Lots of things in life rely on instability to thrive.  Think of “Necessity is the mother of invention,” or even, “No pain, no gain.” But mankind (and womankind, especially) also have a deep and visceral fear of insecurity and risk.  Stability is planning for the long haul, while instability means being able to improvise and function “in the moment.” No person can live a good and full life at either extreme – those who live to avoid all risks are not living, and those who embrace all risks will not live for long.

But for some reason, Jews are more risk-tolerant than the average person. Why?

I think this is because the Jewish people are forever involved with sha’ar, gates. It is a blessing to Avraham:

I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall inherit the gates of their foes.

Gates? That is odd. After all, one might think that we are supposed to end up with land or possessions. But gates?

Gates are interesting places. Gates are a doorway into a new world (“This is the gate of heaven!”).  Lot welcomes the angels at the gates. Avraham buys the burial place at the gates – that is where deals get done. Hamor and Shechem go to the gates of the city convince the men to become circumcised. Mordechai (and the blessed husband in Proverbs) “sits among the elders at the gates.” When a widow shames her brother-in-law for not preserving his brother’s name, she spits on him and throws a shoe at him “at the gates.” The gates of a city is where all the action happens: interaction with outsiders, the marketplace for goods, services, and ideas (the forum is in or near gates). Judges sit at the gates, and so do businessmen and traders of all kinds.

But unlike private property, gates are not owned, at least not by individual people. They are places of action and interaction, not ownership. And the events at the gates are the least predictable. By contrast, a farmer has a limited range of expected action and reaction based on what nature throws at him. But anything can go down at a gate – a new rumor, a riot, an invasion. Gates are sources and breeding grounds for chaos. In part, this is because a gate is where people meet each other, and people, not nature, are always the X Factor in the world. Nature is cyclical, but people can actually change and grow.

Classical Jewish professions include dealing in law, finance, and commerce of all kinds. Indeed, outside of medicine, every stereotypical Jewish profession would be practiced at the gate of a city. There are historical reasons for this (for much of the last few thousand years, Jews were forbidden to own land in many countries).  But I think there are temperamental reasons as well. Jews seem more comfortable in those worlds than are many other people.

Why? What makes Jews more willing to be traders or financiers?

I think the answer is found in the text, when G-d tells Avraham why he is getting this blessing.

Because you have done this and have not withheld your son … your descendants shall inherit the gates of their foes.

What is the connection? Why does being willing to sacrifice your son mean that your descendants will inherit the gates of their enemies?

I think the answer comes down to risk tolerance. Here is why: Avraham takes a huge risk when he trusts in G-d. He has no idea how it will play out, but he is willing to take that risk anyway. The wordplay reinforces this: the word for “withheld” is the same root word as “darkness.” In other words, Avraham’s decision was made in the dark. He was aware of that he had no idea what the future held, but he was prepared to do what he thought was best, and pray that G-d would sort things out.

This is an essential ingredient for Jewish businessmen. It is a reason why solo entrepreneurs in commerce and finance and real estate continue to succeed, long after corporations would logically have forced them from the field: Jews are willing to take risks that rational companies, companies who always need more information before they take a risk, will delay or outright avoid. Yet it is through businesses like that that wealth is created: trade allows for expansion, and Adam Smith observed that trade, each person’s desire to maximize their own assets, grows wealth much better than does keeping your wealth locked away. The Hebrew word for “gates” also means “to multiply,” a reminder that wealth is multiplied through trade.

Entrepreneurial business is a leap of faith, and the road never leads where you think it is heading. It is not for the faint of heart – or those without faith.  Business risks are often unique and the waters are fouled with the mines of unknown, unforeseeable, and unintended consequences, just waiting to explode. Few people choose that kind of risk if a nice, safe options are at hand.  But Jews do.

It all connects. Avraham is blessed to inherit the gates of his enemies – that Jews will prosper in the gates of sometimes-hostile host nations and peoples – because Avraham was willing to take a risk with inadequate information and faith. In both cases, we do all that we can, and then we believe that G-d will help everything turn out all right, somehow. Because that is precisely what has happened for thousands of years, and continues to happen to this day.

