Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 7)

(part1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)
(part 5)
(part 6)

Clearly decades-long friend Spartacus was not in the least interested even in my direct answers to his coldly hostile questions... let alone the reasoning that undergirds my perspective.

He didn't want a dialog. He wanted only to attack, to beat his chest and bellow as king of the hill... while standing in a cesspit. His lifelong open-mindedness was gone; his patient manner had evaporated; his respect for others wrenched into a whip, a goad, a dagger in the back, a sickening fecal firehose on full power.

He responded the next morning to my long, sincere note, where I'd outlined areas I both in fact agreed with him on, and where his vaunted stance was weak, deficient, and unsustainable... and he would have none of it. The admirable open door of his heart and spirit was slammed and soldered shut; and there he stood, arms tightly folded, chin arrogantly thrust out, Mussolini... not the mature man of moderate mind.

From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 8:34 AM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Tar Nation

So the short answer to my question is yes you would. Theoretical life trumps ALL other considerations. A perfect example of the utter stupidity of religion.

Hitler was against abortion too...

My previous reply had gotten nowhere; now, in replying yet again, I would have to repeat a number of things I'd already said clearly – and respectfully – as well as push back even harder... again without taking my gloves off or stepping away from being a patient and respectful gentleman. Something had clearly snapped inside my close friend Spartacus, and I would need to address that, too, and fairly directly. I would lighten things up and counterbalance it all by continuing to sincerely compliment him overall – and point out the terrible contrast between where he was now, and how he always had been. 

From: Aging Child
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 10:52 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tarbrushing Only

Spartacus, my friend, I don't know for certain where you've suddenly broken down inside, or how you've let it happen to you, but in more than twenty years of email, phone calls, visits together, music and laughs and hurts shared, and so much more, you have never attacked my faith, let alone called me a Nazi.

Your determined, relentless, righteous, superficial crusade directed against me is utterly out of keeping with the rare character of the man I've long admired. Your strengths and skills and knowledge I've appreciated and envied and grown from; your experience and perspective have counseled and helped direct many of my more-troubled steps.

Of late your maturity is seemingly out the window, your deep incisive intellect looks to be silted up to a tiny trickle through a flattened gully, and your gentlemanly acceptance that many people do not follow your roadmap… appears utterly snuffed out. Right now you're coming across as a righteous, arrogant, crybaby know-it-all, uninterested in anyone else's perspective than your own, certain of all the quick, easy, pat solutions to the world's array of immense problems, and are utterly disdainful of any other answers to be offered.

Maybe out of your justifiable anger, frustration, and outrage at the course this president has taken, you've grown genuinely frightened; are feeling yourself impotent in the face of a great unconquerable threat. And so, finding yourself in a tight corner, you have to lash out and attack. That's reptile-brain reaction and fear moving you, and guiding your keyboard into vitriol, where for so much of your life there has instead been patience, grown-up reason, and level-headedness. Your commendable restraint and acceptance are devolving badly and alarmingly into juvenile cowardice, arms folded, pout on lips, and choosing personalized tantrum where a deep breath and greater thought and self-reflection are so truly needed. That's il Duce's pose to threats and fear. It was never yours.

Here where you might wisely seize this time of crisis as an opportunity, say, for patient persuasion, you are persuading only a profoundly troubling perception that you are not the least interested in a dialog; that you are unconcerned with a comparison of viewpoints; that your sole focus is the sound of your breast-beating and righteous posturing. I must posit that you're not reading anything that I've written because it runs counter to the mantle you've now chosen to wrap yourself in, and from which you're moved only to take cheap, low-brow potshots. Right now you are choosing to read and see only what you want to see, and nothing else is of worth in your little red book. Come on.

I say that you're much, much better than that. That you're choosing such a low course tears at my heart, and claws deeply and bloodily at my lifelong respect for you. That type of closed-minded self-obsession belongs at the far-far right of the social spectrum, where one finds tea parties, and rifle-toters, and conspiracists, and unyielding hands clutching unacceptable tokens, such as dixie-flags and hooked crosses. The left-of-center, where you've always stood, is about open minds, healing, learning, growth, compassion, conciliation, consensus, common goals and vision — ideals that at the moment you look to have turned your back on; none of them are evident in the cold, unreasoned words and stabs you've been mercilessly taking at me from out of the blue.

This is not the Spartacus I've known and admired and warmly appreciated all these years. He was never shallow, never self-focused, never narrow of mind, never brutal, never vicious, never cruel, never demeaning, never sadistic, never arrogant, never unthinking. What has become of him?

So. Having once again laid out difficult, yet genuinely respectful, words to stake out my parcel of parkland, and certain it'll again be bombarded by further gas-laden shells and jets of flame devouring any waving white flag, let me try once more to address some things you've said. I know you won't read them because of who you unaccountably choose to be at this moment; yet respect for you (and for myself) requires what you've said not be ignored. I challenge you to try the same.

One.

Life in the womb is not "theoretical". It is alive now, today, growing. The child — zygote, embryo, fetus — is not a potential human, but a human with full potential; from day one, its DNA is fully human and is neither the mother's nor the father's. Tearing the child out, dismembering her, decapitating him, because the mother (or/and father) wants to continue living their shallow self-serving life, is every bit as much murder as choking a baby in its crib because it's crying in the wee hours; the difference is one of locale only.

It's not a religious matter. It's pure, raw, demonstrable science: read an embryonics textbook. Religion is simply recognition of the value of life. But it's science that tells us that this, the child in the womb, is alive, is life itself.

Having so easy an out as abortion in a challenging personal situation cheapens the value of life, and of responsibility, and encourages self-service, rather than devotion to and love of others. Being okay with still-warm baby body parts, being fine about a newborn drowned in a bucket in a Planned Parenthood procedure room, means that some essential part of an adult's heart is dead as well. That's inhuman, and inhumane. It poisons our entire culture and species. It is monstrous. It has to end. It brooks no compromise. The struggle against the abortion-minded is a human-rights struggle.

