“Wokeness” is a baby’s insult, like cooties, for use by adult-aged childish people who prefer a sophisticated sounding synonym for “poopy head” to use against those they hate for making them feel insecure, bigoted, stupid and inferior. Nice to see they’re giving the merch away for free, if you can believe any come-on by the cynical hucksters who ruthlessly exploit their innocently faithful believers.
From Dan Rather, saluting some of the many heroes among us and urging us to be the heroes we need to all become to resist this onslaught of organized, billionaire funded lies, hatred, irrationality, greed, blind, deadly vengeance and unlimited destruction.
FOR STANDING UP TO THE BULLY-IN-CHIEF
The day after inauguration, the new president traditionally attends an interfaith prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. This year the televised homily was delivered by Bishop Mariann Budde, who has been the Bishop of Washington since 2011.
Budde addressed Trump, who was sitting in the front row, directly. “Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”
The look on the president’s face was worth more than a thousand words. To put it succinctly, he was displeased.
After the service, he vilified Budde on Truth Social as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” and demanded an apology — an apology for being asked to be merciful, while sitting in a church. Budde, mercifully, declined to respond. Source
This is the greatest example in recent current events of an actual Christian calmly facing down a nasty, brutish, petulant, transactional two year-old anti-Christ type determined to bend the world to his will, using bullying lies and an army of unreasoning, transactional Christian hypocrites as his sword and shield. If mercy toward the oppressed isn’t at the heart of the teachings of Jesus Christ, then my name is Donald Fucking Trump, Interfaith Pope of all Christian martyrs, living, dead, real and imaginary.
Pete Hegseth, number one at the Department of Defense, proud white Christian , with his Crusader tattoos and hatred of “others”, will tell you Jesus hated homosexuals, the poor, women, snitches, Jews, the meek, the weak, gun regulators, prosecutors, government watchdogs, demonic Democrats, advocates of human equality, anyone who questions his personal savior, Mr. Trump, an infallible emissary of God who has never been mistaken. So will dark-skinned fascist liar Kashyap Patel, with his published Enemies List (a brown skinned guy Trump and Hegseth would normally mock as he got beaten up), Jewish Nazi Stephen Miller (another one Pete and Donald would ordinarily spit on), Trump’s personal lawyer (literally), employee of Qatar and Attorney General pick, Pam Bondi, and all the rest of those who claim to love the inimitable taste of their master’s never washed “ring”.
This is a moment when we all need to become the best heroes we are capable of becoming. Despair is not an option, it is a luxury that only helps evil triumph over the rest of us.
Not everyone is wired this way, but for me, I need to unearth clues that help me understand the tangled progress of my life. I learn many things way too late, and I wonder about these things, once the truth of them hits me like a wall. Some may find this process painful and do everything to avoid it.
I am not one of these people, I have left myself countless clues over the decades. The challenge is to assemble them to understand what they’re telling me about the progression of my experience.
Thank the Lord we are all once again free to utter those beautiful words in the United States of America. There’s nothing woke, unwoke or deep asleep about uttering a traditional holiday greeting to our Christian neighbors. Feliz Navidad, y’all.
That said, Jesus, of course, is probably quite unhappy (and rightfully so) about what his most public megaphones are representing as his principles: fuck the poor, screw the meek, child poverty is God’s will, as is pediatric cancer, competition beats cooperation every time, obscene wealth and unslakable greed are the Divine’s way of rewarding the righteous, guns don’t kill people, burning toxic things doesn’t cause pollution, spit on and beat homosexuals, make raped girls give birth, as God intended, etc.
But let me not tar American Christians with the ugly sins of perhaps only a hundred million or so of them. One of the finest people I ever knew, smart, funny, irreverent, mischievous, died a few weeks ago at ninety. Rose was a religious Catholic and went to mass every Sunday, until she was unable to and began attending by video link. When I was overwhelmed, and she was out of ideas, she’d tell me to put my faith in God and let God take care of things that caused me anguish. I would gently remind her that prayer and faith had been ruined for me early on by the staggeringly idiotic hypocrisy of the Hebrew school/Jewish center I attended. She understood, but urged me to try it anyway. I’d deflect with a joke and she’d respond with one of her trademark wisecracks.
