Wednesday Bible Study: Rehashing

Psalm 105 is a lengthy song of praise that recounts God's faithfulness to the Israelites, mostly reciting purported events in Exodus. The introduction is adapted -- largely copied actually -- from 1 Chronicles 16, in which David sets up the Ark and commissions a song of praise by Asaph. 

Note verse 35 -- there are no caterpillars in the canonical version of Exodus. The caterpillars have come up before, which presumably means that they were working from an alternative version of the story. I don't need to harp on the moral depravity of the story -- the 7 year famine God causes, the murder of Egyptian children, the genocidal invasion of Canaan. It is because of these massacres of innocents that Yahweh is great and that is the basic content of this song of praise. Just so we're clear. "⁴⁴ And he gave them the lands of the nations;   and they took possession of the fruit of the peoples’ toil . . ."

105 O give thanks to the Lord,
    call on his name,
    make known his deeds among the peoples!
² Sing to him, sing praises to him,
    tell of all his wonderful works!
³ Glory in his holy name;
    let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!
⁴ Seek the Lord and his strength,
    seek his presence continually!
⁵ Remember the wonderful works that he has done,
    his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,
⁶ O offspring of Abraham his servant,
    sons of Jacob, his chosen ones!

⁷ He is the Lord our God;
    his judgments are in all the earth.
⁸ He is mindful of his covenant for ever,
    of the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,
⁹ the covenant which he made with Abraham,
    his sworn promise to Isaac,
¹⁰ which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,
    to Israel as an everlasting covenant,
¹¹ saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan
    as your portion for an inheritance.”

¹² When they were few in number,
    of little account, and sojourners in it,
¹³ wandering from nation to nation,
    from one kingdom to another people,
¹⁴ he allowed no one to oppress them;
    he rebuked kings on their account,
¹⁵ saying, “Touch not my anointed ones,
    do my prophets no harm!”

¹⁶ When he summoned a famine on the land,
    and broke every staff of bread,
¹⁷ he had sent a man ahead of them,
    Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
¹⁸ His feet were hurt with fetters,
    his neck was put in a collar of iron;
¹⁹ until what he had said came to pass
    the word of the Lord tested him.
²⁰ The king sent and released him,
    the ruler of the peoples set him free;
²¹ he made him lord of his house,
    and ruler of all his possessions,
²² to instruct^[a] his princes at his pleasure,
    and to teach his elders wisdom.

²³ Then Israel came to Egypt;
    Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham.
²⁴ And the Lord made his people very fruitful,
    and made them stronger than their foes.
²⁵ He turned their hearts to hate his people,
    to deal craftily with his servants.

²⁶ He sent Moses his servant,
    and Aaron whom he had chosen.
²⁷ They wrought his signs among them,
    and miracles in the land of Ham.
²⁸ He sent darkness, and made the land dark;
    they rebelled^[b] against his words.
²⁹ He turned their waters into blood,
    and caused their fish to die.
³⁰ Their land swarmed with frogs,
    even in the chambers of their kings.
³¹ He spoke, and there came swarms of flies,
    and gnats throughout their country.
³² He gave them hail for rain,
    and lightning that flashed through their land.
³³ He smote their vines and fig trees,
    and shattered the trees of their country.
³⁴ He spoke, and the locusts came,
    and young locusts without number;
³⁵ which devoured all the vegetation in their land,
    and ate up the fruit of their ground.
³⁶ He smote all the first-born in their land,
    the first issue of all their strength.

³⁷ Then he led forth Israel with silver and gold,
    and there was none among his tribes who stumbled.
³⁸ Egypt was glad when they departed,
    for dread of them had fallen upon it.
³⁹ He spread a cloud for a covering,
    and fire to give light by night.
⁴⁰ They asked, and he brought quails,
    and gave them bread from heaven in abundance.
⁴¹ He opened the rock, and water gushed forth;
    it flowed through the desert like a river.
⁴² For he remembered his holy promise,
    and Abraham his servant.

⁴³ So he led forth his people with joy,
    his chosen ones with singing.
⁴⁴ And he gave them the lands of the nations;
    and they took possession of the fruit of the peoples’ toil,
⁴⁵ to the end that they should keep his statutes,
    and observe his laws.
Praise the Lord!