[an @iwe, @susanquinn, @kidcoder and @eliyahumasinter collaboration]

I’ve been leaving CovidLand every weekend now for about eight weeks. It started with my vacation in western New York, then continued as I started the “restoration” of the dining room (i.e., removing the old wallpaper and painting) in the family’s western Pennsylvania home. Mom has set the deadline as Thanksgiving, when we expect about a dozen or more family to come to dinner. A far cry from the 30 or more that was a regular feature of my childhood, but a vast improvement over last year’s six.

Funny thing about that. We never asked if we should limit it to six last year. It was before any vaccine, and the family is aging to the point it just seemed prudent not to expose a lot of the older members of the extended family to the risk. Another funny thing. This year mom was shooting for 20, and we didn’t ask anyone about that either. You see, we don’t live in CovidLand.

Somewhere outside the DC Metro area, maybe by Frederick, certainly by Hagerstown where I often stop, I’ve left CovidLand behind. The masks, aside from those working for some sort of corporate affiliate like Dunkin’ Donuts or Wendy’s, are gone. There may be a sign on the door, but nobody is wearing them anymore. And it doesn’t seem to freak anyone out. It’s a wonderful feeling and just serves to highlight how much I hate life in CovidLand.

Each morning I get up for work, spend 45 minutes driving into the office, where I dutifully put on my mask as I enter the building, and walk to my office where, once the door is closed, I may remove my mask. I sit at my computer taking online meetings, answering phone calls and e-mails for wight to nine hours whereupon I don my mask for the walk to the car and drive home where (after doffing my mask upon entering my residence) I stare at my unused telework space.

It’s a nice space. Fully OSHA-compliant with an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, the monitor set at the perfect eye level, and a chair the proper height to prevent both back and leg strain. And it all looks nice. The desktop is uncluttered with shelves on either side of the desk to hold my printer and desk lamp. The desk is a fine old piece I picked up in a Salvation Army store for a song when I was in grad school and I have dragged it with me in every move since. Everything is plugged into a commercial-grade UPS, fully surge protected, with a spare battery in the nearby closet. The monitor is an identical model to what I use at work, so when my workspace comes up everything is exactly where I expect it to be.

My home internet connection is considerably faster and more reliable than the one at work, as is my HVAC, and my noise environment. In short, I have created in my home the workspace the government professes to wish for all of us keyboard warriors. Comfortable, efficient, healthy, and accessible. But it is not in an important building in the city where important people can see me and be assured my job, whatever it is, is getting done, as they walk past.

I work for an un-named federal agency and early on there was a great push for vaccinations. A very great push. One that indicated to me there was some metric involved leading to the technically allowed “no thanks” to the vaccine being an unacceptable answer. My personal experience with this was that I declined not to keep an appointment, scheduled for me with no real notice, to get my first shot of an un-named vaccine. I had heard about some of the side effects, wasn’t quite sure if I should consider myself “high risk” and wanted to read up and possibly wait for the promising single dose J&J vaccine which apparently had fewer and less severe side effects. I’d been teleworking for several days a week since March 2020, and exclusively for a solid month after the inauguration, so I wasn’t much of a risk. But it was quickly made clear to me that my “no thank you” was not well received by upper management. Note that upper management in this case may involve military ranks not necessarily used to supervising civilians.

Upon my physical return to work for some computer issues, to say that my immediate supervisor was “very concerned” that I have all the necessary information on “the availability of and information necessary to schedule” a vaccine would understate the situation. It was clear that “no” was not considered the right answer, and absent a well-documented medical or religious reason for it, that unacceptable no would fall on my supervisor as a failure to provide the upper management with the numbers they required.

I was planning on getting a vaccine at some point, so I relented and made everyone’s life easier. Of course, the second shot knocked me on my ass for a week that couldn’t have been much better than the actual infection, and from what I’d been hearing was considerably worse than a lot of cases, and I still had to quarantine for two weeks after the second shot till I was considered “fully vaccinated.” But it was better than catching COVID, right?

Well, that wasn’t really the goal. The goal was to get everyone back in the office ASAP. Upper-upper management had toured our offices sometime in late December 2020 and expressed dissatisfaction at the emptiness, hence in their view, idleness of the facility. Our organization is however about as technocratic and tied to your laptop as they come and was actually seeing a jump in productivity due to people at home routinely working longer hours with fewer interruptions than when in the office. We’d also been supplied with a version of Microsoft Teams that our IT staff hadn’t had time to wreck with IA (Information Assurance) compliance yet, so even the meetings were running better and more efficiently than usual. In short, we were proving every day that we could, as planned, continue to operate efficiently in a “disaster” scenario with minimal on-site presence. This was clearly unacceptable to those walking through empty hallways, unable to see the worker bees busy at their desks.

