{"id":44085,"date":"2017-08-29T15:33:04","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T21:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44085"},"modified":"2017-08-29T15:34:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T21:34:46","slug":"things-fall-apart-center-cannot-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/08\/things-fall-apart-center-cannot-hold.html","title":{"rendered":"“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Doepler's<\/a>
A scene from the last phase of Ragnar\u00f6k, after Surtr has engulfed the world with fire. Emil Doepler\u2019s illustration (ca. 1905) apparently represents the burning of \u00c1sgar\u00f0r or Asgard. \u00a0\u00a0(Wikimedia CC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is pretty funny:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThor: The Dark World Comedy Central Loki Promos\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this<\/em> may not<\/em> be a joke:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTrans-Age is Now a Thing?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

(Thanks \u2014 I guess \u2014 to Doug Ealy for bringing it to my attention.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some other material on the story:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I\u2019ve gone back to being a child\u2019: Husband and father-of-seven, 52, leaves his wife and kids to live as a transgender SIX-YEAR-OLD girl named Stefonknee\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Something from two years ago:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trans-Aged Deserve Equal Rights, Too<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTrans-Gendered, Trans-Raced, Trans-Abled, Trans-Aged, Trans-Specied Solipsists\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does anybody know whether this is real? \u00a0It seems too outlandish to be true, but, on the other hand, I haven\u2019t yet seen evidence that it\u2019s not<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What a wonderful world!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is also relevant:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cForcing Transgender Ideology on Kindergartens\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, as a bonus, I toss this in, too (beware of vulgar language):<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cActivist Demands Reparations for All \u2018Fat, Black\u2019 Women\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A relevant item that was published in\u00a0the Deseret News<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLatter-day Saints \u2014 beware the false god of \u2018history'\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I really liked this article in the Weekly Standard<\/em> from two weeks ago, written by the magazine\u2019s editor:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying Defense\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It expresses some of my feelings about the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give credit where credit is due, though. \u00a0As I\u2019ve said before, I love the elevation of Justice Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States. \u00a0And there have been some other good things. \u00a0From what I hear, for example, the federal response to Hurricane Harvey has been quite well orchestrated \u2014 in contrast to some other<\/em> relatively recent efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and similar groups. \u00a0If so, I\u2019m happy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other political (or quasi-political) news, this didn\u2019t please me:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOrpheum Theatre pulls summer movie over racial concerns\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It reminds me of some efforts a few years back to ban Huckleberry Finn<\/em> and Tom Sawyer<\/em> because Mark Twain used language \u2014 notably, the \u201cN-word\u201d \u2014 that is very much disapproved and out of fashion nowadays.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHuck Finn: Controversy over removing the \u2018N word\u2019 from Mark Twain novel\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCutting N-word from Twain is not censorship\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA Few Words In Defense of the N-Word, in the Novels of Mark Twain\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCensoring Mark Twain\u2019s \u2018n-words\u2019 is unacceptable\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t censor Mark Twain\u2019s N word\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The irony is that Mark Twain was, for his day and place, strikingly sympathetic<\/em> to the humanity of black people.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s an irony about attempts to ban Gone with the Wind<\/em> on racial grounds: \u00a0In 1939, Hattie McDaniel became the first black American to win an Academy Award (\u201cBest Supporting Actress\u201d) for her role in the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

David O. Selznick, head of MGM Studios, asked that McDaniel be permitted to attend the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind<\/em>, but Georgia\u2019s segregation laws made that impossible. \u00a0As a result, Clark Gable threatened to boycott the festivities\u00a0unless McDaniel were allowed to attend, but she\u00a0convinced him to attend anyway. \u00a0And then, when she died of breast cancer at only 57 (in 1952),\u00a0she was refused burial in Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard (the final resting place of such stars as Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino) because it had a rule against\u00a0\u00a0accepting\u00a0the remains of black people for burial.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I become quite uneasy at attempts to erase the past \u2014 whether by dismantling statues or censoring literature \u2014 and to make everything politically correct and bland.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to know that people haven\u2019t always thought the way that we do. \u00a0That\u2019s one of the reasons to read works from other cultures and other periods. \u00a0Doing so expands the mind. \u00a0Beowulf wasn\u2019t a metrosexual. \u00a0Miss Elizabeth Bennett wasn\u2019t an aspiring corporate lawyer. \u00a0Iago isn\u2019t a good role model for community relationships. \u00a0Achilles and Odysseus thought a little differently than most of us do today. \u00a0But it\u2019s worthwhile trying to think ourselves into their worlds.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

L. P. Hartley\u2019s immortal line is always worth keeping in mind: \u00a0\u201c\u201dThe past is a\u00a0foreign\u00a0country: they do things differently there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 This is pretty funny: \u00a0 \u201cThor: The Dark World Comedy Central Loki Promos\u201d \u00a0 *** \u00a0 But this may not be a joke: \u00a0 \u201cTrans-Age is Now a Thing?\u201d \u00a0 (Thanks \u2014 I guess \u2014 to Doug Ealy for bringing it to my attention.) \u00a0 Here\u2019s some other material on the story: \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    This is pretty funny:   "Thor: The Dark World Comedy Central Loki Promos"   ***   But this may not be a joke:  \" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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