Everyone has the right to defend themselves. Even Pope Francis, who is on the rather liberal end of many things, agrees with this.
But what is proportional to an enemy who has vowed to murder the populace and demonstrated that intent with murdering babies?
And let us be honest. The claim, "the majority of Palestinian people do not support Hamas" is pretty much equivalent to "most Germans weren't Nazi's", isn't it? It's thin. Indeed, maybe for those in the Middle East today, it has even less credibility. Certainly here in the US, in spite of separation from the artificial boundaries of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the Great War, plenty of Palestinians and their first generation descendants have rallied to the bloody cause as so many Palestinians have in the past, demonstrating that lamenting the results of bad decisions seems to be an intergenerational habit.
Congressman Rashida Tlaib, who was quick to accuse the IDF of rocketing a Palestinian hospital that in fact Islamic Jihad, which would regard her as an abhorrent example of a woman who should be out of government, accidentally rocketed.
But does that matter?
And did it in 1945?
And let us be further honest. The concept of proportionality is a Christian one. No other culture worries about it to the same extent that Christian ones do, and if it is now a global concept, it's' due in no small measure to Christianity. Everyone protesting for proportionality does so in hopes that it reaches a Christian audience. The historical global norm, outside of Judaism and Christianity (and I'll confess ignorance on Islam), was for slaughter.
It's the Christian influence that's made it unacceptable. For pagan people, and non-Abrahamic people? Well, that was what was done.
So we are left, then, with what is proportionality?
Was destroying Berlin in 1945 proportional to the Nazi genocidal imperial regimes? Or would it have been better to say, well, not all Germans were Nazis? Or did that, with a threat like Nazism, not really matter that much?
Questions that have to be answered. And the namby pampy "let's condemn overreaction" have to answer them most of all.
Or does it?
Does staying a hand, display more strength than using it? Turn, as it were, the other cheek?
And can we, even with the descent into liberal secularism, which seems to solely involve what's under our Fruit of the Looms, avoid answering them, in real, bloody, terms, rather than platitudes?
I offer no solutions, or answers.
I'm only posing the questions. With, of course, the proviso that if you answer wrong, there's blood on your hands, one away, or the other.
Poppies. Poppy seeds were added to Italian bread in the middle ages by the poor, specifically to keep themsleves stoned most of the time. This was because their lives were bad. The German army passed out booze, and sometimes drugs, late in World War Two to "motivate" troops, or in other words stone them before they went into horrors. Somehow, we're headed back into the Italian situation.
Headline from The Denver Post:
Gov. Polis tells Bill Maher he’s “excited” about medical ‘shrooms after voters pass psilocybin legalization
Colorado becomes the second state after Oregon to establish a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin.
Because Americans aren't stupid enough already, and Denver isn't enough of a giant doped up smelly dump.
Seriously, the march of intoxicants in this society ought to be an alarm bell going off. Something is really screwed up and the only thing a lot of people, and governments, can think to do is to keep people stoned.
A walk thought Denver's capitol city should show anyone, including Governor Polis, how messed up Colorado is as an example of this. Truly, and I'm not a teetotaler, if there's one thing that could have been done to help keep the country from getting where it now is, that we could go back and do, not repealing prohibition would be it.
Panem et circenses?
It seems so.
Bias?
Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich is a registered member of the Mormon church, spokesman confirms
So what?
I note this as this does seem to be the sort of headline that imports next to no useful information but which reporters, because of a bias, believe it does. It's impossible not to read this and think that the suggestion is that Anderson Aldrich shot up a gay club because he's a Mormon.
I'm rather obviously not a Mormon, but I'm confident that the LDS church does not advocate this sort of thing in any sense.
This is, I'd note, just a stone's throw from suggesting that all members of any conservative religion that generally holds conservative social views is a menace to society, a suggestion I've seen in news articles more than once.
Bias confirmation
Most folks here no doubt don't follow it, but there's a thing called "Catholic Twitter", which is made up of Catholics, on Twitter.
The main thing about Twitter is the gross exaggeration of any one topic until it's at the screaming level. Most of the people on Twitter don't take Twitter all that seriously to start with, and they shouldn't, and any one topic that's on it is not likely to be all that important or reflective of what is going on in the real world.
Anyhow, below is a part of a conservation that got rolling and rapidly morphed into "blind my eyes to the evidence". How it got started I'm not sure, as it involves the now actually relatively old story of Catholic cleric's abusing some sexually.
