THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT

 Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. He was too polite. I usually substitute bullshit for baloney. 

Really, shouldn't that guide to critical thinking be required for graduation? Granted we might have to simplify the language a littlie. Where would that lying sack of BS be if more of our fellow citizens had been able to see him for what he really is. If more people could have realized that the whole Republican would be oligarch trickle down was smoke and mirrors. That fighting so called subversives was not about communist inflitration. It was about a small clique of rich land owners protecting their supply of super cheap labor. That globalization was a lie. That you can't make peace by making war.

The children at the border are the children and grandchildren of our wars.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT

 Just finished watching South Pacific. Six words You've Got to be Carefully Taught. Learned the lyrics before I ever saw the musical. They were in my Modern Problems text book. Seniour year hight school. The boradway musical premiered in 1949. Pushed the envelope on interacial relationships. 

You've got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You've got to be taught

From year to year,

It's got to be drummed

In your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You've got to be carefully taught

May be one of the shortest songs to ever be in a major musical. 

CORNBREAD

The feeling I get whenever almost anyone from the Republican party opens their pieholes 

 

JUST A NOTE

 Over the years obvious asylum seekers are denied for the most ridiculous of reasons. The victims can not "document" what happened to them. "We can't allow asylum becuase you don't have written proof that you were arrested and tortured. You don't have written proof that the daughters dragged from your home were taken, tortured, and murdered. Even though you found your oldest dumped in a cemetary, tortured, her arm cut off. Told by someone else that your sixteen year old daughter's body was burned." 

These aren't the obsessive compulsive nazis who recorded the death of their concentration camp victims. Although there were millions of victims who went nameless to their mass graves. No records were kept. If there were there was plenty of time to shred the proofs before the truth and reconciliation commissions started to meet. 

LUCAS, JUSTO, ANGEL, DOMINGO AND JUAN

 

Photographer Mary Scully. Mayan wives, mothers sisters, perhaps daughters protesting the war crimes against their people early 1990's. The names of the dead and disappeared.

1952. A democratically elected government in Guatemala was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA in support of the United Fruit Company and against suspected Communist subversion. That's been the go to since the Russian Revolution. No matter what or where if  US business interests are threatened? "The Commies are coming. The Commies are coming."

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state and his brother Allen had close ties to the fruit company. United Fruit was unhappy with one, land reform and two, efforts to end labor practices that were just above the levels of slave labor.

This was a second attempt. The first happened under Harry Truman but was aborted. Too much bad publicity. The successful operation happened under Eisenhower. I admire Ike as a military leader but, he was a political tyro early in his administration. 

That coup kicked off a civil war that lasted off and on until 1996. Everyone in the country suffered but the booted heel of oppression hit the Maya the hardest, Subsistence farmers in the hill country the civil war saw more than one humdred thousand dead or disappeared,  often by torture, and over four hundred villages destroyed. Some of those villages had existed since before the conquistadors came bearing the cross and searching for gold. 

Largely illiterate but devout, the majority of the villagers were Catholics. The regimes especially in the late seventies and early eighties responded by killing native church workers and  expelling foreign priests and nuns. Anyone supporting land reform, unions, farmers coops, literacy campaigns was a target. Special targets were lay church workers, catechists, who risked their lives to bring in the consecrated hosts to celebrate communion. Often held outside the villages for protection. The wafers were hidden in sacks of corn, baskets of beans or tortillas. Their chapels were closed, convents occupied by troops.

1982. The village of Santa Cruz El Quiche. Five men, their names Lucas, Justo, Angel, Domingo and Juan. They were lay catechists well known to their fellow villagers. The army arrived, gathered the villagers and gave them this message. If the five men were not killed by their own relatives Santa Cruz and surrounding villages would be destroyed. The deadline was the next morning.

The villagers met all night. The final decision was to refuse. The five, probably know that their days were numbered,  refused in turn. Graves dug, prayers were said. When the army showed up the next morning the bodies were presented. The army's goal was to drive wedges between the families and other villagers. It didn't work. Ruler at the time? A general names Rios Mont. Finally convicted of war crimes decades later. Our president. Good old Saint Ronnie.  Who said of the general that he "believed he was getting a bum rap" and that he was a person of "great integrity." Sound familiar? He was a nice person. They were all nice people. All those murdered church workers and peasants. Left wing propaganda.

Source: People of God Published 1989, Viking Penguin press author Penny Lernoux.

THE GIFT OF SILENCE

Really listen to the silence. It can echo like thunder. 