Footnotes

1. Psalm 105:22 Gk Syr Jerome: Heb to bind
2. Psalm 105:28 Cn Compare Gk Syr: Heb they did not rebel

Dementia

Clinical psychologist John Gartner pulls out his Ph.D. to tell the world what ought to be obvious. Donald J. Trump has fairly advanced and rapidly progressing dementia. Believe me, I know what dementia looks like and I don't need a degree in psychology to tell you, but for some inexplicable reason the world wants to turn a blind eye. The New York Times ran at least one story every day for a couple of months (maybe a slight exaggeration, but also maybe not) telling us that Joe Biden is old, and the next day that he's still old, and the next day that he's still old . . .  Every time he forgot a name or got a date wrong it was a front page story.

 

Meanwhile, the Republican candidate is continually spewing gibberish, mixing up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, thinking that Barack Obama is president, and -- oh heck, here are a few excerpts:

 

When Duty to Warn began in 2017, our mission as mental health professionals was to warn the world that Trump was dangerously unfit and a malignant narcissist. Practically conventional wisdom today among anyone who’s not in the cult.  . . .After Biden won, I took off my uniform and went home. . . .But I couldn’t believe my eyes. Day after day the press was gaslighting the American people: Pathologizing Biden’s normal signs of aging, such as forgetting names, and normalizing Trump’s flagrant signs of dementia. That false narrative was having a real impact on the polls, and no one with the right letters after their name was stepping in to correct the record. . . .

 

I call it the “double lie.” Pathologizing Biden’s normal aging is the first lie. Normalizing Trump’s dementia is the second.  . . . Forgetting the name of the president of France isn’t the same as thinking Obama is president or that Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi are one person. Can we introduce a sense of proportion and some common sense here?

 

Overall, [Trump] shows a shocking decline in verbal fluency from his previous baseline.  . . .Now, his vocabulary is impoverished, and he often can’t finish a sentence or even a word. Typical of dementia patients, he repeats himself and overuses superlatives and filler words. . . .Not only will Trump continue to get worse and worse, his rate of decline is accelerating, and if he is typical, he will fall off what they call the “cognitive cliff” relatively soon.

 

Recently, Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. You can kind of intuit how the demented thought process works in Trump’s mind to combine people. There’s an archetype in his head of a hated powerful female politician he is fighting. Fragments of Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi stick to this miasma of ill-defined thought and feeling, and combine in his imagination to form a new combined person who doesn’t really exist: Bad, bad, Nikki-Pelosi woman. Me hate her. 8 times he’s said he’s running against Obama. How often does he say and think it in private? I think this suggests that Trump has also combined Obama and Biden into one imaginary hated Joe-Obama person.

 

Trump shows formal signs of disordered speech we typically see only in organically impaired dementia patients: A) “phonemic aphasia” Trump uses non-words in place of real words, that usually include a fragment of the actual word. For example saying “mishuz” instead of missile, or “Chrishus” instead of Christmas. You can look at supercut reels assembled by Ron Filipkowski on Twitter, The Daily Show, and now by the Democratic House Judiciary Committee, as well. Both Chairman Nadler and Rep. Swalwell showed their own supercuts of Trump’s cognitive decline at the Hur hearings, to counteract Hur’s partisan slur about Biden’s “poor memory.”

 

Trump evidences “tangential thinking” where he drifts from one unrelated thought fragment to another, and sometimes tries to “confabulate” them into a story. But the narrative is literally incoherent. When the press describes Trump’s speeches as “rambling,” they are gaslighting us with a euphemistic word that normalizes the grossly abnormal. Trump regularly degenerates into incomprehensible strings of words.

Just recently outside a New York courtroom, Trump declared:

“We can’t have an election in the middle of a political season. We just had Super Tuesday. And we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”

Some of his utterances are incomprehensible for a different reason. They suggest Trump is so disoriented he’s occupying a different reality than everyone else. 

For example:

“They’re weaponizing law enforcement for high-level interference against Joe Biden’s top and only political appointment. A guy named me. A guy named me.”

