Lex Anteinternet: A 2020 Holiday Reflection. Part 3 of 3. The Resolu...

Lex Anteinternet: A 2020 Holiday Reflection. Part 3 of 3. The Resolu...: 

A 2020 Holiday Reflection. Part 3 of 3. The Resolute Edition

In prior years I've put up a string of threads entitled Resolutions For Other People.  I haven't done it every year, but I have quite a few times.  My last one is here:

New Years Resolutions For Other People (and maybe some for everyone) 2020.

And the one before that:

New Years' Resolutions for Other People. 2019 Edition

These fall largely into the category of satire, and like most satire there's an element of seriousness to it.  This past year, 2020, however, has been altogether far too serious to really effectively delve into satire with.  Some serious resolutions, on a societal and personal basis, are really needed now.  

2020 has exposed some cracks in the fabric of Western society that have been there for a long time, at least since 1968, if not since 1939, or 1929, or perhaps 1917 (or maybe 1914).  Spanning a long period of history for other reasons, it's pretty obvious that the depth of our societal strife is much, much deeper in terms of years and origins than the weekend pundits would have it.  Something didn't suddenly go wrong during the Trump Presidency. Something was wrong a long time before that.  Anyone who has experienced at least a half century has been able to see that unless they've chosen to blind themselves to it.  Much of the "progress' that has been allegedly made in society has in fact been deeply retrograde.  In some significant ways we're much closer in societal influences to the year 20 now than to the year 1920, and that's not good at all.

So, with this in mind, some resolutions.  Yes, for other people, but also some individual, perhaps, down below.

Gravitas

1.  1968 didn't work out because the 1960s didn't.

When we hit 2018 we ran, along with retrospectives on 1918, some on 1968.

1968 was a pivotal year in the history of the West.  Things were revolutionary in the true sense of the word because it was the year that smoldering revolutionary views of society harbored in the college age Baby Boomers, but dating back to revolutionary views that became deeply seated in some sections of society in the 1910s through the 1950s, busted out.

Well, like the French Revolution, that was all a big fat failure.

That doesn't mean that there weren't things that needed to be addressed, but a lot of the addressing was just a rich kids tantrum that he didn't get an extra slice of pie for desert and we've been paying for it in spades.  

The 1960s were the decade in which the Boomers decided that none of the "conservative" values of any kind were correct and that none of them applied to them. Well, that was an ignorant approach to the world. And that was followed up by the "greed is good" 1970s in the same generation.

Overall, the generation that still in power in the Untied States, and still very influential in much of the West (although that's passing away with blistering speed in much of it) ripped down the ediface and then the structure of nearly everything.  The edifices may have needed some stripping, but the structures were torn down without reflection.

I've long maintained that the generation that's up and coming, the ones that are below age 35 now, are much more like the ones born before the World War Two/Depression Era/Greatest Generation, than any since then.  They've been left, however, without much structure.  Of course, in some ways, the generation that fought World War One suffered through that as well.

Tennyson wrote that:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Well, sometimes the old order changes simply because its under assault.  Here we have Tennyson's writings twice before us. The old order was attacked a bit too much, and what replaced it is now the old order and needs to go.

Chesterton noted;

There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, "You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer is "You can." A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed.

This doesn't mean that everyone who has reached the age of 50, and I have, needs to suddenly find an iceberg and float out to a watery demise.  Far from it.  But lots of what we reassessed in 1968 and the years that followed need to be reassessed as the results are a mess. The Sexual Revolution alone looks a lot like the French Revolution. . . a spectacular celebrated failure that sparked more spectacular failures.  Celebrating the French Revolution is vicariously celebrating Stalin, Moa and Pol Pot.  Celebrating the Sexual Resolution is pretty much just like that.  And that's but one example.

2.  Something old

It used to be the case, for some reason, brides were told they needed;

Something old 

Something new.

Something borrowed

Something blue.

I don't know about that, but the entire society needs to try the first one, as we by and large don't know what works anymore.  And by that, I mean something serious, and some things not so much.

What I more particularly mean is that everyone, and I'm serious about this, ought to look back prior to the Boomer generation and try something, and really try it, that your progenitors of that generation prior would have regarded as routine.  Because this blog is directed at the faceless void, I don't know what that really means in your case.

In my own, that'd be pretty easy as my parents weren't Boomers.  So for folks like me, I'd say go back one prior to that.  I.e., if your parents were in the pre Boomer generation, look at least one back.  If  your parents are Boomers, look to the generation or generations prior to that.

And be at least partially serious.

Now, I know some people who think they've done this.  Their great grandparents might avhe been immigrants from Poland, for example, so they've adopted Polish names for their newborn and they eat kielbasa on the Polish national holiday, whatever that is.  And I in fact mean something sort of like taht. . . but more.

On the light side, that is what I mean.  I don't care if you are a dedicated vegan.  If your grandparents routinely had a hefty Sunday meal of roast beef, potatoes, and finished it off with coffee (and many people did just that), try it for a few weeks running.

Try it.

But beyond that, try something serious.

Did your grandparents always put in a garden?  Put one in. Did one of them go fishing, and not in the weeny "catch and release" way, but in the "I'm eating that" way.  Do it.  Was one a farmer. . . think about farming if you can (which you probably can't, so put in a garden).

And beyond that.

Were your grand parents Italian immigrants and you think that you celebrate that heritage by having lasagna every now and then?  You don't.  Go to Mass for three months in a row.  Were they Romanian?  Well go to the Romanian Orthodox Church three months in a row or the Greek Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic one if you can't find one and see what that's like . . .seriously.  

And are you living a life that your Italian grandmother would have regarded as an infamnia when she was 20. Well knock it and try to live like she did.

With all of this stuff, I think you'll find something. . . and something serious, real, and seriously real.

3. Reassessing the reassessment of retiring.

Over the past several years I've read endless articles in business journals and newspapers about how retirement is dead, nobody should retire, and isn't it nifty that people don't retire.

It isn't.

There tend to be only so many jobs in an economy and when they're occupied, they're occupied.  It's different if you won the work, and professionals and business owners do, but otherwise, that's just not the case.

Additionally, there comes a time when there needs to be a shifting over, and we're now there.  This past several months we saw Finland field a slate of candidates for their nation's chief executive who were all in their 30s with one exception who was in his 40s.  That guy lost.  In contrast, the United States fielded a slate of candidates that were sifted down to people in their 70s and 80s.  That's insane.

People routinely complain about the American infrastructure being past its prime.  Of course it is.  The entire nation is vested in people who are past their prime in some ways. Even taking the most recent election, there's no earthly way that either Donald Trump or Joe Biden were the men they were twenty years ago.  

