Yes, they want to kill you and your children

You may have read that RFK Jr. says he doesn't want to take away access to vaccines for people who want them, he just wants to end vaccine mandates and he's "just asking questions" about vaccine safety. Sure. It turns out his lawyer has sued to revoke FDA approval for the polio vaccine. In case you don't know it, in the 1950s, Americans were terrified by an epidemic of poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, a viral disease which can be fatal, but more often causes partial paralysis and other long-term consequences. I had an elementary school classmate who wore braces on his legs and walked with crutches. My aunt had permanent weakness in her shoulders. President Franklin Roosevelt used a wheelchair. My mentor in my doctoral program, Irving Kenneth Zola, wore brace and walked with crutches, and often used a wheelchair. In other words people who were permanently harmed by polio were commonplace.

One of the nation’s most prominent charities in the 1950s was the National Foundation for Infant Paralysis, doing business as the March of Dimes, which funded vaccine research. In 1955 a vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh was found to be safe and effective, and Salk became a national hero. Today, polio has been eradicated from most of the world. It persists only in regions, largely remote, where civil conflict has hindered vaccination efforts. Now RFK wants us to go back to the good old days. From the NYT:

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death. That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions. . . .

Much of Mr. Siri’s work — including the polio petition filed in 2022 — has been on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit whose founder is a close ally of Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Siri also represented Mr. Kennedy during his presidential campaign.

“I love Aaron Siri,” Mr. Kennedy said in a clip played on a recent episode of a podcast hosted by Del Bigtree, who is Mr. Kennedy’s former campaign communications director and the founder of the Informed Consent Action Network, which describes itself as a “medical freedom” nonprofit. “There’s nobody who’s been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”

Like Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Siri insists he does not want to take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. “You want to get the vaccine — it’s America, a free country.” he told Arizona legislators last year after laying out his concerns about the vaccines for polio and other illnesses.

He did not mention the petitions he has lodged on behalf of ICAN with the Food and Drug Administration, asking regulators to withdraw or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio, but also for hepatitis B.

 

Now, this is completely, grade A, world class nuts. No, we can't have this brain damaged lunatic running HHS and overseeing the FDA. And oh yeah -- if you voted for Donald Trump, this is what you asked for. I know it will only enrich your life when your kid is paralyzed.

Wednesday Bible Study: Apparently everyone is doomed

Isaiah continues prophesying the destruction of every people and every city he can think of. Now it's the turn of Tyre, which was at the time a prosperous port city in what was then Phoenecia, and what is now Lebanon. Our fortune teller seems to equate the international trading that went on there with prostitution. He is entirely vague about who or what is going to destroy the city but he imagines it will cause distress to its trading partners, e.g. Egypt. Then after 70 years the city's greatness will be restored and it will return to making money by trade, but by some unspecified means the profits won't remain with the merchants but will be distributed to devout people to pay for luxuries. 

 

Uhm, this did not happen. Alexander did conquer Tyre in 332 BCE -- everybody back in those days was going to get conquered eventually -- but it didn't regain its importance after 70 years. It never really became as central to Mediterranean trade as it had been, but it survived. Today it's more of a tourist town, or it was until Lebanon became not a nice place to visit. Anyway, this is all nonsense.

23 A prophecy against Tyre:

Wail, you ships of Tarshish!
    For Tyre is destroyed
    and left without house or harbor.
From the land of Cyprus
    word has come to them.

² Be silent, you people of the island
    and you merchants of Sidon,
    whom the seafarers have enriched.
³ On the great waters
    came the grain of the Shihor;
the harvest of the Nile^[a] was the revenue of Tyre,
    and she became the marketplace of the nations.

⁴ Be ashamed, Sidon, and you fortress of the sea,
    for the sea has spoken:
“I have neither been in labor nor given birth;
    I have neither reared sons nor brought up daughters.”
⁵ When word comes to Egypt,
    they will be in anguish at the report from Tyre.

⁶ Cross over to Tarshish;
    wail, you people of the island.
⁷ Is this your city of revelry,
    the old, old city,
whose feet have taken her
    to settle in far-off lands?
⁸ Who planned this against Tyre,
    the bestower of crowns,
whose merchants are princes,
    whose traders are renowned in the earth?
⁹ The Lord Almighty planned it,
    to bring down her pride in all her splendor
    and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.