At a recent rally, he said: 

“Biden beat Barack Hussein Obama. Ever heard of him?”

 

The fact is it's accelerating and he's no longer presentable in public. But the New York Times pretends not to notice.

 

 

Okay, somebody asked

A commenter suggested that if I want to know why people support the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, I should ask them. For some reason this particular individual did not propose an answer. However, Jordan Klepper has gone to many Trump rallies and asked the question.

 

So, now you have your answer. They are blithering idiots.

 

Sunday Sermonette: Natural History

 Psalm 104 is historically important, because it is among the biblical passages the church used to convict Galileo of heresy. He wrote to the Grand Duchess Christina "Astronomers seem to declare what is contrary to Scripture, for they hold the heavens to be spherical, while the Scripture calls it "stretched out like a tent." (v. 2) He argued that such passages should not be taken literally as scientific findings might discredit them. In fact, verse 5 was specifically cited at his trial. 

We know now that God is not the explanation for any of the natural phenomena described here, whether accurately or not. Religious fundamentalists cannot accept the discoveries of science, which since Galileo include Darwin, Einstein, and Bohr. We can still view nature with a sense of awe and wonder, but we also know a hell of a lot more about it than people did in 600 BC. 

104 Bless the Lord, O my soul!
O Lord my God, thou art very great!
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty,
²     who coverest thyself with light as with a garment,
who hast stretched out the heavens like a tent,
³     who hast laid the beams of thy chambers on the waters,
who makest the clouds thy chariot,
    who ridest on the wings of the wind,
⁴ who makest the winds thy messengers,
    fire and flame thy ministers.

⁵ Thou didst set the earth on its foundations,
    so that it should never be shaken.
⁶ Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷ At thy rebuke they fled;
    at the sound of thy thunder they took to flight.
⁸ The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
    to the place which thou didst appoint for them.
⁹ Thou didst set a bound which they should not pass,
    so that they might not again cover the earth.

¹⁰ Thou makest springs gush forth in the valleys;
    they flow between the hills,
¹¹ they give drink to every beast of the field;
    the wild asses quench their thirst.
¹² By them the birds of the air have their habitation;
    they sing among the branches.
¹³ From thy lofty abode thou waterest the mountains;
    the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy work.

¹⁴ Thou dost cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
    and plants for man to cultivate,^[a]
that he may bring forth food from the earth,
¹⁵     and wine to gladden the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine,
    and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
¹⁶ The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,
    the cedars of Lebanon which he planted.
¹⁷ In them the birds build their nests;
    the stork has her home in the fir trees.
¹⁸ The high mountains are for the wild goats;
    the rocks are a refuge for the badgers.
¹⁹ Thou hast made the moon to mark the seasons;
    the sun knows its time for setting.
²⁰ Thou makest darkness, and it is night,
    when all the beasts of the forest creep forth.
²¹ The young lions roar for their prey,
    seeking their food from God.
²² When the sun rises, they get them away
    and lie down in their dens.
²³ Man goes forth to his work
    and to his labor until the evening.

²⁴ O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
    In wisdom hast thou made them all;
    the earth is full of thy creatures.
²⁵ Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
    which teems with things innumerable,
    living things both small and great.
²⁶ There go the ships,
    and Leviathan which thou didst form to sport in it.

²⁷ These all look to thee,
    to give them their food in due season.
²⁸ When thou givest to them, they gather it up;
    when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things.
²⁹ When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed;
    when thou takest away their breath, they die
    and return to their dust.
³⁰ When thou sendest forth thy Spirit,^[b] they are created;
    and thou renewest the face of the ground.

³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure for ever,
    may the Lord rejoice in his works,
³² who looks on the earth and it trembles,
    who touches the mountains and they smoke!
³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
    I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord.
³⁵ Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
    and let the wicked be no more!
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
Praise the Lord!

Footnotes

1. Psalm 104:14 Or fodder for the animals that serve man
2. Psalm 104:30 Or breath

Arguing with idiots

Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote this now famous editorial a couple of weeks ago. It is a sad day when the editor of a big city newspaper is forced to go on the record defending the concept of reporting the truth. I'll just give an excerpt, in case you haven't read it.