At some point, this is getting dangerous if for no other reason that an entire society in the hands of people in their natural decline will be a country in decline.  But it can be worse. So far the nation's been spared what will happen if we keep this up, which will be a President who descends into mental illness or a Supreme Court with more than one member who have Alzheimer's.  It's inevitable.

Moreover, there's something wrong with a society in which people who have worked their entire lives can think of nothing else to do.  Travel, if you still can. Write.  Photograph. Become a Church reader or a Synagogue canter.  Be more natural.  Mehr Mensch sein.

4.  Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

If you worked your entire life in Dayton, you owe the place something or at least you owe Ohio something.  Don't pick up and move simply because you can when you retire your job at Amalgamated Amalgamated.  If you hated Ohio, you should have left before then.

Okay, family ties, health, etc., all matter.  And I don't have a problem with people moving from Craig to Ranger, or Riverton to Dubois, or Santa Fe to Taos. But we owe where we are from something and to have lived and worked in a region and then to pick up root when we retire and relocate does a double disservice.  It deprives our community of what it gave us, both in resources and in knowledge, and it drops us in a place where we may very well be an economic and cultural menace.

If you retire from Giant Co in Illinois and then buy a farm in Nebraska as a hobby, some young farmer in Nebraska probably won't be able to get a start.  If you wanted to be a farmer you should have tried it prior to that point.  You get the picture.

And frankly, if you stick around and finally pass in your region, people remember you.  And for a long time.  If you pick up and move to Arizona, people forget you, and your obituary in the paper just brings a "I wonder who that was and why they're in our paper?".  Don't fools yourself.  You may have been a big lawyer at big law firm, but if you die some place distant, nobody is going to remember you.

5.  Right, Left and all points in between.

Let's start here with "the Donald".

You lost the election, President Trump, and you need to accept that immediately.

You are doing a massive disservice to the nation by pretending otherwise.  

And for those participating in this, its' hurting the country.

We are a democratic nation.  We're not Weimar Germany.  Denying the results of an election, even if it means that the person elected is somebody we detest, is detestable.  It needs to stop.

And remember, if things devolve to them against us, there's always the chance that there's a lot more of them, then us.

Let's go beyond that, however, and really look at what's going on underneath and resolve to address it.

The country ended up with Donald Trump not because, as some lefties seem to think, 50% o the country is crazy.  Rather, 50% is totally disenfranchised. That needs to be brought to an end.

Americans who defined what to be an American is up until Berkeley radicals suddenly determined they had the right to do that need to be heard from, and in a large way. And that means that the nation isn't going to become a "progressive" (and we'll get to that definition in a moment) petrie dish.  The more that occurs the more the subjects of the experiment don't like it.

Indeed, the irony of the recent populist movement is that you really have to look outside the US to find analogous examples and they're all really disturbing.  A good one is pre revolutionary Russia.  Most Russians never became Communists and they certainly weren't in 1917. They were just sick and tired of a government that served only itself and they were happy to let it burn to the ground even if they were burned up in the process. That's sort of what's going on now.  

The needs, desires and views of the Rust Belt demographic needs to be taken into account and given voice.  If it isn't, this is going to keep on and get worse.

The left also needs to quit ignoring the actual views of various demographics they claim. The rise of real lefty ideas is very limited and the up and coming generations, including those concentrated in ethnic minorities, are much more conservative than they are.  People being both, for example, against abortion and Hispanic isn't nuts, its the norm in that demographic.  The left is going to have to change or it'll render itself irrelevant in a generation.

But before we leave that, those now in the diehard populist camp need to wake up and realize that they aren't the majority of Americans anymore. There's a lot of them, but the old assembly line manufacturing America is gone forever.  In towns and cities people are more left wing and are a lot more accepting of a government role in everything.  Not everything urbanites confront is invalid by any means, and populist are going to have to yield to that.  That means that people need to quit screaming "socialism" every time the government is involved in something and frankly, as we transition into a new economy, the government's role in everything is going to increase enormously.

And conservatives and progressives need to figure out what the heck those labels mean.  To be a conservative presumably means you are conserving something, but what?  If its just the way things were, that's not going to work, as things were never the way that we think they were and some things move.  Beyond that, somethings need to be dumped.  So if its core values, it needs to be thought out. And part of that means adopting some things that conservatives in the US have seemingly never aligned themselves with.  Conservatives, for example, ought to be conservationist. The same core value is at work.  And if you are pro life, you ought to be pro vaccination, even if that means a strong element of government control in that.  Conservatism isn't libertarianism, which is a completely different ethos.

Progressivism has an even bigger problem in that it suggests we're progressing towards something.  If that's the idea, and I think it is, progressives need to be honest about that. Where are we progressing too.  All too often its seems that concept of progress is rooted in a weird science fiction like world where through better chemistry and gene splicing, we'll make a brand new species.  Most people don't want that, and for good reason.

Progressivism supplanted the world liberalism, or rather it returned.  Progressives at one time were populist liberals like Theodore Roosevelt.  Now they aren't.  The term Liberal made more sense and I think it ought to return.  To a certain degree the world lost favor as liberal came to essentially mean libertine, and government funded libertine, but that was more honest.

Anyhow, everyone ought to resolve to listen to the other side more.  The simple fact is that if you are adopting your views because your party seems to hold them, or because Donald Trump does, or AoC does, you aren't thinking.  No sane person can hold all the views that anyone party seems to. 

One final thing here. Other than next week, this isn't going to be an election year, but none the less I'll give a voting resolution. Everyone, and by that I mean absolutely everyone, ought to find a third party candidate to vote for in the next election they vote in.  Everyone.  To not do so is to acquiesce to an anti democratic two party structure which is part of the overall problem.

6.  Listen to Science.

I think I've posted this one before, but this year in particular has brought out some very odd developments in regard to the public's views on science.

I'm hearing a lot of people say they don't trust the science behind the vaccines.  Okay, maybe you don't, but why?  If it's not an informed basis, you should question your conclusion.

Now, that doesn't mean that a person should automatically accept everything that's currently a scientific theory. Even scientists don't do that.  But it does mean that a person needs to weigh and measure their views against the appropriate yardstick. That yardstick is never "scientists are telling me something I don't want to hear".

All too often that's all it amounts to.  We used to get a lot of that with cigarettes, but that's now pretty much gone away. We still get some with drinking in which people insist they can drink a gallon of beer a day or something like that.  In some instances, as noted, and particularly it seems in regards to diets, there are good reasons to question the latest scientific stuff, but you should do so in a scientific fashion.

