The consequences of truth-telling


Terry Moran interviews Trump, April 29, 2025. Official White House photo.

The Washington Post has reported that Terry Moran will not be returning to ABC. Moran was suspended after a post on “X” that was critical of Trump and Stephen Miller.

As a retired newspaperman, I well understand why news organizations (other than, of course, right-wing propaganda organs such as Fox News) must defend their reputation for objectivity. Those are the rules, and according to those rules Moran went too far.

But we have rules, and we have truth. One of the reasons we are where we are today is that the responsible media, for years (ever since Fox News came on line in 1996), have been unable to tell the truth because of their rules about bias and objectivity. The lords of right-wing propaganda strangled the responsible media with its own principles. Thus the fascist movement could lie constantly and laugh all the way to the bank, and to the White House. The responsible media could not bring themselves to plainly call a lie a lie and then explain the purpose of the lie (which they understood perfectly well but wouldn’t say). The right wing has to lie. To them their lies are beautiful. Ethically they couldn’t care less. The responsible media avoid it at all costs.

The pathetic irony is that Terry Moran told the truth, a truth that is so perfectly obvious to rational, morally sane people that it hardly needs to be said.

There’s another thing. In reporting on Moran’s post on “X,” the responsible media were squeamish about even reporting what Moran said. They’d quote some of the post, but the context was never clear, and it was never clear whether they were reporting the complete post.

I’ve included a screen shot of the complete post.

I am terrified about what is going on in Los Angeles. I’m also terrified that things could be even worse on Saturday, because of Trump’s military parade (which Gavin Newsome rightly called “vulgar”) and the protests. Over the next few days we stand to learn a lot about the intentions of the Trump White House and the current appetite of the American people for putting up with it.

A glimpse of the post-Trump future?


Source: Wikimedia Commons

As Karis Nemick in the television series Andor reminded us, authoritarianism is always brittle. Though Trump is surrounded by some of the most eager and rabid — but also the most incompetent, the most deranged, and the most corrupt — lackeys in American history, the future of authoritarianism in America is tied to the fate of one and only one person — Donald Trump. Authoritarianism in America has a single point of failure.

Trump is 78 years old. For his last year or so in office he will be a lame duck. In 42 months he will be gone (if he doesn’t die first from too many cheeseburgers and milkshakes).

There will be (there already is, actually) a fierce competition to become the next Trump and to keep the movement going. J.D. Vance, of course, wants to be the new Trump. I’m skeptical that Vance has got what that would take. Trump, it seems to me, wants a dynasty, not a functional movement. Don Jr. would like to be the next Trump, and it’s hard to imagine Trump supporting anyone else. I’m also skeptical that Junior has what it would take.

One of the things we learned from this week’s grotesque warfare between Trump and Elon Musk is how much Trump is hated by elites. Only Musk, at this point, has the power to turn on Trump. But, inevitably, that’s going to change. In three years or so, Trump’s power is going to be gone. Either his term will end, he will die in office, he will be assassinated, or unexpected and unpredictable events will somehow bring him down. Either MAGA creates and anoints another charismatic leader, or MAGA fragments from schism and goes into decline.

Whatever happens, once Trump is perceived as weak and vulnerable, an ugly tide will turn against him. A thousand savage wolves will come for Trump, both to hasten him off the stage and to extract revenge. Trump will be torn to pieces unless a MAGA successor loyal to Trump can be found. Historically, the picture is rarely pretty when authoritarians leave office or lose their power.

A great weakness of the Trump regime is that it is dangerously deficient in cold, pragmatic competence. The Nazis, without their cold, pragmatic competence, would never have gotten as far as they did. The Trump regime, on the other hand, is a pig circus of incompetent narcissists trying to generate video for Fox News. Without the pig circus that feeds the media, there’d not be much left of the Trump regime — not much that could get anything done, anyway.

Here I must add that my predictions about Trump have always been too optimistic. I just could not imagine that he could outlast all the many things that should have destroyed him politically and put him in prison. And even though I have a low, low opinion of at least half of the American population, my opinion was not low enough.

As the commentariat have pointed out, in the Trump-Musk pig circus we are seeing a struggle between MAGA, which wants to control us and dominate us, and the tech oligarchs, who want to own us, control us, and dominate us. Working together, their power is horrifying. But they have shown that their alliance is brittle. We must hope that they continue to try to dominate each other rather than work together.

