I posted back on April 13 about sheltering in place with my 89-year-old mother.

I could not figure out how in the world to post the pictures from that experience. Max tried to help this baby boomer to no avail. Oh, well. Now that I have returned to Flagstaff and have access to my own computer, I have downloaded those pictures. When I was in elementary school, we would have “Show and Tell” in September about our summer vacations.

My mother and me shortly after I arrived. My beard had not yet started.

Food that was dropped off by beloved niece.

Our daily walk

Welcome to Elgin, the home of women stomping on grapes.

Welcome to Sonoita! Three great signs greeting people entering Sonoita.

Why waste money for a wider bridge when someone crosses it only a dozen times an hour?

“Tribute to Ranching” at the local fairgrounds.

What do you do if a cow and goat wander onto your land? You post a “Found” poster at the mailboxes.

Home to Flagstaff.

One difficulty that Abraham Lincoln had in fighting the Civil War was that he understood that if the Union won, they would then be fellow citizens with the newly defeated Confederates.  He was fighting a war against people with whom he had a great deal in common, and with whom he would have to cooperate to govern their unified country in the future.  This somewhat limited his ability to ruthlessly destroy his opponent, and made his battle planning more complex.

Yesterday’s hearings with Attorney General Barr looked to me like the Democrats don’t feel similarly constrained.  In fact, the last few decades of leftist behavior suggests that American leftists no longer feel that they have enough in common with American conservatives to make an effort to cooperate with them on, well, on nearly anything.  I find this extremely concerning.

Many Democrats openly disdain Republicans and avoid associating with them.  If a college student is outed as a closet conservative, even if it’s not true, the social stigmatizing of that student is absolutely vicious.  A girl who is set to start as a freshman at Marquette this fall nearly lost her admission to Marquette because she openly admitted that she was a Republican.  These are not isolated incidents, and they are no longer limited to academia.  Cancel culture is now mainstream.

When you add the vicious social stigma to the literally vicious new militant wings of the Democrat party, like Black Lives Matter, Antifa, NFA, and so on, you end up with an extremely hostile environment for Republicans.  Republicans no longer feel welcome in their own country.

In yesterday’s hearing, Attorney General Barr asked the assembled Democrats,

“This is the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our two great political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence,” he said. “Can’t we just say the violence against the federal courts has to stop? Could we hear something like that?”

The room was silent. The attorney general challenged their loyalty, and not a single Democrat objected. For them, it was just another day at the office.

This trend did not start with President Trump.  This sort of thing was starting when I was in college in the late ’80s; it’s much, much worse now.  Democrats and Republicans used to be friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, but over the past few decades, Democrats appear to have reached the conclusion that they don’t have enough in common with Republicans to make any effort to cooperate with them in any way.

The Civil War appears almost civil by comparison.  That’s an exaggeration, but not by as much as I’d like.

So imagine what happens if the Democrats win this next election.  Heck, imagine what happens if they lose.

I don’t see how this can end well.

Events have been accelerating. We saw the warning signs and now we are in the maelstrom. Two posts from earlier in the Member Feed highlight the latest warnings: Barr vs Nadler Live (as well as @ susanquinn’s The Hearing of Attorney General Barr Is an Abomination) and The Video That YouTube, Facebook and Twitter Have Censored. The former is the outrageous conduct of the Democrat jackals with AG Barr. As many on Ricochet have remarked, if anything Barr has been so neutral and even-handed in the administration of justice that one worries that he is not aggressive enough to save the nation. But, no, the Democrats have to demonize anyone who is not firmly committed to their vision of chaos.

As John Hinderaker at Powerline blog posts:

We are approaching a very weird election in which one of our major parties is taking a stand in favor of rioting, looting, arson, destruction of federal property, and violent attacks on law enforcement. The Democrats seem to think that this is a winning formula. If it is, our republic is doomed.

And yet, many Republicans seem far too complacent about what is going on. Why? The second post involves tech giants taking maximum advantage of their Congressionally granted exemption from publication liability to censor speech. The Republicans (or at least those that support President Trump) are the target and yet too few of our politicians are sounding the alarm.

Can we avoid Heinlein’s famous formulation:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Are we in for an extended run of “bad luck”?

I’ve never signed up for the ‘quote of the day’ because I’m averse to making commitments. I spent the last two months in Utah and just returned to Arizona. I used the above title because I got motivated to write a post today as we enter the last 100 days of suspense waiting to know who will lead America in the next four years. I wanted to write a post detailing how much living through this period of the Donald Trump presidency has meant to me personally. The title is from a quote from a speech I once heard by a former cabinet secretary, but I cannot remember who he was. But he was in his early eighties as I am and he viewed that as being in ‘sudden death overtime’ based on his view that an average life was composed of four twenty year quarters and anything more was a bonus period. He was comparing this to how the professional football league handled games when the score was tied after four quarters.