Americans have always tended to question science based on their politics when they mixed with fundamentalist Christianity, which is a uniquely American thing.  In Europe, where Catholicism remained influential even where the Protestant Revolution forcibly supplanted it, the tradition of the Faith supporting science remains very strong.  Catholics are huge on science and informed Catholics nearly always are everywhere, with the Catholic belief being that science serves to illuminate and explain God's creation.  But in the US the trend in some regional sectors, and spreading over the country in the late 19th Century, was that everything had to be reconciled strictly to the Bible, with it unfortunately being the case that various Protestant theologians read some things into the Bible which actually weren't there, or which were based on erroneous translations, or which lacked nuance.  That has caused the illusion in some quarters that science and religion are at odds with each other, which in fact they are not.

Beyond that, a decline in science education and funding following the Reagan Administration really hurt science education in the generation that immediately followed the Boomers, Generation X.  The Baby Boomers were a large generation and the country didn't always do well in educating them, but up until Reagan came in there was a huge emphasis on science in education.  Following him, there wasn't. This mean that subsequent generations, for a long time, had a poor foundation in science and engineering, with the subsequent result that we ended up having to import a lot of people in that category as we weren't generating our own.

Combined with the Boomer "let's rip everything down" impulse, this gave rise to popular bogosity.  Dr. Oz says ridiculous stuff on television and people believe him.  Jenny McCarthy, fresh out of prostituting herself in Playboy, has a baby and determines that vaccines, not genetics, caused the child to have Downs Syndrome.  Patrick Coffin hosts wackadoodle pandemic conspiracy theorists on a show that started off on orthodox Christianity.  Enough is enough.

The entire society is getting a lesson on science right now and we need to listen to scientists. Some of that means when somebody says something is wrong to outright question them if it is contrary to the scientific opinion.  Retreating into "I heard" or something like that isn't a defense.  I've heard, for example, that the new COVID 19 vaccines "change your physical makeup" and are "new". Neither of those is true in any meaningful scene, but you have to know the science a bit to know why that's not true. But then to make those statements you should know the science as well.

Part of this involves the uncomfortable realization that nobody knows everything about everything, and all of us too.  Which gets me to the next thing.

7.  Learn Some History

When the Internet first became widely used, some eternal optimist gushed about how everybody was now going to easily learn everything, including history.  On the contrary, what really occurred is that vast amounts of bogosity spewed forth on everything including historical topics.

There are really good histories that are written by people who are not trained historians, but usually those same individuals are trained in something analytical.  Rick Atkinson, for example, has a Masters in English and was employed as an analytical journalist before writing his popular histories.  Barbara Tuchman had a BA in Arts from Radcliffe with a focus in literature and history.  Lars Brownworth is a university educated historian who was a high school history teacher.  Generally, when  you find somebody writing good histories who isn't an academic historian, they're probably a 1) teacher, 2) writer from another discipline or 3) a lawyer, all of whom are trained in analytical research.

This used to be the source of raging debates between academic historians, who have traditionally tended to despise historians who come in from other disciplines. They still despise them.  One academic historian who is employed by a university spends piles and piles of time on Twitter writing about about how awful her ex husband is and how great her boy friend is and crap like that, but still has time to take shots as historians who come in from other disciplines. But if ever academic historians have a point on this, and they do, the Internet has really proven it.

Since the Internet has come in people who believe in warped myth, the way the Germans believed that they'd been stabbed in the back in 1918, have had free reign to publish in that medium, and even simply publish, on their favorite myths.  Unfortunately many people treat historical topics the same way that they treat a grocery list, only buying what they know they like.  This has given rise to re revival of a bunch of real baloney of all sorts, a good example being that the Confederacy was about something other than keeping blacks enslaved.  It wasn't, but there's all sorts of bull out there to the contrary.  This has had a lot of really bad results over the past ten years, and right now its giving credence to the absurdity of the AG of Texas engaging in near sedition and suggesting that his trampling of the United States Constitution is supported by respect by the Constitution.  

One of the things about real histories is that they not only keep us from repeating mistakes of the past, we learn what the errors of the past and views of the past really were.  That is in part why historical works keep coming out on topics that have been written about before.  As our distance increases from the times being written about, the body of knowledge that prior readers had on those topics fades.  At the same time, not too surprisingly, people come into the topics today assuming that their beliefs found expression in prior times or that they're enlightened now as their beliefs were contrary to those held in prior times.  Often neither assumption is even close to true.

A lack of historical knowledge has been cited by some in our society as a real problem my entire life.  Most really well educated Americans on historical topics are at least to some degree self educated.  Perhaps this didn't matter in less politically stressed times, but in politically stressed times this always really matters.  Our culture needs a crash course in real history and every American ought to read some works of real history this year, and that doesn't mean some internet screed on a topic but a real book.

8.  Quite listening to celebrities.

I've posted this before so I'm going to be brief, and frankly extreme.  But I mean it.

If you became famous because you are an entertainer, you forfeited your seriousness card and nobody, and I do mean nobody, should listen to you on anything other than your field. That's it.

Nobody should care one whit what any celebrity says on anything serious matter, whether it be politics or science or a social matter.  Staying famous is the stock and trade of celebrities and no celebrity is ever going to say anything that impairs that.  Ever.  If Nazi Dogs For Injustice became a big deal tomorrow, all celebrities would suddenly be Nazi Dogs For Injustice.

9. Don't take any political view, or news story view, from Twitter.

It's probably wrong.

10.  Time to reassess late education.

This should be obvious now, but the education model we're working on, which is really the early 20th Century one modified by the post World War Two one, needs some serious rethinking.

This is likely a topic for another thread, but the current trend is to publicly fund university.  The better argument is to defund a lot of what we're already publicly funding.  We don't really need to fund students who are studying something "studies" and we certainly don't need to give student loans to law students.  We do need to boost science and education funding.

This would mean, of course, that the Department of Departmental Largess in a lot of universities would fail and the department members would be wondering the streets trying to sell pencils while giving left wing advice to anyone who would listen, who would be nobody, while at the same time science and engineering departments, and more traditional departments like history, English, various languages and the like would prosper. They ought to.  It would also mean that students would seem to have fewer options, but which would mean that they'd have more realistic ones.

11.  First thing we do. . . .

No, not "kill the lawyers". But their number needs to be reduced as there's way too many. 

This is party of the byproduct of what we noted in section 9 above, but it goes beyond that. Without getting into the American Default Degree, we can simply note that.  

Since the 1970s this has had a hugely detrimental effect on American society, although we must  note that just recently the courts really shined in defending democracy against an attempt at a coup through the courts.  That doesn't take away from the fact that if you live in a society where any time you turn on a televisions you are confronted with an add asking if you took "x" and then later experienced anything, you might have a lawsuit, is fundamentally whacky.  It's hurting things and this is a good time to reach in and saw off this limb.