So we all got the jab. Well, most of us. There were a few who apparently stuck to their guns or had sufficient proof that their refusal to comply was not a widespread threat to the numbers management wanted to hit. From what I heard, we were well into the 90% vaccinated range when they told everyone that COVID was no longer a reason for telework, as our workplace, through the tireless haranguing of management, had been made safe for all, vaccinated (can’t get it, can’t give it) and unvaccinated alike. So we all returned. The unvaccinated were still required to wear masks mind you, they were voluntary for everyone else, but recommended when working in close proximity. And there was a “don’t ask” policy on vaccination status so you couldn’t assume that a mask-wearing employee was unvaccinated.

It was a glorious few weeks, before the dreaded delta variant, and it turned out that you could both give and get COVID regardless of your vaccination status. Then the masks came back out for all federal employees in all workspaces, unless you had a private office with full floor-to-ceiling walls and a door, so as to effectively seal yourself off … And the outdoors mandate was lifted, but there would still be none of this working from home because of COVID balderdash. All employees would show up at the office and wear their masks while they took their online meetings and answered their phone and their e-mails in their office! With the door shut. Lest the virus leap from a vaccinated you at your desk to the vaccinated and masked co-worker walking past in the hallway.

The feds weren’t alone. All of DC and most of Virginia and Maryland went back to full mask requirements, this time regardless of vaccination status. Because someone could be lying about that after all.

But this isn’t a panic mind you. It’s science. It’s lousy sloppy inconsistent and often bad or just plain wrong science, but damn you, it’s SCIENCE!

Funny thing about science, it doesn’t make judgments about right and wrong, good and bad, woke or not, it just presents a series of facts, a snapshot of reality that we have to come to terms with, but rarely do.  Oddly the medieval mind seemed more adept at this.  It was well understood that the lower calling of natural philosophy was distinct from revealed philosophy (usually referred to as theology back in the day).  Natural philosophy or theology could confirm, through observations by the senses, what revelation and scripture (Revealed Philosophy) had taught us, that the creator had provided us proof of the intelligence, power, and goodness of God based on the order and beauty of the world.  It took centuries to pry them apart and make Natural Science a thing of its own, absent judgments of morality or value, much like the politics of man were eventually recognized as a lesser earthly manifestation of divine law that would forever fall short. Our secular world was born out of the bitter experience that, as revealed millennia before, man was not god, and infusing men with the power or authority of God would not, and could not bring about heaven on earth. But that is another topic for another day.

The problem, or one of the current ones we’re dealing with presently is that, absent God, whom we apparently killed a century or so ago, science and man have once again taken on his role. Science is seen as the arbiter of right and wrong.  We must “follow the science” on global warming or deforestation or masking and vaccinations lest we become fallen beings, turning our backs on the revelations of science and the salvation it can provide us in the hands of proper-thinking men.

Funny thing about science.  It’s a snapshot of reality, and we may or may not get every detail out of that snapshot.  Reality can change, at least our version of it, based on our present ability to read and rationalize that snapshot.  Or based on what the secular priesthood tells us.  So masking is useless, or mandatory and you are fully vaccinated (can’t get it, can’t give it) after two doses, until you aren’t, because fully vaccinated now means three or four doses, and you can still get it, but not nearly as bad, but you should still shun the unclean who refuse to vaccinate because they’re young and healthy, or because they already had the virus, or because they’ve been exposed to it for over a year due to their jobs, and haven’t come down with a case yet…

So I’m leaving CovidLand, this time for about a week, to celebrate with family that we have all come through the worst of it, and can gather without inordinate fear to share a meal and a prayer or two thanking our creator, who reveals his goodness through things that can’t always be measured by the science of men, but that we all know exist.

I often throw around the “completely corrupt” theme somewhat flippantly when talking about our beltway betters and the charade they perform for us while enriching themselves. Unfortunately, as definitive as that simple phrase may be, it really does understate just how much the operations of this Potemkin constitutional republic have been distorted and bastardized into one hell of a joke on us, We the People.