Two.

A common trope is that more wars have been caused, more people have died, because of religion than from any other cause. Simple, stark counterpoint: which religion was Hitler pushing? What spiritual faith was Stalin extolling? Which church did Pol Pot fight on behalf of? Which deity commanded those millions upon millions of deaths? Name the religion. Now name original great Western universities and hospital systems that were not founded by religious organizations.

"Utter stupidity" in fact lies demonstrably in the closed mind and unflexing agenda — and it sincerely troubles me to point out to you that this is the thickest vein coming through your most recent emails. I repeat, and will keep repeating: you are far better than that.

Three.

Your disgust and horror and outrage at the lousy leadership implicit in tens of thousands of American deaths this year is something I share with you. You're attacking me because you've personalized your disgust, and thus I myself must be fully to blame for all those dead countrymen/women, through my agonized choice behind a closed curtain one November. If mine had been the one tiebreaking vote that had kept the president's main opponent out of office, you'd have a case to come at me personally. Since mine wasn't, then you are honor-bound to track down every person who did not vote for that opponent, and berate them every bit as rudely and harshly and immaturely as you've been attacking me; anything less would make a fool and hypocrite out of you… something else my dear friend Sparks has never been.

Is it that the only thing you value in someone today is how much they think and act like you? Where is the mature adult mind in that? Where is the big heart that embraces the differences in all your fellow humans, inside and out? Since when were undifferentiated clones your lone company of choice?

If I am to follow your role model, then, and hold someone solely and unmeritedly, directly responsible for our present great ills — which is what your latest very rude and shallow words have been implying — then you must accept that there is a whole suite of things I am required to coldly and brutally hold you accountable for, or you are embracing a lousy double standard.

Total guilt by clear association:

• Other husbands have knocked their wives' teeth out; you're just as guilty as they, even though you've only been loving and nurturing to your wife, whom I also respect and regard highly; you're still guilty for those other women's batterings because you, too, are a husband, and some husbands see their wives as punching-bags.
• Every bit of woodworking machinery used to tear apart a fresh corpse has your fingerprints on it.
• As a man, you're complicit in the rape of every child.
• As a half-Sicilian, you're also responsible for every bloody machine-gunning by the Cosa Nostra; and as a half-German, the blood and ovens of Buchenwald are under your name.
• As a Caucasian, your knee also was on struggling George Floyd's dying neck.
• As a former-USAF man, you must answer for every American bomb and cruise missile that leveled a hospital and took out a school and apartment block.
• As a resident of a super-big metropolitan area, you're responsible as well for all polluted waters, for stench in the air, for the dead wilds.
• As a man with a beard, that's you sitting on a park bench, eying little girls with bad intent.

Please tell me that the total absurdity of this line of personalized unhelpful response to evil is coming through.

That I have to repeat myself about something so basic and obvious underscores, again, that you're not reading what I've been writing, nor care to. Yet out of love for you, and of unyielding appreciation for all our years, I'll say it again. I did not put this man into office so that he could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The virus that took them was all but nonexistent three and a half years ago; the lousy decisions and nondecisions that exacerbated the plague had not been made. A vote for any candidate is never carte blanche for them to run roughshod over their people.

You have set yourself on a crusade; stop battering your lance and sword on this weathered windmill that is me. What are you personally doing to actually solve this problem? How does shamefully kicking into pitiable ruins a long and deep friendship… redress all the flu-dead? How does that shallow, immature, cowardly betrayal put Trump and his cronies in their proper, deserved places?

I repeat as well: you've personalized your outrage and fear, and are taking repeated aim at an easy target. That's part of why I regretfully have to assert "cowardly" of you, even though till now you've never been a coward.

Get in your car and drive your roiling sense of injustice to Washington DC, to 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, and raise a placard so big and bright that Agent Orange himself can see it, and don't stop until he's on a rail, in tar and feathers, being held down under the waters of the Tidal Basin. Engage your legislators and local electorate to tear them out of office, to sell off all his holdings in full recompense to the parents and children and brothers and sisters of all the dead. Put on some scrubs and volunteer in a hospital, a testing center, a funeral home, and stick with it until the virus and the president are dead and gone.

All those would be worthwhile and honorable, positive channels for you to leverage your great anger and justifiable sense of absolute mission, and sensibly put them toward righting what's badly awry. To instead take the easy, lazy, arrogant, cowardly path of visiting it all on an aging child here at his dilapidated desk, is immensely dishonorable, shameful, unmanly, immature, and disgusting. It is being a pompous, self-righteous playground bully. That's not Spartacus. Make a real difference, not the futile, fruitless, whining, bitter, baby's tantrum you're veering into.

You are far, far better than that… or used to be. I hold you to a much higher standard, one that long inspired and encouraged me. That's Spartacus: hope, not hatred; hand out, not fist drawn; peace, not petty pugilism.

Be your best. That is the man to admire and emulate.

Regards,

Agïng Child

This time, Sparks actually did not respond, and it was a little while before I heard from him again... attacking me from a new angle. (Why?) Before I lay out his next thudding steps, though, I want to dig deeper into how I responded to him here, and earlier, and contrast it with his own bullied tunnel-vision thrusts. Stay tuned.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 6)

(part 1) 
(part 2) 
(part 3) 
(part 4) 
(part 5) 

Another recap is in order: In a longer email to our friend Spartacus, in late June of 2020 (see previous parts here), I'd mentioned – just in passing, and only very briefly – my great worry that the most-recent gatherings of unmasked Americans, whether to celebrate life events or sports, or to protest deep social issues, would serve to spread the unstoppable virus even further, taking many, many more lives.