It'd be easy to do.  Simply quit giving student loans to law students. That would do a lot. But another thing would be to reinstate real bar exams instead of the moronic Uniform Bar Exam. That really needs to go an d ought to go by January 15, 2021.

12.  Stop slandering everyone, including public figures you don't know.

An example from, of course, Twitter.

Don Winslow

@donwinslow

·

5h

When

@BenSasse

lays on the grass the worms beneath him think he has come home for a visit.

Well, "international best seller" author, a lot more people are aware of Sasse and respect him than will every read any of your books, none of which I've heard of, and all of which will be in the bargain bin of the library book sale within five years.

Stating something like this may pass for whit in the 21st Century, but it's awfully close to the infantile school yard taunts of the pre Internet age.  It's easy to imagine Winslow running around with the old "I guess I'll go eat worms" playground chant after a thing like that, but there's a lot of that on Twitter.

Something Less Serious, which doesn't mean I don't mean it.

Well, alright then.  A few things less weighty.

1.  Enough with the tattoos already.

When I was young, as I've written before, having a tattoo meant: 1) you'd landed in the first wave at Iwo Jima, or 3) had been a prisoner in a Concentration Camp; or 4) had been a member of the SS and had your blood group tattooed on your arm; or 3) had been in the Vietnamese Marine Corps, or 4) you were a member of an outlaw biker gang.

I miss those days.

I'm sick of tattoos.  

The novelty of tattoos is completely worn off. At this point, everyone who gets a tattoo should be required to get a tattoo of a sheep, as you're just joining the herd.

Expressing your individuality?  Not hardly.

Additionally, one tattoo seems like the gateway drug for another.  It's gotten so as soon as you see a tattoo pop out on a neckline or shirt line of a woman in particular, you should start looking for more.  If they aren't there yet, they're going to be.

Enough already.

Unless you recently took shrapnel in the knee in Afghanistan or embarked on a religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land, you don't need a tattoo.  You need not to have a tattoo.  If you have some, be original.  Get one removed.

2.  Try some real clothing

Eh?

If I read one more article about "sustainable fashion" I'm going to scream. There's nothing sustainable about fashion unless it came from something that grew or crawled.

Give up that petroleum byproduct blouse or shirt and actually try something real.  Give it a whirl.  Your skin, and the planet, will thank you.

3.  Skip the cartoon moves

Cartoon super heroes are infantile and watching them make you infantile.  Don't go.  

Want to see a move about Wonder Woman?  There's a fairly recent one on Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

4.  Quit abusing the English language.

If you have a bedmate of the opposite gender you live with, that person ain't  your "partner", partner.  That person is your common law spouse in a natural sense, and somebody you are avoiding committing to in a more natural sense.  Whatever you choose to do, don't call him or her your "partner" unless you are engaged in actual business or criminal activity.

Illegal aliens are still that also, not undocumented workers.  Undocumented workers are French slave laborers who are being held in captivity in Nazi Germany who have lost their papers.  It's different.

That doesn't mean that illegal aliens are bad people.  They're people.  But they're here illegally. That doesn't mean that you have to think they should be deported if you don't, but ignoring the fact of an illegality is contempt for the concept of law.

Et tu, Brute?

Okay, so while correcting the world, how did I do personally?

Not great really.

From the exterior I didn't have a bad year in any fashion, but on the interior and on a personal level it wasn't great at all.  I have certain resolutions I make every year and I never seem to fulfill them.  On at least one of them, there's a resignation element to it that means I really ought to quit resolving it.  I.e., maybe if you resolve to become the Czar of Russia every year you ought to reassess your goals.

On the other hand, I suppose, there's that grasp ought to exceed your reach thing that can go on.  That is, a goal may be unrealistic, but how unrealistic?  Becoming the Czar is unrealistic, and becoming the Metropolitan of Moscow is likely as well, but with each step down something is more within you reach.  By that , for example, I could become a Russian Orthodox Priest.  I don't want to be one, and I'd have theological problems with doing that (I'm Catholic), but there are steps I could fairly easily take to do that, if that is something that I desired to do.  You get my point.  But if you just decide, oh, I can't do that, then at some point you become one of those people whose horizons become quite narrow and close in.  I find that a lot of people enter that stage as they age.

Of course, at some point you really can't do that for one reason or another.  For example, way back three parish priests ago, the pastor of my parish asked me to consider becoming a Deacon.  I did consider it, but decided I had no calling there.  If I were to reconsider now, I'd be too old at age 58 to take it up, as the local rules are that you can't be older than 55 when  you enter the program to pursue it.  Now, having said that, they do allow exceptions and I know one fellow who received such an exception, although his example likely provide the reason for the existence of the rule.  His health declined very rapidly and he served very briefly, as he was already in  the "old age" category.

Which gets to the topic of time and physical limitation. In our society there are still some occupations that have upper age limits for entry, with the Federal Government perhaps being unique to some degree in that category as its exempted itself from the laws it imposed on everyone else in this area. But they do make sense.  You don't want 50 year olds trying to enter the Army and you probably don't want htem entering your local police force either.  I feel that we ought to put some age limits on how old a person can be and still run for Congress or the Presidency, quite frankly, or go on the bench.  And at my current age I can't realistically dream of becoming an outfielder for the New York Yankees, assuming that would have been a realistic dream in the first place.

All of which is to say that I'm well on my way to becoming something I didn't grasp when I was younger and now see how you fall into.  And I should do something about that.

Lex Anteinternet: A 2020 Holiday Reflection. Part 1 of 2, . . . or ...

Lex Anteinternet: A 2020 Holiday Reflection. Part 1 of 2, . . . or ...: 

A 2020 Holiday Reflection. Part 1 of 2, . . . or 3, maybe.

No one can doubt that 2020 has been an awful year for humanity.  And 2021 is going to start off that way too.  Just rolling over from December 31 to January 1 doesn't make things suddenly better. 

March, they say, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. . .but this year. . . 

Which is not to say that years don't have their own characters or that 2021 will not turn out better than 2020.  It almost certainly will. By this time next year COVID 19 should largely be beaten and, it if isn't, it'll be something that we will start receiving annual vaccinations for, or at least a lot of us will.

Back to 2020.

2020 has been the year in which the entire world was put to a stress test and the United States and its citizens particularly were.  There's been a lot of personal tragedy and disappointment, with some disappointment measuring towards tragedy.  

By and large the United States hasn't come out of this looking good. But then a lot of the Western world hasn't come out of it looking very good either.

2020 was always going to be a stressful year for Americans as something has gone wrong with the American body politic, and moreover American culture, that really started to fester within the last twelve years.  In future years historians are going to debate about the point at which what we just went through became inevitable, just as they debate the point at which the Civil War, the last somewhat analogous American event became inevitable.  I have my own theories about this, but suffice it to say, something really went off the rails in our culture and its politics during this time frame.

