What's Right, What's Left
Those of you who may have watched the recent Senate impeachment hearings here in the U.S. may be wondering just what exactly happened. First off, despite an expected acquittal by the Senate, President Trump will remain impeached and thus be the third U.S. President to have that added to the history books; but once impeachment is decided by the House of Representatives it then moves on to the Senate to decide on whether or not to remove him from office. In the Senate, the minority Democrat side argued that since there were first-hand witnesses and documents that could prove the president's guilt or innocence, why not have them testify under Oath and have the documents produced, their argument being that in order for something to be considered a "trial" doesn't there have to be witnesses? And if Trump was indeed innocent and had nothing to hide then the witnesses would say as much (President Trump has continued to order such witnesses not to testify); the majority Republican side responded that they simply believed what the President had said and as such, no witnesses or documents were needed; there was no need to remove him from office...and that is how the vote went. No first-hand witnesses or documents allowed. The legal precedent that this Senate "trial" may have now set is this: any future president, federal judge, or high-ranking federal official being considered for impeachment can possibly prevent any damaging witnesses or documents from ever being called or entered into the record. So let's say that you were one of Trump's personal attorneys in the trial and that you still run a non-profit that has only a few family members as employees and has no office, only a mail drop, but your non-profit has received funds of $65 million...no problem. Or let's say that you're a White House counsel in the trial, someone who may have been involved in helping push the Trump agenda now being argued and that as such you should have recused yourself from this "trial" but didn't (this was alleged by former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, who said as much in pages leaked from his upcoming book, a book also allegedly being blocked by Trump citing "national security" concerns)...no problem. Said Jill Lapore in The New Yorker: The Democracy Index rates a hundred and sixty-seven countries, every year, on a scale that ranges from “full democracy” to “authoritarian regime.” In 2006, the U.S. was a “full democracy,” the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world. In 2016, the index for the first time rated the United States a “flawed democracy,” and since then American democracy has gotten only more flawed.
Whether you agree or disagree with how the "trial" of President Trump was conducted and its likely end result --and if you wonder how your friends just can't seem to understand your views-- science now has an answer on why you may feel the way you do and unfortunately, it comes down to something that might be out of your control. Said a piece in National Geographic: ...research has shown that certain areas in the brain are different for liberals and conservatives, and this may affect how they respond to stressful stimuli. For example, conservatives tend to have a larger amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and have stronger physiological reactions to unpleasant photos or sounds. Considered together, these biological differences may partially explain why it’s so difficult for a liberal or conservative to get the other to “see the light.” You’re asking people not just to change their mind but also to resist their biology...In general, liberals tend to be more open-minded, creative, and novelty seeking; conservatives tend to be more orderly and conventional, and to prefer stability. Identical twins separated at birth and raised in different environments typically find their political stances in agreement when reunited, suggesting a genetic component to our political compass. Several studies suggest that variations in our dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) influence whether we vote red or blue.
This also might be why some people will panic at one virus (the corona variation* that has so far killed 2,250+) but not at another (the flu virus which killed 14,000+). Two other thoughts puzzled me as I read more on the immigration situation here in the U.S., one being an article that came from the New York Review of Books on the seemingly horrific struggle immigrants face once in the courts; and the other that came from reading Paul Theroux's recent book on exploring the Mexican border and discovering that so many illegal immigrants were not from Mexico or Central or South America: In the seven-month period, at the time I was walking by the fence, 663 Chinese nationals had been arrested trying to cross from Tijuana...It was estimated that they had paid anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000 apiece to be shepherded into the U.S. China is now one of the world's leading sources of illegal immigrants...In the first half of 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported...more than 4,000 Indian national had been caught crossing the US border illegally...Around the same time, 671 Bangladeshis were arrested...These non-Mexicans are the SIAs -- Special Interest Aliens, who, along with Chinese, included Iraqis, Afghans, Pakastanis, Syrians, and Africans (primarily Nigerians).