Revisiting a lost era


The former home of the Winston-Salem Journal (a morning newspaper) and the Twin City Sentinel (an afternoon newspaper), built in 1926-1927. The building is a reduced semi-replica of Constitution Hall and Congress Hall in Philadelphia. It’s no longer a newspaper office. The building’s interior has been renovated for other uses. Click here for high resolution version.

The Winston-Salem Journal

Today, like most newspapers that manage to hang on in diminished form, the Winston-Salem Journal can’t even be considered a real newspaper at all. But once upon a time it was considered to be one of the great Southern newspapers. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for environmental coverage having to do with a plan to bring a huge strip-mining operation to northwest North Carolina.

The newspaper already had a great staff. But, after the Pulitzer, applications for jobs poured in from recent graduates of Ivy League universities, because the Winston-Salem Journal had a well deserved reputation for being one of the best “training newspapers” in the country.

The Journal was my hometown newspaper. In 1966, when I was a senior at Reynolds High School, I was chosen by the journalism teacher to be the “teen page correspondent” for the two-page spread of high-school news that the Sentinel ran every Friday. The managing editor of the Journal at the time, Fred Flagler, instantly recognized me as a nerd and therefore as copy boy material. That was my first job, part time on weekends. I subsequently did four summer internships at the Journal, and after that I was a Journal copy editor up until 1991 (when I moved to San Francisco and went to work at the San Francisco Examiner and then the San Francisco Chronicle).

The Journal’s staff moved out of the old building to smaller offices almost twenty years ago. Like many defunct newspapers, the newspaper’s real estate became more valuable than the newspaper. This building now houses a law firm on the first and second floors, and an architectural firm on the third floor. There is an ongoing project to renovate the building’s basement and repurpose an adjoining (but un-historic) building nextdoor.

I went on a tour of the building yesterday sponsored by Preservation Forsyth. There were about forty other people on the tour, but only three of us had ever worked for the Journal.


⬆︎ When I was a copy editor and “slot man,” I sat pretty much in the same place where this new occupant of the space is sitting. There’s a balcony outside the windows.

In a newsroom, all copy works its way toward the copy desk. The “slot man” is the copy editor who gives everything one last check before putting it into a pneumatic tube and sending the copy to the composing room. Lawyers call the slot man the editor of last resort. That’s not entirely true. The slot could always appeal to the managing editor if he or she thought something was not ready for publication, when, say, the city editor disputed the slot’s judgment. The Journal never got sued over any of the thousands of stories that passed through me as slot, though the Journal was a defendant in libel cases several times over the years. Click here for high resolution version.

The Shaffner Inn


⬆︎ After the tour of the Journal building, I had dinner downtown with an old friend who also used to work at the Journal. I stayed at the Shaffner Inn, a 1907 banker’s mansion that is now a bed and breakfast. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ The living room. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ Looking down the entrance hall. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ The main staircase. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ The dining room. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ The landing of the main staircase. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ The dining room set up for breakfast. All five rooms were occupied the night I was there. The breakfast was lavish and very well done. Click here for high resolution version.


⬆︎ This was the first traditional breakfast I had had since I was in Scotland last fall. There was yogurt and fruit. But if I’m somewhere near eggs, bacon, grits, and toast, then that’s what I’m going to have.

About Winston-Salem

Winston-Salem has always had a bit of an inferiority complex, because Raleigh, Charlotte, and now even Greensboro are bigger. Winston-Salem has grown relatively slowly, spared the ugly growth and some (but only some) of the corporate brutality that has caused the explosive growth of Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. In my judgment, there are really only two cities in North Carolina worth visiting — Asheville, and Winston-Salem. Asheville is sometimes called the San Francisco of the South. I’d say that’s far too generous. Asheville doesn’t really have much to offer other than the mountains.

Whereas, culturally, Winston-Salem has always punched above its weight. Its history is deeply intertwined with the Moravian settlement of Salem in 1766. The Moravians came from Germany, a protestant sect that brought with it quite a lot of German technology and German high culture. Winston was a prosperous tobacco and textile town. The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is in Winston-Salem. In 1946, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation (tobacco money) pretty much bought a college for Winston-Salem. The foundation built a campus for Wake Forest College and paid to move the college 100 miles from Wake Forest to North Carolina. That’s now Wake Forest University. The university’s medical school and regional medical center are now a key part of the city’s economy.

