Tuesday, January 10, 2017

There's righteous wrath....


Context is all.

This is how you use Twitter.

Damn!  And I mean it:  damn!

And to repeat what Ms. Streep said:

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. O.K., go on with it.

Yes; speaking of your broken heart and the problem of public figures modeling disrespect for private figures (could you identify the reporter Trump was referring to from a photograph?) is an unforgivable throwing of gasoline on the national dumpster fire.  Speaking truth about a bully is beyond the limits of political discourse and an insult to the body politic?

Seriously:  has the whole country gone mad?
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Monday, January 09, 2017

Happy Days are Here Again

So, what Trump said:

I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation.

While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.

Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks. I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm. Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America’s safety and security will be my number one priority.

Which is NOT what Julian Assange has been saying.  But note, too, it's not what the publicly released report said, either:


U.S. intelligence officials released the 25-page public version of the report Friday, after they briefed President-elect Donald Trump and top lawmakers on Capitol Hill from a longer, classified version.

The report says Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's long-standing desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order. It says the scope of Russia's activities was significantly larger compared with previous operations.

This is an excerpt from the public report:

We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign then focused on undermining her expected presidency. 

It doesn't say they wanted Trump to win; but it does say they were glad he did.


There's the simple fact that just two weeks before a new President is sworn into office, the country's intelligence agencies are publicly releasing a report claiming that the United States' great 20th century rival, Russia, conspired to assist in that new President's election. Step back and just absorb that. That is simply mind-boggling. Who could have imagined such a thing, such a confluence of events - the original act, the IC's claims - would ever happen. Here's the report.

[* ed.note: There's nothing crazy about being skeptical or disbelieving intelligence analyses. What's clear in this case is that if there are good reasons for skepticism, they have nothing to do with why Trump insists it's not true.]
If democracy starts to die in America at this point, it will be because we didn't take this foreign threat to our government seriously enough.   Which the report also has something to say about:

We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts in the United States and worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes. We assess the Russian intelligence services would have seen their election influence campaign as at least a qualified success because of their perceived ability to impact public discussion.

Putin’s public views of the disclosures suggest the Kremlin and the intelligence services will continue to consider using cyber-enabled disclosure operations because of their belief that these can accomplish Russian goals relatively easily without significant damage to Russian interests.

Russia has sought to influence elections across Europe. We assess Russian intelligence services will continue to develop capabilities to provide Putin with options to use against the United States, judging from past practice and current efforts.  Immediately after Election Day, we assess Russian intelligence began a spearphishing campaign targeting US Government employees and individuals associated with US think tanks and NGOs in national security, defense, and foreign policy fields. This campaign could provide material for future influence efforts as well as foreign intelligence collection on the incoming administration’s goals and plans.
 Because despite what Donald Trump thinks, it's not just about his election, or about American elections; it really is about national security, and the rest of the free world.  Because:

Immediately after Election Day, Russia began a "spear-phishing" campaign to try to trick people into revealing their email passwords, targeting U.S. government employees and think tanks that specialize in national security, defense and foreign policy, the report released on Friday said.

"This campaign could provide material for future influence efforts as well as foreign intelligence collection on the incoming administration's goals and plans," the report said.
Then again, Trump knows best:






 As Charlie Pierce put it:

The president-elect has to condemn this, openly and categorically. The Republican leadership in the Congress has to be right behind him while he does it. His transition team needs to release everything it knows about their end of this business, and they have to waive immunity and open themselves up to questioning by the special committee of the Congress that this information demands. If none of these things happen, then the transition team, the president-elect for which it works, and the congressional majorities that share its party affiliation have failed the country and have forfeited a good part of their political legitimacy.

I'm not holding my breath.

So really, in two weeks, this completely becomes a non-issue; or a fight between the Senate and the White House.

Happy days are here again.

 (On the upside, it now takes Trump three tweets to express a complete thought.  Is our children learning?)

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Who you gonna believe?



Me? Or your lyin' eyes?

“That is not what he did and he has said that 1,000 times,” [Kellyanne Conway] said Monday morning. “Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt?”

[CNN "New Day" host Chris] Cuomo shot back, “He can say it a million times but look at the video... he’s making a disgusting gesture on video.”

“Why is everything taken at face value?” she asked. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart, you always want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”
This is where I get to quote Jeremiah:

The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse--
who can understand it?
I the LORD test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

Can we judge the heart; or the actions?  And must we disregard whatever Trump says until his handlers can translate it?  Is that what she's telling the world?

And, as Chris Cuomo says, if Trump didn't mean to mock the man, why not just apologize?  Doesn't that tell us what's in Trump's heart?
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Season of Epiphany 2017


'Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul'
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray;
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of 'is and seems'
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.

Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.


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The Beat Goes On







In 11 days, these will be Presidential pronouncements.

And by the way:



And this is what Ms. Streep said that enraged the PEOTUS (I would recommend reading the whole speech; context is all):

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. O.K., go on with it.
That instinct to humiliate goes on, too.  Because the best defense is to say:  "I know you are, but what am I?"


Happy days are HERE again!*

*The full take-down of Trump's original comments is here.
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Sunday, January 08, 2017

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.....

Catching up with what was cached during the 12 days:
“Grow up, Donald, grow up. Time to be an adult, you’re president,” Biden said in an interview with PBS NewHour. “You’ve got to do something. Show us what you have. You’re going to propose legislation, we’re going to get to debate it. Let the public decide. Let them vote in Congress. Let’s see what happens.”

“It’s going to be much clearer what he’s for and against, and what we’re for and against, now that it’s going to get down to actually discussing, in detail, these issues that affect people’s lives,” Biden continued.
Vice President Joe Biden, when asked about Donald Trump's use of Twitter.