THE HOOKS WE'RE BORN WITH

 The public schools get a lot of criticism over how civics and history are taught. And some of it is justified. But, I find myself thinking about how we were raised. How our folks talked about other people, other religions.

I originally wrote this back in 2012. When Fox still pretended to cover the news. At least part of the time. Until this last election I never in my wildest dreams imagined that an unhealth percentage of my fellow citizens would swallow outright lies hook, line and lead sinker. Or having swallowed that it would be next to impossible to help them see the truth.

The public schools get a lot of criticism over how civics and history are taught. And some of it is justified. But, I find myself thinking about how we were raised. How our folks talked about other people, other religions.

I don’t remember my dad ever putting anybody down because of their race or religion. Heck he was a contrary cuss; he wouldn’t like or dislike somebody because of  their jobs, their religion or their race, so that might be part of it.

But, my family comes from a certain heritage. Mainly New England Puritan and Mid Atlantic Quaker. Settlers from two fairly distinct folk groups with their own ideas of liberty. Puritans tended to see liberty as religious liberty while accepting a degree of social control that 21st century Americans wouldn’t stand for. Quakers also claimed religious liberty with a slightly more liberal view of political liberty with a kind of you don’t bother me and I won’t bother you outlook. By the time the family hit the west coast we’d added Methodists to the mix. We all hoped our neighbors would be fair and honest when they dealt with us. But, if they weren’t we believed that we needed the elected hired help to keep the playing reasonably level.

So those are the hooks I brought with me when I walked into my social studies classes. What was presented in my classes pretty much fit the world view I was raised with. But, what happens with kids who absorb a different world view with their mother’s milk and strained peas. How much can being in class for about two and half hours a week for nine months do to change a world view a person has been absorbing all their lives?

What's worse are reports from families of relatives that were resonably sane getting hooked on Fox, YouTube videos or talk radio and becoming, for want of a better description, members of a cult. The schools can't help them. Looks like they didn't do a decent job of immunization. Again I believe we're asking a lot of the Public Schools in an era of faith based home schooling combined with what looks like an almost hopelessly fragmented information delivery system. 

DEAR MR. REAGAN

I wrote this back in 2014. Maybe I'd just finished School of Assassins. A little book about the School of the Americas. Notorious over the decades for training military from our neighbors in the south. All the better ways to kill and maim your own people for their resistance to growing repression. 

Perhaps it was rereading the story of four American women, three nuns and a lay missionary. Raped and murdered by members of the national guard in El Salvador in early December of 1980. Reagan wasn't president yet. When our ambasador asked too many questions he was recalled. Jean Kirkpatrick. US ambassador to the UN claimed that the nuns "weren't just nuns, they were political activists," The sisters ran an orphanage. They didn't ask too many questions. If members of the resistance fighting against the government sent their kids there for safety the sisters didn't ask why the kids were there. 

Reagan increased our support of the Salvadoran government. Death came labeled Made in America. The CIA learned the lessons from Viet Nam all too well. And used them in support of bloody dictators. Anyway rant redux. 

 June 1987. Ronald Reagan, safe behind a wall of Secret Service agents, challenged the leader of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall. The worshippers of Saint Ronnie oooohed and awed and swooned over the courage of “Great Communicator.” (excuse me while I go throw up)

1987. The civil war in Guatamala had been going on since the seventies. The main targets anybody supporting labor unions, teachers, preachers, supporters of land reform and especially the descendants of the Maya. There were whole sections where the religious leaders had been driven out and lay people took their lives in their hands smuggling the means of celebrating communion in sacks of corn or beans. Being discovered meant death. If you were lucky they didn’t torture you first and mutilate your body afterwards.

1987. The civil war in El Salvador had been going on since the late seventies. Foreign church workers had been deported. Local priests had been murdered. Archbishop Romero probably signed his own death warrant in a homily given two weeks before his assassination. It concluded with “In the name of God, then, in the name of the suffering people, whose cries rise to the heavens, every day more tumultuously, I ask you, I beg, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!”

That was 1980. Later that year four American church women were brutally murdered. El Mozote, other villages, nameless refugees. Villagers driven from their homes, fleeing on foot, often for days or weeks. The old, the weak and the young dying on the side of the trail. This went on for over ten long, murderous years.

Honduras. No civil war but lots of refugee camps. These are the countries the children are trying to escape from, Countries with minimal governments but lots of gangs. These kids are just trying to survive. At least some of them may have relatives in this country who came as refugees a generation ago. These are the countries we broke. We’ve never faced it. We’ve never admitted it.