To be loved by someone who is religious can put the whole exercise of religion in a much more sympathetic light. Sure religion is an engine of control, enforced conformity and, sometimes, murderous intolerance of other faiths. Of course people who become very wealthy, influential and powerful promoting religion quickly become corrupt hypocrites, if they don’t start out that way. An old Jew I once knew used to say “the longer the beard, the bigger the thief”. No religion has a monopoly on evil in the name of God. It is good, in the face of such common ugliness in the name of religion, to remember the blessing of true belief in a moral system ruled by a just Creator.
It is encouraging for me to think of examples like Rose Cuccaro, people who lose nothing of their great and unique personalities while being imbued with faith in a divine spirit, and committed to loving and serving those around them. Religion, at its best, does that. It also brings great comfort to the dying.
At Rose’s wake, her daughter told us that her mother dreamed (two nights before she died) that she was at a great dinner party with her nephew Frankie (great guy, he died a few years back) and so many other cherished loved ones, and she named them. “All dead,” said Adrienne. The next day she told her “Frankie’s here to take me home” and she went with her favorite nephew (anybody else at the party would have been just as happy to escort her) for the joyous reunion with the rest of them.
We all agreed that Frankie was the most likely guide to come down to bring her home. Whether they sent him because he was the most recent arrival (“you go for her, rookie, you’ll get a kick out of it”) or just out of Frank’s basic nature, which would’ve been “let me do this, it’s Aunt Rose, I got this one.” Not a bad way to end this dream, if you ask me, if you can believe it.
And with that, a merry Christmas to all. May the blessings of this holiday season, centered around the shortest day of the year, and faith in the coming of Spring, be upon you.
Contempt is the ugliest thing you can see in another person. It is a childish expression of vicious, outer-directed egotism: I am ultra important, you are a piece of shit, I can treat you however I want to and there’s nothing you can do about it. Once someone shows you contempt, there is no saving things, talking things out, reasoning, making peace. Contempt is the last corrosive word these assholes have to protect themselves against their own disabling insecurity.
It is always infuriating to be treated with contempt (also hurtful, unfair, despicable, indecent, etc.), but the best thing you can do, especially if one of these folks has any kind of power over you, is regard them calmly and get away from them as quickly as you can. Even a stranger showing contempt is worth not reacting to, there is never anything to be gained, even if you like fighting and enjoy bashing bullies in the face. There’s really nothing in it for you better than getting away from them for good.
Here’s a recent personal tale of facing contempt that I am actually grateful for. This asshole’s show of contempt kept me out of the hands of a lying, negligent maniac doctor who sent an entirely false report of tests he never performed to my other doctors. He works for Optum, by the way, which is part of United Healthcare — go figure! I guess the entirely fabricated report is one reason Optum never sent me a bill for the three hour session Medicare paid 80% for.
The doctor was friendly and reassuring the first time I met him. He scheduled tests and when I asked about anesthesia he assured me I’d be given conscious sedation before the tests, which was a great relief to me. Having things shoved into your penis, scopes, tubes, etc., while not as horrible as it sounds, is bad enough. I was glad I’d be conscious but sedated for the procedure, which involved putting a thin tube into my bladder by way of my urethra and then filling my bladder with water.
When I arrived for the test, the nurse who was going to put the tube in asked if I was ready. I said I would be, as soon as the conscious sedation was on board. She reacted with frustration toward the doctor “I don’t know why he tells patients they’re getting conscious sedation, we don’t give that for this test, we never give conscious sedation, we don’t even have it in the office. You have to be alert and answering questions. I guess he thinks it calms patients down when he says that, but I always tell him it doesn’t.”
I confirmed that it doesn’t. If I’d known, I told her, I would have taken a tranquilizer before I came for the test. She said that would have been her advice, if I’d been told to call her prior to the procedure and that she was sorry nobody had told me to call her. She had nothing she could give me. The catheter went into my penis and into the urethra before stopping at an obstacle somewhere on the way to my bladder. She retracted it. For the next ninety minutes this angelic woman held my penis, keeping it warm in the cold room, as various applications of lidocaine did their best to numb my urethra, and tried at least three more times to insert various catheters into my bladder. Finally she said the doctor would have to try it himself.