The Virginia Quarterly had a piece on what and how we perceive things to be true: The word rumor connects distantly to the rumble of thunder, a deep roar from afar. Though speculative, rumors have a basis in what is real. “The quiddity of ‘rumor’ is the subtlest emanation of a fact that is always true in essence,” wrote the eccentric Soviet fabulist Alexander Grin, who lived in a time and place where rumor replaced open discourse and the free flow of ideas. It’s for that reason that, while we don’t much observe the distinction today, earlier generations called misinformation a “false rumor,” while a rumor plain and simple was assumed to have some roots in reality. Even if unsubstantiated at the moment, the thought was that eventually a rumor would be proven and amplified by reality, making it a station on the path to the truth of a matter. The National Geographic show Brain Games had another explanation and that was that the more something is repeated --even if it is false-- the more our brains "tire" of making the distinction and begin to accept that it is true.
Said author Christopher Pollon, in a piece in Hakai: I have a habit of collecting random snippets of information for future stories. It’s a big messy file—it lives mostly as scribbled notes on envelopes and napkins, articles ripped from newspapers and magazines, and thoughts and random anecdotes piled on my office floor. It’s like a midden and most of this material will never see the light of day. But last winter, the connection between two characters came together to create this story. It sometimes seems that way for me as well, these random pieces of a puzzle of trying to understand the ways of the world and why people act as they do, right or wrong. Sometimes I can toss them all aside and hope that they will just gather dust on "the pile;" and at other times those pieces will seem to merge as fluidly and as damagingly as a thousand tiny balls of mercury. Take this story in Smithsonian where 10,000 rare bees were killed, seemingly for no reason other than at random: Though they aren’t rendered completely dormant by cold weather, honey bees enter into a reduced state of activity once winter hits, forming clusters inside their hives to stay warm. The buzzing insects would have been “helpless to defend themselves” from the attack, writes Colin Drury of the Independent. Castle staff members aren’t entirely sure of the extent of the damage --they won’t be able to check properly until March, because further exposure to cold air could kill any surviving bees-- but they estimate as many as 10,000 bees might have died. Kirsty Hulley of the Cambridgeshire police called the incident “a cruel, unprovoked and completely unnecessary act of violence.” Or there was another piece in the NEw York Review of Books simply titled, Hatred On the March. Jill Lapore, on her telling of democracies throughout the world (including ours) facing an eroding attack, says that this has all happened before and not once but several times. This partisanship or tribalism or anger or whatever you want to label it...it hurts and is painful but in a growing way.
Krista Tippett brought up this topic on her On Being podcast when she interviewed the poets Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson. Said the Irish Ó Tuama: These are the kind of things we need for the tired spaces of our world. This is the way we need to move forward in a world that is so interested in being comforted by the damp blanket of bad stories. We need stories of belonging that move us towards each other, not from each other; ways of being human that open up the possibilities of being alive together; ways of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, that deepen our friendship, that deepen our capacity to disagree, that deepen the argument of being alive. This is what we need. This is what will save us. This is the work of peace. This is the work of imagination. As one of his poems said: So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around. The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus. Let us pray.
Another of her podcasts featured a similar thought voiced by civil rights "legend" Ruby Sales: What is it that public theology can say to the white person in Massachusetts who’s heroin-addicted, because they feel that their lives have no meaning because of the trickle-down impact of whiteness in the world today? What do you say to someone who has been told that their whole essence is whiteness and power and domination, and when that no longer exists, then they feel as if they are dying?..that’s why Donald Trump is essential, because although we don’t agree with him, people think he’s speaking to that pain that they’re feeling...There’s a spiritual crisis in white America. It’s a crisis of meaning. We talk a lot about black theologies, but I want a liberating white theology. I want a theology that speaks to Appalachia. I want a theology that begins to deepen people’s understanding about their capacity to live fully human lives and to touch the goodness inside of them, rather than call upon the part of themselves that’s not relational. Because there’s nothing wrong with being European-American. That’s not the problem. It’s how you actualize that history and how you actualize that reality. It’s almost like white people don’t believe that other white people are worthy of being redeemed.
