Wingnut crackup

 I admit I failed to comprehend the immense importance of the alternate universe inspired by QAnon in the MAGA psyche. It seemed as though nothing -- not the Dumpster continually spouting gibberish, not the TACO tariffs, not the random trashing of programs with overwhelming popular support, not the MuskMelon defection, not the violent arrests of gardeners and grandmothers -- could put a microdent in their adoration for Dear Leader.

 

But what finally did it is "Move along here, nothing to see" in the Epstein investigation. That this particular obsession got transferred from a pizza parlor in D.C. to Epstein never made sense in the first place, but one way or another the story had to stay alive. The essentially religious belief is that there is a vast global conspiracy, led by prominent Democratic politicians, donors, and activists, that kidnaps and rapes children (possibly in connection with Satanic rituals) and harvests a component of their blood that counteracts aging. Really. The most important leader of the conspiracy is Hillary Clinton, but it also includes Bill Clinton, Tom Hanks, George Soros of course, and everybody else to the left of Joe Manchin. That's what they believe. 

 

In his first term, Trump was going to expose them in an event called The Storm, in which the U.S. military would sweep up the conspirators, subject them to military tribunals, and execute them.  For some mysterious reason, this did not happen. How Jeffrey Epstein comes into this is also a mystery. His serial rape of teenage girls was first investigated back in 2005 in Palm Beach Florida, but the Florida Attorney General Alexander Acosta, a Republican obviously, for some reason gave him a ridiculous sweetheart deal. Trump then appointed Acosta Secretary of Labor.

 

Epstein was brought up again on federal charges in 2019, and as you all know he died in prison in August of that year, while Donald John Trump was president of the United States. DJT's director of the federal bureau of prisons concluded that Epstein's death was a suicide, and DJT's FBI and Department of Justice did not bring charges against anyone else in connection with Epstein for the remainder of Trump's term in office. Nevertheless, for lack of any other plausible framework on which to hang the conspiracy theory, it got transferred to Epstein. In the second Trump term he was finally going to reveal the truth and the vast left wing conspiracy of Satanic child rape would be unmasked. Then . . . 

 

Thud. It is mind boggling, utterly bizarre, impossible to grasp, that this is how the cult finally breaks apart. But just be very clear -- it isn't fundamentally about economic anxiety, or the culture wars, or even so much about racism, although all of that has something to do with it. It's fundamentally just plain nuts. 

Sunday Sermonette: The secret Bible chapter

I say that Matthew 6 is a secret because it's obvious that most Christians have never read it, or have forgotten it. I don't need to point out how this is all the exact opposite of the common beliefs and practices of Christians in the U.S. today, you can readily see that for yourselves, but I'll just give you one example to make it clear.

 

That would be the ridiculous Tim Tebow. He was the quarterback for the Florida Gators and yeah, he was an effective college quarterback and he won the Heisman Trophy. But he was super popular with the Florida fans because every time he'd make a good play, he'd ostentatiously go to one knee and pray, or pretend to pray. That inspired the Denver Broncos to draft him number one, even though most scouts had severe doubts about his ability to play in the NFL, apparently because they figured his Christian fans would buy tickets. He kept doing the public display of prayer thing, but as an NFL quarterback he was a complete bust and he only lasted three seasons. He tried to come back as a tight end but he couldn't block your grandmother and he was cut after one preseason game. 

 

Of course, Christianity is really about making millions of dollars for the megachurch pastors and TV hucksters. 

 

Next time, I'll discuss the origins of this document. By its existence, it implicitly claims that Jesus had a stenographer who wrote down everything he said, and that this writer came into possession of a copy. We'll see if that's plausible, or if it even matters. 

 

6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

² “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ³ But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴ so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Prayer

⁵ “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ⁶ But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ⁷ And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

⁹ “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
¹⁰ your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us today our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,^[a]
    but deliver us from the evil one.^[b]’

¹⁴ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Fasting

¹⁶ “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ¹⁷ But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Treasures in Heaven

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,^[c] your whole body will be full of light. ²³ But if your eyes are unhealthy,^[d] your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Do Not Worry

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 6:13 The Greek for temptation can also mean testing.
2. Matthew 6:13 Or from evil; some late manuscripts one, / for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
3. Matthew 6:22 The Greek for healthy here implies generous.
4. Matthew 6:23 The Greek for unhealthy here implies stingy.
5. Matthew 6:27 Or single cubit to your height

 

A couple of thoughts about Jeffrey Epstein

I'm pretty much down with Josh Marshall on this. We know that Epstein used his money to prolifically procure teenage girls for his gratification. His panderer (who happens to be female) was convicted and is now in prison. Two other men -- Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz -- have been publicly accused of accepting underaged girls as gifts from Epstein. Dershowitz denies it, Prince Andrew denies it less convincingly. Other than that, there is no publicly available evidence that anyone else participated in his statutory rape conspiracy.