When I got back to Arizona I went to my bookshelf for some entertaining reading. I have many Agatha Christie paperbacks (46, I just counted them), most of which I haven’t read, so I decided I should and I picked out one. I picked one written in 1954, originally titled “So Many Steps to Death” and republished as “Destination Unknown” and began reading it last night.

I spent some of the early parts of the day watching parts of Attorney General Barr’s testimony before Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee and reading and commenting on today’s posts by @eherring and @susanquinn on that hearing. I went back to read my Christie novel for a while. Then I closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I opened them and thought for a few minutes for some unknown reason I related the two titles of the novel to my life today in the Trump era. Stay with me now and I will try to make sense of this.

Here I have made it to overtime, have no idea how many steps to death or whether that event will be sudden. The Trump-era has reached a stage where the destination is unknown, certainly to me. But I can tell you one thing for certain: Donald Trump as President has revealed information to me that I would never have known without him in that position; the disgusting behavior of the House Democrats in today’s hearing is just the latest example. I also never had an awareness of the level of deceitful behavior within the establishment Republicans that has been revealed by Trump as President. I left federal government employment in 1994 after 23 years, the last 17 at the Treasury Department, all related to the payment and collection of money. I was a manager of financial operations, but nothing political in my bureau, not even a political appointee. I had a sense that federal government bureaucracy was not something I admired and figured out it was high on the list of desirables for Democrats. I never did figure out that it was also high on the list of desirables for political Republicans, until Trump.

In the 2016 campaign, I was originally a supporter of Ted Cruz. I remember in the 2016 Utah Republican Caucus, when it was looking like a contest between Cruz and Trump, I, and others in the caucus asked Senator Mike Lee, who is in that precinct so was in the caucus with us about Trump. Mike didn’t know much either. But, of course, there was much negative going around. You may recall much of the media was enjoying this at the time and giving Donald Trump plenty of positive reviews and lots of attention. Once Trump was clearly set to get the nomination, we had lots of interaction on this topic here at Ricochet. I was reluctant to support Trump and was totally in a learning mode regarding who he was and what policies he advocated. It didn’t take long to realize most of the Washington establishment did not like Trump as the Republican nominee for POTUS. And there was some effort to figure out a way to deny him that role but to no avail. After observing Trump and Clinton through the campaign and their debates and knowing some of Clinton’s political history, I decided on Trump.

As the campaign unfolded, I learned a lot about Donald Trump but what was amazing was what I learned about others. There was a real sense of shared ownership of the federal government by the establishment Democrats and Republicans and to the exclusion of others. They were joined in this by most of the media, television, radio, and press. Following his election, there were several ineffective efforts to undo the election itself through state vote recounts and attempts to persuade electoral college electors to change their votes. We have now found out that there were efforts within the Obama Administration to deny Trump the presidency and then, as an insurance policy, to have a plan to disrupt a Trump Administration to make it ineffective and to impeach him, if possible. These are all things that should never happen and Donald Trump has revealed that such was very possible.

Throughout the Trump presidency then he has had to contend with an established bureaucracy and Congress and Judiciary operating as what we choose to call the ‘swamp’ to make the Executive Branch ineffective. The Mainstream Media has largely joined in this. Many influential ‘Republicans’ have joined as well. And the technological giants of social media have more recently shown how they can work against the sitting President and his supporters, as well.

So I decided to write this post today, while I still have a chance,  to thank President Trump for the enlightenment I have received because he is President and to wish him the very best outcome in the coming election. I also want to thank Ricochet and its members for this platform that has been a major piece of the process of learning all these things that I never knew before.

As George Will points out in his book, The Conservative Sensibility:

America’s poverty problem is not one of material scarcities but of abundant bad behavior. Data demonstrate that there are three simple behavioral rules for avoiding poverty: finish high school, produce no child before marrying or before age twenty. Only 8 percent of families who conform to all three rules are poor; 79 percent of those who do not conform are poor.

None of this is particularly new; we’ve all heard and read the numbers before. Yet, in today’s world, to breathe these empirical truths is “racist”; it’s “blaming the victims.” Victims of what? Of failed progressive policies that dumb down education at the behest of teachers’ unions that send huge donations to progressive politicians? Of failed progressive welfare policies that reward young women for producing babies outside of marriage? Of failed progressive employment policies that penalize companies for hiring low-skilled workers? Of failed progressive housing policies that make low-income housing scarce?