It had been going off the rails, in all honesty, for some time well before that, like a lot of things, it can be tracked back to the mid 20th Century.  Whatever else we surmise the culture started to experience some serious decay following the Second World War and pretty quickly at that. A cynic might say that the culture went from hypocrisy, on some things, to libertinism, and we could debate which is worse, and they'd be at least partially correct.  But at any rate cracks in the culture formed during the Second World War and began to widen considerably in the 1950s.  They really started to split in the 1960s when the Baby Boom generation came into their own.

That generation is still "in its own" and its fighting out a lot of its fights right now, even as its members increasingly reach advanced old age.  Be that as it may, in the 1980s a shift started to occur that was a reaction to much of what had occurred in the 1960s.

As that occurred, the cultural left in the country moved increasingly far to the left and following them, but some time behind them in terms of the trend, the cultural right did as well, with reaction to the left being a strong part of the latter, and a sense of inevitable triumph and superiority being a feature of the former.  At the same time, the long post war economic dominance of American industry faded and ultimately industry, to a large degree, simply left the United States.  Economic globalism and cultural globalism came in, fueling a sense of abandonment in a large middle demographic in the country whose cultural, political and religious values had been celebrated as defining those of the nation and who were now told that none of that was true.  Reactions from the right to this became increasingly strident as did the policies of the left, with none of it really helping that large American class that tended to define in the past who Americans were supposed to be.  To make it worse, some of the reaction on the right made erosions into advancements that had served that American middle demographic, particularly in education.  Science education and solid history education took a pounding in the late 1980s and the level of science education that was common prior to those years has never returned to average Americans.  

By the time of Barack Obama's election in 2008 there were a lot of Americans who were prepared to accept arguments that Obama, who was a centrist candidate if ever there was one, was a radical leftist, with accusations of "Socialist" and even "Marxist" being leveled against him.  As we've noted before here, up until the last two years of his term about the most Obama could be accused of was being largely ineffectual, a reflection of his policy making style, but perhaps simply despairing of acceptance he took a diversion to the left at that point.

In 2016 the Democrats made the bizarre choice of running Hillary Clinton for the Oval Office when she was one of the most despised individual politicians in the United States.  That year the middle revolved in the form of support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, with the Democrats essentially fixing their primary system so that Sanders couldn't possibly win.  That left Trump the natural candidate for the dispossessed middle.

Not really appreciated at the time, the choice of that demographic to back Trump also meant that traditional Republican conservatives were either pushed aside or even out of the GOP.   The GOP rapidly became Trump's party, with a rearguard of the traditional GOP backing him but for their own purposes.  Trump embraced the concerns and radicalized beliefs of his "base", which included a long festering view that the left was the cultural enemy of the country.  The Democrats managed to feed this feeling through ineptness, choosing to oppose Trump at ever turn.  When that failed, they chose to attempt to impeach him, an effort that was doomed before it started.  All of this fueled an increasingly radicalized Trump base in the belief that Trump was a hero standing against what has been practically portrayed as a Marxist tide, when in reality it was the old Boomer left trying to retain its gains, including significant gains made in the last two years of the Obama Presidency.

None of which is to say that the middle doesn't have a set of legitimate complaints.  And not just in the US, but seemingly all over the world.  Politics over the globe have increasingly come to resemble the United States's recent politics to a much greater degree than the American press might imagine.  Parties based on populism and traditionalism, some of which are highly radical, have made progress all over Europe, and not just there. The trend has been global.

And then came COVID 19.

COVID 19 entered the world in a way that no plague has, ever.  The Spanish Flu may have entered during a World War, but the Germans didn't blame it on the Allies and the Allies didn't blame it on the Central Powers.  It just was.  Prior pandemics haven't been attributed to political actors.  But in the heated political scene of 2020, views on the virus and what it meant rapidly took on a bizarre political atmosphere and a "with us or against us" type of character.  Donald Trump took action fairly quickly, but then he cast doubt on the danger of the disease, which took off to the point that by mid 2020 there were those who were arguing the entire matter was a Chinese conspiracy.  Support for or against measures to counter the disease came to signal political points of view.  This carried on to views about the vaccine, with people making medical decisions based upon their politics or even worse based upon wild rumors that were developed by the most extreme members of the camps and given life by an anti scientific movement symbolized best by the prostilzatons for it by Jenny McCarty, a boob model twit who came to fame by prostituting her mammary glands for cash and who would not be taken seriously on anything else in any other era of humanity.

That McCarthy would be taken seriously enough, before the pandemic, to give rise to a line of thought prevalent mid crisis, says a lot about the decline of American education in some fields and its politicization.  But that's only one stick thrown on a fire that's gone from smoldering in the last twelve years to raging.  

Coming out of World War Two the United States was not only an industrial titan, but no nation rivaled it.  Together with Canada, Australian and New Zealand, the US possessed the world's only major economies that didn't feature largescale firsthand devastation of its infrastructure during the war.  America's position in the global economy had less to do with American genius, although that was certainly an aspect of it, than it did with being the only giant economy which was not bombed during the war.  That fortunate positioning was sufficient to keep us going for thirty years before other industrial nations began to catch back up, and catching back up was what they were doing.  Naively secure in our new position, we not only failed to guard against what was occurring, we actively encouraged it, such that by the 1970s up and coming Asian economies began to seriously erode the American economic position.  Nothing has been done since then to address it, with one single exception.

That erosion meant that while the United States came out of the gigantic post Vietnam War recession of the 1970s, it did so as a nation that was shipping its industry overseas wholescale and which was creating no new jobs to replace those being lost. At the same time it became apparent that a country which had been a petroleum exporter, in the Oil Age, was now an oil importer, and had been for some time.  The first blue collar losses helped bring Ronald Reagan to power, to make a course correction, but it was already clear at that point that the nation was dividing sharply into two sections and people realigning accordingly.  New England liberals whose liberalism had been based on the views of Episcopal and Methodist preachers going back to colonial times began to base their views instead on those like Chomsky and his fellow travelers.  Mid state blue collar Democrats who had backed politicians like Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy now saw their fates aligned with prewar radical right wing Republicans who had opposed FDR.  Southern Democrats abandoned the GOP wholescale, brining with them a set of views that were formed in the 18th and 19th Centuries and which had never changed, driving out the first batch of Republicans who were fiscal conservatives but more moderate elsewhere, and whose Republicanism was based on a conservative economic model more than anything else.  With the drive still invested from the fall out of the Vietnam War, in spite of the success of eight years of Ronald Reagan, "progressives" in the Democratic Party, who shared nothing in common with the Progressives of the Republican Party from early in the 20th Century, began to seriously imagine remaking the United States from a solidly centered (small d) democratic nation based on a Protestant world view combined with a radical democratic impulse into one that had its religious and cultural origins expelled and instead based on a court enforced cultural secularization and collectivisation which was generally alien to American culture.  In this they were aided not only by the fallout of the Vietnam War but also by the pornification of the culture by the Sexual Revolution and the destruction of the industrial economy.