It's worth noting that this story is horrific in general. But at the same time it was a minority of clerics, and most of this story is now really old. To the extent that it remains a real present story it is is because the Church has a lot of older leaders, much like American society in general, who haven't done a good job of confronting this, in part because they seem to have ignored it and don't quite get the story.
Anyhow, one Priest noted.
Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC
@FrMatthewLC
The majority of victims of clerical sex abuse were post-pubescent males who were still minors.
Allowing men who were sexually attracted to post-pubescent male teens become priests likely had a part to do with the abuse (whatever name you give that).
Quote Tweet
Joshua McElwee
@joshjmac
·
Asked about prior comments that gay clergy were responsible for the Catholic clergy abuse crisis, new US Catholic bishop president Archbishop Broglio claims: "It's certainly an aspect of the sexual crisis that can't be denied." Academic studies have found no such relationship.
·Twitter for Android
Fr. Schneider is correct. Most of the abuse that occurred was male on male, and most of that was on post pubescent males who were legally minors.
Let's take a diversion here for a moment.
Just recently a French Cardinal publically confessed and condemned himself for what was translated as "an affair" with a 14-year-old female back many years ago when he was a priest, not a bishop.
That's horrific.
The headlines, however, rapidly went from "an affair" to "rape", or at least the Twitter ones did.
Here's the thing. Under the applicable French law, she was over the age of consent and could do just that. So the act was icky, gross, immoral, inexcusable, but not illegal. It wasn't rape as the law of that land, at the time, defined it.
FWIW, as that surprised me, I looked it up. The age of consent in France is now 15.
I always think of the age of consent being 18, but by and large in most of Europe, Ireland I think aside, the age of consent is lower than 18, with ages in the mid-teens not uncommon. I'm not going to post them all, but that's interesting in part because Europeans like to criticize the US for having legal pathways to "child marriage" while they have legal pathways to what we'd regard here as rape.
Anyhow, this is an example of following the evidence.
And the evidence generally is that most priest abusers were engaging in homosexual abuse, as legal line or not, "post pubescent" is a legal, not a physical, line.
Occam's Razor holds that the simplest answer is generally the best, because it's generally correct. The simplest explanation here is that most of the abusers were homosexuals.
Indeed, they pretty clearly were.
No, that doesn't make all homosexual men abusers, but if you put anyone in a situation in which they have no legitimate means for an outlet, problems arise. The real question, therefore, is how did enough homosexual men end up in the priesthood (and in Boy Scout leadership positions) for this to be statistically observable.
I've posted on it before, but my view is, on the priesthood, that this occurred as it gave homosexual Catholic men a place to professionally hide. That seems to be where the evidence leads. They weren't there because they were homosexuals per se, but because it gave them a socially acceptable excuse for not being married and, even more than that, not exhibiting any interest in women.
Well, of course, the Twitterverse couldn't accept that. The competing explanation, violating the principal of pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, was that the abuse was male on male only males were around, and therefore they were the only targets of opportunity.
That explanation leaves a lot lacking. For one thing, males aren't the only humans around. The French example, which has become two examples, demonstrates that, and an example in our own diocese of many years ago demonstrates that as well.
And while all male environments do give rise to this, it's not quite in the same fashion. Those examples tend to be instances in which not only are only males around, but their virtually cloistered for long periods of time. Groups of straight conscripts, for example, don't start engaging in male on male sexual contact as there aren't women around. Indeed, studies have shown that in areas where there are only males for long periods of time, what tends to happen is that their testosterone levels plummet on their own, and they're simply less interested.
But because we must maintain this fiction socially now, we can't entertain the possibility that the abusers were homosexuals. We can't even really engage in the possibility that a small number of homosexuals are abusers.
The Zeitgeist.
What about the Boy Scouts?
I haven't researched it, but I'd guess that those abusers were attracted to those leadership roles specifically for the target of opportunity situation. So that situation was different yet. The difference, therefore, is that in the priest example I suspect homosexual men put themselves into that situation to avoid suspicion as to their inclinations, and then yielded in crossing a line which they should not have, and which in the US is illegal, but in the same country, at a time when pornification of child models was common, isn't surprising. In the Boy Scout example, that was probably a group of men who were abusers in the first instance, but with homosexual inclinations.
And no, that doesn't mean all homosexuals are abusers.
Less government?
The State gave out $6,600,000 in rent relief, funded by the Federal Government, last month.
This program has stopped now, but its interesting in that there's been so much howling in the state about Federal money. As other examples have shown, people can howl about the dangers of Federal money and take it at the same time.