Does anybody think that's going to happen?




Why does he care?  More importantly, he has a continuing financial interest in that show:  does he want it to succeed, or does his ego want it to fail?  And what does this say about his approach to the Presidency?




Again, I ask....



They don't report it because, of course, it isn't true.  But again, why is he tweeting about this?  Legislation hasn't even been introduced yet.




He's going to be briefed on that within 12 hours of posting this tweet.  Is this how he plans to conduct all his business as President?  Telegraphing to the world what he thinks, and how he's already arguing with the agencies that serve his office?  But remember, he's a big fan of "intelligence"!




I suppose we should be encouraged that he now needs more than 140 characters to convey his thoughts.

Grow up, Donald. Do it really, really fast.  We can't separate ourselves from this mad leader as effectively as we did from King George.
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"I will show you fear/In a handful of dust"

First, read the book; don't rely on someone's analysis or even precis of it.

That said, my summary of the book would be quite different from Jacob Brogan's.  Then again, Brogan is using a very old literary form in his essay:  the dialogue.  It's a form that finally died out sometime in the 18th century, replaced briefly with the epistolary form (Kierkegaard used the latter in his Either/Or.).  That form made the modern novel popular, and it's relevant to a discussion of Frankenstein because that's the form of Shelley's famous novel.  Interestingly, it's also the form of Stoker's Dracula, a character paired with the monster in Hollywood in the century just past; and there are reasons Stoker revived what was already, at the end of the 19th century, an archaic form.  But if you're going to start a discussion of Shelley's gothic novel, you need to start with the narrator.

Or lack of one, actually.  The epistolary form doesn't have a single narrator, it has a series of them.  True to the form (and similar to Kierkegaard's Either/Or), the novel is told in diary entries and letters. The framing device is a letter about Dr. Frankenstein that explains the presence of his diaries which form the basic narrative of the novel.  There are narrators, but they are writing to themselves (the diaries) or to other characters in the novel (letters); no one is telling the story to an invisible audience of book readers.  That concept of story-telling would take time to gain a foothold.  The epistolary novel was an early way of gaining verisimilitude.

And Shelley needs that "willing suspension of disbelief" Coleridge wrote about in her novel.  There is, as Brogan says, very little science in it.  Then again, science was still nascent in the world, and even the basic scientific education we take for granted today (germ theory, atomic theory, genetic theory even) was unknown and certainly not widespread.  Of course, reviving a corpse is beyond science to this day, so there was no need of "hard science fiction" when Shelley wrote.  Dr. Frankenstein relies not on electricity and galvanic theory (the idea that electricity would restore the functions of life, or was even basic to them), but on more ancient knowledge:  alchemy.  This is actually in keeping with the Romanticism that was itself nascent but soon rampant in England and then across Europe and America.

What Shelley was going for, first and foremost, was a ghost story.  This was not a literary form in the early 1800's.  The great English ghost story writers wouldn't be along until the end of the century.  The Brothers Grimm were just assembling their "fairy tales" in Germany, Hans Christian Andersen was only 13 when Shelley's novel was published; the very idea of the "ghost story," much like the "fairy tale," wasn't even nascent in 1818.  We create anachronisms by ignoring history.

Shelley was creating what we would recognize later.  To even call Frankenstein an early effort at science fiction is to engage in anachronism.  Poe barely gets credit for that, and he was a prolific writer who experimented in genre, narrative form, poetic form, and everything else he could do for the sake of getting published.  Shelley was writing a scary story.  So the details of how the creature was animated, much like the details of how a ghost could come to haunt the characters in an M.R. James story, are irrelevant.  And really, the best comparison to Shelley's novel is not later stories about the dangers of science (which really became popular in the Cold War era as we grappled with the consequences of Hiroshima and nuclear proliferation); it is with the legend of Faust.

That's a deeper and older tale with relevance even today.  Faust was a scholar, the prototype of the modern scientist:  a person with singular knowledge, and such knowledge is power.  The difference between Faust and the modern stereotype of the mad scientist is that Faust only threatens his own soul.  His modern counterpart can pursue knowledge which could destroy humankind (the true "fallout" of the nuclear age; that our destruction at our own hands really is possible).  The latest version of this is on Netflix right now:  a movie called "Spectral," where an army of almost invisible humanoid creatures ravages an eastern European city and the U.S. soldiers who are there.  In the immortal words of Frank Zappa, "Bullets can't stop it, rockets can't stop it!  We may have to use nuclear force!"  It's that kind of plot line.  In the end, the cause is found:  weapons research which has created monsters even the creators can't control (shades of  Frankenstein!), but which can be stopped en masse by a simple imperative (of course).  Once again the desire to know runs amok, destroys basic humanity (what animates the creatures is the stuff of modern nightmare, human beings reduced to a central nervous system in a vat), and threatens to wipe out human existence.  At least Frankenstein's creature confines his murderous efforts to Frankenstein's family, and then banished himself from human contact in the Arctic.  Our modern scientific efforts create perfect weapons we stop only at great cost to others.  And if we don't do it, other species do:  think "Alien" and it's sequels, especially "Prometheus."*

Shelley didn't invent these fears; but she created a way for us to talk about them a century before we needed it.  It's worth asking: how did she know?

*The movie ends, as befits the "science in service of madness" genre, grimly.  The scientist who stops the monsters destroys as much of them as possible, to prevent anyone else going down this path.  Of course, the military/government goes in to capture as much information as possible, bent on creating the monsters they just destroyed at great cost.  The moral of the story?  Faust was a piker.  Our modern scientists create monsters with no humanity.  The irony of the Frankenstein tale is that the creature was more human than his creator; or at least a more sympathetic character.
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Epiphany Sunday 2017

Jamelle Bouie has an excellent commentary on the Atlantic article wherein Michael Wear claims the Democratic party has a "religion" problem because it doesn't reach out to white evangelical Christians.  Mr. Bouie makes short work of this argument; I would make shorter work of it.