The doctor came in, sweaty and harried looking, by now it was getting toward closing time. He asked how I was doing. I told him I was wondering what happened to the conscious sedation. He lost his shit, raising his voice and snarling that it was impossible that he’d ever said that, essentially calling me, and his nurse, a couple of fucking liars. In that moment I knew this guy was not going to be my doctor. I managed him as one does an out of control five year-old flinging shit around the room. I made only one call to his office afterwards, to his nurse. She told me how to get the medical records for my new urologist.
Highlights of the report: results of the cystoscopy (a camera at the end of a wand inserted into the opening of the penis) he never performed. He found no tumors, normal this, slightly abnormal that, the report said. No mention of the unsuccessful attempts to insert the catheter to test the bladder, the test went fine, the bladder was normal. He discussed all this with the patient, also getting claimed legal waivers from the patient on about twenty different fronts, covering his ass front and back, and the ass of Optum, and insulated the $560B corporation from the aggressions of any plaintiff’s lawyer who might want to make a fuss about a fictional narrative detailing the results of tests the doctor and his nurse never did.
Think of this, though. If the guy hadn’t had a temper tantrum and started throwing his poop around the room, I’d have gone back to him. I’d have never read his scandalous report, never known he was a compulsive liar. I’d have been in the hands of a maniac working for psychopaths. So the fact that I no longer tolerate contempt saved me from a world of trouble.
Say your sleep is robbed by the daily aching in your prosthetic knee after it hasn’t moved for a few hours. The surgery went perfectly, every surgeon who looks at the beautiful x-ray agrees. You are apparently one of the unlucky tiny percentage who suffer from Highly Successful Surgery Suboptimal Outcome Syndrome and chronic pain and limited ability to walk is something you will have to get used to, asshole. It’s not the surgeon’s problem if you’re unable to heal properly.
On waking you agitatedly consider the nonresponse to the concise, urgent letter you wrote to your urologist seeking clarification on an upcoming surgery that is different, on the presurgical consent form, than the one you discussed and agreed to in his office. You hand delivered the short letter to his office Monday. It is now Thursday, 6 pm. On Monday morning you must get up early and have a battery of presurgical tests, for a surgery you were never informed of, can’t weigh the risks of and certainly never consented to. The internet is a Christmas tree of blinking red lights about the many risks of this changed procedure, one with an alarmingly low success rate that involves shaving the inside of your urethra, lifelong urinary incontinence being but one of its unwanted outcomes (that’s why they make adult diapers, pant load).
Your new urologist is, like most other doctors in America today, an employee of a medical corporation run by vulture capitalists to extract maximum profit from the lucrative sector of human medical anxiety. The name should have been a give away: Psychopath Urology, PLLC. They talk a good game, I do have to give them that. These fuckers are nothing if not adept marketers:
A forwarded text I had from my beloved that I saw as soon as I looked at my phone made me immediately shift my focus. A ninety year-old woman we both love and cherish is in bad shape, hooked up to machines fighting to save her from congestive heart failure. This sharp, funny woman is apparently confused (yet still somehow feisty) and very close to death. Her daughter wanted us to know, because we are close to her mom and left her a couple of unanswered messages the last few days. Devastating news. Sekhnet sent me an agonized proposed text to the daughter, I suggested adding this:
Your mother’s feistiness is one of her enduring qualities, along with her great sense of humor, her wisdom, compassion and her deep faith. She does not fear death and has a humble confidence in where she’s going afterwards. Of course we hope she recovers, so we can have more of the love and joy she brings to us. If she does not recover she will soon be in heaven, a beautiful, blessed soul, reunited with those she loved and lost. It’s heartbreaking to us, who love her, but we must take consolation that she knows where she is headed if this is her time to go, the place for all such wonderful souls.
There is always a lot to beware of in a world where psychopaths, more focused on power over others than most, hold a lot of power over the rest of us. Beware of those who repeatedly lie to win arguments, elections, discussions of who needs to be ostracized, rounded up, roughed up and why. Beware of smug certainty, inchoate anger, apathy, depression. Beware of anyone who shows you they’re incapable of ever being wrong, who blame you and always fight you to the death.