As for corporate brutality, Winston-Salem has had it share but survived. I won’t go into it here, but it involved R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (Barbarians at the Gate), Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, and Piedmont Airlines.

When I chose to retire in the Blue Ridge foothills, part of the calculus was knowing that Winston-Salem is less than an hour’s drive away.

Diet theory


A diet burger made from mashed pinto beans, whole-grain (hulled) barley, wheat germ, and seasonings

There is a movement that argues that diets don’t work, and that people don’t have to be lean to be healthy. Diets don’t work, they say, because, when people lose weight on a diet, they almost always gain it back.

Of course they gain it back! What would be the fun of eating lean all the time? There’s a fix for gaining the weight back: Do another diet.

Thus I often say that I’m an experienced dieter. The real trick with dieting, though, I would say, is to not wait too long to start a diet when you need to start a diet. For most of my adult life, my weight has cycled up and down by about ten pounds.

Gaining ten pounds is great fun. One feels lean after a successful diet, and one wants to celebrate. But eventually that will catch up with you, and another diet cycle must begin. The relative length of the cycles, for me anyway, is not that bad. A diet usually lasts for three to six months. Whereas a live-it-up spree can last from two to four years. If I had better discipline, I’d start a diet after gaining five pounds. That doesn’t work for me, though, probably because at five pounds I can still pretend that my belt isn’t getting too tight.

My first rule for dieting is to count calories, aiming for 1,200 calories a day. That’s enough to have a reasonable chance of getting enough protein. It would be possible to have a doughnut-only diet and lose weight on 1,200 calories a day. But that would be miserable, because one’s glucose level would cycle wildly.

It’s the simple carbs that have to go — bread and pasta, for example. Then, each day, one must figure out how to get enough protein and stay under the calorie target. Fiber is the dieter’s friend. You can have pretty much as much low-carb vegetables as you can eat. The fiber keeps the microbiome well fed, and I think that helps keep the appetite under control.

On a diet, you’re going to be hungry for part of the day. But that’s not so bad if you keep the carbs down, and thus the need for insulin. The current trend in dieting is intermittent fasting. I aim for 19-5 — two meals a day between noon and 5 p.m. I’m moderately hungry in the mornings, but I never go to bed hungry.

There’s pasta, bread, and potatoes in my future. But not yet.

Retailoring a sack jacket: Can that be done?


A thrifted Jos. A. Banks sack jacket gets a new life masquerading as something more British. Click here for high-resolution version.

I feel guilty writing about trivialities, given the state of the country and the state of the world. But life must go on.

I have long known that I prefer the look of British tailoring to American. Maybe from watching all those BBC period pieces? The most beautiful suit I ever saw was in a tailor-shop window at Oxford. The fabric and cut almost took my American breath away.

But it was only fairly recently that I was able to put some names to certain styles of tailoring.

The standard American suit is the “sack suit.” It sounds derogatory, but it’s not meant that way. The cut goes back more than a hundred years (to Europe). But it was in America where it became the standard.

The sack suit is cut with straight sides that ignore the waist line (if any). British suits are cut to emphasize the shoulders (with padding!) and flatter the waist and V-shape of men whose waists are worthy of some flattery. If you look at a photo of even a portly English gentleman such as Winston Churchill, you’ll see that his jackets have some taper.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I got into the bad habit of collecting Harris tweed jackets after visiting Lewis and Harris in 2019. I bought my first Harris tweed jacket in a second-hand shop in Stornoway. I have about eight jackets that I like enough to have had altered. All but one came from the U.K., from eBay. They’re all suitable only for cool weather. I also have some Islay tweed and some Donegal tweed.

I buy a jacket only if I’m confident that the shoulder width is right for me. They can be altered easily enough to tighten the chest and waist (usually too loose for me in thrifted jackets) and adjust the sleeve length.