Mr. Wear needs to read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."  It's easy to forget it's an open letter to white Christian leaders, without reading it.  But everything you need to know about the Democrats' "religion problem" is discussed, dissected, and dealt with there.  Mr. Bouie has, implicitly, the relevant connections between King and Wear and the Democratic Party,  but Dr. King explicitly preaches the word of the Lord.

And Mr. Wear and his ilk need to hear it.  Hell, we all do.
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Saturday, January 07, 2017

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said,

Does he look like a white racist to you?

"....but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”  McCloskey's version has the virtue of being clearer and more succinct than what follows,  although no one can deny Paladino said exactly what he meant on both occasions.

I am writing this during Christmastide.  I am setting it to post after Epiphany.  Some things don't deserve to further stain the season.

This matter requires a little attention.  It first came to my (and therefore public) attention here:

The Buffalo real estate developer who served as New York co-chair for Donald Trump’s campaign said his greatest hopes for 2017 are that President Barack Obama “dies” and that his wife Michelle is “set loose in the outback of Zimbabwe.”

True to form, Carl Paladino isn’t backing down from the deeply offensive comments he made to alt-weekly newspaper Artvoice for their year-end survey of 42 locals about their wish lists for the coming year.

“Of course I did,” he told the Buffalo News when asked for confirmation that he made the remarks about the president catching “mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford” and Michelle Obama returning to “being a male.”

“Tell them all to go f*** themselves,” Paladino added in reference to the News’ editors who put in the request for confirmation. "Tell that Rod Watson I made that comment just for him," he continued, referring to a News editor who is black.*

Keep that in mind, especially the highlighted bits, because Carl Paladino is not a racist (all evidence to the contrary) and his remarks are not about race because it's never about race.  4 days after those comments went public, he decided he didn't want to stand behind them any longer:

I never intended to hurt the minority community who I spent years trying to help out of the cycle of poverty in our inner cities. To them I apologize. I thought about them every day as I fought against unqualified and incompetent superintendents, administrators, teachers and School Board members, unfair union contracts, broken homes and children who can't get the education they need to break that cycle of poverty because our school system is a failure, for reasons that needn't be. I have shown those who chose not to watch but to enter the arena how to fight the demons. Nevertheless, I won't be judged by those timid souls who sit unbloodied in the gallery always prepared to criticize.  Nor do I have any respect or regrets for the insane education activists who hover over and defend the dysfunction of the BPS.

I'm just going to enter comments as we proceed.  He insulted Michelle Obama and Back Obama.  To them, he doesn't apologize.  Keep it classy, Carl.  And notice he's the good guy here; the whole world is against him, and he's bloody but unbowed.  What a guy! And watch that last line; it turns out this whole affair is also the fault of the school district.  You can't make this stuff up.

I received your emailed survey at an emotional moment after I had just listened to Obama's statement that he regretted the slaughter in Aleppo that, in fact, resulted from his failed and cowardly foreign policy, a policy to look the other way while innocent people were murdered and starved.  I view Barak Obama as a traitor to American values. We don't stand down and leave soldiers to die on a battlefield when we can send help. We don't lie to the American people and the parents of our fallen to get re-elected.  Obama has not led America to a better place by disregarding the rule of law and standing with his elitist brethren as above the law nor has his wife Michele Obama who told our children and the world after the election that now "there is no hope for America."

Yeah, that's right!  He was upset about the news out of Aleppo!  Yeah, that's the ticket!  Oh, and Michelle is to blame, too, for disagreeing with Paladino's politics.  The nerve!

Your survey questions provided me with the spark to vent and write deprecating humor about a bad President for whom the main stream media continues to seek an undeserved legacy. I wanted to say something as sarcastic and hurtful as possible about the people so responsible for the hurt and suffering of so many others. I was wired up, primed to be human and make a mistake. I could not have made a worse choice in the words I used to express my feelings.

It wasn't Carl's fault; it was the survey questions that started it!  No, it was the media's fault for their reporting on Obama.  Thanks, Obama, for making Carl spew his bile in public!  I hope you're happy now!

It's all too easy to make mistakes when you're emotional about the rigged teachers’ contract by an incompetent Board of Education majority who sold out the school district as payback to teacher's union leader Phil Rumore for his election support. They couldn't care less about the children of Buffalo. And I'm bewildered about the Supreme Court Judge who tried to dismiss a lawsuit to recover $450 million fleeced from the children of Buffalo by LP Ciminelli during the $1.4 billion schools building project.

Or is it the school board's fault?  All we know is, Carl is only human, and a guy can only take so much!

I publicly took responsibility for what I said and confirmed those were my answers, but believe it or not, I did not mean to send those answers to Artvoice.  Not that it makes any difference because what I wrote was inappropriate under any circumstance.  I filled out the survey to send to a couple friends and forwarded it to them not realizing that I didn't hit “forward” I hit “reply.” All men make mistakes.

 He took responsibility but he's not responsible and besides he only meant it as a joke among friends and besides it was inappropriate under any circumstance except the circumstance of telling the editors to "f*** themselves" and telling Rod Watson it was especially for him, and it was actually appropriate to say such things to his friends, and besides it was really the fault of the technology.  Who can be blamed when technology lets you down and does what you tell it to rather than what you later decided you meant it to do?  All men make mistakes, and no real man is ever responsible for the mistakes that reveal his true character to the nation and, more importantly, the school board he sits on.

What is horrible is explaining to my 17 year old daughter how her hero could be so stupid.

If she doesn't know who you are by now, Carl, the therapy sessions are gonna go on for decades.