The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

 

I'll actually go a lot farther. Yes, the blatant lies about the 2020 election, the attempted coup -- to seize the presidency by violence -- that was bad. And a lot of what went with it was bad, trying to subvert state governments, brutally defaming innocent people, lying relentlessly about the real president and members of his party. But that's just the beginning.

 

If I were given the assignment of designing the most vile, repulsive human being imaginable, I would come up with Donald J. Trump. He is as profoundly evil as any human can be, with no redeeming qualities whatever. He is a malignant narcissist, a sadistic psychopath, and an ignorant idiot. Every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He is a habitual sexual predator. He has not the least caring or concern for any human or any living creature but himself, with an insatiable need to fill the black hole at the center of his soul with adoration. Somehow, in one of life's greatest mysteries, he manages to find people to give it to him. He is a career criminal without a single worthy accomplishment in his entire life. He is just a con artist, and a thief. He is also physically repulsive, by the way, which makes the cult all the less explicable.

You will find people who say, "Well, I don't think much of Trump personally, but I like his policies." Okay, here are his policies. This is what you like. 1) Rich people shouldn't pay taxes. 2) Supreme court justices should be far right extremists, mostly so we can outlaw abortion, and maybe stuff gay people back in the closet. 3) We should kiss Vladimir Putin's ass and let him conquer whatever countries he wants to. 4) Donald J. Trump should be exempt from responsibility for all of his crimes. 5) It's okay for politicians to spout racism, mock people with disabilities, and lie with impunity. As for immigration, that's all just a lot of bullshit. He employs undocumented immigrants in his own businesses, for starters. And he ordered the Republicans in congress not to pass more resources for border security because he wants to use it for a campaign issue. Not that it's valid in the first place for reasons I won't get into here but might a bit later.

So what the hell is going on here? I'm far from alone in finding this mysterious, actually. People have various ideas, of varying degrees of plausibility, but nothing really satisfactory. And yeah, I know the comments I'm going to get - I'm demeaning half the country, why can't I respect other people's opinions. Well, first of all, it isn't half the country, it's more like 30% and second, there are some opinions I cannot respect. And we aren't actually talking about opinions here, we're talking about the truth, which is not the same thing.

Wednesday Bible Study: The Return of the King

You may recall that an earlier psalm purported to be the last Psalm of David, but as we know, the current Book of Psalms is actually a compilation and the editors just didn't delete that. There are more psalms attributed to David and we've come to two of them today. Psalm 101, attributed to David,  is a sort of oath of office. Psalm 103 is a song of praise, which gives God several attributes that he clearly doesn't have. No, he doesn't heal all diseases (v. 3), doesn't renew youth (v. 5), doesn't work vindication
and justice for all who are oppressed (v. 6) and most certainly is not merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (v. 8). I don't even know where to begin. Let's say, oh, just to pick one at random, Numbers 25:

25 While Israel dwelt in Shittim the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. ² These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate, and bowed down to their gods. ³ So Israel yoked himself to Ba′al of Pe′or. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; ⁴ and the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people, and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” ⁵ And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you slay his men who have yoked themselves to Ba′al of Pe′or.”

 Or how about, oh what the heck, 1 Samuel 15:

15 And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the Lord. ² Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish what Am′alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. ³ Now go and smite Am′alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’”

⁴ So Saul summoned the people, and numbered them in Tela′im, two hundred thousand men on foot, and ten thousand men of Judah. ⁵ And Saul came to the city of Am′alek, and lay in wait in the valley. ⁶ And Saul said to the Ken′ites, “Go, depart, go down from among the Amal′ekites, lest I destroy you with them; for you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Ken′ites departed from among the Amal′ekites. ⁷ And Saul defeated the Amal′ekites, from Hav′ilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. ⁸ And he took Agag the king of the Amal′ekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. ⁹

 Then there's Numbers 31, where you really get to see merciful God who is slow to anger:

31 The Lord said to Moses, ² “Avenge the people of Israel on the Mid′ianites; afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” ³ And Moses said to the people, “Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Mid′ian, to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Mid′ian. ⁴ You shall send a thousand from each of the tribes of Israel to the war.” ⁵ So there were provided, out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. ⁶ And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand from each tribe, together with Phin′ehas the son of Elea′zar the priest, with the vessels of the sanctuary and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand. ⁷ They warred against Mid′ian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male. ⁸ They slew the kings of Mid′ian with the rest of their slain, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Mid′ian; and they also slew Balaam the son of Be′or with the sword. ⁹ And the people of Israel took captive the women of Mid′ian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. ¹⁰ All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire, ¹¹ and took all the spoil and all the booty, both of man and of beast. ¹² Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses, and to Elea′zar the priest, and to the congregation of the people of Israel, at the camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.