Already by the 1990s these divides were becoming sharp, if not fully obvious to all.  The rise of a new right lead by individuals like Newt Gingrich foreshadowed what was coming even as the last of the old left found new voice in the GOP through the Neo Conservatives.  The election of solidly middle ground Bill Clinton sparked a massive radicalized and fairly anti democratic effort in the GOP to expel the President through an impeachment, an effort that never ever should have been attempted.  The second George Bush and his first rival Al Gore were throwbacks to earlier calmer times, but in Barack Obama those on the left read in hope for a radical change even if Obama himself did not hold such radical views.  This in turn took the lid off of the rust belt centered populism that was mistaken for conservatism in that branch of the GOP.

Barack Obama's Presidency drug up a lot in both parties, much of which hampered his Presidency and made it fairly ineffectual.  By the last two years of his time in office he'd accommodated himself to being the presumed head of the liberal wing of the party and began to accordingly give some voice to that wing, although it was really the court, in the form of the Obergefell decision, that sparked a revived radical left in the Democratic Party. That same decision  helped ignite the already shouldering populism in the GOP as individuals who, as noted above, had defined Americanism culturally were informed that htey not longer did, and that their views were no longer really wanted.

During the same time, as already noted, the industrial base of the country did not recover at all.  On the fringes of the Midwest, that being the West, times were good in that the high prices of fossil fuels sparked economic booms that made the rugged region a success.  As that occurred, however, some areas began a population influx of those from the coasts, such as Colorado, that changed their cultural and political natures permanently.  The collapse of the fossil fuels in  the 2010s, however, brought the economic grief of the Rust Belt to the Far West, which was already conservative in its views.  The impact, however, of a large influx of migrants for economic reasons from other areas of the country had begun to change the region's political views from radical libertarianism to math the insurgent populism that was already at work in the GOP elsewhere.

And that brought us to the election of Donald Trump.

Whatever Trump himself may stand for, for his supporters he has come to symbolize the stand of a "real" America against an insurgent "foreign' one.  Democrats have reciprocated in a way by urging their supporters to "resist" Trump, recalling the "resistance" of World War Two, something which is unfortunate in a way as the resistance itself of that era was heavily left wing and which is moreover unfortunate in that it suggests that those engaging in the "resistance" are "resisting" an illegitimate power.

It was that view that took us in a little over three years from heated polarization to outright intellectual battle lines.  Populists in the GOP already regarded the Clintons as criminal and Obama as a socialist.  Democrats seemingly confirmed that by immediately resorting to words recalling the struggle against fascism of the 1940s and informing the Republicans that they basically would not work with the elected President.  They then confirmed that through a dedicated effort to remove him. That effort in turn convinced the GOP populist that the Democrats were in fact an enemy, something made very easy by a section of the Democratic Party already having declared itself to be just that.

With that view, the politicization of everything became easy, just as it tends to in times of real extreme tension.  And then that extreme tension arrived in the form of SARS-CoV-2, or as it is commonly called, COVID 19.

All through the election there were those who called for extremism.  Old symbols of radicalism came out and were demonstrated. Then George Floyd was killed by police in Minnesota and that in turn was used by various groups as a basis to demonstrate against the government and the times.  In far off areas which saw themselves as removed from the Minnesota event, this seemed like a thinly veiled excuse to attack the nation. And the pandemic became worse and worse.

All of which leads us to where we now are.

And where we are at is not good.

The middle of the nation in ever sense has voted for Joe Biden in what can truly be regarded as a vote to return to normalcy.  This means that most of the electorate has not bought off on the arguments of the populist and it doesn't seem the country as engaged in a war against a foreign alien radical ideology. They have also indicated, through their vote, that they don't want to radically remake the American nation and they basically share a lot more in common with the cultural ideal of the populist than they do with the radical democrats. They've basically decided to elect an old, JFK style, middle of the road imperfect Catholic, rather than a fire breathing radial of any stripe.  That probably tells us where we need to go, and how we want to get there, but it also tells us that there's an element of the nation that wants none of it.

On the right, right now, there's a very strong populist element that has become anti democratic, but doesn't recognize itself as such.  It's defining whose vote is legitimate to an extent by their politics, and its also given way to conspiracy theories that demonize their opponents to the point where it can be believed, in spite of all evidence, that they lost the election due to fraud.  Inherent in that belief is the belief that real Americans would have voted only one way.

At the same time, there are those who are already discontented with the new Democratic President as he shows no signs of equally extreme radicalism, but in the other direction. This body, accustomed to rule through the courts, would have the new President pack the Courts with jurists who would disregard the Constitution, even though those very jurists are the ones who saved the election from being overturned.  Following that, they'd force the remaking of society in their progressive image, a world devoid of gender, faith and connection with reality.

This is a road that we started on somewhere during the last seventy years, or at least the last fifty.  We're going to have to get off of it, or the nation won't survive.  Finding the off ramp wont' be easy, but it also means that if we don't do it, we're headed for disaster.

One thing already noted here is that, demographically, the country, and indeed the entire Western world, is headed towards a more conservative, and more educated, future.  The character of the up and coming demographics doesn't resemble those in control and those in the streets very closely.  So maybe we'll be saved from ourselves by our future selves.  

Anyway you look at it, the fall out of things that rose up since 1945 are plaguing us in the extreme right now, with a genuine failure to really deal with a plague as part of that.  Lincoln called on the better angels of our mercy in the 1860s, we don't seem to be calling upon them in 2020 very much.

All of which is helping to make 2020 not only an an annus horribilius, but probably a watershed as well.  The question of whether its a good one, or we're just going off a cliff, isn't evident yet.

Lex Anteinternet: Merry Christmas! Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Frohe Weihnac...

Lex Anteinternet: Merry Christmas! Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Frohe Weihnac...:   

Merry Christmas! Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Frohe Weihnachten!, Поздравляю со cветлым праздником Рождества!, Häid jõule, Mutlu Noeller, Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus, क्रिसमस की बधाई, Linksmų Kalėdų, Bella da Nadel!, کریسمس مبارک, สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส, Ya Krismasi, Felix dies Nativitatis, Nollaig Shona Daoibh!, Vrolijk kerstfeest!, Noflike krystdagen! Nollaig Chridheil, Krismasi njema, Natale! Joyeux Noël !, Gleðileg jól, ¡Feliz Navidad!, Feliz Natal!,God jul!. めりーくりすます, 행복한 크리스마스 되십시오, Chúc Giáng Sinh Vui Vẻ!, 圣诞节快乐, Maging maligaya sana ang iyong pasko, Hyvää Joulua! щасливого Різдва, Wesołych Świąt, Eguberri on, Eedookh Breekha, عيد ميلاد سعيد, חג מולד שמח, Craciun Fericit, Boldog Karácsonyt!, Cestit Bozic!