Recently on eBay I came across a jacket made of silk tweed. It’s a two-button, light-weight American jacket, from an old-reliable menswear company, Jos. A. Bank, made in Portugal. It was, of course, a sack-cut jacket. Madeline, a tailor trained in Hong Kong who had altered all my other jackets, had retired. So this time I went to a place at the mall. They actually did a good job, and they were less expensive than Madeline was. The young woman who pinned the jacket understood what I was looking for. The result was not exactly British-style tailoring, but it’s close enough. Once a sack jacket, always a sack jacket, I suppose.


⬆︎ Its previous life as a sack jacket is more visible from the front. Click here for high-resolution version.


⬆︎ Just up the road from me is a pasture in which two old horses live, Pete and Buddy. Just now there are millions of daisies in the pasture. Pete sneaks out at night when he can, and he often comes down to eat some of my clover. Click here for high-resolution version.

Do unto books as you would have them do unto you


Undergoing radical surgery to get a new cover and a new life. This was a cookbook that had been heavily used, though not very gently.

If you were a book, how would you want to be treated?

If you have a lot of books, as I do, and if you have books that had previous owners, then you will learn a lot about the (sometimes long) lives of books, including things that will make you sad.

When I was in elementary school, we were taught how to treat books kindly. Rules included not turning down corners as bookmarks and not writing inside the books. We were taught how to relax the bindings of new books so that the binding wasn’t damaged. We were often given book jackets for textbooks so that the books would last longer.

I think that there are, though, some things that books don’t mind very much. Some signs of previous owners add charm to the book’s history. Some things, though, reveal that a book has been abused.


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ Abuse by cold-blooded defacement

Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum. Lee Smolin, Penguin, 2019.

I bought this used hardback from an online bookseller because a new hardback was expensive. These pencil and highlighter marks are on pages xviii and xix in the preface. The defacement continues for two more pages, and then stops completely.

This reveals a lot about the previous owner. He or she started the book with an aggressive determination to understand it, then didn’t even make it through the preface! The book was published in 2019, so the previous owner didn’t keep the book very long, either. So the book was orphaned into the used-book market and was sold to me for a humiliating $2.16.

I will write about this book soon. Lee Smolin is one of my favorite physicists.


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ Loved and left behind

Winnie the Poo. A.A. Milne, Dutton, 1961.

This book is a little dog-eared, but it was treated kindly. The book clearly was a Christmas gift to Gabriel in 1971 (see next image). If we assume that Gabriel was six years old, then he would have been born in 1965. There are several Gabriel Behringers in the world, so I can’t be sure (from Googling) who the previous owner might have been. But I hope it was the Gabriel who is now an upper-school English teacher with a master’s from Dartmouth.


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ Merry Christmas, Gabriel

There are no marks in this book other than the book plate and the gift inscription, but there are dark-colored stains on pages 3 through 7. Perhaps Gabriel spilled some chocolate milk?


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ Librarians, fickle friends of books

Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Edited by A.L. Rowse, Harper & Row, 1964.

This book’s first life was in the library of David Lipscomb High School. From Googling, I see that that’s a private prep school in Nashville, Tennessee, affiliated with Lipscomb University and Lipscomb Academy. These are Christian schools!

It’s hard for me to doubt that this book is very happy to be away from a bunch of young Christians and into the hands of an old heathen who actually cares about Shakespeare’s sonnets. The book’s last due date was October 23, 1997.

I wonder why it was removed from the library, since Shakespeare’s sonnets are eternal and the Rowse edition is a classic. Maybe someone complained to the school’s administration that some of those sonnets are very, very naughty?


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ Books, like cats, like a little petting

Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Robert D. Richardson Jr., University of California Press, 1986.

Many of Ken’s books are mingled with mine, though of course he started a new library after he moved to Scotland. In books that Ken has read, I often find tiny little X’s in the margin, in light pencil. This is how Ken marks his books. I have a somewhat different method that is a little heavier-handed than Ken’s method. If I were a book, I don’t think I’d mind light pencil marks.


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ I plead guilty

Oscar Wilde: A Life. Matthew Sturgis, Knopf, 2021.

When I make notes in books, I prefer to put them in the same place. That’s on the left side of the back guard sheet. I always use light pencil marks so that when the book outlives me a new owner can erase me.


Click here for high-resolution version

⬆︎ How to make sure a book has a long life

Ender’s Game. Orson Scott Card, Tor, 1985.