We didn’t hear the voices that just might have cried out Mr. Reagan stop sending the gun ships. Mr. Reagan, stop sending the bullets, mortars, guns and weapons that are killing us. Mr. Reagan, stop training the soldiers that are killing us. Mr. Reagan, let us live. Let us choose how we want to live. Give us the chance to raise our children, not bury them.

Oh God/dess this is too much. I pray my nephews and their children won’t be called on to answer for our sins.

CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA IS DEAD

(I blew off a real head of steam when I wrote this about three years ago. Unfortunately the problem is gottne worse not better. But I see fewer calls to try to slow the dying. More calls to just say the heck with it and move on.)

And so is so called evangelicalism. It was a long, slow decline into dementia beginning a couple of generations ago. Cause of death. Pride. Thirst for Power. Hate and dismissal of anyone different from them; whether in appearance, language or faith. Claims of persecution when that persecution wasn't happening.  Indifference from the other side. Ignorance. You can probably add more causes. Finale resting place? Empty hearts and souls.

I know. I know. The progressives and the moderates and semi radicals keep trying to breath new life into the corpse. But then one of the so called christians (the small c is deliberate) finally admit what we knew all along   and make it final. All the CPR and artificial respiration isn't going to bring it back to life. Their interpretation of the Word is like Marley's ghost only you could take those chains and stretch them all the way to Pluto.

Read Perkin's words. Heaven knows this isn't the first time this attitude has reared it's ugly head. Isn't this what torqued the old prophets right down to the last one. You know the foot sore rabbi from Nazareth? Putting politics ahead of righteous action. Putting greed above caring? Putting hate above love? Calling down the wrath of heaven on those who don't share your beliefs while giving those in power a pass?

Before the followers of the Man From Nazareth took the name of Christian many of them used The Way to describe themselves. Some still do. The Eastern Orthodox for starters.

So take the word Christian and bury it. Put some flowers on the grave. If you can find any in polluted America and follow The Way

I AM A QUAKER BUT

 I keep reading Catholic writers. 

Yeah, I sort of fell off the planet for awhile. Had some medical problems. It's taken awhile to find my voice again. So maybe just maybe I'm going to do a little south of the border exploration. Those refugees at the southern border are there for a lot of reasons. And most of those reasons have roots in US foreign policies going back decades. I mean who would choose to leave their homes, their families, their country? Who would make an endless journey, many on foot, unless they wer certain they had no choice? Ronald Reagan I hope, wherever you are, you are forced to confront the death and destruction that can be laid at your feet. 

I wish  I could find a picture of this man. He stands there. A man in the patched working clothes of a Salvadoran peasant.Who knows? It may be that's all the clothes he has. In front of him? Three small, simple crosses. No names. They mark what looks like a mass grave. The forest will probably claim them in a few years. Even the man won't be able to find them. Who were they? A wife? Children? A mother? A father? Stangers caught trying to get out of the war zone and couldn't keep going? A stranger digging graves and committing unknowns known only to God. 

 Archbishop Romero is the figure with the glasses. Surrounded by the peasants who called him Monsenor. From the time he began to speak out for justice for the poor he pretty much accepted that he probably wouldn't die in bed. 

"Nothing is as important to the church as human life, especially the lives of the poor and oppressed. Jesus said that whatever is done to the poor is done to Him. This blood, these deaths are byond all politics. They touch the very heart of God." Archbishop Oscar Romero March 16, 19680. A week later he was dead. Shot down during mass. One of his last homilies (sermons) included a call to the police and military to ignore orders to kill their own people.

Funny how we hear the quote that the "poor will always be with us" as an excuse to pretty much ignore them. Even from the supposedly "Christians." And we seldom hear "And the king will answer them, 'I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me.' Mathew 5:40 That ends the passage about the prisoners, hungry, widows and orphans. The actions that will separate the sheep from the goats. 

Most of us assume He meant everybody was our brother or sister. There are others who obvivously have a much narrower definition of brothers and sisters. 

The words on the left side of the window "Let my death if it is accepted by God, be for the liberation of my people and as a witness of hope in the future." For his people Romero was regarded as a saint long before the church made it official. It took thirty eight years and a pope from Latin America. 

Well this one took the bit in its teeth and went where it wanted to do. 

AN OREGON ORIGINAL

I was looking up somebody else when I stumbled onto this. 

In 1970 Fuller Theological Seminary invited a Freshman Republican senator to speak at graduation. Mark Hatfield from Oregon came into the senate swimming against the stream. He never quite stopped. Hatfield identified as an evangelical Baptist. I haven't been able to find out what "flavor" of Baptist. 