Overlooking everything I'd shared with him at length in my note, about personally and professionally meeting the virus; about seeing to my mother's (and fellow frail seniors') needs under that virus; and about a possible ray of hope amid it all – even the just-passed (and for now postponed)  Fathers' Day, let alone my family's grief at the recent untimely death of our cousin... overlooking all of this, Sparks had leapt onto a negligible, small piece of my brief afterword, rewritten and recast it, adding an incendiary layer on politics and racism. Where had that come from?

So I took a deep breath, and began the first of three further responses to him that would each be the product of many hours of hard thought, rewrites, and conscious effort to make sure I wasn't directly critical of him in any way – we'd been friends for quite a long time, and knew each other well... didn't we? Weren't we?

There must be no possibility of his mistaking my meaning again. So I took pains to lay out that viral-spreading worry of mine in far greater detail, stressing that I didn't – don't – "demonize" the most-recent protestors, and underscoring as well my full support for their cause. The timing of these protests was tragic, in that they were certain to lead to increased death. I explained that I did find the protests' swerve into violence greatly disturbing, unacceptable, and utterly at odds with protesting in peace for a just grievance – which the movement had. Had had.

Concluding my long note to him, I wrote – and I believe this with all my heart: "Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless."

His terse reply came in the next afternoon. Once again, he ignored everything I'd worked hard to lay out and explain for him, instead shallowly seizing on a lone piece of one concluding sentence, twisted it utterly out of shape and context, and swung it hard across me like a steaming tarbrush:

From: "Spark" le Klaus

Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 1:37 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."

How ironic. So many "good, conscientious" people of faith helped elect 2 monsters in order to theoretically protect theoretical life, but instead of protecting life, their words and actions have resulted in the very real death and destruction of countless lives of actual people. After 3+ years of daily increasing horror and debacle, will you remain a "good Catholic" and help re-elect them if your bishop tells you to?

Okay. Now I had to push back – without losing my cool, and my decades of respect for him. This outright rudeness and hostility was completely out of keeping with how we'd always interacted, and with how he dealt with other people; again, he truly has a big and compassionate heart. It took me over five hours to write and hone an answer that addressed his bitter, near-irrational, veering screed.

Where had it come from?

I was hurt, and worried... and had an idea about the cause behind his bizarre, unfathomable twist. I have never known anything to frighten him or even bring him heavy anxiety, beyond what each man – especially husband and father and breadearner – must confront. Here though, even in his tightly secure home, he was vulnerable to a killer virus that could not be negotiated with or beaten back, could only be – hopefully – held at bay with mask and gloves and buckets of sanitizer and a couple injections and an abundance of social caution. He could only hope it wouldn't catch him and kill him, or his wife, or his children, or all of them. Beyond that, and his few basic safeguards, he was powerless and impotent.

Our Spartacus spent years in the military. If he couldn't stop this direct assault, he could still track down and eliminate its cause, and save this country greater harm. And that's a noble line of response. Could he have concluded, in some bizarre, twisted way, that I myself must be the cause of all the "increasing horror and debacle", because I hadn't voted against the current administration, whose response to the virus had been woefully inadequate?

I signed off with an apt quote from Chesterton – a writer he's read and respects:

From: Aging Child
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 6:55 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tar Nation

Whoah, whoah; down boy!

Spark, please don't take your frustration and anger and justifiable rage at this administration out on me. My vote three and a half years ago was to keep a committed baby killer out of office; it wasn't a mandate for her opponent to kill some 125,000 Americans through arrogance and indifference.

The administration's bullheaded obliviousness to the virus, as threat and grim reaper, has been a heavy factor in all those deaths. So has our culture's, and individual people's, own stubbornness and wishful thinking in the face of the threat and its horrid toll. It is not okay yet to go back to the beach, the coffee shop, the crowded department store.

My daughters, my mother, my pastor, my bishop, my pope, even Jesus Christ Himself, does not pull my strings, let alone my election-booth levers. I vote by my conscience, which is informed by my faith, which holds all life as sacred and deserving of nurturing, protecting, and improving.

So: let's change the 2016 election, and put Trump's main opponent into office instead. Let's say she took heavy-handed steps against the virus early on, and kept the mortality rate closer to Germany's of some 5% – not bloody likely in our culture, so let's assume a 7% mortality rate, still, rather than the current almost-16% (as of 4:33 this afternoon). And let's assume half as many positive cases at this point – again, not likely; the lion's share of the vectors aren't under federal control, short of breaking out the brown shirts and goose-steps.

That would yield about 400,000 domestic positives so far (versus the actual 805,000+), and some 20-30,000 Americans dead. Is that a number you could be happy with? You'd be content that 30,000 Americans would now be dead under her administration? Or is your contention that a different backside in the oval office would have kept the virus out of this country entirely, and there'd be zero deaths stateside, while the rest of the world is bulldozed into mass graves?

125,000 deaths is unacceptable. 20-30,000 is unacceptable. 104 dead Australians is unacceptable.

During the prior administration, this country averaged over 2,700 babies murdered in the womb daily: nearly 8,000,000 from 2013-2018 – these are Guttmacher numbers... and gut-wrenching numbers as well.

That's what I voted against: a world where it's okay to kill a baby, and okay to kill a senior citizen, an invalid; where life is cheap, and is measured only by its convenience to someone else who has the power to take it away mercilessly and without a second thought.

Out of faith, out of valuing the lives of the oldest and youngest and most vulnerable, I made the only sane and compassionate choice I could make, short of withholding my vote entirely (and thus failing of my civic duty), or selecting a less-distasteful candidate, who hadn't a chance of defeating the pro-abortion juggernaut.

And I'm as aggravated as you with nearly everything Trump and his yes-men and -women have done with their executive power in the maddening span since. He has also defunded abortion organizations domestic and international, and pushed back prior regulations requiring religious organizations to provide abortion and related services, a violation of the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment.

All this does not excuse or make acceptable his willful ignorance in the extent of the death and damage this pandemic has brought our country. It does not; nor am I a supporter of anything he or his people do that is not good for Americans collectively and individually. To assume otherwise of me is to blindly wield a tarbrush as wide and indiscriminate as any that's disgustingly used on the far right. You are better than that, and I've always liked that about you.