Bloomberg Businessweek opined that what emerges from the recent U.S. Senate "trial" may reverberate far into the future, a thought perhaps echoed in the new book The Immoral Majority by conservative author Ben Howe, a book he subtitled: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values. But as the earlier piece from National Geographic noted: Our behaviors and preferences are profoundly influenced by our genetic makeup, by factors in our environment that affect our genes, and by other genes forced into our systems by the innumerable microbes that dwell inside us. I realize that this sounds ridiculous. We’re taught that we can be whatever we want to be, do whatever we want to do. Intuitively, it feels like we pick and choose the foods we like, who we give our heart to, or which buttons we press in the voting booth. To suggest that we are just meat robots under the influence of unseen forces is crazy talk!. But the author goes on to apparently agree with the positions of the poets and podcasters and writers mentioned above, that regardless of the divide and the uncontrolled nature of our beings, there is this: Knowing the molecular basis of our adverse behaviors should put us in a better position to curb or remedy them; accepting that other people have little choice in how they came to be should engender more empathy and compassion. Perhaps, with the confidence that we are not in total control, we can resist the urge to praise or blame and seek understanding instead
*The Conversation had a summary of the early symptoms you might experience, and why those symptoms might be more linked to other similar corona viruses and not the Covid-19 (recently named, the moniker simply stands for the Corona (Co) virus (vi) being a disease (d) in the year 2019 (19).
Whether you agree or disagree with how the "trial" of President Trump was conducted and its likely end result --and if you wonder how your friends just can't seem to understand your views-- science now has an answer on why you may feel the way you do and unfortunately, it comes down to something that might be out of your control. Said a piece in National Geographic: ...research has shown that certain areas in the brain are different for liberals and conservatives, and this may affect how they respond to stressful stimuli. For example, conservatives tend to have a larger amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and have stronger physiological reactions to unpleasant photos or sounds. Considered together, these biological differences may partially explain why it’s so difficult for a liberal or conservative to get the other to “see the light.” You’re asking people not just to change their mind but also to resist their biology...In general, liberals tend to be more open-minded, creative, and novelty seeking; conservatives tend to be more orderly and conventional, and to prefer stability. Identical twins separated at birth and raised in different environments typically find their political stances in agreement when reunited, suggesting a genetic component to our political compass. Several studies suggest that variations in our dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) influence whether we vote red or blue.
This also might be why some people will panic at one virus (the corona variation* that has so far killed 2,250+) but not at another (the flu virus which killed 14,000+). Two other thoughts puzzled me as I read more on the immigration situation here in the U.S., one being an article that came from the New York Review of Books on the seemingly horrific struggle immigrants face once in the courts; and the other that came from reading Paul Theroux's recent book on exploring the Mexican border and discovering that so many illegal immigrants were not from Mexico or Central or South America: In the seven-month period, at the time I was walking by the fence, 663 Chinese nationals had been arrested trying to cross from Tijuana...It was estimated that they had paid anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000 apiece to be shepherded into the U.S. China is now one of the world's leading sources of illegal immigrants...In the first half of 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported...more than 4,000 Indian national had been caught crossing the US border illegally...Around the same time, 671 Bangladeshis were arrested...These non-Mexicans are the SIAs -- Special Interest Aliens, who, along with Chinese, included Iraqis, Afghans, Pakastanis, Syrians, and Africans (primarily Nigerians).
The Virginia Quarterly had a piece on what and how we perceive things to be true: The word rumor connects distantly to the rumble of thunder, a deep roar from afar. Though speculative, rumors have a basis in what is real. “The quiddity of ‘rumor’ is the subtlest emanation of a fact that is always true in essence,” wrote the eccentric Soviet fabulist Alexander Grin, who lived in a time and place where rumor replaced open discourse and the free flow of ideas. It’s for that reason that, while we don’t much observe the distinction today, earlier generations called misinformation a “false rumor,” while a rumor plain and simple was assumed to have some roots in reality. Even if unsubstantiated at the moment, the thought was that eventually a rumor would be proven and amplified by reality, making it a station on the path to the truth of a matter. The National Geographic show Brain Games had another explanation and that was that the more something is repeated --even if it is false-- the more our brains "tire" of making the distinction and begin to accept that it is true.