Before I dive in, it is worth noting up front (via my quick, morning internet search) that the current annual salary for both a U.S. Senator and a U.S. Congressman is $174,000. It is also worth noting that all of the quotes to come are from a 2013 book called Extortion – How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Your Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets by Peter Schweizer so it may be somewhat dated. If there has been a major government reform movement since then that I have missed, please accept my apologies and disregard this entire post.

As noted, the fact that there is widespread corruption in our ruling beltway will surprise no one. But it is important to note just how refined and institutionalized the process is…and the magnitudes of cash involved. Lest you are under any impression that your citizen legislators work for their constituents back home:

… The underground money economy of the Permanent Political Class works in hidden ways. When newly elected members of Congress come to Washington, D.C., they often find that they – much to their surprise – are already in debt.

Both Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives have created a largely hidden system of “party dues” that requires members to extract money beyond their own campaign donations to fund their respective parties. – Page 63

[Emphasis added]

So, on day one in office, it is clarified that each congressman actually reports directly to the party leader in the House and the head of the party’s national committee.

It appears that dues are set based on the prestige of the committee seats each wishes to occupy:

… The more powerful their committee assignments, the more money members are expected to extract from the industries they have oversight over or regulate. For a newly elected member of Congress on a weak committee – for example, the Ethics Committee, which is considered the least attractive committee for a variety of reasons – the annual party dues can run around $150,000. And for those on a powerful committee? The sky is the limit. Those in leadership positions or on powerful committees can be expected to raise $600,000 or more as part of the system. – Pages 63-64

[Emphasis added]

Yet another priority for your congressman to answer to that is at least an order of magnitude more “important” and more immediate than the lowly constituent back home. Feeling good about your government yet? (For the record, I looked up a couple of local representatives and it appears that having two committee seats at a time is common. My very limited research varied between one and three.)

SIDE NOTE: The “Ethics Committee” equals “weak committee” construct in that last quote deserved a post of its own. So a newcomer is allowed to have an entry level seat on the committee that judges the ethics of his peers and his advancement beyond that seat relies entirely on those peers and their House leader. Is there any wonder that the term House Ethics Committee (or Senate Ethics Committee, for that matter) is the biggest joke on cocktail circuits for the rich and powerful both here and abroad? (See “Financial Disclosure Forms, Use of” if you doubt that statement in the slightest.) But, I digress.

Well, if you have stuck with me this far, let’s keep digging:

Raising money is what helps an ambitious member of the House rise in the ranks far more than ideas or competence. …

But you get what you pay for. Built into these [committee seat] valuations is the implicit extortion value of the seat. Sitting on the House Financial Services Committee means you can extract lots of money from wealthy financial institutions. But a slot of the Ethics Committee gives you little opportunity for extortion – except perhaps from your fellow members of Congress who are facing ethics investigations. Members of the Ethics Committee can and do receive donations from their colleagues and party leadership! … – Page 65

[Emphasis added]

There it is again. Are you feeling good about the self-policing within the Legislative Branch yet?

Well, I don’t want this to get too long but I cannot help but dig just a little deeper:

Apart from the hidden dues system, there is another major – but also hidden – source of politicians’ funds: each other. Federal laws are very clear: a politician can’t solicit or receive campaign contributions in congressional buildings or in the U.S. Capital. But there is a little-talked about exemption to that rule. … The exemption states that “the rules and standards of conduct enforced by the Standards Committee do not prohibit Members from soliciting (or receiving) campaign or political contributions from other Members in the House buildings (emphasis in the original). It is a huge loophole that makes it possible for members to link their votes to cash. … Members of Congress receiving these funds can even convert them into personal cash in their own pockets! – Page 67

All in the name of good government, I am sure. Given the levels of corruption that they don’t even bother to hide from us anymore, I can only imagine the magnitudes that are still hidden and, given our reliably incurious press, will likely never be known. I suspect that if you are paying attention – and “see the game” just a little bit – the answer is in the headlines right before our eyes. I would bet that the corruption pipeline had a major branch through Ukraine a few years back. Now? Well, pipeline branches are being opened all over the place with the $Trillions being placed from your checkbook. The best way to find out is to know what stocks the Pelosi’s have purchased in the last 90 days.

Good luck with that…and good day.

Gratitude is an admission of weakness, of need. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why children have such a hard time saying, “thank you.” “Thank you” is proof of the existence of what a woke person would call a power imbalance.

But “thank you” is also so important because it is part of what makes a good society. In a primitive or nature-worshipping society, might makes right. Nobody powerful needs to be nice because they can simply take what they want.