Spartacus, my friend, please take a deep breath, and step back. I'm not Donald Trump; I'm not anywhere in his corner of lowbrow kowtowers. Please hold fast to your very own commendable words and outlook, that "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue".

Nobody said it was easy. It's not; I know.

Regards,
Mïchael
The world pays a compliment to the Catholic Church by not tolerating in her all the transgressions that the world willingly tolerates everywhere else. — G. K. Chesterton

[More follows; Spartacus would shallowly ignore every step of my reasoning that I'd laid out for him here, as well as little olive branches I'd scattered among my robust counterarguments to his rude characterizations. He was not interested in a rational, intelligent dialog; and his increasingly malicious posturing would only worsen. The stench of tar and feces from my many-decades' friend was thickening... and sickening.]

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 3)

(part 1)

(part 2)

By early summer of 2020, deaths in the United States from the still-unstopped coronavirus were already exceeding 125,000, barely a scant half-year since its first domestic toehold, with heavy prospects of deaths rising far, far higher. Most public gathering-places were just beginning to open again, although still to restricted numbers of patrons – e.g., restaurants and grocery stores and so on – and limited to drive-through and pick-up, etc., business.

I think the two biggest factors in the lack of control over the spread of the virus in the U.S. were two: 1) At-times too-timid response from the federal government, and most state governments, to more forcefully prohibit gatherings of people early on in order to bring down the transmission rate. (Note, though, that at the same time that ministers were being arrested for holding religious services, casinos were allowed to remain open – arguably bespeaking a clear governmental bias against spiritual expression, despite the First Amendment's free-exercise clause.)

As counterpoint, though: Americans have a poor history of following governmental mandates; one clear-and-simple case in point is the difficulty in emplacing universal requirements to just wear a motorcycle helmet... an obvious, sensible practice that shouldn't even be an issue. And so, very strong mandates to wear masks, and to (selectively) not congregate, wouldn't be followed to the degree they must be followed. Too many folks – particularly on the right – see such practical restrictions as curtailments of enshrined natural liberty... but it wasn't a matter of suppressing proud, individual citizens' freedom and independence; it was to ensure cooperation in protecting and saving the lives of many, many others.

This doesn't mean that laws and mandates should not have been emplaced – they most-definitely were needed, and should have been even stronger (and more consistent). They simply were spurned and not followed by people who were sure they knew better, and who were measuring clear common sense by how inconvenient common sense's dictates were to them. Many, many of these stubbornly unmasked people soon became cold statistics, underscoring the absolute necessity of such difficult mandates. The more sensible stayed at home, sanitized, wore masks... and waited for their next stimulus check.

2) Building on that, another obvious big vector of the virus's spreading even further was the series of protests over the cold murder of George Floyd by a police officer, as well as the shooting-death of Breonna Taylor by police, both these victims unarmed African-Americans. The two deaths clearly pointed out the entrenched racism in too many Caucasian-heavy metropolitan police forces. I supported the protestors, and the Black Lives Matter movement – so long as we include unborn black lives; anything less fosters racism, given that three times as many Black babies as Whites are killed in American abortions. With African-Americans comprising less than 13% of the American populace to White America's nearly 58%, some 39% of all American abortions are to Black mothers. These are Planned Parenthood's own statistics, via their Guttmacher Institute; it is immediately demonstrable that Planned Parenthood specifically targets the Black and Brown communities. And:

These protests and their movement lost my support once they turned to violence – especially in vandalism and looting of local businesses, and in murder (over two dozen lives were lost). The protest movement was hijacked by criminal opportunists, besmirching and supplanting the needful call for addressing and fighting against racism. You don't redress choking an innocent and helpless man... by torching a car dealership, by plundering and burning down dozens of businesses. We saw that same criminal idiocy three decades ago after the 1992 acquittal of a trio of Los Angeles police officers who had been witnessed and filmed brutally beating unarmed Rodney King. At least 63 people were killed over six days, nearly twice as many as were lost during the Watts anti-racism riots twenty-seven years earlier yet. We have learned nothing since then. And I say that from my firm personal stance against racism, against police brutality. We are capable of far, far better.

The initial 2020 protests, again, were understandable – yet also a) gathering hundreds of unmasked people together was stupid and unacceptable, regardless of the objective and cause; and b) months of seething tempers over being cooped up at home, over normal activities and businesses shut down, fed even more heat into the movement, contorting it into what became a disgraceful show of cathartic madness that did nothing to address what had been originally protested against: race-based murder and abuse by professionals trained and sworn to protect those very same people. I'd be interested to see reliable statistics on how many coronavirus deaths resulted specifically from those mass gatherings.

Oh, and the associated movement of Defund the Police was also stupid and short-sighted. Criminal police officers must be held fully accountable for their actions; likewise, their superiors who protect them. Suspend them and try them; if convicted, fire and jail them. Period. But shut down and remove the police entirely, and you've pulled the pin out of the live hand grenade that a lot of American inner cities and schools have become. Interestingly, and sensibly, in the two years since, communities have lately been quietly bringing police officers back into schools. They shouldn't be needed there in the first place. But the shamefully easy access of firearms to practically any young American, combined with ever-growing individual self-focus, means that our children are unsafe in what should be a very safe environment. That shouldn't surprise; babies aren't safe in their mother's wombs anymore, either – why wouldn't their older brothers and sisters (and grandparents, for that matter) be any less vulnerable to murder in this toxic, violent, arrogant, selfish culture?