¹⁰ Till^[b] your land as they do along the Nile,
    Daughter Tarshish,
    for you no longer have a harbor.
¹¹ The Lord has stretched out his hand over the sea
    and made its kingdoms tremble.
He has given an order concerning Phoenicia
    that her fortresses be destroyed.
¹² He said, “No more of your reveling,
    Virgin Daughter Sidon, now crushed!

“Up, cross over to Cyprus;
    even there you will find no rest.”
¹³ Look at the land of the Babylonians,^[c]
    this people that is now of no account!
The Assyrians have made it
    a place for desert creatures;
they raised up their siege towers,
    they stripped its fortresses bare
    and turned it into a ruin.

¹⁴ Wail, you ships of Tarshish;
    your fortress is destroyed!

¹⁵ At that time Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the span of a king’s life. But at the end of these seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute:

¹⁶ “Take up a harp, walk through the city,
    you forgotten prostitute;
play the harp well, sing many a song,
    so that you will be remembered.”

¹⁷ At the end of seventy years, the Lord will deal with Tyre. She will return to her lucrative prostitution and will ply her trade with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth. ¹⁸ Yet her profit and her earnings will be set apart for the Lord; they will not be stored up or hoarded. Her profits will go to those who live before the Lord, for abundant food and fine clothes.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 23:3 Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls Sidon, / who cross over the sea; / your envoys ³ are on the great waters. / The grain of the Shihor, / the harvest of the Nile,
2. Isaiah 23:10 Dead Sea Scrolls and some Septuagint manuscripts; Masoretic Text Go through
3. Isaiah 23:13 Or Chaldeans

Nobody knows anything

Well, that's not exactly true. We've come to know a good deal since the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, about how the universe works, what life is and how our natural world came to be, our own biology -- all sorts of important stuff that I and all educated and sane people know very well. Nowadays a lot of people don't want to know the truth, but that's not what I'm talking about.

 

Specifically, nobody knows enough about human society to predict its future. Every year we get a whole lot of economic forecasts which offer a range of predictions about the stock market, interest rates, GDP, unemployment. Most of them are substantially wrong, and the prognosticator who guessed right this year will be wrong next year. 

 

I don't think anybody foresaw the sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. SecDef Lloyd Austin said he sure didn't, and if anybody should be in a position to know it would be him. Now people are coming up with all sorts of reverse engineering solutions to why it happened, most of which are absurd. I've seen a lot of takes that Israel wiping out Hezbollah deprived Assad of a necessary base of support but that is completely absurd.  Hezbollah had virtually no physical presence in Syria and could not possibly have done anything to defend the regime. It is much more plausible that Russia could no longer defend Assad because of the Ukraine war, and that mattered a good deal. But still, nobody saw it coming.

I thought I was being transgressive by refusing to shed a tear for United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but it turns out my reaction was basically mainstream. However, it also turns out that he was not acting out of personal grievance. He was a rich kid with an Ivy League education who adopted what I consider to be very correct views about the health insurance industry but decided to take a bizarre action in response. Bizarre and apparently feckless as murdering the guy seems to be, it has provoked a massive outpouring of rage against the industry which just might matter in the end, which is to say that much of history is stochastic. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Hitler surviving his WWI injuries, Comey announcing he'd found a new trove of emails just before the 2016 election, Joe Biden blanking out in the debate . . . there are a googleplex of minor events and accidents that have massively changed the world. 

We don't know what's going to happen. We never will. Just do your best to get through it.

Sunday Sermonette: Op-ed page

Isaiah 22 is uses a lot of elaborate and obscure language, but it's not actually a prophecy. It's a report and commentary on the news. King Hezekiah has witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria, and Jerusalem is under siege. Isaiah wants the palace administrator Shebna deposed, and replaced by Eliakim. That's it. This has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the end times or any of that garbage.

22 A prophecy against the Valley of Vision:

What troubles you now,
    that you have all gone up on the roofs,
² you town so full of commotion,
    you city of tumult and revelry?
Your slain were not killed by the sword,
    nor did they die in battle.
³ All your leaders have fled together;
    they have been captured without using the bow.
All you who were caught were taken prisoner together,
    having fled while the enemy was still far away.
⁴ Therefore I said, “Turn away from me;
    let me weep bitterly.
Do not try to console me
    over the destruction of my people.”