When a book has become a classic, and the first edition has been signed by the author, you can be sure it will have a long life. Orson Scott Card and I were friends back in the 1980s, but after that our lives went in very different directions. I doubt that he’d give me the time of day now.

His reference to “a true marketplace of ideas” refers to a computer bulletin board that I ran back in the 1980s, Science Fiction Writers Network.

Character in a time of fascism


Karis Nemik and Maarva Andor

Last week I finished watching the second season of “Andor” on Disney Plus. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. What sticks with me, though, is not so much the story. It’s the characters — and the character of the characters.

In a time of fascism, people sort pretty much into three groups: one, the eager fascists; two, the members of the rebellion; and three, those who can’t be bothered to care one way or the other. “Andor” is a brilliant character study of the first two types.

In this MAGA era, we all know some of the eager fascists. We also know people whose little lives are more important to them than anything happening in the larger world. What’s sad is that most of us who identify with the rebellion are so isolated. We’re frustrated that there is no meaningful role for us. This is a miserable vacuum in which stories can help us manage our isolation and frustration.

My guess is that those who created “Andor” know exactly whom they are speaking to — to those of us who would join a rebellion if there was a way to do it. There are times when the script of “Andor” breaks into a monologue and speaks to us directly.

Maarva Andor:

“There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

“The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive than when we are asleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this, if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start!”

Karis Nemik:

“Remember this, freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

“Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

“And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

“Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.”

Mon Mothma:

“I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.

“Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

“This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday … what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!”

Luthen Rael:

“Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion. I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.

“What is my sacrifice?

“I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.

“So what do I sacrifice?

“Everything!”

The ugliest minds that ever existed

Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Viking, 2025. 660 pages.

If ever there was a book (other than the Bible) that makes a sickening read, this is it. As I said to a friend, slogging through this book is like rolling around in a garbage truck that services an abbatoir and a pig farm. But it’s not the book itself. The book itself is a brilliant work of scholarship. What is sickening to any normal human being is — or ought to be — the subject matter.

If people knew the actual history of the church, as opposed to the rubbish that the church teaches about itself, we’d soon be rid of the church. This was already pretty familiar terrain to me. But my credibility as a person who despises the church requires knowing something about the history of the church and the sources of that history.

First, a disclaimer. Yes, there are some nice people in the church. And yes, some nice thoughts are attributed to Jesus. But that changes nothing. As early as Religion 101 (a required course where I went to school many years ago) one learns that there actually was nothing new in the teachings of Jesus. There were many contemporary cults in that part of the world whose teachings very much overlapped with the teachings of Jesus — the Essenes and the Pharisees, for example.

There are a million places to get mired down in the history of Christianity — for example, the question of whether Jesus existed at all. If you’d like to get mired down in that, a good place to start would be the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Personally I prefer to assume that Jesus actually did exist, and then move on from there to the history of the church.

Paul of Tarsus is a good place to start. He was a professional and zealous persecutor. To quote Galatians 1:13 (King James version): “For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: (14) And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”

We don’t know what form this “beyond measure” persecution took. It probably meant throwing people out of the temple, or encouraging stonings and beatings. During the occupation, the Romans actually put some restrictions on the liberal Hebrew use of capital punishment. But under the Torah many things could get you stoned: blasphemy, apostasy, violation of the Sabbath, adultery, or being a disobedient son.

But, if you pay attention to what Paul reveals about himself in his letters, his cruelty never goes away. It’s just that the targets of the cruelty changed. (Galatians 5:12, 1 Corinthians 5:5.) Yes, some of Paul’s cruelty may have been merely rhetorical. But he was still a horrid person.

After Paul and his letters, we get into the mysterious history of how the other books of the New Testament were written (and rewritten). From there we move from the contents of the Bible itself to the beginnings of the church and how its doctrines were decided (and decided again, and decided again, and decided again, and by what sort of ugly souls).

There is a vast amount of history, well recorded, about how Christianity became the imperial religion of Rome. One needs to get mired in this history to get a feel for why Christianity could be made into an imperial religion, just what Rome needed for its cultural genocides. See The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, by Catherine Nixey.