¹³ Moses, and Elea′zar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation, went forth to meet them outside the camp. ¹⁴ And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. ¹⁵ Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? ¹⁶ Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the Lord in the matter of Pe′or, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. ¹⁷ Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. ¹⁸ But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. ¹⁹

 Sweet!

In between is another of those endless, whiny laments by some guy who thinks the whole world is against him. 

 

A Psalm of David.

101 I will sing of loyalty and of justice;
    to thee, O Lord, I will sing.
² I will give heed to the way that is blameless.
    Oh when wilt thou come to me?

I will walk with integrity of heart
    within my house;
³ I will not set before my eyes
    anything that is base.

I hate the work of those who fall away;
    it shall not cleave to me.
⁴ Perverseness of heart shall be far from me;
    I will know nothing of evil.

⁵ Him who slanders his neighbor secretly
    I will destroy.
The man of haughty looks and arrogant heart
    I will not endure.

⁶ I will look with favor on the faithful in the land,
    that they may dwell with me;
he who walks in the way that is blameless
    shall minster to me.

⁷ No man who practices deceit
    shall dwell in my house;
no man who utters lies
    shall continue in my presence.

⁸ Morning by morning I will destroy
    all the wicked in the land,
cutting off all the evildoers
    from the city of the Lord.

 

A prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

102 Hear my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to thee!
² Do not hide thy face from me
    in the day of my distress!
Incline thy ear to me;
    answer me speedily in the day when I call!

³ For my days pass away like smoke,
    and my bones burn like a furnace.
⁴ My heart is smitten like grass, and withered;
    I forget to eat my bread.
⁵ Because of my loud groaning
    my bones cleave to my flesh.
⁶ I am like a vulture^[a] of the wilderness,
    like an owl of the waste places;
⁷ I lie awake,
    I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
⁸ All the day my enemies taunt me,
    those who deride me use my name for a curse.
⁹ For I eat ashes like bread,
    and mingle tears with my drink,
¹⁰ because of thy indignation and anger;
    for thou hast taken me up and thrown me away.
¹¹ My days are like an evening shadow;
    I wither away like grass.

¹² But thou, O Lord, art enthroned for ever;
    thy name endures to all generations.
¹³ Thou wilt arise and have pity on Zion;
    it is the time to favor her;
    the appointed time has come.
¹⁴ For thy servants hold her stones dear,
    and have pity on her dust.
¹⁵ The nations will fear the name of the Lord,
    and all the kings of the earth thy glory.
¹⁶ For the Lord will build up Zion,
    he will appear in his glory;
¹⁷ he will regard the prayer of the destitute,
    and will not despise their supplication.

¹⁸ Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
    so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:
¹⁹ that he looked down from his holy height,
    from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
²⁰ to hear the groans of the prisoners,
    to set free those who were doomed to die;
²¹ that men may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,
    and in Jerusalem his praise,
²² when peoples gather together,
    and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

²³ He has broken my strength in midcourse;
    he has shortened my days.
²⁴ “O my God,” I say, “take me not hence
    in the midst of my days,
thou whose years endure
    throughout all generations!”

²⁵ Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
²⁶ They will perish, but thou dost endure;
    they will all wear out like a garment.
Thou changest them like raiment, and they pass away;
²⁷     but thou art the same, and thy years have no end.
²⁸ The children of thy servants shall dwell secure;
    their posterity shall be established before thee.

Footnotes

1. Psalm 102:6 The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain

A Psalm of David.