On the other hand, take care to appreciate the things in your life you are grateful for. If you have a talent that allows you to spend time in a special zone — be thankful as you enjoy it. If you gain an insight that helps free you from a painful cycle you’ve been trapped in, gratefulness is the proper feeling to have about it. If you have one person in your life who you can share your deepest feelings with, you are very lucky and Thanksgiving is the right day, as is every other day, to consciously feel appreciation for that great blessing.
I surprised myself a few weeks ago, during a discussion of my numerous, interlocking medical problems, any one of which can find me in an emergency room if not treated skillfully and soon, by expressing gratefulness. An overwhelming appreciation of good fortune, particularly amid hard luck and trouble, itself is something to be grateful for.
I’m grateful to find myself grateful.
It’s always worth a few moments to take a short inventory of the blessings in your life, no matter what horrors you are facing — particularly when you’re facing monsters, actually. The miraculous, precious, fleeting nature of life is worth considering from time to time, and being very grateful for.
Days of Awe Yom Kippur 5785
Please rise.
In ancient times, as the days grew notably shorter, darkness appeared earlier and earlier and the nights turned cold, people fearfully began to pray. A hundred variations of “oh, Lord, please don’t destroy us!” were recited across the land, by trembling crowds presided over by priests who led them in rituals.
In Judaism these rapidly shortening days mark New Years and, ten days later, after the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The tradition is that as night falls on Yom Kippur, God closes the immense Book of Life, where He (They, actually, God is commonly referred to in the plural, Elohim) has recorded the fate of every human for the following year, according to our deeds.
During the Ten Days of Repentance, the period between New Years and Yom Kipuur, Jews are commanded to make amends with people we’ve hurt, repay debts, make peace, atone for bad things we’ve done, forgive those who sincerely seek our forgiveness, straighten out misunderstandings, right any wrongs in our power to right. The sages teach that you must try to make amends with someone three times before you can abandon the process.
Sadly, in a world where the best teachings of every religion are not always faithfully carried out, not all Jews follow this exemplary practice, even once. I would estimate that most do not exert themselves to make amends, though many fast and pray to God, rising and being seated over and over as the pages of the Yom Kippur prayer book are turned.
Any Jew who dons white clothes, fasts and fervently prays, without taking a serious moral inventory of their own actions during these days, without approaching people they’ve hurt to make amends, is, to my mind, a sorry, sanctimonious sack.
My closest friend of many years, whose angry wife demanded no discussion of an ugly conflict we’d had, met me for lunch a few days before Yom Kippur two years ago so that we could try to make amends before the Big Guy closed the Book. This Jew who prays every morning became indignant when I got serious and came to the point, told me I’d blindsided him and angrily stormed out of the restaurant where we were eating.
It soon became clear we would never be friends again.
Our mutual friends all took no side, except to say that I was an unforgiving sadist intent on bending others to my will and that therefore they could never forgive me. It was impossible, they said, with no consciousness of the incoherence of their righteous stand, to forgive someone who can’t forgive.
Among this crew of highly moral souls was my friend the brilliant rabbi/fundraiser. His Switzerland-like acceptance of this idiotic verdict was particularly grotesque to me. In a position to make peace between two hurt friends, and being admired and wise, able to influence others to be reasonable, he affected an impeccably neutral stance. It’s clear now he that he made a calculation, thinking only of what was worth the most to him and what was worth the least.
Our subsequent falling out was ugly enough, though friends noted that my final letter to him, though insulting, was somewhat restrained, not nearly as vicious as I am capable of making it.
The following Yom Kippur I wrote him a long, careful, peacemaking letter, many drafts of it. I was careful to set out all of the ugly things that had happened without blame, without making him feel defensive. I offered him the chance to speak like two mensches, at least one last time, a kind of do-over for the ugly ending to our long friendship a few months earlier. I persuaded him that we owed our long, affectionate friendship at least that.
He called and we were both calm, and engaging, and hoping for the best, I suppose. At one point I asked him, in his capacity as a rabbi, if he could think of a situation where it was proper for one Jew to tell another who comes to him to make amends before Yom Kippur to buzz off. “Who is allowed to act this way?,” I asked, almost rhetorically.
There was a long pause, and then my learned old friend said “Only HaShem”. Only God.
The People rest, and please be seated
gratuitousblahg 