Credit Cart Sales and Firearms
A recent headline read:
Guns bought through credit cards in the US will now be trackable
So what?
In the United States, you have a right to keep and bear arms. We all know this. But that really doesn't mean that private companies can't track it.
They're already tracking everything else.
If we really don't like this, what we ought to do is simply ban credit cars, which are inherently inflationary to start with.
Misplaced Complaints
A lot of people are complaining about Elon Musk buying Twitter and treating it like a toy.
Well, he's super rich and for him, it probably is a toy. He's probably loving seeing people complain as they dance to his tune. And that probably explains why he let Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene back on Twitters.
Just ignore it.
Twitter really doesn't matter. I noted this all the other day here:
Elon Musk has bought Twitter and is busy making changes to it internally. This, in turn, has resulted in a lots of righteous anger about his behavior.
Here's the real question.
Who cares?
We have a Twitter Feed. You can see it on the bottom right-hand corner of this page. That doesn't stop the fact that Twitter is basically stupid.
A person can't say anything worth saying in as few of words as Twitter restricts you to. All Twitter really is for us is redirection to this blog. Does it work? Who knows. But as far as weighty conversation, not happening.
Indeed, the fact that people seem to think its weighty shows how dim the American intellect has become, as if there wasn't plenty of proof for that otherwise.
Now, I have some feeds that I follow I really like. Some do nothing other than what this one does, direct you to other things Some are basically photo feeds, much like Instagram.
But as far as news or anything worth reading, not going to happen.
Some people seem to think that Musk shouldn't be allowed to own Twitter or, if he does, he shouldn't be allowed to wreck it. Well, why not? He owns it. If you are uncomfortable with that, as many are, the real argument is that a person shouldn't be allowed to amass the size of fortune that Musk has. Musk was born into a wealthy South African family, and he's made more money, showing I suppose that being born to a wealthy family is a good way to get richer.
It also shows how screwed up American immigration laws are, as Musk apparently lives in Texas. Why was he allowed to immigrate here? No good reason at all, and in a society whose immigration laws made sense he'd be back in South Africa, or perhaps someplace in what's left of the British Commonwealth.
His personal life also shows how Western morality has declined. Musk has ten children by three women, the first six by his former wife Justine Musk, then two by Claire Elise Boucher, the Canadian singer who goes by the absurd stage name Grimes, and finally twins via Shivon Zilis. If nothing else, this proves that vast amounts of money will get the male holder of the same money and sex, but it's not admirable and that this sort of conduct is no longer the type that is regarded as scandalous, although it should be.
None of which is a reason to get all in a twitter about Twitter. If he wrecks it, well, he bought it.
Who cares?
A bigger topic regarding Must, really, is should a just society allow one person to have so much of the planet's resources.
I risk sounding like Huey Long on this, but I really don't think so. There shouldn't be billionaires at all. Before you reach a billion in assets, indeed, before you reach $500,000,000, you simply ought to be taxed down to size. And no, I don't believe that disincentivises a person from "developing the economy". And if it does, well, I don't care.
We're now past the election, but speaking of that and I guess twitter, it's really time for John Barasso to stop coming on Twitter and complaining about the price of gasoline.
Here's how the price of gasoline works.
It's made from petroleum oil.
Petroleum oil is produced in certain spots of the globe and sold all over the planet before it's refined.
Most of the world, the United States included, uses more oil than it produces. This is true of the US even though its a major petroleum producer.
US petroleum is expensive to produce. Normally, Mexican, Venezuelan, Arabian and Russian oil, are not.
If the price per gallon is low (West Texas is $79.19/bbl as I write this. . . low), a lot of North American oil becomes uneconomic to produce. Just about $60.00/bbl is that point for the US.
If the price per gallon is high, it means that a lot of North American oil is economic to produce.
Wyoming only makes money on petroleum when the price is relatively high.
An unstable price doesn't benefit anyone.
Russia invaded Ukraine, and for a variety of reasons this has driven up the price of oil. OPEC+, which includes Russia, has operated to try to keep the price high.
Want lower prices?
Lower demand or increase cheap supplies.
We have no cheap supplies in North America.
Joe Biden doesn't set the price of gasoline.
Scary
North Korean is rapidly becoming a frightening menace.
The question is what, if anything, can be done about this short of military action, and will we reach a point where this seems necessary to any administration other than a Trump administration, which probably wouldn't.
This is Viktoriia. Today she died in Kyiv. Her colleagues write that her body was found in her beloved husband Bohdan's embrace, their cat was with them in the building attacked with the Russian drone. She was pregnant. They had been expecting for child.
