"Test everything; hold fast to what is good."
We can all get along. We can all agree that one side of this issue involves a realistic assessment of the evidence and the other side involves a delusional fantasy based on some perverse need to assert the absolute worst about others. Maybe we can’t agree on which side is which, but at least we can agree that this is the shape of the disagreement.
A collection of Wednesday-morning links around a common theme. Unfortunately, this bunch tends more toward the disturbing, frustrating and infuriating side than toward the hopeful and inspiring side.
You need to make $18.79 an hour to reasonably afford to rent an apartment. GOP plan says no Medicare until you turn 70. “Balance the budget just like a business must,” says man whose business is $2.5 million in debt. Plus Dorothy Day, predatory lenders, senators defending predatory lenders, the death of a hero, and a study confirming that a disproportionate share of the very rich are jerks.
“Residents of the Greenbriar Village development say owner Equity LifeStyle Properties has been unjustly increasing their land rents, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Equity is the largest manufactured home community company in the United States and in some cases has increased land rents more than 100 percent in a year, said Randy Schaffer, the president of the Greenbriar homeowners association.”
The pattern of PIB will be familiar if you’ve ever discussed marriage equality with relatives, co-workers or fellow parishioners who oppose it, but can’t quite explain why. It’s not so much an argument as a defense of not having one: “Oh yeah? Well just because I can’t give a good reason why something should be prohibited doesn’t mean it should be allowed! After all, I can’t explain why polygamy, incest and bestiality should be prohibited either — so does that mean those should all be made legal too?”
Columnist Brahm Resnik worries that this bill would, in effect, require all transgendered persons in Arizona to carry their birth certificate with them at all times. But it wouldn’t do that. It would, instead, require everyone to carry their birth certificate with them at all times.
What we earlier saw with Sen. Mark Kirk is still true for Sen. Rob Portman. It is good to see his perspective change due to “direct personal relevance,” but it would be better if he could learn to expand his perspective even without it. That’s the next necessary step, the next epiphany awaiting these senators. How can we encourage that next step?
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