⁵ The Lord, the Lord Almighty, has a day
    of tumult and trampling and terror
    in the Valley of Vision,
a day of battering down walls
    and of crying out to the mountains.
⁶ Elam takes up the quiver,
    with her charioteers and horses;
    Kir uncovers the shield.
⁷ Your choicest valleys are full of chariots,
    and horsemen are posted at the city gates.

⁸ The Lord stripped away the defenses of Judah,
    and you looked in that day
    to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest.
⁹ You saw that the walls of the City of David
    were broken through in many places;
you stored up water
    in the Lower Pool.
¹⁰ You counted the buildings in Jerusalem
    and tore down houses to strengthen the wall.
¹¹ You built a reservoir between the two walls
    for the water of the Old Pool,
but you did not look to the One who made it,
    or have regard for the One who planned it long ago.

¹² The Lord, the Lord Almighty,
    called you on that day
to weep and to wail,
    to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.
¹³ But see, there is joy and revelry,
    slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
    eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
    “for tomorrow we die!”

¹⁴ The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: “Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for,” says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

¹⁵ This is what the Lord, the Lord Almighty, says:

“Go, say to this steward,
    to Shebna the palace administrator:
¹⁶ What are you doing here and who gave you permission
    to cut out a grave for yourself here,
hewing your grave on the height
    and chiseling your resting place in the rock?

¹⁷ “Beware, the Lord is about to take firm hold of you
    and hurl you away, you mighty man.
¹⁸ He will roll you up tightly like a ball
    and throw you into a large country.
There you will die
    and there the chariots you were so proud of
    will become a disgrace to your master’s house.
¹⁹ I will depose you from your office,
    and you will be ousted from your position.

²⁰ “In that day I will summon my servant, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. ²¹ I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah. ²² I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. ²³ I will drive him like a peg into a firm place; he will become a seat^[a] of honor for the house of his father. ²⁴ All the glory of his family will hang on him: its offspring and offshoots—all its lesser vessels, from the bowls to all the jars.

²⁵ “In that day,” declares the Lord Almighty, “the peg driven into the firm place will give way; it will be sheared off and will fall, and the load hanging on it will be cut down.” The Lord has spoken.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 22:23 Or throne

Assassination

We don't yet know the motive for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but while we're waiting to find out, it's a good time to talk about the company. It's conceivable that this was an entirely personal matter, having nothing to do with Thompson's job -- maybe Thompson was boinking the guy's wife. But that seems highly unlikely, all the more so because the hit happened in Manhattan, a thousand miles away from his home in Minnesota.

 

On the other hand, if the motive were political, we'd expect to have seen some sort of public manifesto or claim of rationale, and so far that hasn't happened. What I can well believe, however, is that the motive was more about a personal grievance against the company. An earlier ProPublica investigation found that United HealthCare flags expensive accounts for added scrutiny and in at least one case, had improperly denied paying for a treatment apparently because of the expense. This is anecdotal, and the company disputes that the denial was improper. But lack of transparency by insurers, and lack of enforcement action by government, leaves us in the dark about the extent of the problem.

A more recent investigation by ProPublica finds that United systematically denies payment for behavioral health services. The company uses algorithms to arbitrarily limit the number of therapy sessions it will pay for, without regard for patient’s needs. It’s practices have been found illegal in three states, but there is no relevant national regulatory authority for plans that people buy in the marketplace, or plans funded by Medicaid. As many people with behavioral health needs are Medicaid beneficiaries, this means that some of the most vulnerable people are routinely denied needed services. New York’s Attorney General won a $14.3 million judgment against United for illegally denying mental health services, but this had no effect in other states.

 

According to an analysis in The Economist, 45% of medical spending in the U.S. goes to just nine firms: insurers, drug distributors and pharmacy benefit managers.  UnitedHealth had revenues of $324 billion in 2022, second only to Walmart, and it is now America’s 12th most valuable company. United is the health insurance provider for 50 million people. So Thompson was making millions, much of it off of the government,  juicing  profits by denying desperately needed services to the most desperate people. I'm not saying that the proper response was to assassinate him, but I think that's the likely motive. Maybe some other people ought to be looking over their shoulders right now.