Recently, on an email list I'm on, the topic of the individual culpability of Russians for the war in Ukraine came up. Most of the people who posted on the topic, not surprisingly, held that individual Russians had no culpability, it was all Putin, or Putin and his cronies. A few held the opposite view.
I tend to hold that opposite view.
Now, it is not the case that some babushka in Vladivostok just trying to get by really has blood on her hands, but rather at some level, and I'd but that level fairly low, responsibility for actions in wars vests.
After the Second World War, and even continuing on to the present day, thousands of Germans were put on trial from crimes during the Second World War. "I was only following orders" was held not to be an excuse. Crimes, we supposedly learned, are crimes no matter what.
Of course, it's easier to see those crimes if you are ordered to shoot civilians, but what about bombing them? That's effectively what's going on.
Well, it's no different.
Bombing of cities was once a controversial subjected in a way that it always should have been, but which after World War Two it wasn't. In 1939-40, both sides in Europe stuck to bombing military and industrial targets, but the Germans actually accidentally hit civilian targets during the Blitz that seemed to observers to be calculated acts. The British, who rapidly went to nighttime bombing, fairly quickly quit worrying much about collateral damage, and things were off and running.
Theoretically, most Allied bombing in Europe was targeted, but the targeting was relatively loose. American daylight bombing was conducted during the day for precision, but even it hit a lot of residential areas. British nighttime bombing was much looser by default. Frankly, at some point at least the British passed over to where the Germans had already been, and were effectively bombing civilian targets, or at least bombing so cavalierly that they knew that they were killing a lot of civilians. Lest Americans feel too good about this, the US deliberately went to the same tactic against Japan, bombing highly flammable civilian housing on the theory that making workers homeless would wreck Japanese production, even though it was effectively already wrecked.
The US is the "good war", as Studs Terkel put it, to Americans, and it's practically the high point of modern British history. But in truth, the areal bombing campaigns crossed over into the criminal and immoral. And in both instances they had no discernible impact on shortening the war by way of loose targeting.
The exception to that last statement, of course, was the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities, which directly ended the war with Japan. The US has been struggling to justify destroying two Japanese cities in what was a terror attack ever since, but it can't be justified. Excuses have ranged from it was no worse than the firebombing of Tokyo, which was also immoral, to it hypothetically saving the lives of a lot of Japanese soldiers and civilians, as well as allied ones. We don't know that, of course, and at the time of the bombings, that was only a theoretical possibility.
We've basically found it impossible to reconcile with ushering in the age of atomic weaponry ever since, but we have abstained from its further use in spite of it being urged from time to time. Indeed, it was urged during the Korean War, the French Indochinese War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even during the Vietnam War. Most of the civilians and military figures in authority always said no to the suggestion.
The fact that the US blazed the trail on this has been used recently by Putin as an excuse for suggesting he might go nuclear. It doesn't provide one, as we've abstained. Indeed, since World War Two the Western Way of War has become more and more precise, and excuses for collateral damage of any kind less and less tolerated. Single USAF bombs to neighborhoods have been regarded as inexcusable by the US. On the ground, photographs by Marines with Afghan dead combatant bodies have been regarded as criminal, when their grandfathers in arms routinely cut the ears off of dead Japanese soldiers and nobody thought anything of it.
Putin's war has stripped the band aid of the noble Russian combatant off and showed to us an ugly wound that goes back at least as far as World War Two. The Red Army was effectively a large armed mob that committed at least the crime of rape on a massive scale. The current Russian army doesn't seem much better. Indeed, it seems as the crude vulgarity of Russian servicemen that came in with the Russian Revolution just won't go away.
Nobody has let the Germans get away with supporting the Nazis and all that meant. Nor should they. The Third Reich tarnished the reputation of the Germans in a way that will take at least two centuries to change. The Russians are working on the same thing.
One of the reasons that the July 20 plotters attempted to kill Hitler in 1944 is that they wanted to show the world that not every German was fully invested in the evil, although even those in on the plot were to some degree. Russia's reputation now can only be saved for generations to come if some brave Russians refuse to cooperate in the evil and do something, whether that means voting with their feet and leaving Russian ranks in Ukraine, to parking a tank in front of the Kremlin and declaring Putin's regime over.
Whether or not that happens is yet to be seen. But what we can say is that every Russian missile crew that points a missile towards Ukraine and helps fire it is complicit in murder to some degree.