What is horrible is watching my family and friends react to the rabid hordes of attacking parasites we now call activist progressives.

More horrible than finding out what a sick excuse for a civilized person you are?  That's hard to fathom.

It's been a sick, combative year for America. We changed the direction of our country and beat back the demons for a few decades. I am proud to have been a part of the making of history.

If this is your idea of "making history," then Lord help us all.

As for the vanquished progressive haters out there spewing their venom at anything that is a reminder of their humiliating defeat, irrelevance is tough to chew on.

Nothing irrelevant about racism, is there, Carl?  Proud of what you said now, are you?

For the mean spirited disoriented press trying to find grounding and recover legitimacy on my back, pray that you still have a job next year because you have lost all credibility with the people.

Except the people who don't believe this non-apology apology you have issued.  Although, admittedly, it may become a textbook example of the form some day.  So, in that sense, maybe you have been a part of the making of history.

No, I'm not leaving the school board, not when it's time to help implement the real choice elements of Trump's plan for education reform.  I've spent years dedicated to the mission to defeat the thought that the liberal progressive elitist establishment can continue to hold our minority children captive in the cycle of poverty simply to provide their voting base. I don't intend to yield to the fanatics among my adversaries.  I certainly am not a racist.

You certainly are a racist, though of course since you say you aren't, how can we think otherwise?  As for staying on the school board, that's not really your choice, I don't imagine.

I was explaining to a new crop of students the basic idea of Greek tragedy limned by Aristotle all those millennia ago.  The key element, I told them, was that the tragic hero had to accept responsibility for his mistakes, had to recognize the tragedy was his (well, Medea, her), fault.  If he didn't, he's just a gutless weasel suffering a series of unfortunate events.  The hero takes the blame for what he did so terribly wrong.

Carl can rest easy in the knowledge that, aside from his 17 year old daughter, no one is ever going to think of him as a hero.

UPDATE:

Yes, I know, I haven't published it yet, but I can add this from the school board meeting about Mr. Paladino.

The board met to consider a fiery resolution that said if Paladino did not resign within 24 hours, they would petition New York Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia to remove him. Elia has so far declined to weigh in on the controversy.

The resolution, introduced by board member Hope Jay, called Paladino’s remarks about the Obamas “unambiguously racist, morally repugnant, flagrantly disrespectful, inflammatory and inexcusable.” It also said they reflected negatively on “the Buffalo Board of Education, the City of Buffalo and its leadership and its citizens, the State of New York, and every decent human being in America and abroad who has been shocked and offended by his words.”

When Jay read her resolution Thursday at the school board’s special session, the crowd gave her an enthusiastic standing ovation.

Only two board members ― Patti Pierce and Larry Quinn, who are considered Paladino allies ― did not support the resolution. They said they would like to see Paladino apologize to the students of the district rather than resign.

Pierce said she hoped the people in Buffalo could show Paladino some forgiveness for his comments and “take a page out of the horrific massacre that happened in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine innocent people in a house of worship were slain by a hateful, hate-filled man.”

The comparison drew gasps from the audience and was too much for one woman, who left shouting that it was offensive to use the murdered African-American congregation members in this situation.

The Board voted 6-2 for him to leave.  I'm sure somehow this is Obama's fault.

*His comments were actually uglier than that summary might lead you to believe:

Artvoice: What would you most like to happen in 2017?

Paladino: Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady [sic] cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.

Artvoice: What would you most like to see go in 2017?

Paladino: Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

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Through the looking glass

I don't want to steal this from TC, but he posted this quote from Trump from a press pool report (he has the link):

Asked more generally about sanctions against Russia, he responded: "I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. And we have speed and a lot of things and I'm not kind the security that you need. But I have not spoken with the senators and I will certainly will be over a period of time. "

Now that's pretty much straight from the transcript.  Why the transcript would read this way if it isn't what Trump said is a mystery, but that's how the pool report posted on line transcribed his remarks.

A few hours later, Charlie Pierce has it delivered to us this way (apparently courtesy of Politico) with no indication it's been cleaned up:

I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind, the security we need.

 Where did the words go, and where did the words come from?  And how common is this going to become, that the gibberish that spews from the President's mouth (I defy any native English speaker to explain what the bold sentence in the first quote means without adding more words to it that an English sentence would require.  If I got that sentence in an essay from a student, I would wonder about his education, and even his mental ability.)

Be?  Become?  Who am I kidding?  This is as American as cherry pie.

The courtier press, indeed.*

*When I worked for a law firm, and later practiced law, trial lawyers knew the transcript of a deposition (testimony under oath) was full of weird sentences that didn't make sense.  A good lawyer would think of the written record and get the witness to clarify truly odd statements, rather than try to play "gotcha!" in the courtroom (which never worked).  But as I was telling my students this week, when the President-elect speaks (or the President), his words are "performative language."  He has to mean what he says and say what he means, or China (for example) starts cleaning the sights on their guns and thinking of how they invented gunpowder. and other such discomfiting ideas.  The President can't babble like a language-challenged 3 year old and let someone else, on bended knee, straighten out his language for him.  The kind of clean up only works in press conferences, and then only when the conference is broadcast live.

And since I have the luxury of writing this one day, and posting it much later, this news story intervenes between the Idea and the Reality:

In yet another series of typo-filled tweets Thursday, Trump blasted the Affordable Care Act and the Democrats’ promise to salvage the health care plan, which the Republican businessman has vowed to repeal.  He also bullied Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer with name-calling taunts.

“The Democrats, lead by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad ObamaCare is and what a mess they are in,” he tweeted early Thursday, likely meaning to write “led” instead of “lead.”
....
“Instead of working to fix it, they do the typical political thing and BLAME," the President-elect tweeted. "The fact is ObamaCare was a lie from the beginning.”