 

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.  The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.

The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest ^fand on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds.

And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.

Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

Καὶ ποιμένες ἦσαν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῇ αὐτῇ ἀγραυλοῦντες καὶ φυλάσσοντες φυλακὰς τῆς νυκτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ποίμνην αὐτῶν. Καὶ ἄγγελος κυρίου ἐπέστη αὐτοῖς, καὶ δόξα κυρίου περιέλαμψεν αὐτούς• καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν φόβον μέγαν. Καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ ἄγγελος, Μὴ φοβεῖσθε• ἰδοὺ γάρ, εὐαγγελίζομαι ὑμῖν χαρὰν μεγάλην, ἥτις ἔσται παντὶ τῷ λαῷὅτι ἐτέχθη ὑμῖν σήμερον σωτήρ, ὅς ἐστιν χριστὸς κύριος, ἐν πόλει Δαυίδ. Καὶ τοῦτο ὑμῖν τὸ σημεῖον• εὑρήσετε βρέφος ἐσπαργανωμένον, καὶ κείμενον ἐν φάτνῃ. Καὶ ἐξαίφνης ἐγένετο σὺν τῷ ἀγγέλῳ πλῆθος στρατιᾶς οὐρανίου, αἰνούντων τὸν θεόν, καὶ λεγόντων, Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη• ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία. Καὶ ἐγένετο, ὡς ἀπῆλθον ἀπ' αὐτῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ ἄγγελοι, οἱ ποιμένες ἐλάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, Διέλθωμεν δὴ ἕως Βηθλέεμ, καὶ ἴδωμεν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο τὸ γεγονός, ὃ ὁ κύριος ἐγνώρισεν ἡμῖν. Καὶ ἦλθαν σπεύσαντες, καὶ ἀνεῦραν τήν τε Μαριὰμ καὶ τὸν Ἰωσήφ, καὶ τὸ βρέφος κείμενον ἐν τῇ φάτνῃἸδόντες δὲ διεγνώρισαν περὶ τοῦ ῥήματος τοῦ λαληθέντος αὐτοῖς περὶ τοῦ παιδίου τούτου. Καὶ πάντες οἱ ἀκούσαντες ἐθαύμασαν περὶ τῶν λαληθέντων ὑπὸ τῶν ποιμένων πρὸς αὐτούς. Ἡ δὲ Μαριὰμ πάντα συνετήρει τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα, συμβάλλουσα ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτῆς. Καὶ ὑπέστρεψαν οἱ ποιμένες, δοξάζοντες καὶ αἰνοῦντες τὸν θεὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν οἷς ἤκουσαν καὶ εἶδον, καθὼς ἐλαλήθη πρὸς αὐτούς. 

Lex Anteinternet: On thought before conclusion.

Lex Anteinternet: On thought before conclusion.:

On thought before conclusion.

The Triumph of Orthodoxy, a painting representing the triumph over iconoclasm in the East, a movement that truly smashed icons..

This is a follow-up item from one of our companion blogs.

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus: 

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

In what should put this matter to rest, the Vatican indicated that the vaccines are not morally objectionable.

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.: This is something that you have to be pretty attuned, I think, to the Catholic world to pick up on, and to appreciate.  There's been som...

For most rank and file orthodox Catholics this will in fact be the end of this debate, but my prediction is that for some it will not for some Rad Trads who have headed off in the Dr. Taylor Marshall/Patrick Coffin direction.  

Indeed, while I'm not following either of them, I'm skeptical that they'll accord Pope Francis the respect and authority here which loyal Catholics should.

I don't post much on these topics here and they're really only of interest to those in the Catholic, and perhaps Orthodox, world, but there's a certain segment of Rad Trads that have become so dedicated in their opposition to Pope Francis that they ironically have started to resemble the most anti Catholic Protestants in some odd ways, without realizing it.

Fr. Charles Coughlin at an economic conference.  Coughlin went from a radio personality on moral and social issues to a diehard opponent of Franklin Roosevelt whose memory is now associated with a sympathy for fascism.  He was ultimately silenced by his Bishop.  While its to Coughlin's credit that he obeyed his superior's orders, his reputation continues to be a haunting spectre in some spheres that still taints the Church, unfairly.

They are also adopting, in some instances, political and scientific views that really ought to stop and give a person pause.  This sort of thing has happened before and usually ends up with Papal correction and then ultimately the movement being forgotten, or an unfortunate example that we wish we could all in fact forget.

Which gets to the interesting topic of analysis and nuance.

It's perfectly possible to be extremely orthodox and not a Pope Francis fan, without being disrespectful to him or his office or, moreover, assert that he must be wrong on whatever he's saying because he's Pope Francis.

UCLA Berkeley students at an America First rally in 1940.

Likewise, it's possible to be very conservative socially and politically without believing that the recent election was stolen or that any effort is worth it to retain the current sitting President.  By the same token, a person can believe that the President Elect is in fact the President Elect, support him as such, while not feel that he personally isn't in need of serious correction in some areas.

The world doesn't divide into all good and all evil, and very few people have actions that are universally one or the other. And endorsing something that we'd normally regard as wrong, because our opponent has endorsed it, should cause us serious pause.   So should leaping to conclusions about causes and origins, and motivations.

We all agree that the World War One was horrific.  Few, at any point, would have maintained that the 1918 Flu was a German plot, however.  Patrick Coffin likes to call SARS-CoV-2, or as most call it COVID 19, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Flu, or words to that effect.  There's no reason on earth that the Chinese would have unleashed this intentionally on anyone, let alone themselves, but some tend to insist upon that.

More extreme, Coffin's given voice to at least one person who has maintained, although he has stopped short of endorsing it himself, that the pandemic was unleashed in league with the Chinese by Bill Gates and his associates as part of an effort to achieve something, although what that would be is pretty unclear.  As I don't listen to Coffin, I might know the answer to that if I followed up on it.

Dr. Taylor Marshall, who has made a name for himself as a highly traditional Catholic, beyond that which most conventional orthodox Catholics would be regarded as, has spent some time post election on the various wild ways in which Donald Trump could still be elected President.  Never mind that Marshall is highly educated, holding a doctorate, and should have realized that these theories were absurd and that it was immediately clear that the focus for Catholics should be our moral views in regard to the upcoming administration.