 

Epstein did give free plane rides to prominent people including Bill Clinton, and he partied with Donald Trump in the past but it appears they had a falling out. (Hardly unusual for the Dumpster.) Epstein funded a couple of Harvard and MIT  researchers and otherwise used his money to rub up against prominent academics. But again, there's no publicly available evidence that any of these people did anything more than accept perfectly legal favors from him. (I believe one or more of the researchers got into trouble regarding university policy, but I'm not going to bother to look it up.) 

 

As for Epstein's death, he certainly had ample motive for suicide -- he was looking forward to a very unpleasant life. On the other hand, it would certainly not be news that prison guards can be corruptible. You can distrust the investigation. Donald Trump was president at the time and maybe he had reason to cover it up or even ordered the hit. I wouldn't put anything past him. And Dershowitz is a Trump fellator so maybe that's why he had immunity.  But . . .

 

The problem with this particular conspiracy theory is that Dershowitz's Trump fluffing would not give him any immunity from the New York Attorney General or Joe Biden's FBI, which also had the opportunity to take a second look at Epstein's death. (Not that I would expect Merrick Garland to get off his ass to do that.) If the reason Pam Bondi is covering up for somebody, then so did Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. Conceivably -- barely -- both figured they couldn't open the can one some people without opening it on all of them, but it seems more likely to me that there really is nothing there. 

 

The point is that while you're always free to speculate, it's never wise to start believing without good evidence. Homo sapiens sees patterns everywhere, but they're often what's called pareidolia -- seeing the face of Jesus on toast, that sort of thing. There really are conspiracies and it's legitimate to have theories about them -- law enforcement does it all the time, that's their job. But they have to prove it. 

Wednesday Bible Study: I'm down with some of this but . . .

 it's pretty much the opposite of what most people in the U.S. who call themselves Christians today believe and do. Or at least a lot of it is. Yet it's one of the best-known chapters in the Bible. It's called the Sermon on the Mount but evidently that's only because Matthew goes first. Much of this material is also in Luke, but it's delivered on a plain, not a mountain. 

 

I won't even begin to comment on everything here but a couple of notes are in order. Presumably, the part about amputating your body parts that lead you astray is not to be taken literally. The meaning of verse 13 is quite obscure. 

 

In verse 17, Jesus insists that the law -- which means the prescriptions and proscriptions in the Torah -- is still in effect and will be until the end of time. Yet Christians have never observed the Torah law. They eat pork, they eat meat and dairy together, they don't sacrifice, they mix fibers in the same textile, they don't observe the Passover or any of the pilgrimage festivals . . .  You get the idea. He advises settling out of court, which may be a good idea in some cases but hardly seems profound. Sometimes marriages don't work out and divorce is the best option, as far as I'm concerned. As for oaths (verse 33) Christians routinely take oaths with their hand on the Bible. I'm down with the rest of it.

 

5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them.

The Beatitudes

He said:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴ Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
⁵ Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
⁷ Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Salt and Light

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

The Fulfillment of the Law

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Murder

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,^[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ²² But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister^[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’^[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

²³ “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

²⁵ “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. ²⁶ Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Adultery

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’^{[e] 28} But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹ If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Divorce

³¹ “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’^{[f] 32} But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Oaths

³³ “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ ³⁴ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. ³⁶ And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. ³⁷ All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.^[g]

Eye for Eye

³⁸ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’^{[h] 39} But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. ⁴⁰ And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. ⁴¹ If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. ⁴² Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love for Enemies

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[i] and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 5:21 Exodus 20:13
2. Matthew 5:22 The Greek word for brother or sister (adelphos) refers here to a fellow disciple, whether man or woman; also in verse 23.
3. Matthew 5:22 Some manuscripts brother or sister without cause
4. Matthew 5:22 An Aramaic term of contempt
5. Matthew 5:27 Exodus 20:14
6. Matthew 5:31 Deut. 24:1
7. Matthew 5:37 Or from evil
8. Matthew 5:38 Exodus 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Deut. 19:21
9. Matthew 5:43 Lev. 19:18

 

Mortal Fools

I recall writing about this quite a while back but it's time to revisit. It is true that the warming atmosphere is more energetic, can hold more moisture, and is producing more frequent and more severe storms. That the ruling party of the wealthiest nation on earth denies this is an abomination. . . . 

