You know, I go back and forth on whether I write about my parents and aging, what with wanting to be respectful of their privacy. But I am learning some things by experience that I think are useful to share, and maybe readers have had similar experiences that they likewise might wish to talk about in the comments. The background is that Dad has had declining memory for a fair while. He just turned 80, so he’s not young to... Read more
So, apropos of nothing, let’s think about anti-vaxxers for a bit, shall we? It seems to me that you can classify them into four groups. First are the traditional faith-healers. They’re a small minority and their anti-vaccination stance is a small part of an overall rejection of modern medicine. We accept their refusal to vaccinate in a sort of choose-your-battles approach, and save our energy for the bigger questions of what to do when a parent from one of these... Read more
In the news today at the Chicago Tribune (and pretty much everywhere else): “Mayor Emanuel blasts decision to drop charges against ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett: ‘This is not on the level’.” The State’s Attorney’s office claims that “eh, he would have just gotten community service anyway and he’s a stand-up guy who already volunteers” (or, quoted rather than cynically paraphrased, “After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and... Read more
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. On April 17 – 18, 1521, Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms and refused to recant. (See this Reformation timeline.) On April 17, 2021, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the latter event (having missed the first 500th anniversary), the bishops of the German Catholic Church declared themselves to be independent of Rome, changing their doctrine and practices as they believed... Read more
Yes, I get that it’s just a parable, but some years, when the Prodigal Son is in the Sunday readings, I wince at what’s lost. The younger son says, “give me my inheritance now,” then squanders it in dissolute living. A quick google search tells me that at the time, the oldest son would receive double the share of any others, so that one-third, rather than half, the total property would have been sold in this way. Were the hearers... Read more
So I wrote the other day about a book called Alienated America, the primary thesis of which is that Trump’s primary support came not from evangelicals but the men and women from communities where institutions of community life had collapsed, where the people might think of themselves as “religious” but were not affiliated with a church, nor did they have alternate forms of community life like book clubs or swim clubs or whatever. They were alienated, they had no sense... Read more
Remember when, back after the Charlie Hebdo attack, everyone changed their profile pictures and said, “je suis Charlie”? Well, except that it turned out that at least some portion of that everyone later started saying things like, “well, maybe the magazine shouldn’t have been saying such mean things about Islam.” And later on we ended up with debates over whether the French (and subsequently the Belgians) brought it all on themselves by not properly integrating Muslims into their societies and economies. This... Read more
So I just finished Tim Carney’s Alienated America, and have a few rambly thoughts. To begin with, it’s very good. Here’s the book in a nutshell: When you look at the localities which supported Trump in the primaries, and which continue to be his core supporters now, they’re not the evangelicals which gave him their votes in the general election — they were faced with the binary choice of Trump vs. Clinton, which really was a choice between a professed... Read more
On The Federalist: “Illinois Considers Another Terrifying Law Allowing Infanticide” — look, I don’t write the headlines, and I know that the “infanticide” label is now being pooh-poohed as scare-tactics, but the latest Illinois legislation, with 42 co-sponsors, not only removes any limit on abortion whatsoever (existing law at least nominally requires a medical reason for post-24 week abortions) and specifically affirms that abortion is about ending up with a dead baby, but requires that health insurance cover abortion, at... Read more
Chicago had a mayoral election last night. It was a very strange election (yes, 14 candidates, and the top two head into a runoff, and a ranked-choice vote would have really been far preferable to this business of candidates dividing up constituencies), and the outcome was, to me at least, unexpected: Lori Lightfoot, 17.5% of the vote, Toni Preckwinkle, 16%, Bill Daley, 14.7%, Susana Mendoza, 9%, Amara Enyia, 8%, Jerry Joyce, 7%, Gery Chico, 6%, and a host of others... Read more
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