“Might Makes Right” is also the nature of totalitarian regimes, all freedom-oppressing governments, from dictators to socialists (but I repeat myself). “Please” and “Thank you” are admissions of weakness, which is dangerous for anyone in such a society to utter. The powerful cannot admit weakness, and the weak cannot afford to put themselves at someone else’s mercy. Our instincts are to protect ourselves above all. So in such a society “Thank you” is expressed only by those with no power and no alternatives: beggars.

There is, of course, another way to look at it. No man is an island. Societies are stronger when there are ties between people, within families, communities, and the nation. The farther we move from a state of nature, the more power comes from understanding that most things worth doing require cooperation and teamwork, a common vision.  But recognizing and appreciating other people does not come easy – that is why we have to force children to do it.

So, for the United States to celebrate Thanksgiving is the ultimate expression of freedom, of the dogma (against all empirical evidence) that we can each be secure enough in ourselves to admit that we need others, that we are not, any of us, truly self-reliant. Saying “Thank you” to other people, to our Creator, is the mark of good breeding in a child, a positive culture in a community, and the prerequisite for a good society and civilization.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Someone called “Senator Kayse Jama (He/Him)” (apparently Jama is an Oregon State Senator**) has linked–on his Twitter account–to this person:

No idea who Anessa Hartman Haudenosaunee is, but, Lord, I love the fact that she’s a member of something called the “Snipe Clan.” (It’s the pedant in me.  So sorry if that’s triggering.)

And, wait…what?  I thought Lincoln proclaimed the fourth Thursday of every November an official “Thanksgiving” holiday largely to commemorate Union victories in the American Civil War (particularly the one at Gettysburg).  And that–actually–he was simply codifying George Washington’s original intention from the last decades of the eighteenth century.

Am I wrong?  Inquiring minds (mine, anyway) would like to know.

Or, is this just another Leftist nutball who’s detached herself from reality and the facts in order to spin a comfortable narrative that suits her (I’ve not checked its pronouns) narrative?

** As described on his Twitter profile, in order of precedence: “Somali-American. Son of a Camel Herder. Father of Twins.”

Augustine in a sermon on Psalm 41 (Psalm 40 in the Septuagint-based numbering system he used):

Et vide beatitudinem tuam–And look at your blessing!

The Psalmist says (using the ESV), “Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him; the Lord protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land . . . .”

In Augustine’s Latin, you’re supposed to understand the poor man–which is probably closer to the original Hebrew than you would think from just looking at the English. (See here for a Hebrew-English interlinear; you can click on the number 7919 for the original word.)

Augustine tends to look for Jesus Christ in every sentence of the Psalms–sometimes in every word.  To understand the poor man is to understand Christ, who though rich became poor for our sakes, as Paul says in the New Testament.  Interestingly, Augustine still gets to what is probably the original sense of the sentence: caring for poor people!  You can look at the end of Section 2 of his sermon here in the public-domain translation where he goes through Jesus back down to earth, telling us to care about the poor here.

The Psalmist also keeps us down on earth with that “blessed in the land” line.

In a bit left out of the public-domain translation (available in this book), Augustine explains that that keeping alive is about the next life.  Now keep in mind that the next life is, like this one, bodily.  Augustine sometimes talks about heaven without talking about earth, but at just this point he doesn’t even mention heaven.  He talks about eternal life, yes, but, true to New Testament form, he’s talking about the bodily resurrection!  He quotes Paul.

And then he quotes Paul again, saying that G-d gives us hope in the present as well as the future!  And that takes him back to the Psalm, which talks about blessing on earth!

It looks to me from the afore-linked online interlinear source that the Hebrew word in question corresponds nicely to Augustine’s terra (Latin) and to the New Testament γῆ (Greek) in that it can mean either “earth” or “land.”  Augustine’s emphasis is on earth, and he explains that some Christians make the mistake of thinking G-d only blesses them in the next life.  In this life, they’re into things like astrology!  They think (or they might as well be thinking): Satan controls this evil world, and as long as we’re in good with G-d for the afterlife, we can give Satan his due here!

No, says Augustine.  In this life, we only seek good from G-d.

Just something I’ve been reading.

But you don’t really need Augustine if you read his sources.  Read Psalm 100.  Read 1 Timothy 6:17-19.

Give thanks on this, and on all days, to G-d.