 

However, the Guadalupe river has always been prone to catastrophic flooding. It has happened pretty regularly. In 1978, 33 people drowned when the river flooded due to tropical storm Amelia. In 1987, a flood swept away a bus full of children. Many were rescued but 9 died. The river flooded again in 2002 but I don't believe there were any fatalities. In any case, everybody knew that this could happen, but they continued to build and operate summer camps for children along the river, and declined to invest in a warning system. This flood was more powerful than the earlier ones, although I can't say whether the much greater death toll also might have had to do with there being more people near the riverbank than in the past. 

 

In any case, it's a psychological bias of humans to ignore the possibility of infrequent events. Not that every 15 years or so is all that infrequent, actually. People build their houses and farms on the slopes of active volcanoes. They build unreinforced masonry houses in earthquake zones -- that's why the death toll in earthquakes in southwest Asia is often so high. This can in part be a function of poverty. Land on volcanoes is fertile, and it's likely to be available. Earthquakes in California are far less deadly than earthquakes in Turkey or Pakistan, but that's because California building codes are very stringent, which Californians can much more readily afford. 

 

The people of Kerr County don't have that excuse, but their folly is quite common. That's why we let our guard down between pandemics, and let the public health infrastructure deteriorate. That's why the flood protection system in New Orleans was neglected -- despite repeated warnings that a major hurricane would inundate the city. I can give countless other examples of situations in the U.S. and around the world that are just begging for disaster, that nobody is paying the slightest attention to. Of course, it might not happen any time soon and then I'd be accused of being overly alarmist, so I won't try to list them. 

 

No, we can't be completely safe. We aren't about to depopulate tornado alley or Puerto Rico. But we can be a lot more realistic about prospects for disaster.

Sunday Sermonette: Disordered thinking

Before I get to the next chapter, let me bring this into the present. I looked in for a minute on CNN's coverage of the flood catastrophe in Texas. They were interviewing a guy whose daughter had disappeared, and he had joined many other civilians in searching for the missing. The setting is obviously hazardous, with bridges and roads washed out, debris everywhere, water of unknown depth. The interviewer asked him if he was worried about the danger and he said, I quote, "I know the good Lord is looking after us and keeping us safe." This is the same good Lord who just murdered the guy's daughter and probably 60 or 70 other people.

 

You hear the same sort of reaction after every disaster. God must have been looking after me because all my neighbors are dead and I'm still here. Thanks the Lord for the miracle that turned the fire away from my house. Religion requires doublethink. It makes no sense whatsoever, so in order to be religious, your thinking has to be disordered. Matthew 4 is just more proof of that. See if you can find the blatant contradictions. Before you start thinking about that, I'll just note that the devil take Jesus to a high mountain from which he can see "all the kingdoms of the world." I guess the earth was flat in those days. 

 

You might also ask how the writer knows all this. Presumably Jesus must have told someone. Should we believe him? 

 

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted^[a] by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³ The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’^[b]”

⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶ “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’^[c]”

⁷ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’^[d]”

⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹ “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’^[e]”

¹¹ Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Jesus Begins to Preach

¹² When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³ Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— ¹⁴ to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:

¹⁵ “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
    the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan,
    Galilee of the Gentiles—
¹⁶ the people living in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
    a light has dawned.”^[f]

¹⁷ From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Jesus Calls His First Disciples

¹⁸ As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” ²⁰ At once they left their nets and followed him.