Yes, this is still about our friend Spartacus, whose own outlook, I believe, has closely paralleled my own on matters of racial justice, and corruption in politics and the police. Here I've been laying out background and context, key elements of which a decades-long friendship has plenty. More shortly.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 2)

(part 1 here)

I don't recall how much I discussed my forced 2016 electoral choice with friend Spartacus... and at the moment am not supremely inclined to search for that among our 24 years' worth of email. I'm sure we took up the subject, though in brief, and I explained that my moral and ethical commitment (not merely religious commitment) to the sanctity of human life had brought me to where I could no longer support any political person or effort that ran counter to protecting human life at all its stages, regardless of how much my heart still lay with the Democratic party overall.

Our friendship continued; we were bigger than any differences and outlooks. That's friends from the heart... and increasingly too rare in our world.

Some three years after the election, I got a call from my sister Alicia, even more state lines away from me than Spartacus. Cammie, a dear friend of my sister and her immediate family, had recently passed away from cancer. As executors of her will, Alicia and her husband Levi now found themselves with an extra car... would I like it?

I certainly would! My Honda PoC was shedding oil and parts faster than I could cram scant $$ back into it to keep it moving. The car they offered was a near-pristine 2009 model that had seen very little use during Cammie's exclusive ownership, only a scant 9,000 miles over ten-plus years. Per Cammie's estate, her car wouldn't be free – but the purchase amount my sister named put it in my astonished reach. (I learned later that other family members chipped in further... which was all the more touching.) I would just have to find my way over some 450-ish miles to pick it up.

The car wasn't ready just then for me to get it, fortunately granting me time to stack up more shekels, and make plans for its retrieval. And then, come Spring 2020, Alicia let me know I could now drive up for the car.

At that point, though, thanks to (supposedly) some Chinese lab or farmers' market, the entire country was completely locking down, to the point where interstate travel was nearly illegal. After shutting down for two weeks, the medical practice where I work had come open again (with many restrictions and limitations to keep patients and staff safe), and I was issued papers showing I could travel on behalf of the practice.

Yet travel was still too dangerous to one's health – the death rate was climbing exponentially, and no one was out of danger's reach. I received both doses of the Moderna vaccine, and worked more on the travel plans. And no matter how I mapped it, the only practical one-day route to Alicia and Levi's home was right through the center of one of the nation's two biggest viral-hotspot metropolitan regions (e.g., there'd been word of mass graves, in the news).

It also would take me within rental-car honking-distance of Spartacus's tight-locked compound. He and I discussed this via email, but concluded, first, that the trip wasn't worth the risk to health; and, second, that it would not be safe for me to stop by, either – not for me, nor for his wife and kids. In fact, he very understandably and very strongly advised me against making the trip at all; I agreed – he has a good sense for practical and realistic matters. I'm more prone to wishful thinking, and more than once he's been the perfect litmus strip.

Over the next few months, things slowly began to lighten up, in terms of transportation and socially-distant interactions. Early on, my mother's nursing home had suspended all visits with family members – wisely; among its 100 or so patients, nineteen had caught and died from the virus. Administration there been very strict, and that had kept their patients' losses low... whereas another facility just a block from my and my mother's home had lost nearly seventy patients.

Mother's nursing home had limited the family interactions to virtual visits via Zoom, and visiting/chatting from outdoors, through the patients' windows, for a few minutes. We did both, mostly through Mother's window: brother Sarge and our other sister Mew, and some of the grandchildren, made avail of the opportunity, really lifting (Grand)Mother's spirit... and probably also that of the hard-working, PPE-laden staff assisting and sometimes translating.

Mother and I were both born just outside a colonial-era city... and Alicia and her family live just a few miles away from there. So in mid-July, a week after Mother's birthday, I let her know (through the window) that I would be driving up there the following weekend, to the city she (and I) had always loved, and wanted to return to. I saw her eyes grow really wide as she lay there in her bed: clearly she was pleased with the news, and agreed when I told her I wished she could come along with me. But I'd show her the car as soon as I'd get back, and we could drive right up there once it was completely safe.

Resting there in bed after her lunch, Mother's mood and focus on us were very good; the nurse/aide assisting us through Mother's window showed Sarge and me the book Mother had been reading the last couple days: Motherhood Is Murder, something right up the alley of her crime-story-loving maternal heart! So I'd be out of town that next weekend, not able to make my usual visit, though Sarge (and likely some other family members) would happily fill in and keep her entertained... and vice-versa.

I scheduled that next Friday and Monday off from work; I'd planned out ever step of my itinerary, including a one-night layover with Alicia and her family, before about-facing behind the wheel of new(er) car, with rental vehicle contractually dropped off. Interstate transport restrictions had been largely lifted, and I deemed I could make the trip safely with masks, prudence, inflexible social distance, thanatophobic caution, and a thick supply of sanitizing lotion and wipes... all of which I had in abundance.

I wouldn't detour en route and visit Spartacus's fortress, much though I'd like to see and BS with him again, and his family. So I didn't let him know I'd nonetheless be in their neighborhood, just en passant – what would be the point? I had a feel as well that he would regard the long drive as unwise, bordering on foolishly (even suicidally) stupid. He may well have been right... though, for the record, let me state that I did survive, returned with the car (RIP, Cammie; and thanks, Alicia), never contracting so much as a sniffle twixt Alicia's home and mine.

More later...

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 1)

Both readers of this long-running (and at times long-dormant) blog likely remember many-years' friend Spartacus. A quick visit to the searchbox there on this page's northwest corner will turn up a warm number of times where he's very illuminatively weighed in on something I've passed along here, or has himself shared something of particular note. He's even taken the blog's mike – well, keyboard – more than once. Go ahead; check 'em out.

We met in elementary school more years ago than I can believe, and with mutual friend Eileen were the Huey, Dewey, and Louie of the playground. Then after just a couple fun and busy years, Spart's family moved a number of state lines away, and after a few letters we fell out of touch.

About three decades later (that can't be right), I located him online and reached out... and in a particularly short time we were close friends all over again. I found him to be sharp-minded, knowledgeable among a dizzyingly wide range of fields, including avionics and history of both Europe and of music. He is skilled in a number of art media, from intricate model aircraft, to palette and canvas, to fine-crafted (and rough-hewn) wood, to electronic music, and far more yet. I admire (and have envied) these exceptional skills... and have very few equivalents of my own.