"As we consider the impact of Christ's gospel in these times, we must honestly confront the critical realities that characterize the life of the society and the world...

First and most obvious to us here in the United States is the war in Indochina....

I ask you to balance carefully and in good conscience evaluate the pros and cons to this endeavor and then to have the courage to follow where your convictions lead you. can we rationalize the human suffering, the wasted resources, and the deterioration of moral sensitivities  associated with this war supporting what seems to be an authoritarian puppet regime in Southeast Asia? Is the good to be achieved in this endeavor greater than the evil we are being forced to endure to achieve it?"

In the era of Billy Graham crusades (man never met a war he didn't find a way to support) many evangelicals questioned his faith because he refused to support the war in Viet Nam. He had a long history of opposition to war and advocacy for the homeless and mentally ill. And I'll admit he managed to see that Oregon received our share of the federal pie. 

He finally retired in the mid nineties as politics entered the single issue era and the idea of public service started the downhill slide. We have plenty of career politicians but you find yourself wondering who they're serving. Us or themselves. 

CREATION'S JEWEL BOX

 For some peculiar reason fundies like to show up on science/tech oriented thread and start evangelizing. Some of the commenters ignore them. Some laugh at them. Some are a little rude. Global warming, Jesus loves you. Take a science program like Cosmos. If Tyson isn't actually proselytizing he's anti religion. It gets really old after awhile. Especially when they hint they have kids that' they're bringing up in the Old Time Religion it gets old really, really fast. 

Let’s face it coming up, so to speak, to a group of half way well educated science geeks and starting out with “the Bible says so,’ spiel probably isn’t going to go over very well anyway. Proving you have absolutely, and I do mean absolutely, no understanding of the science you’re attacking is not going to win you any friends or influence anyone else either. Fish don’t turn into humans. Monkeys don’t turn into humans. Gorillas don’t turn into humans. Humans become humans, in one form or another, for a several million years. 

And then when we follow the link to your page just might find you accusing those who don’t agree with of laughing at you. No, most of us aren’t laughing at you. We may just feel a little sorry for you the same way we’d consider someone who is tone deaf or color blind. There’s a whole wonderful universe out there and it seems that you can’t see or hear it. 

There just isn’t room in your vision of the universe for this. Sapphires, rubies, topaz, amber and diamonds tossed on a blanket of black velvet. Ten thousand galaxies in a tiny slice of sky; thousands, millions, tens of millions of light years back in time. Awesome, a little scary, but awesome. And thank you Hubble telescope for your years of service.   This is a composite shot from a very tiny piece of the sky. Each of those disks is a galaxy. the colors enhanced to highlight the dominant colors of each galaxy. The little dots are stars, most of them. Thousands, to millions, to hundreds of light years away from our little outpost in the stars.

THE CULT OF IGNORANCE

Still far too true.

 

WHILE TRUTH IS PUTTING ON ITS BOOTS

Georgia representative and human lightning rod, Marjorie Taylor Greene,  gave a tepid apology  for the statements she made before being elected last fall. I honestly don't know if the voteres in her district would have eleceted her if they had known her "views" before they went to the polls. These views were open to discovery with a little research. You now the kind of research at least some of us make before we fill in those little ovals on the Oregon mail in ballot. 

Doesn't really matter. She promptly retracted her apology. On pretty much party lines the house voted to strip the representative from Georgia of her committee assignments. Those assignments most reps point to when they are running for reelection to prove they were awake at least most of the time. She thinks it's a joke. 

And just in case we need reminders of what this individual claims to believe. There's this editorial cartoon. Sorry, I can't quite make out the name of the cartoonist. This was published before she lost her committee assignments. What were they thinking. Assigning her to the education committee? 

Of course she's claiming her free speech rights are being trampled. You are entitled to say anything you want. Up is down, right is left, black is white, whatever. The rest of us have the right to point out that you just might be a blithering idiot. The reps who heard "hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence" can't be blamed if they look at her and wonder how safe they are with her in the room. 

The FBI released photos of the wreakage at the pentagon. Wreakage identified as parts of the plane identified as striking the building. She stalked David Hogg, a survivor of a school shooting. You can say what you want. Private platforms, and FB, YouTube, Twitter etc., can set standards for statements or videos on those platforms. Violate those standards and they have the right to block you, freeze your accounts, toss your ass to the curb. Many of your fellow citizens believe that it's long past time for certain individuals to be tossed to the curb. 

Churchill. among others, stated that a "lie makes it around the world while the truth is putting on its boots." Or words to that effect.