A Sound of Sheer Silence

All four of my grandparents have passed on.  My father's father died when Dad was in college, long before my mother (and, thus, I) came on the scene.  Dad's mother died when I was two, so I don't really remember her.  But Mom's parents I remember very clearly.  Grandpa died in October of 1991, and Grandma passed away in August of 2001. There are a handful of things that I remember from those funerals.  For Grandpa's, I remember the torrential rains in the 24 hours beforehand, flooding the streets and requiring the police in the small town where they lived to take us to the church in the "paddywagon."  For Grandma's, I remember that the pastor of the parish in which she had been a member for 50 years couldn't be bothered to come to the wake.  But what I remember maybe the most clearly was one of the hymns, sung at both of those services. It was "On Eagle's Wings," by Fr. Michael Joncas.  This song came to mind because President-elect J...

Could everyone PLEASE stop sharing this video of Michael Lofthouse? He’s the founder & CEO of Solid8, a tech company based in San Francisco. If it goes viral it could hurt Michael Lofthouse and Solid8, his company. Let’s all be nice to Michael Lofthouse and Solid8. https://t.co/WH7MKrWnzQ — Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 7, 2020 Last night, Patton Oswalt, a (in my opinion) very funny comedian, Tweeted out to his many followers a video of a man shouting racial slurs at a family having a birthday celebration at a restaurant.  But, he didn't simply do that.  He also provided identifying information about the man that was shouting those slurs, and more importantly about his company and its business activities.  It doesn't take deep analysis to understand what Oswalt was trying to do here--the idea is to create social and economic consequences for this person stemming from his racist views and actions.  In the ideal world, from Oswalt's perspective, this dude wo...

In January 1968, the North Vietnamese army launched the Tet Offensive, a campaign that profoundly and permanently undermined the American public's confidence in the Vietnam war.  Over 16,000 American soldiers would die in Vietnam over the course of 1968.  In April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  In the spring of 1968, riots swept American cities.  In June, Bobby Kennedy, who was almost surely going to be the Democratic nominee for President in the fall, was assassinated.  Ultimately, in November, former Vice President Richard Nixon, a Republican, defeated then-current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Given these facts, it is natural to look to 1968 as a model for 2020.  And, those that do that tend to think that this analogy would favor the Republican, Donald Trump.  But I think that is facile.  Yes, there are many parallels between 1968 and 2020, but those parallels point as much against Trump as they point toward him.  And there ...

This is a post about Bernie Sanders, and also about his once and (maybe) future supporters.  I write this post with full awareness that what I am about to say is likely to piss off people, including people who are friends of mine.  My goal is not to troll them or antagonize them, but I expect I will do so, and for that I am sorry. The bottom line, though, is that I think Bernie Sanders was and is a bad candidate who ran a bad campaign.  Moreover, much of the discourse coming out of the Sanders campaign, and especially from Sanders supporters, lacks a recognition, or care about, the basic nature of politics.  Which is OK as a philosophical proposition (I mean, you do you), but does not advance the ball of becoming the nominee for a political party and eventually get elected President, which was the ostensible goal of this exercise in the first place.  Sanders and his supporters ran an anti-political political campaign, and the fundamental incoherence of that en...

What do you think tap water is? It's a gay bomb, baby. And I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings. I'm not even getting into it, quite frankly. I mean, give me a break. Do you think I'm like, oh, shocked by it, so I'm up here bashing it because I don't like gay people? I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin' frogs gay! Do you understand that? I'm sick of being social engineered, it's not funny!           — Alex Jones, October 2015 Shit like “flat earth” and “chemtrails” are metaphorical expressions of alienation from a educational economy that huge chunks of the population have no access to. And that’s the tea. — Matt Christman (@cushbomb) January 18, 2019 There are a group of people On Here who are very, very concerned about "the Discourse."  This tends to be people of a liberal (as distinguished from "the left") bent, but every once in a while moderate ...

" If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. "--Barack Obama. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." --Lyndon Johnson. 1. It seems pretty clear to me now that the beginning of the political apocalypse in the United States can be dated to November 4, 2008, in Chicago's Grant Park.  On that night, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.  It may seem idiotic to have to say, but that evening is significant because Obama was the first non-white person to be elected President, and more specifically the first black person...

There is a lot of talk about "owning your privilege."  Allow me to make an attempt at owning mine. One of the things about my life that I am increasingly aware is very unusual for a straight man of my age is that I have a handful of very close, very deep male friendships.  There are three or four (depending on the circumstances) people that I have known for a very long time (20+ years) and with whom I feel comfortable sharing personal things--struggles, fears, losses, disappointments.  And these people have shared similar things in their lives with me. This has been an enormous blessing in my life, one of the top two or three blessings that I have received.  But it has one notable downside, and has created a notable blindspot.  Because I know these guys so well, and so intimately, they form the baseline for what I think men as a whole are like.  Or, more accurately, they form a sample set from which I extrapolate my back-of-the-envelope estimates of wha...

Lots of people have said lots of better and smarter things about #metoo, particularly in light of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings ( most recent update here , though this story is evolving at warp speed), than I can.  I have never been assaulted, so I cannot speak to the experience.  I have, however, noticed a couple of things out there in the discussion that I think are worth commenting on. 1. "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" and "Innocent Until Proven Guilty."   Lawyers, and people who like to sound like lawyers, often try to gaslight people who are concerned about an accusation against someone by saying things like "people are innocent until proven guilty!" and "where is your proof beyond a reasonable doubt?"  The idea here, of course, is that you are a bad person for "immediately assuming" that a person is guilty of whatever they are accused of, whereas the speaker is a reasoned and broad-minded and fair person.  This is nonse...