Wednesday Bible Study: Descent into gibberish

 Chapter 20 is just weird. God commands Isaiah to go around naked, which he does for three years. Then God prophecies that the king of Assyria will conquer Egypt and Cush (the upper Nile region) and lead the captives away naked. Needless to say, this never happened.

Then we get Chapter 21. Nobody can explain what most of this is supposed to mean. The last part - the prophecy against Arabia -- is not actually a prophecy. Assyria had already conquered the region  at the time this was written. But as far as all the jive about the watchman, it can mean whatever you want it to.

 

20 In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it— ² at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot.

³ Then the Lord said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush,^{[a] 4} so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared—to Egypt’s shame. ⁵ Those who trusted in Cush and boasted in Egypt will be dismayed and put to shame. ⁶ In that day the people who live on this coast will say, ‘See what has happened to those we relied on, those we fled to for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?’”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 20:3 That is, the upper Nile region; also in verse 5

 

21 A prophecy against the Desert by the Sea:

Like whirlwinds sweeping through the southland,
    an invader comes from the desert,
    from a land of terror.

² A dire vision has been shown to me:
    The traitor betrays, the looter takes loot.
Elam, attack! Media, lay siege!
    I will bring to an end all the groaning she caused.

³ At this my body is racked with pain,
    pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor;
I am staggered by what I hear,
    I am bewildered by what I see.
⁴ My heart falters,
    fear makes me tremble;
the twilight I longed for
    has become a horror to me.

⁵ They set the tables,
    they spread the rugs,
    they eat, they drink!
Get up, you officers,
    oil the shields!

⁶ This is what the Lord says to me:

“Go, post a lookout
    and have him report what he sees.
⁷ When he sees chariots
    with teams of horses,
riders on donkeys
    or riders on camels,
let him be alert,
    fully alert.”

⁸ And the lookout^[a] shouted,

“Day after day, my lord, I stand on the watchtower;
    every night I stay at my post.
⁹ Look, here comes a man in a chariot
    with a team of horses.
And he gives back the answer:
    ‘Babylon has fallen, has fallen!
All the images of its gods
    lie shattered on the ground!’”

¹⁰ My people who are crushed on the threshing floor,
    I tell you what I have heard
from the Lord Almighty,
    from the God of Israel.

A Prophecy Against Edom

¹¹ A prophecy against Dumah^[b]:

Someone calls to me from Seir,
    “Watchman, what is left of the night?
    Watchman, what is left of the night?”
¹² The watchman replies,
    “Morning is coming, but also the night.
If you would ask, then ask;
    and come back yet again.”

A Prophecy Against Arabia

¹³ A prophecy against Arabia:

You caravans of Dedanites,
    who camp in the thickets of Arabia,
¹⁴     bring water for the thirsty;
you who live in Tema,
    bring food for the fugitives.
¹⁵ They flee from the sword,
    from the drawn sword,
from the bent bow
    and from the heat of battle.

¹⁶ This is what the Lord says to me: “Within one year, as a servant bound by contract would count it, all the splendor of Kedar will come to an end. ¹⁷ The survivors of the archers, the warriors of Kedar, will be few.” The Lord, the God of Israel, has spoken.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 21:8 Dead Sea Scrolls and Syriac; Masoretic Text A lion
2. Isaiah 21:11 Dumah, a wordplay on Edom, means silence or stillness.

 

 

Sunday Sermonette: Jean Dixon was better than this

As we have noted several times, Isaiah's prophecies tend not to come true. Apologists have tried to explain this by imagining that they refer to events in the far future, that maybe sorta kinda can be twisted into something like Isaiah's description. This requires ignoring much of what he literally says. His prediction of Immanuel cannot possibly refer to the eventual birth of Jesus because Isaiah quite literally says that Immanuel's mother is already pregnant, in the 8th Century BC, among other compelling reasons. 

But the only thing they can do with Chapter 18 is ignore it completely. None of this ever happened and nothing like it ever could happen. The Nile has never dried up. The Canaanite language has never been spoken in Egypt and it is now extinct. The Egyptians have never worshiped Yaweh, there has never been an altar to Yahweh in Egypt, and all of the rest of it is equally absurd. I'll just leave it at that.