We found ourselves on largely parallel paths politically as well, pitched well to the left of center: distrustful of entrenched politicians; advocate of the overlooked and underrepresented; anti-NRA, anti- big-business, anti-conservative, and so on. Economically, he considered himself an anarcho-syndicalist, while I was beginning to discover distributism.

And thus we were for a good many more years, buddies over the miles and internet, armchair scientists (and SF-readers), fellow snarkers via email, occasionally visiting each other's homesteads and families, and sharing tales of respective journeys and discoveries, and the every-so-often off-color chuckle.

Yet at the time that our now-adult friendship began to coalesce, my Catholic faith was returning to me, and vice-versa. Over the succeeding years it continued to deepen and flesh out, and enrich and inform and direct my inner life and values... in turn directing my outer actions.

Spartacus is (I believe) agnostic, and distrustful of organized religion... and I can't blame him, given the wealth of religious hypocrites and the hypocrisy of the wealthy "religious". Throughout nearly all our modern-years' friendship, he has been especially polite and respectful in regards to my ever-deepening faith, keeping his own read and opinion silently to himself. This was very rare to find, and I appreciated it. Nor has it ever been in my nature be a proselytizer, so I had no sense that what my heart had come to embrace could come across to him as obnoxious.

The growth in me of faith led to a shift in how I applied it to the world around me, most especially socially and politically. I was proud to have voted – twice – for an African-American for president, even while finding a growing discomfort within at how closely the Democratic Party, and seemingly its entire slate, from Commander-In-Chief to downtown dogcatcher, had blindly and resolutely aligned itself with values and objectives I could no longer align myself with, not and be the Catholic I wanted and needed to be. I've been a registered Democrat since my late teens, but, to paraphrase St. Thomas More, I am the king's good servant – and the Lord's first.

One of those troubling political thrusts is abortion... and long before Barack Obama finished out his second term, I realized I simply could no longer mark the ballot checkbox next to any candidate supporting that issue. At some other place on this blog, I'd like to detail why it's glaringly clear that abortion is cold-hearted infanticide, hand-in-glove with racism and entrenched political misogyny. Right now, and in immediately following posts, we're looking at a maelstrom-sized, inexplicable sea-change in a greatly valued friend, man, buddy... and that same rich and world-spanning sea turned shallow and stagnant and unnavigable.

And so at the next election – 2016 – I greatly wanted to cast my vote for the country's first major-party woman candidate for president... and simply could not. The alternative was to not vote, which would be to abandon my social duty, or to select another candidate. Decades ago, faced with a similar pair of unpalatable opponents, my father defiantly wrote in Mickey Mouse on his ballot.

I considered that, but chose instead to vote for the candidate most likely, if possible, to beat the former First Lady... and that happened to be the arrogant, pompous, womanizing jerk Donald Trump – who had also come down firmly on the pro-life side, where I myself was anchored. So come election day, I pinched my nose hard enough that it nearly bled, and pulled his box's lever.

We know how that election turned out; more later.

The Post: From Beacon and Leader, to Blind Lemming

At the expense of sounding like a conservative, let alone a stuck record (or flawed CD), I've got to howl out loud about yet another abomination:

 

I've linked the particular Washington Post article behind the above synopsis… and I totally agree if you feel no need to sully your summer afternoon with that bit of filth.

The left has largely shaken loose of its common sense… and has clearly failed BIO 101 as well. So let me take the lectern and address this monster personally: If you have a uterus, particularly a functional uterus, you are a woman. Period.

You're not a "he"; you're not "transitioning" into a sex that can never be yours; you're an XY for life – get over it. You can take all the chemicals and lab-fashioned hormones you want, to force your body to unnaturally grow facial hair; you can even have the doctor sew you up, stitch on a prosthesis, lop off your mammaries – you're still a woman. (And what did all those hormones do to the baby in your uterus – did you even consider that? Or do you value your "beard" and spotlight more than protecting a helpless, innocent child? Where in that is the "love" you profess?)

There's no such thing as "transgender", unless you're a rare species of fish, or living inside an Ursula K. Le Guin novel. At most, the only "trans" you are is a transvestite, and indulging in your disorder and living a deluded life – with the arrogant desire to be applauded for it. Well, I'm not clapping; if you see my hands together, it's in prayer for you both, and the poor kids… and the world you want all of us to live in.

And if this were simply harmlessly funny, instead of personally disgusting and socially demoralizing, I'd toss out a pun of "delusions of gender". But I'm not laughing.

Deep breath; end of current screed. All that is yet another darling of the left that I'm no part of, and voted against in November.

I'm also not subscribing to that paper – I'll still buy the Sunday issue, but I'm going to don latex gloves first… if I can get them past these extended fingers.

Thinking It Through

The other day, I baited the hook and tossed it out into the far-right end of the pond, to get a weigh-in from my conservative Brazil-raised nurse friend, Senhora N. Fermeira…

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 12:44 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: Intriguing Thought-Experiment

This from the funday sunnies:

I think it's way too simplistic… but also great fodder for many alternate-world novels.

Regards,

Gene

Give peace, O Lord, to those who wait for You; hear the prayers of Your servants, and guide us in the way of justice. — Sirach 36

…and she came out swinging her Bible belt:

From: N. Fermeira [mailto:Senhora@Yabbadoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 5:30 PM
To: Aging Child <AGeneChilde@YouWho.com>
Subject: Re: Intriguing Thought-Experiment

It is UTTERLY pagan.

I don't enjoy alternate-world/dimension fiction since I became a Believer. I like my science fiction firmly planted in the real and the really possible. I wouldn't have a problem with a novel imagining an extension of the Created Universe --

"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's provision." ― J. Hudson Taylor

Okay; got it.