“’Keep you doctor, keep your plan!’” Trump tweeted, mocking Democrats who insisted Obamacare’s implementation would not change private insurance. The President-elect probably meant to type “your doctor.”

I actually have copies of these tweets in another post, complete with typos. I have read, but not verified, that after Jan. 20th these tweets will be considered part of the Presidential record, and any attempt to remove them or correct them could be a violation of law (a minor infraction, I don't mean the guys in black would bust the windows as they swing in on ropes).  Considering all the allegations made against "Crooked Hillary" for innocuous alleged violations of law, that's almost karmic in its irony.*

In any case the tweets certainly make me think the transcript got it right.



*and yes, as NYDailyNew helpfully points out, Trump does this a lot.  It's going to be a very interesting Presidential record, indeed.
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The faucets are dripping....


When Wikileaks does it, it's legitimate.  When NBC does it, it's not:



In their defense, Wikileaks insists the leak was authorized:



If you go to the Twitter thread, you'll see Wikileaks never supports this claim with any evidence.  However, it was reported earlier that three versions of this report would be published:  one for public consumption, one for classified clearance, and one for the highest clearance.  For the latter version, reportedly even people who supplied information for that report would not be cleared to read it.

Which one was leaked?  The one to be made public soon anyway?  Or the one that was classified.  Does Wikileaks know?  Or are they just made something got leaked in violation of laws they themselves freely violate?  Jealous of poaching on their turf?  Or supporting Trump?


Enquiring minds want to know!

And the answer is:  distraction!

Citing anonymous senior U.S. officials, Reuters reported that a soon-to-be-made-public report on Russian interference in the 2016 election affirms that Russian officials coordinated the leak of hacked emails to WikiLeaks at the direction of Vladimir Putin. It is unclear from the Reuters story whether the report names those officials.

The upcoming report, the anonymous officials told Reuters, concluded that the Russian government sought to discredit the electoral process and assist Donald Trump. President Barack Obama saw the report Thursday morning, and the President-elect is scheduled to be briefed on it Friday afternoon.

And of course, now that the publicly released report is out; what was Wikileaks complaining about, again?  Maybe this bit from that now-made-public report:

Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 US presidential election represented a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations aimed at US elections. We assess the 2016 influence campaign reflected the Kremlin’s recognition of the worldwide effects that mass disclosures of US Government and other private data—such as those conducted by WikiLeaks and others—have achieved in recent years, and their understanding of the value of orchestrating such disclosures to maximize the impact of compromising information.  During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used intelligence officers, influence agents, forgeries, and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as hostile to the Kremlin, according
to a former KGB archivist. 
Guilty dog barks first.
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The flying fickle finger writes, and having writ....


Like the amusement park rides where you have to be "This Tall" to ride, you probably have to be at least this old (your humble narrator's age) to remember "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In."  Even the idea of adding "In" to something* to make it hip dated so fast it died with that show which was, at the time, cutting edge TV comedy.  Where is it now?

Sic transit gloria.

Anyway, one of the wonders of digital broadcast is that it creates a number of apparently cheap-to-broadcast channels that are filled with all manner of broadcast specific offerings, most of them re-runs.  One one such channel the other night I caught the "Laugh In" episode where they introduced what would be a running gag for 5 years and one of the cultural bequests (that lasted slightly longer than the show) of "Laugh In":  the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate award.  And who was the recipient of this first dubious achievement award?

The U.S. Congress, for ignoring the wishes of 200 million Americans, and failing to pass a gun control law.  In 1968.

I'm ceaselessly bemused by Millenials and Gen X'ers on the intertoobs who seem to think the world was a paradise until shortly before they became aware, who are sure the past was simple and uncomplicated and only the present is the problem, a problem that would be solved if only the DNC hadn't conspired against Bernie (but the allegations of Russian interference are a government conspiracy because you can't trust the government!) or if only Barack Obama had been FDR redux or if only Nancy Pelosi had turned power over to Keith Ellison or...

Well, there's always an "if only" that would return us to pre-millennial status when all was well and nothing went wrong and the Congress was admired rather than derided and despised and locked in hopeless partisan squabbles.  It's fun to watch TV from 50 years ago, especially if you remember 50 years ago, because it reminds you that the French are right:  the more things change, the more they remain the same.

*There were "love-ins," there were even "be-ins."  Nobody ever knew what that last one was.  Yes, they were halcyon days to be "in."  Don't laugh, Millenials; your day is coming.
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Friday, January 06, 2017

Ariel Poems: "Journey of the Magi"




'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.


--T.S. Eliot


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Epiphany of the Lord 2017: II


Because I never get tired of this picture.😀
A slightly emended re-print from 2006.


January 6th; the "twelfth" day of Christmas. Observed by churches this coming Sunday.

"Epiphany" comes from the Greek word "epiphaneia," which my Bauer (Greek lexicon) translates as "appearance", with the intransitive verb form "to show." Interestingly, the English word was so associated with the church that as recently as some 20 years ago the OED entry for the word still gave a first definition as the festival on January 6th, commemorating the visit of the Magi, and the second definition "A manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being."

So it has almost always been a "religious" word in English.

Interestingly, too, the Greek word ("epiphaneia") only appears in the letters of the New Testament, and once in the Gospels: in Luke 1:79.

"To shine on those sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death, to guide our feet to the way of peace."

The last "verse" of the song of Zechariah, the "Benedictus."