²¹ Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, ²² and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Jesus Heals the Sick

²³ Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. ²⁴ News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. ²⁵ Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis,^[g] Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 4:1 The Greek for tempted can also mean tested.
2. Matthew 4:4 Deut. 8:3
3. Matthew 4:6 Psalm 91:11,12
4. Matthew 4:7 Deut. 6:16
5. Matthew 4:10 Deut. 6:13
6. Matthew 4:16 Isaiah 9:1,2
7. Matthew 4:25 That is, the Ten Cities

 

 

 

Wednesday Bible Study: First Century Jewish Politics

Matthew 3 has a couple of elements that may puzzle people. During the Second Temple period, there were various Jewish sects in Judea, notably the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes.  It isn't really important that you understand all of what distinguished these sects. Briefly, the Sadducees rejected all of the Tanakh other than the Torah; Pharasaic belief became the basis of Rabbinical Judaism as it developed in the diaspora. The Essenes were an ascetic, communal movement that believed in the immortality of the soul, communal ownership, and obedience to a leader, among other tenets, including apocalyptic prophecy. 

 

It is not clear that John is part of a community, although he could be construed to be the leader of his own. However, as he is ascetic, refers to a coming apocalypse, and calls out the Sadducees and Pharisees for condemnation, it might be that he was an Essene. The resemblance between Essene beliefs and practices, Jesus's own lifestyle and preaching, and the early Christian community as described in Acts, obviously suggests that Christianity may have emerged from an Essene community. Scholars dispute this however, and as far as I'm concerned the only really important point here is that Christianity was originally a heterodox Jewish sect.

 

Note that while insects in general are tref, it is specifically permitted to eat locusts. However, John is not eating a balanced diet. If he doesn't sneak in some vegetables, he will develop scurvy.

 

3 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea ² and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³ This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him.’”^[a]

⁴ John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. ⁶ Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹ “I baptize you with^[b] water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with^[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

The Baptism of Jesus

¹³ Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. ¹⁴ But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

¹⁵ Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

¹⁶ As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷ And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Footnotes

1. Matthew 3:3 Isaiah 40:3
2. Matthew 3:11 Or in
3. Matthew 3:11 Or in

 

Focusing my outrage

The Bill that just passed the Senate -- with yes votes from all but 3 Republican senators*, every one of them a sniveling, worthless coward -- is  catastrophe for the nation in every possible way. It represents the largest upward transfer of wealth -- from the poor and middle classes to the wealthy -- in our history, at the cost of blowing up the national debt. But I can't write about everything so I'll concentrate on what it's going to do to the medical institutions that have brought us historically unprecedented health and longevity.

 

You don't have to take it from me, you can take it from the Congressional Budget Office as reported by the Center for American Progress. 

 

"Roughly 17 million people would lose health coverage and become uninsured by 2034 because of the Medicaid and ACA marketplace cuts in the bill, the bill’s failure to extend enhanced premium tax credits for ACA marketplace coverage, and other harmful ACA marketplace changes being made via rule changes, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That’s up from the House Republican plan, which would cause about 16 million people to become uninsured."

This also means that more than 300 rural hospitals will be at risk of closure or drastic reductions in service, and that 25% of nursing homes may go out of business.

 

The people who will be most severely affected by this disaster are, of course, disproportionately people who voted in November to make it happen. Then their grandmother gets thrown out of the nursing home and dumped on their front lawn, and they have to travel 3 hours to find a hospital but they won't be able to pay for its services once they get there, who are they going to blame? I'm very interested to find out. 

 

*Credit where it's due, Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted no. Lisa Murkowski voted yes. If she had not, the bill would not have passed. 

 

 

Sunday Sermonette: That's one story

I believe I mentioned here a while back that the Christmas story we're all familiar with is actually a mashup of two completely different stories, in Matthew and Luke. In Matthew, there is no inn, no stable, no manger, no shepherds. Also, no edict from Caesar Augustus that everybody had to go to their home town to be taxed. Jesus is born in the house of Mary and Joseph, who already live in Bethlehem.  They are visited by the three wise guys from the East, who do not show up in Luke. They blab to Herod, the Roman viceroy, that a baby has been born who will be king of the Jews. Since Herod considers himself king of the Jews, he orders all the male babies in town to be murdered, ergo Mary and Joseph and the kid have to flee to Egypt. When Herod dies and they finally come back to Judea, they go to live in Nazareth.

 

None of this happens in Luke. Herod doesn't murder any babies, he doesn't even know about Jesus as far as we can tell. They don't flee to Egypt, they go straight back home to Nazareth, and they present the baby at the temple.  So you can believe one of these stories if you must, but you can't believe them both. (Obviously if Herod really had ordered all the male babies in Bethlehem murdered, or if Augustus had ordered everybody to go to their town of birth to be taxed, there would be other historical records of these events. There aren't. In fact neither of them ever happened.)