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 5:45 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: Wringing the Bell

I hadn't thought of the pagan side of it — which is why I run some of these odd ideas by you, and your well-anchored feet.

Beyond the simplism, I also see wishful thinking in cartoonist Darren Bell's dream. And you're right, further, in this way: anyone can come up with an imaginary, different-world scenario, and then retrofit steps backward to make it credible… to those who don't look beyond the surface, or who have a weak grounding in reality. Well, it's not credible. Intriguing idea, yes, but there are more ideas than there are people… and on average, the quality of those ideas is all over the board as well, and weighted toward not just unreal, but utterly unrealistic.

I think I mirror your perspective, in that I don't read fantasy, except a) Tolkien's; and, b), a teeny handful by sturdy, first-rate SF writers (exactly two come to mind). I want the real, too; and not the haphazard, random, unstructured. I believe the Greeks called that Chaos.

And speaking of Greek fire and Roman candles, I hope there'll be great (and safe!!) fireworks for you and the herd this evening. Ciao bella!

Acropolitanly,

Gene

Give peace, O Lord, to those who wait for You; hear the prayers of Your servants, and guide us in the way of justice. — Sirach 36

Bell certainly thought through a lot of steps; it's not a shallow idea… but, no, not realistic. Still, the best SF, and the pinch of very-good Fantasy, is almost always written from a keen what-if perspective. And though Senhora wouldn't, I myself would read an alternate-worlds novel set in that milieu.

I'm not dismissive of what-if… but it's certainly a mule I can ride too much, far into that kingdom of wishful thinking. And did I mention I don't have a GPS?

My next fishhook into the water was a pair of fantasy novels that I mailed down to her for her summer birthday, Niven and Pournelle's great take on Dante, Inferno, and its more-recent sequel, Escape From Hell. She liked them.

Most Serious and Determined Mater

Nope; I haven't abandoned this blog… these last few weeks have seen me swimming in the deep end of family history: old photographs, letters, documents and more. I'm learning more about people I knew, or knew about, long ago… whom I'm also part of, and vice-versa. Where it's Germans, I have fun learning and translating. And where it's American/Commonwealth, I find I've picked up some of the fascinating work my mother started on before her strokes, and which has lain idle and waiting nearly eight years… to a couple centuries. Cool!

Calvinist nurse-friend Senhora gave me an opportunity to come up for air this afternoon, with a link to a conservative article about the seemingly "good intentions" of the Second Vatican Council, versus the lousy fruit that came up in its wake:

From: N. Fermeira [mailto:Senhora@Yabbadoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 10:52 AM
To: Aging Child <AGeneChilde@YouWho.com>
Subject: Interested in your reaction to this article (not an anti-Catholic one)

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/mater_si_magistra_no_renewal_of_tradition_in_the_catholic_church_.html

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 12:06 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: Mater et Magistra

Will do, ma'am – I've got it up onscreen right now, and will start on in. Anti-Catholic I can handle… there's little that's as challenging as one of Jack Chick's intractable tracts, or marching Orangemen. More this afternoon; cheers!

(I'm not going to reproduce the article here; have a look yourself; I'll wait. While reading the article, I swung over to Catholic Answers for a nonsecular look at the Council and its impact. There I found a piece written by keen authority and writer Marcellino d'Ambrosio, "The Unfinished Business of Vatican II". I quoted it just a bit (and should have attributed it as well); it helped knowledgeably counterbalance what outside-looking-in insisted on seeing.)

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 2:03 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: Mater Ecclesia

Okay…

At first pass – still reading the article/editorial…

The writer's dead-on, in that quite a number of stupid and just-plain wrong things cropped up in the Church in the wake of Vatican II; and he does seem to be calling for a return to how the Church had done things for generations and centuries. But he's dead wrong in saying (or at least implying and presenting) that these things were brought about because of the Council.

His thrust is the tack/slant of a lot of Western secular journalism in looking at the postconciliar Catholic Church: an inerrant "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" about visible/outward changes in the Church from the late 1960s on out: these changes came after the Council, therefore they're the Council's fault and doing. The writer – Pulitzer-Prize winner that he is – does not quote even one Conciliar document to back that up, and by tone and context simply cites the vague "spirit of Vatican II" as cause and fulcrum and mandate for those changes.

Every major Council has been followed by decades of reflection and debate – e.g., the Council of Trent (1546–64) mandated the creation of the Church's first seminary system… but it took a century and a half before that vision was made a reality. And Councils are also followed by immediate misunderstanding (both inside and outside of the Church), knee-jerk reflexive, too-soon leaps out of the gate, and missteps and fits and starts.

So it's certainly been the same with Vatican II!

The Council (e.g., in "Sacrosanctum Concilium") did not mandate building churches more like Frank Lloyd Wright works; nor moving the tabernacle; nor replacing crucified Christ with resurrected/risen Christ. It did call for greater participation by the laity, and for bringing the Mass more directly to them, which included the liturgical shift from Latin to the vernacular. But Latin was never dropped, never banned – and absolutely retains a place of prominence in the Church in both liturgy and administration.

Nor was the Council convened for "altering the liturgy and dispensing with centuries of tradition to appease a world society"; nor was it "the impetus behind the liberalization of the Catholic Church". However… assumptions made about the Council, and serious misinterpretations of its objectives and directives, were used as impetus (i.e., excuse/rationale) for some agenda-driven in-ecclesiam people to make drastic changes that were not called for, and were profoundly counter to the Church and Council's mission, means, and method. So, for just one example, nuns shucked their habits in favor of pants suits and even short skirts. (Today, the nuns' orders that are seeing the greatest number of new – and young – members are those with traditional, floor-length habits. The liberalized ones are dying out.)