One can make a lot of idle speculation of all of this. Epiphany is actually at the heart of Christianity, and causes the constant friction Christianity has had with Greek rationalism ab initio. Greek epistemology, via Aristotle, was based on the idea that knowledge was "discovered" from the natural world (so for centuries those we now call "scientists" were referred to as "natural philosophers"). Plato's epistemology is often considered to be different, but the difference is really only in type, not in kind. For Socrates knowledge came, not from the "illusory" world, but from the "real" soul, and the memories recovered there via the instruments of the illusory world. Either way, though, the most important knowledge is "discovered" by the activity of the subject.

Hebraic epistemology, on the other hand, and such as it was, centered on revelation, on the revealing of knowledge from the source of all things: the Creator.

This is not a mere academic concern. Much has been made of late about Paul's writings, and how they are less valid than the Gospels because Paul never knew Jesus (neither did the Gospel writers, most likely), and mentions little about the life of Jesus, and nothing about his teachings, but claims authority based on his "revelation."

"for surely you have already heard of the commission of God's grace that was given me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words..." --Ephesians 3:2-3.

Revelation, for many in Paul's audience, was grounds enough for a claim to authority, one that would then be tested against the "proven" revelation of the Scriptures. To his Gentile audience, Paul would then appeal to a different kind of knowledge; but this brings us to Matthew, and the story of the Magi.

The story itself is really quite simple. A lot of traditions have grown up around it, to the point we are convinced Matthew mentions three wise men (he only mentions three gifts), and that the star "led" them to the stall (that's Luke, by the way) in Bethlehem, all the way from "the East." In fact, it's the traditions around Matthew that have led to speculations about whether the star was a nova (Johannes Kepler's theory), a comet (Halley's?); or even a planetary conjuuction. Which shows, in part, the pervasiveness of Greek epistemology. Or maybe it's just a "human tendency." But, as Yeats asked, how can you know the dancer from the dance?

Back to Matthew: First, the star doesn't move until the end of the story. What the Magi report to Herod is that they have seen the new king's star "at its rising," and have come to pay him homage. A bit of Greek epistemology, I think, intruding into Matthew's Jewish world. Nature reveals a truth Herod's scholars have missed, until it is pointed out to them. But the Magi don't know everything, and have to rely on the Holy Scriptures for final directions. It is only then that the star "moves" and guides them until it stands still over the spot where the child lay. Which may simply mean, again, it brought them at night (a powerfully metaphorical scene, that; the light shining in darkness.) Why do I insist on the distinction? Because Matthew tells us Herod ordered the death of all males 2 years old and younger, based on what the Magi had told him. So "lay" doesn't mean an infant unable to sit up.

So what is the Epiphany? Traditionally, it is the revealing of Jesus to the Gentiles. Perhaps there is even a bit of unintended bias involved in it, as most of the early church "fathers" were primarily Greek in their epistemology, and sympathetic to a story that gave them an opportunity to "see" the Christchild in signs available to those without knowledge of the Scriptures, but also signs that required them to come to the Scriptures for full understanding. Certainly Augustine and Aquinas would find that a comforting tale.

But it is also the crucial story for Christians, a much more important story than simply the chance to wear coloured robes and lead a camel through the church. It is the story of how we know what we know, and where our knowledge truly comes from. It is not a story with an answer, however. As T.S. Eliot intuited, it is a story that only points in a direction.

A story worthy of more meditation and consideration than we are wont to give it.
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Epiphany of the Lord 2017



O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shining far through shadows dim
Giving the light for those who long have gone
Guiding the wise men on their way
Unto the place where Jesus lay
O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine on

O beautiful star the hope of life
Guiding the pilgrims through the night
Over the mountains 'til the break of dawn
Into the land of perfect day
It will give out a lovely ray
O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine on

O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine upon us until the glory dawns
Give us a lamp to light the way
Unto the land of perfect day
O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine on

O beautiful star the hope of grace
For the redeemed, the good and the blessed
Yonder in glory when the crown is won
Jesus is now the star divine
Brighter and brighter He will shine
O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine on

O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine upon us until the glory dawns
Give us a lamp to light the way
Unto the land of perfect day
O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine on

O beautiful star of Bethlehem
Shine on
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Sunday, January 01, 2017

New Years Day 2017

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

3:2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

3:3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

3:4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

3:5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

3:6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;

3:7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

3:8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

3:9 What gain have the workers from their toil?

3:10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.

3:11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;

3:13 moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

Psalm 8
8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;

8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

8:6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,

8:7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

8:8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

8:9 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Revelation 21:1-6a
21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

21:2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;

21:4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

21:5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."

21:6a Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Matthew 25:31-46
25:31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.

25:32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,

25:33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

25:34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;

25:35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

25:36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'

25:37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?

25:38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?

25:39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'

25:40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

25:41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;

25:42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

25:43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

25:44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'

25:45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'

25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

It is actually as rare as hen's teeth that the lectionary serves up a passage from Ecclesiastes; and almost as rare that it serves up the parable of the sheep and goats from Matthew.  When it presents them both as the choice for New Year's Day (also the First Sunday of Christmas), how is one to resist?

The alternative, if you were wondering, is Matthew's story of the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the innocents.  But we've done that already, so we can move on to the last judgment as the way to start the new year.

The world's new year, not the church's.  The church new year started on the first Sunday of Advent,  Appropriately, that was about apocalypse, too.  The church loves to start things with ending things. There's a reason for that, and we should come back to it.  But we start things first with the orderliness of Ecclesiastes, and the wisdom of ordering.  Pete Seeger made the catalog of Ecclesiastes 3 famous; but he left off the conclusion, the best part:

3:9 What gain have the workers from their toil?

3:10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.