 

2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi^[a] from the east came to Jerusalem ² and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

³ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

⁶ “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel.’^[b]”

⁷ Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. ⁸ He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

⁹ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

The Escape to Egypt

¹³ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”^[c]

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷ Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”^[d]

The Return to Nazareth

¹⁹ After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

²¹ So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. ²² But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, ²³ and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 2:1 Traditionally wise men
2. Matthew 2:6 Micah 5:2,4
3. Matthew 2:15 Hosea 11:1
4. Matthew 2:18 Jer. 31:15

 

A few words on scientific publishing

I believe I addressed this briefly with my series on Gioia, but I should say more about it. I'm an editor for two journals, and I have done hundreds of peer reviews myself in my career, and of course I've had my own papers peer reviewed. Journal academic editors and peer reviewers generally are not compensated for their time. (The publishers do pay managing editors, but they have no role in deciding what gets accepted.) We do it because we need it on our CVs, basically -- it's an expectation that faculty will do a lot of stuff that they aren't explicitly paid for. Serving on committees for our own institution, academic societies and conferences, writing letters of recommendation, all kinds of unpaid labor.

 

Anyway, as an editor and peer reviewer I can catch insufficient literature reviews, inadequate explanation of methodology and methodological weaknesses, ethical lapses, errors of logic, statistical mistakes and unsupported inferences -- whatever is discernible in the paper itself. But I can't know for sure that the authors really did what they said they did, how careful they were with their interventions and measurements, or whether they in fact fudged their data (there are a lot of ways of doing this while telling yourself you're being honest), retrofitted their hypotheses, or just plain made shit up. Also, journals differ greatly in their standards for what gets published. 

 

There are in fact so-called predatory journals, that will publish just about anything for the publication fees. That's right, scientific journals don't pay the authors, and sometimes the authors have to pay them.  There are good open access journals and bad ones. The good ones have standards and require legitimate peer review, and the benefit is that you don't need to pay hundreds of dollars for a subscription or have privileges at a library that does. Many subscription only journals are owned by capitalists who charge exorbitant prescription rates and have paid advertisements. Open access was a well-intentioned idea and I have links to a couple of open access publishers in my side bar. However, as I say there are some very bad ones as well. 

 

So what does all this mean for the quality of the scientific endeavor and scientific literature? Well, it means we do face some challenges but it's mostly okay. First of all, if a conclusion really is wrong and the experiment really won't deliver the results, others will usually figure that out pretty quickly, if it's about something important that people will notice and want to follow up on. Outright fraud does often get detected Of course we can't know how often it doesn't get detected, but it seems to be committed by serial offenders and once they get nailed people start to look harder at all their output. Here's the Retraction Watch leaderboard so you can see what I mean. Also, people's colleagues and grad students are generally honest and it isn't easy to get something past people in your own lab.

 

However, as I have suggested above there are a lot of ways people can fool themselves, and there are a lot of weak results that manage to get published. So a competent scholar has to know what journals are reputable, and how to read papers to evaluate the strength and credibility of their results. There's often a lot of spin in the abstract and conclusions as well so you need to be able to see through that. 

 

The bottom line is that science proceeds messily and can get things wrong for a while -- sometimes a long while. It was very hard for physicists to give up on the ether, or geologists to accept the reality of continental drift (now called plate tectonics), and there have been shorter term fads that didn't pan out. But the long-range trajectory of our knowledge and understanding is always upward. We did get rid of the ether and we do know that the continents move. We know that gastric ulcers is actually an infectious disease (not the result of suppressed anger), and that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and Human Immunodeficiency Virus is the case of AIDS. We know a whole lot, and we know a whole lot of what we don't know, and we know a whole lot of what we have been wrong about, and why we were wrong.

 

The problem is not the scientific community, or establishment, or institution, or whatever you want to call it. The problem is people who think they're so smart they know more than people who really do have hard-won expertise from years of study and poverty and pain. (Try being a grad student, it's really not much fun.)  Also, con artists and liars, who do often believe their own bullshit. And the problem is other con artists and liars who appoint such people to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the cowardly tools who vote to confirm them. But the truth will win out in the end. Stalin was the worst enemy of the Soviet people in many ways, but Lysenkoism is pretty well up there, because it created food shortages and famine. But it's gone now. 