In fact, the Council was called in response to a serious pastoral crisis, not a dogmatic one: this was on the eve, and right in the midst, of great cultural shifts and revolutions – but it wasn't called to kowtow to or leap on board with those movements. In a nutshell, the goal of the Council was to equip the Church to effectively re-evangelize the world through a compelling proclamation of Christ in a language that the world could understand (hence the vernacular).

The Council also sought to revitalize Christians by reconnecting them with the sources of faith and life: the Bible, the liturgy, and the Fathers of the Church. And a more accurate self-understanding on the part of the Church was needed, so that clergy and laity could more clearly understand their own roles in fulfilling the mission of evangelization that Jesus had entrusted to the Church.

The article's writer connects and contrasts shifts in society and culture away from religion and religion-derived values, with the Council – although, he more realistically concedes, "it would be unwise to ascribe a cause-and-effect relationship between Mass attendance and Vatican II". Correct! Those shifts were already in motion when the Council Fathers first sat down together in 1962, and are the milieu and context which all of Christendom engages, in which it lives today – not a response to the Council.

He's also dead-wrong in saying the Council was convoked to "appease a modernizing world, not surrender to it". Huh? In essence and practice, appeasement is surrender; and the Church does neither. It reaches out. And it doesn't change its mission: it's never wavered on any key doctrine: marriage, life (e.g., abortion), mission.

The nearest I've seen to "appeasement" in the Church is at the local level: 1990s lectionaries and hymnbooks with "inclusive language", where God is no longer "he", for instance; churches with no visible tabernacle, no visible suffering Christ. These aren't Rome's doings; they're diocesan, and regional – and have in fact been thrust back out again, such as with updates to the Mass late in 2011.

In all, our author is fairly right-on in describing the symptoms – but not in their cause, nor what's incubated the symptoms. He cites two responses the Church can make: return to tradition… which, in fact, the Church never left. And what it's been doing of late is that very return to tradition: excising some of local, modernist accretions. (But there, he skirts and skates close to the schismatics, such as the Society of St. Pius the Tenth, who have been more Catholic and more holy than the Pope since 1958.)

The other response would be, stupidly, for the Church to withdraw from the world and wash its hands, while also folding them in prayer. Yet Jesus (and His apostles and saints) walked right into the world's problems and issues, head on, and He poured out all His blood for them; that's the only approach the Church can give. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church (Tertullian). Mother Teresa lived that… her sisters' churches don't even have pews, let alone plush kneelers…

I've urged it before: we don't need a faith that merely affirms us – that would be the Unitarians down the road, or the United Church of Canada. Our faith must challenge us… again, following in Jesus' footsteps: "You've heard it said that… But I say that…" shows up six times in Matthew 5 alone. And that is the Church.

Regards,

Gene

Although you Have not seen Him, you love Him; even though you do not see Him now, yet believe in Him, you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, as you attain the goal of your faith. — 1 Peter 1:8-9

And I heard back fairly quickly… considering that Senhora N. Fermeira and I both lead busy lives.

From: N. Fermeira [mailto:Senhora@Yabbadoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 4:52 PM
To: Aging Child <AGeneChilde@YouWho.com>
Subject: Re: Mater Ecclesia

I didn't take it that the author was saying the Council caused the undesirable consequences -- more that the cultural climate of the times resulted in a warping of the laudable goals of the Council. I think the same happened in Protestantism. Of course I have no expertise on Catholic history so can't -- nor do I wish to -- dispute your assertions based on your own familiarity with that history.

I was more taken with his observation that traditionalist may ultimately be the only Catholics (and Protestants too!) left upholding the Christian faith. And it was interesting that some are advocating a withdrawal to monastic communities by the true believers.

Anyway, thanks for the thorough analysis. :)

The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the medieval picturesqueness of one, with the modern conveniences of the other.

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

I'd braced myself for a loose step… and it wasn't there at all; huh.

From: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 5:37 PM
To: Senhora@Yabbadoo.com
Subject: RE: Ecclesial Mater

Most welcome, N! I always fret that when I weigh in long-distance, the recipient will growl and gnash… so thank you for letting me know how the article came across to you. And I appreciate your take; that actually helps me along!

(Just now heard on a streamed program, quoting Fulton Sheen: "It's impossible to lose your footing on your knees.")

That darned cultural climate! And der Heilige Geist (Holy Ghost/Spirit) is discarded in favor the zeitgeist… brother! I think that the majority of the folks who sought/worked to "update" the Catholic Church did so out of naïveté and good intentions (paving the road to…), rather than manipulativeness and an agenda even to overturn: they were good-hearted, but clueless.

The same, I think also, probably applies to the protestant world… but if I assert that really strongly, I'd be doing it outside of my own reckoning. My sense, though, is that when the Seventh Lambeth Conference in 1930, in Resolution 15, green-lit contraception, the first big appeasement domino fell… and with "I'm OK, You're OK", four decades later, just about all of the protestant shepherds leapt into the life-is-cheap pool… instead of pulling the sheep out of it.

So… yah; unless Jesus was really a married gay abortion doctor who drove a brand-new Lamborghini, it's only a (re)turn to the tradition that will save Christendom, both outside of and within the walls of the Vatican… and at the soup kitchen. Anything less… well, one scriptural passage that's always troubled me is Matthew 7:21-23:

Not everyone who says to Me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in Heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, "Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in Your name? Didn't we drive out demons in Your name? Didn't we do mighty deeds in Your name?" Then I will declare to them solemnly, "I never knew you."

You know I'm all for monastic/professed communities! But the Church (on either side of the Tiber) simply can't respond to the present day like the proverbial ostrich, and retreat so far back into the cloister that that's all that's left of it. His church will always have to go out to the people (Jesus spent a lot of time in Samaria!) – it's good for the humility of the shepherds, and brings hope to where it's needed most.

Okay; now, sing along with me: "Brighten the corner where you aaaare…"

Regards,

Gene

Although you Have not seen Him, you love Him; even though you do not see Him now, yet believe in Him, you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, as you attain the goal of your faith. — 1 Peter 1:8-9