3:11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;

3:13 moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

God has put a sense of past and future into our minds, and yet we still can't find out what God has done from beginning to end.  Boundaries; edges; limits; beginning and ends.  Sometimes it is like that is all we know, and all we expect.  Certainly Ecclesiastes expects no more:  "I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live."  That's a sentiment worthy of the 12 days of Christmas, which we've only reached the middle of.  "Moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil."  God's gift!  What a lovely thought!  A gift given without thought of a return, of an economy, of creating a circle in which the gift leads to a gift back, even the gift of recognition, of thanks, of acceptance.  Does God need us to recognize this gift?  No!  We merely need to recognize it as a gift, for ourselves.  What better way to eat and drink and take pleasure in all our toil?

And not that all should eat and drink; not the worthy, not the virtuous, not the hard-working or those who 'earned it.'  How do you "earn" a gift?  Even Santa Claus doesn't really work that way.  Ever know a kid who actually got coal and switches for Christmas?   It is God's gift that we should eat and drink and take pleasure in our toil.  What gain do we have from it, aside from pleasure in doing it?

The year ended has left us wondering what the year ahead could bring; and dreading it.  We assumed the system would take care of us, and it didn't.  But neither did the system turn reality on its head.  A sliver of the population elected Donald Trump, because a larger sliver of the population decided there was no merit to trying, no reason to care, no purpose in turning out.  They decided the system would function with or without them, so why bother?  They thought the system didn't matter; or didn't matter to them; or they didn't matter; or that the system would save them from themselves; when, of course, the system rolls blindly on if no one steps up to guide it.  To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.  Those are words of guidance, not words of reassurance that it will all be fine, and you will be taken care of.  You should find pleasure in your toil; but you still have to toil.

There is a time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, a time to dance; a time to build, a time to pull down, a time to keep, a time to throw away.  But you have to act to keep, or it will be taken away from you. You have to decide to throw away, or you may not be able to discard what burdens you.  Laughter and mourning are activities, not spontaneous and involuntary actions; dancing and building and even tearing down require your involvement; you cannot leave it to others.

There is no time to leave it to others.  If you think the system will take care of it for you, that your only concern is you, then the system will run blindly, and only at the end will you wonder why you didn't see it.

"Lord, when did we see you?"

The hungry, the naked, the sick, the strangers:  they pass before you, but you pay no attention.  The outcast, the marginalized, the foreigner, the "not like us," the one who endangers our comfort with reckless daring:  they never share our hearth.  The systems doesn't take care of them:  we do.  We bear the responsibility.  There is a time to sit with folded hands, and a reason to do so; and it is wisdom to know the difference.  It is not wisdom to close our eyes and let the system run on its own.

"Lord, when did we see you?"

The answer is:  when did you not?  Why weren't you looking?  Why did you leave it to someone else, something else, why do you still blame everyone else?  Why do you think you are not responsible, why do you think the time is not now; why do you find no pleasure in your toil?

If you give food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, comfort to the sick, welcome to the stranger, what do you get in return?  Do you give such things expected a reward, a circle where you start a cycle which ends with something for you?  Do you do such things in their time?  And when is it not their time?  What is well ordered about caring for those who need your care?

Matthew tells us the ones who do and the ones who don't will ask the same question:  "Lord, when did we see you?"  The ones who didn't weren't slighting the Lord; the ones who did weren't serving him; not consciously, anyway.  But both were acting; if, at the end, the scales fall from their eyes, it is because one group was too busy to look, and the other group was too busy not looking.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.  It is ordered, but it is not ordered in spite of you.  It does not run without you.  "Moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."  We cannot find that out, but we can find out what we have done.  At some point, the promise is that it will be revealed to us.  And what did we do?  Did we act for ourselves, and pray the system to take up the slack?  Or did we act for others, and find pleasure in our toil?  Did we perpetuate a circle, a cycle?  Or did we break the circle with our gift?  It is a gift we have been given; do we keep it, or do we pass it on freely?

The church starts things with ending things.  In our end, the poet tells us, is our beginning.  There is a time for everything.  Do not wonder when you saw the Lord; look; see.  It is a gift given to you.
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Feast of Fools


New Advent, as ever, is a treasure trove:

A celebration marked by much license and buffoonery, which in many parts of Europe, and particularly in France, during the later middle ages took place every year on or about the feast of the Circumcision (1 Jan.). It was known by many names — festum fatuorum, festum stultorum, festum hypodiaconorum, to notice only some Latin variants — and it is difficult, if not quite impossible, to distinguish it from certain other similar celebrations, such, for example, as the Feast of Asses, and the Feast of the Boy Bishop. So far as the Feast of Fools had an independent existence, it seems to have grown out of a special "festival of the subdeacons", which John Beleth, a liturgical writer of the twelfth century and an Englishman by birth, assigns to the day of the Circumcision. He is among the earliest to draw attention to the fact that, as the deacons had a special celebration on St. Stephen's day (26 Dec.), the priests on St. John the Evangelist's day (27. Dec.), and again the choristers and mass-servers on that of Holy Innocents (28 Dec.), so the subdeacons were accustomed to hold their feast about the same time of year, but more particularly on the festival of the Circumcision. This feast of the subdeacons afterwards developed into the feast of the lower clergy (esclaffardi), and was later taken up by certain brotherhoods or guilds of "fools" with a definite organization of their own (Chambers, I, 373 sqq.). There can be little doubt — and medieval censors themselves freely recognized the fact — that the license and buffoonery which marked this occasion had their origin in pagan customs of very ancient date. John Beleth, when he discusses these matters, entitles his chapter
"De quadam libertate Decembrica", and goes on to explain: "now the license which is then permitted is called Decembrian, because it was customary of old among the pagans that during this month slaves and serving-maids should have a sort of liberty given them, and should be put upon an equality with their masters, in celebrating a common festivity." (P.L. CCII, 123).

