CSotD: Forecasting a hard rain

I wasn’t expecting to run more “hypocrisy” cartoons — the issue is out there, everyone knows it, there’s little more to be said. And then Matt Davies made me giggle.

As noted before, it’s not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when you say “Nobody should do this” and then do it yourself. There’s nothing hypocritical in McConnell consistently flexing his muscles and imposing his will, even if it appears to be for other reasons.

Which it wasn’t then and it isn’t now.

The only thing that has changed is the color of his tie. Nice touch, Matt.

But this does puzzle me …

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Tim Campbell)

 

(Pat Bagley)

Granted, I don’t expect Bagley and Campbell to come at an issue from the same perspective; Neither is an extremist but Campbell is generally more conservative.

But both seem to attack the press, Campbell taking the extremist viewpoint of the press as the enemy of the people and Bagley apparently accusing them of doing too little.

It’s always disturbing to see a member of the press attack the press, though, as a commentator, Campbell is expected to express opinions and has the same rights as Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. He doesn’t have to agree with me.

But you run into the same question Abbie Hoffman faced: What are you going to replace it with?

Abbie usually parried that with a joke, though he did suggest that we should pay garbagemen more than we pay people with fun, prestigious jobs. It wasn’t a joke, but it wasn’t gonna happen, either.

So the question is, if you think the press is the enemy of the people, what’s your solution?

In the Soviet Union, a plane crash was not news because it didn’t have a point. Most planes arrive safely, so there’s no news value in the one or two that don’t.

However, in this country, at least until recently, advancing administration goals was the job of a PR firm, not the press.

Meanwhile, Bagley appears to want the press to do more than simply shine a light into dark places. It raises the same sort of unanswerable question: So what do you want them to do, beyond reporting what’s happening?

If reporting on Bill Barr’s announced wish to charge dissenters with sedition doesn’t get people riled up, I don’t have an answer. It would be nice if more media outlets were locally owned by passionate people instead of being the bland ad-factories of soulless Wall Street beancounters, but you can’t blame reporters for that.

And we do have Rachel Maddow and the Bulwark and others.

 

Should a Domer meet a Domer …

Pat Byrnes (ND ’81) appears to be critical of the likely choice of Amy Coney Barrett (ND Law ’97) to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court.

As noted before, replacing an ardent feminist with a handmaid is as transparently phony a move as was replacing Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas.

I use the term “handmaid” purposely, because Coney Barrett is reportedly a member of People of Praise, a charismatic Christian community based in South Bend and founded by a couple of fellows who lived down the hall from me (ND ’72).

The group referred to female members as “handmaids” until the popularity of Margaret Atwood’s tale suggested perhaps they should drop the term.

Whether they dropped the implications is up to those aforementioned enemies of the people to uncover, but I have watched my alma mater slide to the right over the years. It’s not Liberty University yet, but I suggest there are plenty of people working towards that goal.

As for the founders of People of Praise, it was annoying when they’d come to Mass in the little chapel in our dorm and stand in the front, ostentatiously closing their eyes, raising their hands and rocking slightly back and forth, but what finally drove me away was more substantive:

There is a place in the Mass where the priest offers some prayers and then solicits intentions from the congregation. It’s usually things like “for my mother, who is ill” or “that everyone will be safe traveling this weekend,” but the self-righteous group referred to as “The God Squad” took it further.

“For my roommate, that he will begin coming to Mass and find God” was the one that finally drove me out. You simply don’t say that aloud in a small community, and my own feeling is that you shouldn’t do it in a larger one, either.

There are many mansions, dammit, and I don’t want some God Squadder declaring the Lord’s intentions as universal truth.

Certainly not from the bench.

 

Because, as Ed Hall aptly illustrates, that’s a case of Making America Great Again that should sent chills up the spines of decent people, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.

Speaking of college and coat hangers, yes, I did know someone. It damn near killed her.

And I knew girls who went to back-alley abortionists, when it was dangerous and illegal and nobody could keep statistics.

To which I will add that, if y’all are so pro-life, how do you justify this

 

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

(Bill Bramhall)

 

(Mike Luckovich)

 

(Chris Britt)

Call it the Three Stages of Genocide:

Indifference

Denial

Deception.

And, as long as religion is on the table today, I would insist that there is no moral difference between causing people to die and allowing them to die.

Nor is there a great deal of difference between the person in charge and the people who fail to resist, whether they work in the White House or at the Center for Disease Control.

Five percent of the world’s population. Twenty percent of the deaths.

Bearing in mind that Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were not gassed to death. They died of typhus, because the people who put them in a cage did nothing to prevent the disease.

One day, we’ll need to explain where we were when all this was happening.