Doctrine

Soon madmen such as Augustine of Hippo (354-430) come into the story. Augustine was largely a free-lancer, but you’ll want to read up on official church doctrine, in particular the First Council of Nicaea (325 CE) and the First Council of Constantinople (381 CE). Then it’s time to get mired in the history of the papacy. This will lead you to a history of the crusades, and the Inquisition. Eventually you will get to the Reformation. What were the Protestant complaints against Rome? Investigate the madness of some of the reformers: John Calvin, Martin Luther, Thomas Müntzer, Andreas Karlstadt, John of Leiden (it was reported that he beheaded one of his wives because she wouldn’t accept his authority). You can safely assume that the history of the Reformation could not have happened without fanatics and authoritarians with many different axes to grind — and very ugly minds.

You’ll notice that, so far, I haven’t even mentioned sex.

One fascinating thing I learned from this book has to do with the history of the Moravian church (well known in Pennsylvania and North Carolina because of their early settlements). It’s called “the time of sifting,” and Moravians almost succeeded in purging it from the historical record because it is so embarrassing to them. I won’t get into it here, but it has much to do with the son of Nicholas Zinzendorf (1700-1760), whose patronage allowed the Moravian church to expand to America. The son was Christian Renatus von Zinzendorf. For some juicy details, all of it about sex, you’d need to see A Time of Sifting: Mystical Marriage and the Crisis of Moravian Piety in the Eighteenth Century, by Paul Peucker, Penn State University Press, 2015.

Sex

There is just no way to try to summarize the history of the church where sex is involved, whether that history has to do with doctrine, persecution, or the church’s own scandals. But it is a history that is always sick. It has cost many lives and has destroyed many millions more. As Christian “mission” work expanded from the 18th Century onward, this sickness was exported to the rest of the world, where the sickness took root and persisted even after the Christian empires were kicked out. The church has always sought to get its sexual doctrines codified in secular law, whether related to marriage, divorce, contraception, or homosexuality. Human societies are always vulnerable to panics, but sex panics are particularly contagious and malicious.

It’s making a comeback

Under Trump, Republicans are salivating to re-impose Christian authoritarianism and doctrine — using public money for indoctrination of the young, banning books, reversing Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges to recriminalize abortion and homosexuality, and weakening constitutional protections so that Christians can exert Pauline persecution against people they don’t like.

Even the recent popes seem to have some understanding that there is not much future in that. But in the United States there is a Great Renewal of authoritarian zeal. There are reports that the decline in churchgoing has bottomed, and that more young people have started going to church. Mainstream publications such as the New York Times and The Atlantic are publishing more articles than ever that are flattering to the church.

Diarmaid MacCulloch

In the Wikipedia article on Diarmaid MacCulloch, he describes himself as “a candid friend of Christianity.” OK. That’s a suitable posture for an Oxford scholar who studies the history of Christianity. I can’t help but wonder, though, how he maintains his sanity and avoids banging his head against the wall or throwing up a lot.

Every now and then in the past, someone has pressed me on my lack of religion. I now have a stock answer ready if it’s needed. It’s that I know far too much about the church to be religious.

I wish everyone did.

Outlasting them is the best revenge


Jefferson Griffin, vile fascist pig

Today, at last, a ruling by a federal court put an end to a six-months-long attempt by a swamp-scum Republican, Jefferson Griffin, to steal a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. It’s important to understand the absurdity of Griffin’s claims to be able to invoke the appropriate level of disgust for this man. I won’t rehearse the details here — the mainstream media coverage has been good. But adding to the disgust is the fact that Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court kept Griffin’s claims alive for months when it was so obvious that Griffin had no legitimate claims and was only trying to subvert yet another election for Republicans.

North Carolina is a purple state. My expectation is that North Carolina will become bluer and bluer between now and the 2028 election, as Republicans show the world that what they are now is fascists. One of North Carolina’s senators, Thom Tillis, is up for re-election in 2026. He seems to understand that he cannot win a statewide election now, so he is one of the few senators market-testing flaccid Republican attempts to stand up to Trump.

My track record on Trump predictions is not good, because I have always been too optimistic that someone would stop him. Again and again, for years and years, the courts have let him skate, and Republicans in Congress blocked impeachments twice. For what it’s worth, I expect the next three and a half years to be a horror. But I still cannot imagine that fascism in America can survive the end of Trump. The fools who voted for Trump deserve all the misery that they are likely to get. Hatred for Trump already has reversed two elections in two other countries, Canada and Australia. Americans are far more stupid and more gullible than the people of Canada and Australia, but I don’t think Americans like fascism any more than Canadians or Australians, once Trump teaches them what fascism and corrupt government are, and they slowly perceive that it was not what they were promised.