The Feast of Fools and the almost blasphemous extravagances in some instances associated with it have constantly been made the occasion of a sweeping condemnation of the medieval Church. On the other hand some Catholic writers have thought it necessary to try to deny the existence of such abuses. The truth, as Father Dreves has pointed out (Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, XLVII, 572), lies midway between these extremes. There can be no question that ecclesiastical authority repeatedly condemned the license of the Feast of Fools in the strongest terms, no one being more determined in his efforts to suppress it than the great Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. But these customs were so firmly rooted that centuries passed away before they were entirely eradicated. Secondly, it is equally certain that the institution did lend itself to abuses of a very serious character, even though the nature and gravity of these varied considerably at different epochs. In defense of the medieval Church one point must not be lost sight of. We possess hundreds, not to say thousands, of liturgical manuscripts of all countries and all descriptions. Amongst them the occurrence of anything which has to do with the Feast of Fools is extraordinarily rare. In missals and breviaries we may say that it never occurs. At best a prose or a trope composed for such an occasion is here and there to be found in a gradual or an antiphonary (Dreves, p. 575). It is reasonable to infer from this circumstance that though these extravagances took place in church and were attached to the ordinary services, the official sanction was of the slenderest.

....

The central idea seems always to have been that of the old Saturnalia, i.e. a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity or impunity is conferred for a few hours upon those ordinarily in a subordinate position. Whether it took the form of the boy bishop or the subdeacon conducting the cathedral office, the parody must always have trembled on the brink of burlesque, if not of the profane. We can trace the same idea at St. Gall in the tenth century, where a student, on the thirteenth of December each year, enacted the part of the abbot. It will be sufficient here to notice that the continuance of the celebration of the Feast of Fools was finally forbidden under the very severest penalties by the Council of Basle in 1435, and that this condemnation was supported by a strongly-worded document issued by the theological faculty of the University of Paris in 1444, as well as by numerous decrees of various provincial councils. In this way it seems that the abuse had practically disappeared before the time of the Council of Trent.

There, at least, is a proper Saturnalia connection.  It probably looked like this story from a Texas memory.  I don't have the whole story typed up, but I used this condensed version of it a few years back:

"Christmas that year, not one to look forward to, was one we should alway look back on."

The opening sentence of "Looking Back on Christmas" by William Owens.  I don't know if it's memoir or fiction, but it's become one of my favorite Christmas stories.   It's the story of a family gathering in rural Texas on Christmas Eve.  The family gathers, then sits down to dinner, and after dinner:

After the first table [old Texas tradition my family carried on with in my childhood:  the men ate first, then retired, and the women and children ate.  Yeah, my wife was appalled by that, too, and it was long before we were married that she encountered it.] the men and the bigger boys built up a big fire in the pasture between the house and the front gate.  Then, while the women stood on the front porch to watch, Uncle Charlie gave the little children firecrackers and showed them how to shoot them.  He put a paper fuse against a live coal.  When it had lighted he threw it away from the fire into the dark.

"Don't ever let one go off in your hand," he said, "And don't throw it close to nobody.  Somebody might get hurt."

While we went through the firecrackers he had given us, the men made a trip back to the kitchen.  This time they brought the jug with them and set it in the back end of a wagon.  They brought out more fireworks, and Monroe had the sack of powder in his coat pocket.

"Time for a roman candle," Uncle Charlie said.

He took a long red roman candle and went to the fire.

"You all watch now," he said, "I'm gonna hold it like I was aiming to shoot the gate."

Charlie runs into the dark and let's the candle shoot balls of fire, then he gets Othal to join him in a roman candle battle.  Full disclosure:  I once did something similar with my cousin, although in summer, not winter.  We used plastic tubes from his golf bag to launch bottle rockets at each other.  We didn't even have the excuse of alcohol, we were just young and dumb.

Anyway, you get the flavor of the celebration.  Firecrackers going off, then roman candles being fired at each other in close range.  Then when those are exhausted and everyone's tired of running around and through the house:

Uncle Charlie was not ready for the fun to be over.  He went up the steps and across the front porch.  Aunt Niece was standing in the door, with the lamplight behind her.  He lifted her chin with his fingers and went on past her, to the chimney corner where he kept his double-barreled shotgun.  Then he came out with the gun under his arm and a box of shells in his hand.

Near the fire, he loaded both barrels and set the stock against his shoulder.

"You aiming at the gate?" Othal asked.

"You got to aim at something."

He fired, and after the first blast we heard shot rattle against the gate.

"Got it first shot," Othal said, and ran for his own gun.

In no time at all, five guns were blazing away at the gate, and the little children were running for hiding places under the house.  I shivered at the sound, but felt safe, for their backs were to us and
they were aiming at the gate.

Then Othal came running around the house, loading and firing as he ran, and some of the others took after him.  The women had run inside, but I could hear them telling the men to stop.  Too scared to stay under the house, I crawled out and started for the door.  In the darkness I can straight into Otha's knees, and he let a double-barreled blast go off right over my head, leaving a burning flash in my eyes and a ringing in my ears.

The gate was "a wide, heavy gate made of oak timbers fourteen feet long and an inch thick."  However, the next morning:  "We went to look at the gate, and found it half hanging from the posts, with the timbers drilled and splintered by shot."  The story ends this way:

Uncle Charlie came in with a backstick for the fireplace.  My grandmother was waiting for him.

"You ruint the gate," she said.

"I reckon we did."

He laughed and the light in his blue eyes showed he was not sorry.  She frowned and went out to the front porch.

Aunt Niece came in, with a peeled orange in her hand.

"Christmas gift," he said to her.

She went up to him and stuck a slice of orange between his teeth.  They were both laughing without making a sound, and once he leaned over and kissed her.

"I had me some Christmas," he said.
Sometimes you don't know to know anything about history to get the sense this is the time of year for some serious fooling around.

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