103 Bless the Lord, O my soul;
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
² Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits,
³ who forgives all your iniquity,
    who heals all your diseases,
⁴ who redeems your life from the Pit,
    who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
⁵ who satisfies you with good as long as you live^[a]
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

⁶ The Lord works vindication
    and justice for all who are oppressed.
⁷ He made known his ways to Moses,
    his acts to the people of Israel.
⁸ The Lord is merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
⁹ He will not always chide,
    nor will he keep his anger for ever.
¹⁰ He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor requite us according to our iniquities.
¹¹ For as the heavens are high above the earth,
    so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
¹² as far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
¹³ As a father pities his children,
    so the Lord pities those who fear him.
¹⁴ For he knows our frame;
    he remembers that we are dust.

¹⁵ As for man, his days are like grass;
    he flourishes like a flower of the field;
¹⁶ for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
    and its place knows it no more.
¹⁷ But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
    upon those who fear him,
    and his righteousness to children’s children,
¹⁸ to those who keep his covenant
    and remember to do his commandments.

¹⁹ The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
    and his kingdom rules over all.
²⁰ Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
    you mighty ones who do his word,
    hearkening to the voice of his word!
²¹ Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
    his ministers that do his will!
²² Bless the Lord, all his works,
    in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Footnotes

1. Psalm 103:5 Heb uncertain

 

 

Spring Garden Street

That's actually the name of a street in Philadelphia where my paternal ancestors lived, but it seemed like a good title for this post. If I still had the energy to keep up the Windham County blog I would have put it there, but for now I'll just leave it here.

Living in the temperate zone we do have to get through the winter, but our reward is spring, which you can't have otherwise. I got a load of horseshit from my neighbors last fall and now I'm starting to spread it around. I planted a Concord grape next to my front porch, with a decent scoop of manure in the hole, and my idea is that it will grow up the column and across the beam on the south side, and I'll be plucking grapes for my servants to peel -- well, okay, no servants -- in the summer and fall. The kitchen garden already has parsley, oregano, and mint, which are perennials, and I'll be planting basil and other herbs soon. There's a peach tree next to the new grape vine as well.

 

I've also started spading the garden. The garlic is already going strong and I have some voluntary spinach. I'm going to plant onion sets, carrots and potatoes in the next couple of days, then get started on tenderer crops in the next couple of weeks. Even if you're an apartment dweller, if you have a balcony, you can grow quite a lot of good stuff in containers. If you have even a postage stamp of a lawn you might be surprised how much you can grow in a small space. 

 

It's good for the soul, and what's good for the soul is good for the body. But more than that, as long as you're figuring out how to consume fresh produce, or use your fresh herbs, you won't be consuming manufactured "food" from the middle aisles of the supermarket and you'll be developing better eating habits. Even if you don't have access to horseshit, you can compost your kitchen waste, which is definitely better than sending it to the landfill, and you can also build up your soil over time with bark mulch and straw and whatever other organic material you can get. 

 

Oh yeah -- don't rake up your grass clippings, leave them on the lawn. Also, you can chop up the leaves with the lawnmower, you don't need to rake them either. Really. It's all a plot to sell you synthetic fertilizer. You can also grind up the sticks and other coarser matter with a fairly inexpensive machine -- plug in electric ones are powerful enough for most homeowners' purposes. So try it -- you'll be happier!

Sunday Sermonette: Yahweh Dah Bomb!

We now get a run of (mercifully short) songs of praise. Again, there are multiple gods but our god is the biggest and baddest. Yes, he is also the creator, but that's sort of a contradiction. If the Big Y created the heavens and the earth, where did all these competing gods come from? This is never explained.

There is some weird imagery in these, with geographic features engaging in anthropomporphized activities. As a final note, these were evidently written during times of victory and prosperity. They obviously don't pertain to the exilic situation in which the book was compiled.

98 O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things!
His right hand and his holy arm
    have gotten him victory.
² The Lord has made known his victory,
    he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
³ He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
    to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
    the victory of our God.

⁴ Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
    break forth into joyous song and sing praises!
⁵ Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
    with the lyre and the sound of melody!
⁶ With trumpets and the sound of the horn
    make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord!

⁷ Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
    the world and those who dwell in it!
⁸ Let the floods clap their hands;
    let the hills sing for joy together
⁹ before the Lord, for he comes
    to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
    and the peoples with equity.

