on the street for speaking Danish, change school curricula, and carry out a fake referendum to rubber-stamp the conquest. Is that the American plan too? If not, then what is it? This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.
For the past year, American allies around the world have tried very hard to find a theory that explains Trump’s behavior. Isolationism, neo-imperialism, and patrimonialism are all words that have been thrown around. But in the end, the president himself defeats all attempts to describe a “Trump doctrine.” He is locked into a world of his own, determined to “win” every encounter, whether in an imaginary competition for the Nobel Peace Prize or a protest from the mother of small children objecting to his masked, armed paramilitary in Minneapolis. These contests matter more to him than any long-term strategy. And of course, the need to appear victorious matters much more than Americans’ prosperity and well-being.
The people around Trump could find ways to stop him, as some did in his first term, but they seem too corrupt or too power-hungry to try. That leaves Republicans in Congress as the last barrier. They owe it to the American people, and to the world, to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests. He is at risk of alienating friends in not only Europe but also India, whose leader he also snubbed for failing to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, as well as South Korea, Japan, Australia. Years of careful diplomacy, billions of dollars in trade, are now at risk because senators and representatives who know better have refused to use the powers they have to block him. Now is the time.
Try to imagine it.
An American military occupation of Greenland.
Years of careful diplomacy, billions of dollars in trade, are now at risk.
Senators and representatives who know better have refused to use the powers they have to block him.
WHO KNOW BETTER!
Who know better have refused.
Now is the time.
Look at the first line that I use from the article.
Genuinely lives in a different reality.
Look at that first word.
Genuinely.
It is an adverb of the word genuine.
According to the online Merriam-Webster, genuine means sincerely and honestly felt or experienced or something that is actual or true.
Truly lives in a different reallity.
Truly.
It is TRUE.
In that movie My Cousin Vinnie, when the girlfriend takes the stand and delivers a statement on the car used in the crime, the District Attorney yells out an objection and demands clarification on whether her statement is an opinion or a fact.
The Judge looks at the girlfriend and asks, “Is this your opinion?”
The girlfriend replies in a voice that leaves no doubt, “It’s a FACT!”
Folks, the guy sitting at the desk in the oval office genuinely lives in a different reality.
It’s a FACT!
In God we trust?
Oh, I hope so!
As Thomas Jefferson said, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
No Haiku For You 