CSotD: Choices, when they’re offered
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An odd Juxtaposition, but these are odd times, at least in the United States.
I share some of Edison's father's laid-back attitude at this stage, because I've been here before, sort of.
It often drove me crazy during the campaign, mostly on specific topics that younger people were interpreting in ways that suggested they hadn't been around very long.
The idea, for instance, that Trump was a draft-dodger for having taken "five deferments" when only one had much to do with getting out of the draft: The heel-spurs issue which got him a temporary out. Had the lottery not gone in his favor, he'd have had to return periodically to have that condition confirmed and it wouldn't surprise me if he did.
But the other "four" were the standard II-S deferment that every male college student took and which I never heard anyone consider four separate deferments, though perhaps it was.
I just know you had to sign a card that said you were still a full-time student (12 hours, as I recall), and I don't remember if you just signed it in the fall or had to sign it again in January when you registered for second semester.
I do know that Arlington National Cemetery has plenty of residents who took a II-S while they were in school and then either signed up or were drafted and went without hesitation and lost their lives in Vietnam. It was not "draft dodging" to take a II-S.
And the other day, somebody yelled "Gun!" at a Trump rally and the Secret Service bundled him off stage. That's considered very funny by people too young to remember Sirhan Sirhan or Arthur Bremer.
But I am reasonably calm because I'm reasonably sure that we won't wake up Wednesday to find that an opportunist screwball has been elected president.
On the other hand, like Kal, I recognize a new reality, or, at least, a new reality for the United States, which, until relatively recent times, seemed immune to the divisive insanity in the rest of the world.
Again, there's an age factor at work: Having had several friends from Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s, including a very nice couple who had been burned out of their apartment in the Catholic ghetto of Andersonstown, I'm aware that a lot of people in the world live with the possibility of insane violence lurking in the shadows.
I'm also aware that they do, indeed, live, that it ebbs and flows, and that I heard several times that they'd be more scared visiting Detroit or New York City than walking through Belfast or Derry.
That's the "new normal" for a substantial part of the world and let's hope it doesn't become ours, but Kal is right about two groups each with their own cock-sure reality.
Here's an article from the Atlantic headlined "How Social Media Got Weaponized: War in the Digital Age" that will give you plenty to ponder, in case you are among those who think that we will all sigh on Wednesday morning and say "Thank goodness that's over."
Because it's never over.
I'm also old enough to remember what a relief it was when the White House Tapes surfaced during Watergate, and what a relief it was when the Supreme Court voted unanimously that Nixon had to release them, and what a relief it was when he resigned and, especially, the relief when America shook itself as if awakening from a nightmare and began to put measures into place to make sure nothing like that could ever happen to us again.
And I'm old enough to remember how long that lasted.
Meanwhile, back at the Vatican
John Cole puts a pin into the fantasy bubble around Pope Francis, who, despite the hopes of Catholics who see him as a really nice guy, has once more declared that there will be no women priests.
He is a nice guy, but he's also a guy bound by tradition and theological constraints, and it's interesting that he made this latest declaration on the way home from a conference with the Lutherans, because the comic strip Francis had commented on the differences between the two churches October 20, presumably anticipating the Pope's trip.
Even without reviving the Gnostic arguments, there could be a substantial listing of ways in which the secular world in general has changed, and, specifically, in which ways Israeli culture of 2000 years ago differs from Western culture today, but there is an underlying futility to the argument because it is essentially a matter of being on the bus or off the bus.
People within the Church often sneer at "Cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose that which they will believe and that which they will not, and I agree with them: If you accept the central premise of Papal Authority, you lose the right to interpret for yourself.
And as Catholics and Lutherans celebrate the 500th anniversary of either the Protestant Revolution or the Protestant Reformation, depending on which side of the matter you occupy, it's worth noting that the movement was based on the issue of whether people could read and interpret scripture for themselves.
Which is to say, if you don't accept the authority of the Pope, you're a Protestant, not a Catholic, regardless of where you bend your knee on Sunday morning.
As with Kal's cartoon, the Reformation did split the Christian world into two camps, each with its own very different set of facts.
And, as we've seen in the ensuing 500 years … well, perhaps this isn't the day to look into all that. It's not a very pleasant topic.
Dr. Seuss says to go vote.
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