No, of course not. Again, to even suggest such truths is racist. The only politically correct “truth” is that “systemic racism,” not behavior, causes poverty and inequality. The only politically correct solution, then, is to spend scarce resources that have alternative uses to fight systemic racism while continuing to spend scarce resources on progressive policies that create and sustain poverty; that is, on policies that create the inequality progressives claim is the result of systemic racism.

I don’t think there is a civilization on earth that does not at least pay lip service to the ideal of a just society. I think this is in part because even despotic rulers know that in order to keep their reign intact, their people need to somehow feel that justice has been done.

And while definitions of what constitutes Justice differ radically between different ancient and modern laws, there actually is not that much of a distinction between humanists and Catholics, atheists or Jews.  This is because, as far as I can tell, the Torah requirements for justice have been widely adopted and even taken for granted.

For example, the ancient principle of “Might Makes Right,” while dominant wherever tyranny holds sway, is not considered legitimate or even acceptable in the civilized world.

Also swept away is the ancient idea of Greece and Rome that there are (at least) two bodies of law: one for the native and one for the “other,” the barbarian or heathen. Instead, the modern world assumes that everyone should receive justice under the same body of laws. “Decide justly between any man and his fellow and a stranger.” (Deut. 1:15) Similarly,  though capricious and “might makes right” despotic regimes certainly exist – and I count “cancel culture” among those – reasonable people the world over share the ideal that justice should be blind to the status of the petitioner: “You must not pervert justice; you must not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the rich; you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” (Lev. 19:15), and “You shall not be partial in judgement: hear out low and high alike.” (Deut. 1:17).

But what IS the foundation of justice? I’d like to make a radical argument: in the Torah, justice is not necessarily underpinned by a code of law, not even a Torah one. Sure, there are the principles we have already repeated: justice (as opposed to tyranny) is a critical building block for any righteous society, and it requires equality under the law.

But when you look at the use of the word “Tz-D-K”, the Hebrew for justice in the Torah, you discover something quite surprising. The first time it is used is to describe Noah, a “just man in his generation,” and the second refers to a king-priest who greets Abram after his victorious battle. His name was Malchi-Tzedek (the second half of the name forming the root word for “justice”.) And although Abram’s allies don’t perceive a divine hand in the victory (we see, after all, what we choose to see), Malchi-Tzedek immediately credits G-d: “Blessed be the most high G-d who has delivered thy enemies into thy hand.”

What do these two people have to do with Justice? Why is Noah called just and Malchi-Tzedek has the word for justice in his name?

I think the answer is clear in the text: Malchi-tzedek was able to see things from Abram’s perspective. He could see things from the point of view of the other person.

And Noah? The very first thing we know about Noah through his actions was that Noah was able to hear G-d. THIS is what made him “righteous in his generation.” Noah heard G-d’s voice.

Which beautifully explains to us for both within the Torah and for all time immemorial what “justice” actually means: it means hearing each person, making them feel valued and appreciated. A good judge is someone who cares about people, who is sensitive to their feelings and need for respect. That is the single biggest prerequisite for justice to be done.

I am not saying that a justice and a society do not also need laws (the Torah certainly gives us the principles for a detailed set of laws), but I am saying that the laws are ultimately only worthwhile if justice is seen to be done, if petitioners feel that they have been heard fairly.

That is why “justice” in the Torah is not given to us in the name of a Torah scholar. Instead, the two people associated with justice, Noah and Malchi-Tzedek were not even Jewish. The lesson in this is incredible to me: the Torah is not only telling us that we have to treat fellow-Jews and non-Jews the same under the law. It is also telling us that the torch-bearers of the concept of justice were indeed themselves not Jewish.  This is a shockingly egalitarian revelation to me, both for the ancient world and for the modern one. The Torah credits not G-d and not the forefathers for inventing justice, but two outsiders, thoughtful and empathic men, men who could hear a non-corporeal voice and who could see a situation through the eyes of other people.

Justice may (and should) be codified in a body of law, but that body of law is worthless unless people validate it and feel valued within it. This is why Moses commands that his justices “hear out your fellow men and decide justly… hear out low and high alike…. And any matter that is too difficult for you, you shall bring it to me, and I will hear it.” It is the hearing

Within the Torah, judges were hierarchically assigned, with the first tier judge hearing all cases within his local cohort; just ten men formed that unit. That judge was not a legal giant; he was instead a man who wanted and needed to peaceably coexist with his cohort. So his first goal would have always been to try to find a compromise, a settlement that minimized resentment. Doing his job well meant taking the time and energy to truly listen to the petitioners, hear them out, see their point of view, and even (as Noah did) to hear what may not be spoken out loud. Only after someone feels they have had their day in court can a just decision be reached.