 

99 The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble!
    He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
² The Lord is great in Zion;
    he is exalted over all the peoples.
³ Let them praise thy great and terrible name!
    Holy is he!
⁴ Mighty King,^[a] lover of justice,
    thou hast established equity;
thou hast executed justice
    and righteousness in Jacob.
⁵ Extol the Lord our God;
    worship at his footstool!
    Holy is he!

⁶ Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
    Samuel also was among those who called on his name.
    They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.
⁷ He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud;
    they kept his testimonies,
    and the statutes that he gave them.

⁸ O Lord our God, thou didst answer them;
    thou wast a forgiving God to them,
    but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
⁹ Extol the Lord our God,
    and worship at his holy mountain;
    for the Lord our God is holy!

Footnotes

1. Psalm 99:4 Cn: Heb and the king’s strength

100 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands!^[a]
2     Serve the Lord with gladness!
    Come into his presence with singing!

³ Know that the Lord is God!
    It is he that made us, and we are his;^[b]
    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise!
    Give thanks to him, bless his name!

⁵ For the Lord is good;
    his steadfast love endures for ever,
    and his faithfulness to all generations.

Footnotes

1. Psalm 100:1 Heb land or earth
2. Psalm 100:3 Another reading is and not we ourselves

 

 

 

We Da Peeps

In the previous post I listed some structural and contingent reasons why the relationship between voting and any idea of popular sovereignty is problematic. I didn't even mention some of the specific kludgy features of the U.S. system, such as the overrepresentation of small states in both the Senate and the Electoral College, which is itself an unwieldy and dangerous anachronism; gerrymandering; and obstacles to voting.

However, let's assume we had none of those problems. In fact, propose a fantasy world in which we either had direct democracy -- all legislation by referendum -- or that representatives had to take a high quality poll of their constituencies and vote the way the majority wanted on every issue. I realize it's a practical impossibility -- it's a thought experiment. What would be the consequences?

 

In the first place, as we've already noted, most people have very limited understanding of public policy, whether its the underlying problems to which policy responds, the mechanisms of policy response, and the consequences of policies. These are mostly very complicated issues, and even policies crafted by experts in response to high levels of public consensus often have unintended consequences and need to be fixed, but there is still value in expertise. Ever since Plato some political philosophers have doubted the capacity of the people to rule themselves, and proposed rule by specially qualified people -- philosopher kings, in his words.*

 

I certainly don't go that far. For one thing, the philosopher king's conception of what's good for the people would very likely differ from their own, and I have no idea how this person is to be identified and elevated to power.  Hitler, Stalin and Mao no doubt thought they knew what was best and were the smartest about how to achieve it. In fact, that pretension was essential to Mao's cult of personality. However, we do need mechanisms for injecting expertise into the policy making process, if rule by the people is to have any chance to result in their getting what they actually want.

Which brings us to the next essential point, which is that what "the people" want is not definable, even in principle. You could try putting a binary proposition before the electorate and decree that whatever got more than 50.0001% would become law, but in most cases many people wouldn't want either one, or if they did at least have a preference they would demand a different choice. And believe me, as any survey researcher well knows, the answers you get depend on how you ask the questions, and in what order, and in what notable events might have happened yesterday. And some questions are contingent. I want A only if B, but if C I want D, whereas other people have a different preference structure and they can't be reconciled.

Perhaps the biggest problem, however, is that it's a very dubious proposition that minorities have no rights. If a majority can rule without restriction, then the Bill of Rights goes away. That's what it's there for. Congress shall make no law . . .  even if 90% of the people want it to. Democracies can vote themselves out of existence, in fact, and have done so. A related problem is that protecting liberty for one person often requires constraining liberty for another. Democracy and freedom obviously don't mean that you can do whatever you want to, they mean you have to be bound by rules and laws.

Glib answers don't work. The process of governing in a Republic means constant tradeoffs, and it means that some people will be dissatisfied, and that it will often be the majority. And there certainly isn't any reason why a person can't express that dissatisfaction, and disapprove of the wishes of the majority or the outcomes of the political process, regardless of whether the majority approves. On the other hand you do have to obey the law, but on the third hand sometimes people have made very compelling arguments for exceptions and they are honored for having done so. (Viz. Rosa Parks, to take a relatively non-controversial example.)