I don't like Noam Chomsky's views.

That is, his political views.

But as whacky screwball as they are, and they're so far to the left they're in the Squirrel Nut Zipper category, he's notable for having supported his political enemies in academic positions as he thought they were good academics.  And that is what makes Chomsky a serious academic himself.

That sort of conduct is always somewhat rare.  But in the era we're now in its become absurdly rare. Indeed, it's becoming the culture of the country.

And countries with that culture fly apart.

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coron...

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coron...: In what should put this matter to rest, the Vatican indicated that the vaccines are not morally objectionable. Churches of the West: On the ...

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.: 

On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

This is something that you have to be pretty attuned, I think, to the Catholic world to pick up on, and to appreciate.  There's been some questioning in Catholic circles on whether its morally permissible to take the Coronavirus vaccines.

Before I get any further, let me state that at least in the Diocese of Cheyenne, where I live, it is.  Our Bishop has so declared.

Okay, how does this all come up?

Well, not the way that you might suppose, at least if you are an American. There isn't a raging debate in the Catholic World about the efficacy of vaccinations.  While that debate might exist in American society at large, where there's an anti Science tradition that's very long in standing, and which has been reamplified in recent years due to a decrease in science funding in education which was sufficiently pronounced such the standards of education could fall so low that a twit like Jenny McCarthy, who is only qualified as a big boob model, is actually taken seriously on a scientific matter (who would listen to McCarthy on anything is beyond me).  No, this topic comes up due to a long standing Catholic moral principle holding that life can only be taken by a person in self defense.

Catholics are extremely serious about this.  Much more so than other non pacifist. Catholics aren't overall pacifists, but the Church's view on when life can be taken is quite strict.  It's often highly misunderstood, in part because the majority of Christians in the world are Catholic and lots of people in every religion will fail to follow the tenants of their faith.*  And its also a standard that has evolved a bit as society and technology has evolved, while the wider facet of that being ignored has also tended to be ignored in some quarters.  Perhaps the most dramatic examples of that might be the bombing campaigns of World War Two, a war for which the Allied cause is often cited as being about as close to a "just war" as a war can be.  Be that as it may, it's nearly impossible to reconcile some of the Allied bombing efforts of the Second World War with justly fighting a war, and the use of the Atomic Bombs at the wars end almost certainly cannot be.  Be that as it may, there were plenty of Catholic aircrewmen on bombers during the war.

And what isn't at issue is a religion based disagreement with science.  Indeed, in spite of the intrusion of Protestant beliefs into the pews of Catholic Americans to some extent, the Catholic Church as a whole is hugely supportive of and a supporter of science.  Indeed, ironically, at least one of the common scientific beliefs that some fundamentalist Protestants really have trouble with is one that a Catholic cleric came up with, that being the Big Bang Theory.  Catholics generally love science.

So what's the problem here?

Well stem cells.

If you read the entry above you'll see that at least one of the vaccines was developed using stem cells at some point, but at the same time neither of the current ones used stem cells from a directly aborted baby.  Given this, the Bishop of Cheyenne has given them a pass.

But the fact that this letter was issued also means that somebody had a question about it and it had to be addressed.

This isn't a majority of Catholic Bishops, we'd note.  Whatever happened (the Jesuit magazine America claims it was due to misinformation regarding the vaccines) at least two American Bishops issued statements that condemned at least one of the vaccines. This lead to a corrective memo being issued by the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops which addressed that issue, which reads much the letter that is set out above. The vaccines are okay.  The memo also apparently cited to a pro life organization that termed the vaccines as ethically uncontroversial.

The British Catholic Bishops went further and urged their flock to get the vaccines, noting that getting them was "not a sin".

In contrast, Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan declared the vaccines morally impermissible.  And this is what makes this sort of peculiarly interesting.  

Bishop Schneider is a traditionalist and is well known in traditionalist circles.  He's an opponent of much of what was derived from Vatican II and is very outspoken.

Now, Catholics in the Diocese of Cheyenne are not obligated to follow the pronouncements of Bishop Schneider that are contrary to those of Bishop Biegler.  The Bishop in your diocese, in the Catholic order of things, is the one that you need to pay attention to on certain things and can rely upon in others.  Catholics owe their diocesan Bishop a degree of loyalty.  If you are in a diocese in which the Bishop has said its morally impermissible to receive the vaccine, you can't simply just ignore that.

But in the current Internet Fueled Age considering the views of our local Bishop has become less common in areas in which people want to pick and choose their beliefs.  Trad or Rad Trad Catholics latch on to statements like those from Bishop Schneider that fit their views and will reject them over their own Bishop.

Indeed, this has the odd impact of distorting the Catholic order pretty significantly.  Even well into the mid 20th Century Catholics were much more in tune with what their own Bishops had to say than what the Pope might be doing.  The Pope was far away and the Bishop was fairly near.  This reflected the order of the Church.  On day to day matters in the Catholic world, the Bishop was likely to be the one that Catholics heard from.

But now many Catholics tend to follow the Pope almost as if he was present in the local parish.  In reality, what the parish Priest is doing tends to be immediately important to Catholics real lives more than what the Pope may be doing, on a daily basis. But if you read Catholic commentary now, particularly that of Trads and Rad Trads, you'd get the other view.

And not completely without reason. This Pope has been upsetting to orthodox Catholics.  But that in turn as fueled a sort of hyper orthodoxy that predated Pope Francis.

I'm expecting that to develop here.

As for what I'm doing, vaccination wise, I'm receiving it as soon as I conceivably can, and I'm an orthodox Catholic.

And I think there may be another moral issue afloat here.  In this day and age there's a massive amount of scientific bogosity that's circulating in society and many Americans, at least, have come down to believing things that are absolutely false.  Indeed, on this issue, the irony is that there will be some Trads that will abstain from receiving the vaccine due to having views that are supported by pronouncement of Bishops like Bishop Schneider, who have a bit of a fan following, while other rank and file Protestant and non religious Americans will abstain as they've bought off on the blatherings of anti vaxer boob model Jenny McCarthy and her fellow travelers.

We'll deal with the strange era of anti scientific thought elsewhere on one of our companion blogs, but on an issue like this, for sincere Catholics, the issue thus becomes this.  If it takes 70% of the population to become immune from a virus to achieve "herd immunity", and if we now that the virus kills, if we refuse to participate in achieving herd immunity, are we morally complicit to some degree in unnecessary deaths?

*One of my favorite examples was one of Cromwell's lieutenants who fought to prosecute the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church but who asked for, and received, permission for his mistress to be in prison with him rather than his wife.  Granted, Crowwell's people were generally very serious Calvinist who believed in double predestination, something most who claim to be Calvinist today do not, but that's really taking that a bit far.