Listening is the foundational aspect of justice: being able to hear G-d and man alike, being able to truly see things from the perspective of the other person. The Torah tells us that this is a critical virtue, one that we learned from non-Jews and in turn must apply it zealously within our own society as well as seeking to make it a universal virtue across all the lands and peoples of the world.

The world’s oldest profession is giving bad advice to women.  The serpent in the Garden of Eden invented it and found an easy mark in our First Mama, Eve.  Being a biblical scholar and expert on myth and culture, I suspect it went something like this:

Serpent:   Look at you collecting all those wonderful herbs and berries. Does Adam appreciate all you do for him?

Eve:  Of course he does.  He says I am the best part of all creation.

Serpent:  But he is off all day naming animals, plants and even stars, obsessively getting to know things.  He spent most of yesterday afternoon walking with God and watching bees.  Bees!  Seriously, shouldn’t he be spending that time with you?

Eve:  Learning and affirming all of nature is his job, silly.

Serpent:  But why not learn it all in one fell swoop.  Isn’t that what the fruit of that one tree is for?

Eve:  We are forbidden. It would be wrong and selfish to try to gain such power.

Serpent:  But you would not be doing it for yourself but for Adam.  You are the least selfish creature in the whole garden.

Eve:  Oh, Stop it. You’re embarrassing me.

Serpent:  You know Adam is obviously too hung up on his big-deal mission to properly think about you or what is best for both of you.  Maybe you need to be the one to do it for the both of you.  What could be more loving, especially if done by someone like you who never wants anything for herself and only thinks of him and of the power you both deserve? Together, of course.

Cue the angelic flaming sword SWAT team to stand by because that apple is coming down…

Why do young women accept the sheer barbarism of hook-up culture?  Or the post-Roe world where a baby is just her body/her problem rather than a miraculous moral and personal connection to a father, families, and community?  Our sexual mores and culture seem as if they were imposed for the convenience of Harvey Weinstein, Bills Clinton and Cosby, and lounge lizards everywhere.

And the scope of American female suckerhood is widening. Boys who “identify” as girls are winning track meets while feminists still don’t seem to get that the identity politics they promoted eventually comes for us all.  Victimhood celebrations in the wake of #MeToo also mean that male CEOs will have nothing to do with, much less mentor young women for fear of accusations.  The decision by women to privilege the rantings of male-hating harridans in academia and literature poisons possibilities of intimacy, commitment, and sanity.

Women also appear to be more suspectable to the political rhetoric of fear and protection.  Political operatives study and scheme about whether “soccer moms” can be made more afraid of terrorism, economic collapse, crime, or catastrophic climate change but the choice to deploy a fear/protection pitch is the constant.  Young single women, trained to be terrified of commitment, trained to crave ‘safe spaces’ and feeling pressured to delay reproduction indefinitely out of fear of financial stress over and above tuition load debt are being groomed for fear/protection politics for life.

We have dystopian anti-communities in the inner cities largely because the federal government aggressively and successfully sought to outbid poor working men for possession of women and children.  Upscale white women now increasingly vote for the same deal: guarantees of income and health care, guarantees of job security, and assistance of all kinds in lieu of the more uncertain adventure of building a life and family with a man.

The fruit on that tree now claims to be security, safety, job satisfaction, and the promise of uninterrupted material well-being.  An awful lot of women don’t seem to have learned much since that first bogus sales pitch that got us all into the current mess. Thank God, for the spectacular exceptions to that tendency and if there was ever a time for them to rise to the forefront, it’s now.

I had a good friend in college (we’ll call him “Trey”) who was one of the best natural athletes I’ve ever seen, and he was absolutely brilliant. He didn’t do sports, and he was a fifth year senior with a ‘C’ average. His Dad owned some type of factory in New York State, and Trey knew exactly where he was going when he graduated. He knew his Dad would hire him regardless of his grades, so why study? And he liked college (mainly, he liked girls), so every time he got close to graduating, he’d change his major so he could stay longer. He was an alcoholic, drinking heavily several times per week. Trey invited me to a party one night, and I said I couldn’t go. He said, “C’mon, man! It’s Friday night!” I told him I had to study. He asked why I had to study on Friday night, and I informed him that I didn’t have a guaranteed management job lined up for me, and I knew that I had one chance at a better life by going to college, and I was not about to screw it up, thank you very much. He said he didn’t understand. And he probably didn’t.