What I am saying is that it's complicated, and in fact it's a good deal more complicated than I have made it so far.

*"Unless, said I, either philosophers become kings in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophic intellgence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsory excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon, for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either." The Republic,

 

More Poli-sci

This post will be in two parts -- or maybe I'll just get to one part now and do the second part separately, we'll see how it goes. The first part is some empirical true facts about elections and electoral democracies, or republics if you prefer to use that term for representative systems such as ours. I don't want to get hung up on vocabulary. The second is philosophical -- how should we understand democracy, popular rule, We The People? How does that work and how can it work and how should it work?

So, Part One. Many people assume that elections and the resulting legislative and executive (and in some states, judicial) representation are essentially machines for turning popular preferences into public policy. Alas, this is not so. Actually, it doesn't really make any sense. First of all, fundamentally, most people know and understand very little about public policy. Either they just don't invest much time and effort in learning about it, or they get information from unreliable sources, or they have strong preconceptions and confirmation bias such that they don't accurately process the information to which they are exposed, or likely all of the above. 

 

For example, according to polls many people blamed Joe Biden for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the restrictive abortion laws that ensued in many states because he was president when it happened. Many people believe that a) the people flooding border towns and being bussed to northern cities are illegal immigrants, and b) illegal immigrants receive government benefits, and even that they vote. Neither is true. The people who are allowed to remain in the U.S. who cross the border without visas are applicants for political asylum. Because of current U.S. law (unchanged under the previous administration, note well) and international treaties, we have to give them a hearing on their claim. Because the immigration courts are backed up -- the administration has asked for more money from congress to operate the system, but the Republicans in congress have refused to provide it -- they must wait a long time for their hearings. Most are ultimately deported. Meanwhile, they are entirely ineligible for any government benefits and obviously, cannot vote. But they are not here illegally. People who are here illegally provide much of the workforce for agriculture and construction, and we'd be in trouble without them, BTW. They also cannot receive any government benefits and cannot vote.

I could go on -- many people believe that the share of the federal government that goes to foreign aid is 25% or more. It's actually about 1%. Most people seem to believe that crime rates are increasing, actually they've been falling steadily for 20 years. And crime is higher in Republican led states than in Democratic states, BTW -- Manhattan is one of the safest urban areas in the country! You could look it up. Many people believed that Obama had raised their taxes when he in fact lowered them. But you get the idea.

But even if we had a well-informed electorate, there are structural difficulties with the democratic ideal. For one thing, in the U.S. (it's more complicated in parliamentary systems), the winner-take-all presidency means that there will never be more than two important political parties. I shouldn't have to take up a lot of space explaining why this is, but all you have to do is look at U.S. history and you will see that it is true. Third parties are short-lived, have little impact, and are quickly either absorbed by one of the two major parties or disappear, with the exception of occasionally replacing one of the parties, which amounts to the same thing. Either way, a third party has to disappear.

Ergo, the parties have to create broad coalitions, ergo it is very likely that you'll end up having to support one that agrees with most of what you believe, or what you care about most strongly, but not with everything you would wish for. Furthermore, on many issues the majority, even the very large majority, has a policy preference that they care about a little, but a minority has a different preference that they care about a lot. This is called diffuse versus concentrated interest. This means that the minority has a disproportionate impact because they vote on that single issue, and they are very likely to turn out. 

Another problem is that in our age, it costs a lot of money to successfully run for office. Therefore people who have a lot of money to donate to campaigns have a highly disproportionate impact, and not only that, they have a very concentrated interest, to whit, rich people don't want to pay taxes, and they don't want regulation of their businesses. For many of them, that seems to be all they care about. Because the impact of money -- via political advertising, and voter turnout operations -- highest on low information voters, many people do not realize that they are voting for candidates whose real agenda is to cut taxes on the wealthy and eliminate worker and consumer protections. So we get a lot of policies that are in fact unpopular.

It turns out part two will have to wait for the next post.