 

9 A prophecy against Egypt:

See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud
    and is coming to Egypt.
The idols of Egypt tremble before him,
    and the hearts of the Egyptians melt with fear.

² “I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian—
    brother will fight against brother,
    neighbor against neighbor,
    city against city,
    kingdom against kingdom.
³ The Egyptians will lose heart,
    and I will bring their plans to nothing;
they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead,
    the mediums and the spiritists.
⁴ I will hand the Egyptians over
    to the power of a cruel master,
and a fierce king will rule over them,”
    declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

⁵ The waters of the river will dry up,
    and the riverbed will be parched and dry.
⁶ The canals will stink;
    the streams of Egypt will dwindle and dry up.
The reeds and rushes will wither,
⁷     also the plants along the Nile,
    at the mouth of the river.
Every sown field along the Nile
    will become parched, will blow away and be no more.
⁸ The fishermen will groan and lament,
    all who cast hooks into the Nile;
those who throw nets on the water
    will pine away.
⁹ Those who work with combed flax will despair,
    the weavers of fine linen will lose hope.
¹⁰ The workers in cloth will be dejected,
    and all the wage earners will be sick at heart.

¹¹ The officials of Zoan are nothing but fools;
    the wise counselors of Pharaoh give senseless advice.
How can you say to Pharaoh,
    “I am one of the wise men,
    a disciple of the ancient kings”?

¹² Where are your wise men now?
    Let them show you and make known
what the Lord Almighty
    has planned against Egypt.
¹³ The officials of Zoan have become fools,
    the leaders of Memphis are deceived;
the cornerstones of her peoples
    have led Egypt astray.
¹⁴ The Lord has poured into them
    a spirit of dizziness;
they make Egypt stagger in all that she does,
    as a drunkard staggers around in his vomit.
¹⁵ There is nothing Egypt can do—
    head or tail, palm branch or reed.

¹⁶ In that day the Egyptians will become weaklings. They will shudder with fear at the uplifted hand that the Lord Almighty raises against them. ¹⁷ And the land of Judah will bring terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom Judah is mentioned will be terrified, because of what the Lord Almighty is planning against them.

¹⁸ In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty. One of them will be called the City of the Sun.^[a]

¹⁹ In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the Lord at its border. ²⁰ It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. ²¹ So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the Lord and keep them. ²² The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

²³ In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. ²⁴ In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing^[b] on the earth. ²⁵ The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 19:18 Some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls, Symmachus and Vulgate; most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text City of Destruction
2. Isaiah 19:24 Or Assyria, whose names will be used in blessings (see Gen. 48:20); or Assyria, who will be seen by others as blessed

 

Movie Review

Last night I saw Bonhoeffer, about the German theologian who resisted Nazism and paid with his life. (I don't think that's a spoiler, most people know that already.) I've done a little research and I can tell you that the story follows the general arc of the history. It omits a good deal, which is necessary, and sometimes you would need a bit of background knowledge to understand what's going on. It also includes some invented scenes which are intended to condense larger events or realities into succinct metaphors. It completely fabricates the circumstances of Bonhoeffer's execution, for the sake of a symbolic scene that turns him into a Christ figure, which I consider an indulgence by the writer and in some ways contrary to the main point of the thing, which is precisely not to do that with any human, and which is precisely what Bonhoeffer says at one point from the pulpit.*

 

In any case, the movie is very well acted and the period ambience is created with great conviction. The holocaust itself takes place largely off stage, and the movie foregrounds what was in fact quite a small and futile resistance. The cowardice of most of the clergy and German citizens in general is represented, but constitutes the background. That's alright, I think, because the auteur Todd Komarnicki is trying to speak to those of us who might be inspired to resist. When we see even immensely wealthy and influential people rushing to Palm Beach to kiss the ring even before the malignant clown take office, we know that moral courage is in short supply right now.

 

* It also has Martin Neimoller make a version of his famous statement ending "Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me," from the pulpit before his arrest. He did make statements against Nazism from the pulpit but those exact words were made after the war. He survived 11 years in concentration camps.