The same will happen to RFK Jr. Granted, we don't want to have to live through this, and some of us won't. But it will end.

Finishing up the series

Okay, I'm going to cut to the chase with Gioioa. Here is his last point, and then I'll tell you why I think he's just missing the mark.

 

Have you heard the complaints about “fake science”?

Of course you have. This phrase is everywhere. Here’s a measure of its use in print, courtesy of Google.

Source: Google Ngram

Democrats accuse Republicans of fake science. But Republicans also make the same charge at Democrats. I’m not sure anybody really wins in these arguments, but I can tell you who loses—namely science itself.

But, as you can see from the chart, the term “fake science” hardly existed during the 20th century. In those days, science was considered emblematic of truth. If it was fake, it wasn’t science.

But when the knowledge structure collapses, science loses its privileged access to truth. At the final stage, it gets harder and harder to distinguish science from propaganda. We are now living in that nightmare scenario.

 

Okay, so what's really going on? I was going to tell you myself, but then Andrew Gelman came out with this, which pretty much does the job for me. What we're facing is an epidemic of lying, but it's only by a certain faction, if you will, of society, that benefits from an enabling institution. I'll chop Gelman up in fine enough pieces to fit in a blog post, but enough to get the idea across:

 

4a. Why do they do it?

One reason to lie is that you don’t have good arguments on your side. Or, maybe you have ok arguments on your side, but not good enough. So if you add some fake evidence, it makes your case stronger.  . .

Saying you did a 3-day study of video games, that’s not so impressive. “Long term” sounds much better. Sure, you have to mislead, but it makes your case stronger! . . .

Saying that you sent masked officers to arrest some opposition-party politicians who were at no point posing a threat to anybody . . . ummm, that sounds pretty bad, kind of authoritarian even! But if they were committing “assault” and “lunging” at the officers, that’s another story. It’s a false story, but that’s the point! The motivation for lying is that it makes your case sound stronger.

4b. How does it work?

OK, fine, but the above reasoning is not enough. After all, if you lie and nobody believes you, it doesn’t do the trick. So the next thing you need is a medium of communication that will propagate your lies. . . .

The government statements falsely accusing Lander of “assaulting law enforcement” and Padilla of “lunging” . . . these lies get spread on social media, in the partisan news media, and even in the nonpartisan media when they repeat the official statements.

4c. Standard operating procedure

Again, a key way that this “reckless disregard for the truth” thing” works is that it’s accepted. I don’t even think the people saying these false statements recognize them as lies. They function as terms of art. In social psychology, “long term” can mean whatever you want it to mean, and “instantly become more powerful” is just something you get to say, even if you have no measures of power. In legal consulting, you can just say something you don’t believe. And when the cops say “assaulting” or “lunging,” what that really means is that they don’t like you, that’s all. Yes, some people like me and those news reporters quoted above will object, but we’re outsiders and we don’t really count.

 

So it's not that we are entering a post-enlightenment epistemology in which there is no longer such a thing as legitimate scientific inquiry, or intersubjective reality. It's that Rupert Murdoch has shown the way to getting rich and powerful using the ever more powerful media of mass communication to propagate lies, and that he and others who have caught on to the trick have allied themselves with psychopaths who will trade what Murdoch and his friends want -- not having to pay taxes or be constrained by the rule of law -- with what the psychos want, which is also unlimited wealth along with unlimited power and gratification of their narcissism. 

 

It isn't actually anything new -- it worked for Hitler and Goebbels.  But we need to call it what it is.

 

 

 

  .

 

 

 

Wednesday Bible Study: The Gospel According to Matthew

There is far too much background information about the Gospels I can even begin to convey in one post. We'll lay it out piece by piece as we go along. As most people know, there are four Gospels, i.e. purported accounts of the life and sayings of Jesus. Three of them -- Matthew, Mark and Luke -- are called "synoptic," which means they have a lot of overlapping material. Most scholars think that Mark was actually written first and that Matthew drew on it, but it is also posited that there was a lost work called "Q" which was also source material for Matthew. We just don't know. However, even though the synoptic gospels share material, there are also contradictions among them, and for that matter within them.  