Actually, the media have been negligent on one angle of Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to steal an election. I’ve tried to find out who paid for that six months of appeals, which must have cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. I still don’t know. We need to know who is paying for these Republican attempts to subvert the law, the Constitution, and some of the most important principles of democracy.


2001 Honda Rancher TRX-350, 4-wheel drive, electric shift

I did not need an ATV

For several years I have fantasized about buying an ATV. Everybody has one here in the sticks, whether they can afford it or not. It’s considered essential equipment. I can by no means justify spending much money on an ATV, but I came across a 2001 Honda Rancher 350, well maintained with low mileage. I bought it from the shop that had maintained it. It had been parked for a year. It has new tires and got a thorough servicing including a rebuilt carburetor. It runs perfectly, and, like my 2001 Jeep, I expect it to still be running when I kick the bucket at age 104. It’s a classic.

I like the design of the older Honda ATV’s. The body has soft, curving lines, as opposed to the sharp lines of newer ATV’s. My 2001 model also has a kind — if slightly goofy — face, unlike the aggressive faces of newer ATV’s. I have plenty of woodland trails here to ride it on. I may get a little yard work out of it. And when I’m too lazy to walk the half mile to the mailbox and the half mile back, the ATV will get me there. It will get me outside more. Plus driving it is more of a workout than I would have thought. Steering it is far from effortless, and riding it in hilly woodlands requires a constant shifting of body weight according to the terrain. Maybe it will help keep me young, the better to outlast the fascists.

New glasses

At my age, part of outlasting the fascists is to take care of the brain. We now know how important good vision and good hearing are for keeping the brain healthy and active. It had been almost three years since I got new glasses. I have glasses for reading and glasses for driving, but I particularly notice the improvement with my new reading glasses (which I also use for the computer).

The book is Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford historian. I’ll have more to say about the book when I’ve finished reading it. It’s already pretty familiar terrain to me, though. When I claim that there is nothing on earth more cracker-fed delusional than the church, and when I further claim that there is no subject on which the church is more horsewash whacked than sex, I’m entirely serious. Anyone who doubts it either doesn’t know much about the history of the church or will believe pretty much any old thing as long as they’re told that it came out of the mouth of God.

My eye doctor is in King. That’s where the The Dalton bar and restaurant is, which I’ve written about before. (A Bistro and Bar in Trumptown). As usual, I had the grilled salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and grilled green beans.


I tried to talk the bartender into selling me a half shot of Oban 14, just so I could taste it. But he wouldn’t do it.

Mountain Laurel

Mountain laurel is very common all over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here in the foothills it is less common, but it is very abundant on the ridges and creek valleys around my house. The ATV gets me to places where I’m more able to appreciate it. Just now the mountain laurel is approaching the end of its blooming season. If I had ever seen mountain laurel bloom before, I don’t recall it.


Scottish pie from the high street bakery in Dunbar. One of these is a meat pie, and the other is a fruit pie.

Scotland calling

Travel is another thing that helps me outlast the fascists. I’ve booked a trip to Scotland in late September — a lovely time of year in Scotland. I’ll be hanging out with Ken, of course, near Edinburgh. But also an old friend from California is making his first visit to Scotland, so I’ll meet up with him and tag along for a few days in Aberdeen and Inverness. I have been to Inverness, but not to Aberdeen.


Scottish pie from the high street bakery in Dunbar

Panisses


Chickpea panisses with a dipping sauce made of Greek yoghurt and a pepper sauce. Click here for high-resolution version.

I have never been to the south of France. But I understand that panisses (singular = panisse) are a popular street food there, particularly in Marseilles. I came across a recipe recently online, and I had to make some.

The recipe is simple, though you’ll need to do some frying. Google for the recipe and you’ll find many online. You’ll need a dipping sauce. Pretty much any dipping sauce will do.

The panisses soak up remarkably little oil, probably because the chickpea polenta is saturated with the cooking water and is not thirsty for oil.

I’m always looking for high-protein, low-carb foods. I wish I’d known about these things sooner.


Click here for high-resolution version.