I saw a news story this morning about a group of protestors who were blocking traffic on an interstate in some city. A commuter drove his pickup through the crowd and hit one of the protestors. I watched the video. The other protestors were horrified that one of them had been seriously hurt. So here we have a group of people who stand around on the interstate and are genuinely surprised when they get hit by a car. These are people who are not accustomed to experiencing the consequences of their actions. They have a lot in common with Trey, come to think of it. They have little hope for a better tomorrow, they sense a lack of control over their future, they sink into nihilism and despair and begin to see the world as a strange, depressing place. People in this situation sometimes do things that look stupid to the rest of us. Like drinking themselves into oblivion six nights a week. Or standing around on interstates.

I was fascinated by the video, because most of the “protesters” on the interstate were wearing surgical masks, to protect against Coronavirus. They were being very conscientious of safety precautions against a virus which poses little to no threat to young people like them, while they stand around on an interstate, which most certainly DOES pose a threat to young people like them. When they carried the young lady off the interstate, after she’d been hit by the pickup truck, I saw someone pull her mask back up over her bloody nose.

Safety first, right?

And then many of them returned to standing around on the interstate. Remember that these people are not clinically insane. These are just people.

People are strange. I love them, but they’re strange. Of course, so am I. I cast no stones here.

But my point is that people get much more strange when they start to lose the connection between their actions and the consequences of those actions. Once someone loses that connection, it’s just hard to say what crazy stuff that person might do.

My Uncle Fred often spoke of the seen vs the unseen. Some consequences of government actions are seen (like a new bridge being built), and some are unseen (like a new business not opening, because too much money was taken out of the local economy).

People losing the connection between their actions and their consequences is an unseen consequence of too much government. A safety net that is too robust leads to erratic, self-destructive behavior. Like not studying hard in school. Or standing around on interstates.

And like Trey and the protestors, as we lose the connection between increasing the influence of government, and the many unseen consequences thereof, then we start to do stupid things with that government.

One reason to spend less money on, say, The War on Poverty, is that it doesn’t work. But I would argue that a better reason is that as we further insulate poor people from the consequences of their actions, then their actions will predictably become more erratic and self-destructive. Like Trey, who for all I know is still drunk today. Although if he’s running a factory now, as I suspect he is, then he might be sober now, which I suspect he is. The chains of responsibility that he spent his life fleeing may end up saving him.

Life is funny that way.

It’s not just the government that causes such problems. Suppose you train someone from kindergarten that the biggest threat to the world is global warming, and that they should recycle their cans. Ok, suppose one day, that person just tosses a can in the regular trash somewhere. What is the impact of that? Nothing, really.

But suppose you take a kid who just lost their farm, like me, and you give them a scholarship to college. You don’t have to tell that kid to study. Believe me, he will achieve whatever he is capable of. Because the connection between his actions and their consequences is a lot less abstract to him.

Life is not a game, to kids like that.

Trey’s Dad had protected him from the consequences of his actions for his entire life. And did Trey love him for that? No, he resented his father. I never understood why, but he hated his father. That made no sense to me at the time.

But now, watching these people with surgical masks protest against the government of the country that has given them such security that they don’t understand the danger of standing around on an interstate, I think I’m starting to understand Trey.

I hope he found his way. I really do.

Maybe all the wealthy kids that were sent to study with him taught Aristotle about the importance of virtue and responsibility. Aristotle felt that happiness was impossible without fulfilling one’s responsibility to others.

So Marx was half right. But the half that he missed is really important. Marx never supported himself. Never. So rather than making his world a better place, he stood around on interstates. And thus, it became impossible for his fertile mind to make the world a better place. It’s tragic, really.

By compassionately sheltering Americans from the consequences of their actions, we are making it impossible for them to make the world a better place. Quite the contrary, in fact.

It’s tragic.

That’s all, really. I didn’t say it’s bad to wear a mask. But it’s not normal.

Go ahead and rant and rave about us normal people, if you like. We’re just being human. Humans have warm CO₂ coming out of our mouths, and we like to breath in fresh air, instead of that warm CO₂. So why are some people so surprised that humans don’t want to wear masks?

One thing I often hear is that wearing a mask is a minor inconvenience. Minor to whom? I find it to be a major inconvenience. And who are you to say otherwise? I don’t find it inconvenient to wear boots and long pants every day of the year. If it’s 105 or 25, I’m wearing boots and pants. A lot of people couldn’t take it. They tell me so. People are different.

So, for those who find it a minor inconvenience, I submit it is a minor inconvenience for you to either respect the rights of those who dare to have faces (and stay away from us), or just stay home, if faces bother you. Fair enough?