Said author Christopher Pollon, in a piece in Hakai: I have a habit of collecting random snippets of information for future stories. It’s a big messy file—it lives mostly as scribbled notes on envelopes and napkins, articles ripped from newspapers and magazines, and thoughts and random anecdotes piled on my office floor. It’s like a midden and most of this material will never see the light of day. But last winter, the connection between two characters came together to create this story. It sometimes seems that way for me as well, these random pieces of a puzzle of trying to understand the ways of the world and why people act as they do, right or wrong. Sometimes I can toss them all aside and hope that they will just gather dust on "the pile;" and at other times those pieces will seem to merge as fluidly and as damagingly as a thousand tiny balls of mercury. Take this story in Smithsonian where 10,000 rare bees were killed, seemingly for no reason other than at random: Though they aren’t rendered completely dormant by cold weather, honey bees enter into a reduced state of activity once winter hits, forming clusters inside their hives to stay warm. The buzzing insects would have been “helpless to defend themselves” from the attack, writes Colin Drury of the Independent. Castle staff members aren’t entirely sure of the extent of the damage --they won’t be able to check properly until March, because further exposure to cold air could kill any surviving bees-- but they estimate as many as 10,000 bees might have died. Kirsty Hulley of the Cambridgeshire police called the incident “a cruel, unprovoked and completely unnecessary act of violence.” Or there was another piece in the NEw York Review of Books simply titled, Hatred On the March. Jill Lapore, on her telling of democracies throughout the world (including ours) facing an eroding attack, says that this has all happened before and not once but several times. This partisanship or tribalism or anger or whatever you want to label it...it hurts and is painful but in a growing way.
Krista Tippett brought up this topic on her On Being podcast when she interviewed the poets Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson. Said the Irish Ó Tuama: These are the kind of things we need for the tired spaces of our world. This is the way we need to move forward in a world that is so interested in being comforted by the damp blanket of bad stories. We need stories of belonging that move us towards each other, not from each other; ways of being human that open up the possibilities of being alive together; ways of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, that deepen our friendship, that deepen our capacity to disagree, that deepen the argument of being alive. This is what we need. This is what will save us. This is the work of peace. This is the work of imagination. As one of his poems said: So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around. The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus. Let us pray.
Another of her podcasts featured a similar thought voiced by civil rights "legend" Ruby Sales: What is it that public theology can say to the white person in Massachusetts who’s heroin-addicted, because they feel that their lives have no meaning because of the trickle-down impact of whiteness in the world today? What do you say to someone who has been told that their whole essence is whiteness and power and domination, and when that no longer exists, then they feel as if they are dying?..that’s why Donald Trump is essential, because although we don’t agree with him, people think he’s speaking to that pain that they’re feeling...There’s a spiritual crisis in white America. It’s a crisis of meaning. We talk a lot about black theologies, but I want a liberating white theology. I want a theology that speaks to Appalachia. I want a theology that begins to deepen people’s understanding about their capacity to live fully human lives and to touch the goodness inside of them, rather than call upon the part of themselves that’s not relational. Because there’s nothing wrong with being European-American. That’s not the problem. It’s how you actualize that history and how you actualize that reality. It’s almost like white people don’t believe that other white people are worthy of being redeemed.
Bloomberg Businessweek opined that what emerges from the recent U.S. Senate "trial" may reverberate far into the future, a thought perhaps echoed in the new book The Immoral Majority by conservative author Ben Howe, a book he subtitled: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power over Christian Values. But as the earlier piece from National Geographic noted: Our behaviors and preferences are profoundly influenced by our genetic makeup, by factors in our environment that affect our genes, and by other genes forced into our systems by the innumerable microbes that dwell inside us. I realize that this sounds ridiculous. We’re taught that we can be whatever we want to be, do whatever we want to do. Intuitively, it feels like we pick and choose the foods we like, who we give our heart to, or which buttons we press in the voting booth. To suggest that we are just meat robots under the influence of unseen forces is crazy talk!. But the author goes on to apparently agree with the positions of the poets and podcasters and writers mentioned above, that regardless of the divide and the uncontrolled nature of our beings, there is this: Knowing the molecular basis of our adverse behaviors should put us in a better position to curb or remedy them; accepting that other people have little choice in how they came to be should engender more empathy and compassion. Perhaps, with the confidence that we are not in total control, we can resist the urge to praise or blame and seek understanding instead
*The Conversation had a summary of the early symptoms you might experience, and why those symptoms might be more linked to other similar corona viruses and not the Covid-19 (recently named, the moniker simply stands for the Corona (Co) virus (vi) being a disease (d) in the year 2019 (19).
Comments
Post a Comment
What do YOU think? Good, bad or indifferent, this blog is happy to hear your thoughts...criticisms, corrections and suggestions always welcome.