 

The author of Matthew was purportedly one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, but this is generally considered impossible, and it is thought to have been written sometime late in the first century CE, at which time it is highly unlikely that Matthew the disciple would have remained alive. We'll get to more of those details and disputes later. For now, I'll just deal with Chapter One. It is incredibly boring. Purporting to be the genealogy of Jesus, but of course that's a contradiction already because it's actually the genealogy of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who according to the self-same book was not the father of Jesus. Furthermore, it directly and multiply contradicts the genealogy given in Luke -- they don't even agree on the name of Joseph's father. The actual point of this exercise is to demonstrate that Jesus was a descendant of David, and hence could be king of the Jews. Except that he wasn't. Whatever. Here you go, enjoy the 39 begats.

BTW, notice that there is no order from Augustus that all the world should be taxed, and that the family had to go to Bethlehem. Joseph just takes Mary home.  Apparently they lived in Bethlehem the whole time. Also, the prophecy referred to in verse 22 is from Isaiah, and it refers not to a virgin but to a young woman, alive at the time, not 700 years later, and Jesus is never called Emanuel. Just sayin'.

 

1 This is the genealogy^[a] of Jesus the Messiah^[b] the son of David, the son of Abraham:

² Abraham was the father of Isaac,

Isaac the father of Jacob,

Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

³ Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,

Perez the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

⁴ Ram the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

⁵ Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,

Obed the father of Jesse,

⁶ and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

⁷ Solomon the father of Rehoboam,

Rehoboam the father of Abijah,

Abijah the father of Asa,

⁸ Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,

Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,

Jehoram the father of Uzziah,

⁹ Uzziah the father of Jotham,

Jotham the father of Ahaz,

Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,

¹⁰ Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,

Manasseh the father of Amon,

Amon the father of Josiah,

¹¹ and Josiah the father of Jeconiah^[c] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.

¹² After the exile to Babylon:

Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,

Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,

¹³ Zerubbabel the father of Abihud,

Abihud the father of Eliakim,

Eliakim the father of Azor,

¹⁴ Azor the father of Zadok,

Zadok the father of Akim,

Akim the father of Elihud,

¹⁵ Elihud the father of Eleazar,

Eleazar the father of Matthan,

Matthan the father of Jacob,

¹⁶ and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

¹⁷ Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.

Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about^[d]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet^[e] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,^[f] because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”^[g] (which means “God with us”).

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 1:1 Or is an account of the origin
2. Matthew 1:1 Or Jesus Christ. Messiah (Hebrew) and Christ (Greek) both mean Anointed One; also in verse 18.
3. Matthew 1:11 That is, Jehoiachin; also in verse 12
4. Matthew 1:18 Or The origin of Jesus the Messiah was like this
5. Matthew 1:19 Or was a righteous man and
6. Matthew 1:21 Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves.
7. Matthew 1:23 Isaiah 7:14

 

Sunday Sermonette: Let's get this over with

This will be my last post on the Tanakh, AKA the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. We'll finally be moving on to the Christian canon. A couple of remarks about the denouement of the Book of Jonah are called for. First, Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. Obviously, the emperor and the people there were not devotees of Yahweh, and there is no evident reason why the Big Guy in the Sky would single it out for destruction. On the contrary, of course, Assyria subjugated Judah and destroyed the northern kingdom before the Babylonians came along to finish the job. Yahweh is said to have made that happen because the Israelites weren't offering sufficiently slavish devotion. So this whole thing makes no sense in context, which is one reason why many people think it's intended as a sort of satire.

 

It makes even less sense that everybody would suddenly believe this uncredentialed interloper. Actually it's far from clear how he even survived and traveled since he was barfed out onto the beach with nothing but what was left of his clothing. That the Ninevehns even put sackcloth on their animals is a further indication that this is intended as a joke. The last chapter seals the case for me, it is comically ridiculous, and it ends with a pseudo moral. So this is a fitting note to end on.

 

3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ² “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”

³ Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. ⁴ Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” ⁵ The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.

⁶ When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. ⁷ This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:

“By the decree of the king and his nobles:

Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. ⁸ But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. ⁹ Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

¹⁰ When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

 

4 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ² He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

⁴ But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

⁵ Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. ⁶ Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant^[a] and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. ⁷ But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. ⁸ When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

⁹ But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

¹⁰ But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Footnotes

1. Jonah 4:6 The precise identification of this plant is uncertain; also in verses 7, 9 and 10.