SCOTUS or Bust

 

I watched Steven Crowder yesterday. 

He had the Texas Attorney General Paxton on to explain the case that 18 states have signed on to. It’s not a terribly complex idea. Your state ruined my vote. I’m sure the legalese we will be subjected to will eventually confuse the hell out of me. But that’s the deal with legislation anyway, it seems designed to turn ordinary people off by using words we no one really uses. Like the Amicus (friend of the court) brief a lot of the states signed on to. Paxton said it just means those states can offer support, but that they aren’t a 'party' in the case. But Texas wants them to be an official party so why the discrepancy? Maybe it's less messy and the states in question can always become a party in the future.

 In a nutshell the case goes like this. Texas argues that because other states( Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia) didn’t follow their own rules on election laws, it affected the national votes of the citizens of Texas. This is how it was explained by Paxton and in a number of summaries I’ve read or listened to. The solution to the mess of fraudulent voting machines, mail in ballots and not separating ‘past deadline’ from ‘under deadline’ might be this--ignore it and show how they abused their own process instead. 

As we’ve seen in all 4 states the testimonies from poll workers almost makes the problem worse. It adds another layer to investigate.  Proving fraud in a neat legal way seems insurmountable.

Federal judges threw out the cases from Trump’s team and Sidney Powell’s team because they didn’t want to open Pandora’s box. Well… that and they’re partisan hacks. Or they’re decent judges who lack the will to really get messy with this. In either case, fraud is easy to prove. Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis already have a full slate of regular people on willing to go under oath and swear to the brazen maleficence. The Texas case doesn’t try to prove fraud even though plenty exists. It only shows how illegalities from governors and judges to change election laws without going through the proper channels, affected the national votes of Texans.

If the Supreme Court takes the case it’s a win right? I don’t pretend to be a legal expert (or even someone with a casual interest) but this seems like a winner. The logic is clean, your illegalities affected my vote. The same way that adding a little bleach to drinking water destroys it. The question for me is how does SCOTUS rule? If Texas is awarded a win, what happens to the votes or electors from the states that ignored their election rules? Are the votes of the citizens thrown out? Do they get a redo? I can’t see them awarding those votes to Trump. If the ballots can’t be sufficiently verified does the state forfeit all its electoral votes? SCOTUS under Roberts mostly takes a limited role in deciding big picture cases. The obvious non-example is the Obamacare mandate clause that he rewrote as a tax. Thanks for nothing Bob!

Otherwise they’ve taken a do no harm approach. I like the idea of kicking decisions back to the lower courts and supporting or rejecting cases based on technicalities. We might be in newish territory here. The last thing we want is a court that starts writing new laws or finding new language is old texts. Texas can’t be the first state to sue other states but with an election hanging in the balance the potential for a monumental decision is imminent. 

Of course they could always reject the whole thing and Trump could hope for better luck in the lower courts. So far though it’s been one defeat after another and I don’t see anyone but the Supreme Court sticking its neck out. Texas has nowhere else to go with their case. There is no lower court that adjudicates state to state disputes. It’s SCOTUS or bust.

Royal Pains: The Crown Season 4

 

I've been watching season 4 of the Crown on Netflix. I wanted to write about Thatcher because I think she is a more interesting person. She's an irritation in the show however and her droning voice makes me queasy. She is too wooden (in the show) and put off by most things related to the monarchy. I know she was tough in real life and made enemies. But her legacy is in cutting inflation and creating opportunities for home ownership. The economic boom came did happen after some slow years and union busting. I think this could have been shown more. Instead we get the sense that Thatcher doesn't care that people are out of work. She'd rather start a small war in the Falklands than have to help her own citizens.

The show is called The Crown though and so the royals get the most press.

Charles and Diana are already done by the late 80’s. They didn’t actually divorce until 1996 but it feels like a mess in the first year. If there is any truth to the characters in the story, and that’s asking a lot, neither come off very well. At first I thought they’d show Charles as a pompous, awkward ass and Diana as a put-upon mother just trying to survive. Thankfully it’s a lot more complicated than that. Charles is incredibly vain and insecure. He thinks of himself and his home, his happiness and his image in the Commonwealth above everything. Diana is also vain but slightly more sympathetic because of her young age and approachability. I don’t actually know if she was approachable but she pulls it off well in the Australia episode. The Australia-New Zealand trip was their first official visit as a couple. The excursion was apparently a smashing success for Diana, less so for Charles who just looks out-of-sorts and constantly moody.

 Diana refuses to put her newborn son up with a midwife and parade around the country waving at crowds and giving speeches. She insists on being with her baby in a secluded place. That endeared her to a lot of people because they understood the difficulty in leaving a baby for 6 weeks. She seemed like a loving, caring mother—not like a royal.

But she loves the adulation a little too much and her newfound celebrity turns her into the central character in her struggling marriage. That isn’t how it’s supposed to work. You don’t upstage a Windsor. It all goes south after their Australia trip but there is an overwhelming sense that these two just don’t work together. It’s more than age or status. They’re just different people with different interests and different goals. Charles wants his mistress (Camila Bowles) but can’t marry her because she is married to someone else. Even if he could, she wouldn’t leave her marriage easily and the Crown wouldn’t support it. But of course it does eventually happen and the Crown, reluctantly supports it.

Diana does some daft things to “prove” how much she loves Charles. She does a dance number at a local opera on his birthday. Charles is mortified. She then enlists a private orchestra and sings some musical numbers for him. He is mortified again.

These aren’t objects of affection for her man; they’re little bits of drama where she gets to play the star. But she acts hurt when he is understandably reviled at her lack of tact. That she didn’t her little performances for what they were proves how selfish she became, matching Charles in the adulation department. Especially when Charles has never expressed any interest in her singing, dancing or theater performances.

Diana was a young impressionable girl in the first episode who probably though marrying a royal was glamorous and exciting. But the dull ceremonial stuff eventually gets in the way and when you’re married to a lump like Charles, it’s splitsville for sure. I think this is likely what happened to her son Harry and his wife Meghan. She thought royalty meant parties with celebrities and fame. Instead it meant ceremonial duties and charities, putting the monarchy first at all costs. She was never cut out for it and I don’t think Harry is either.

There is great scene in the last episode where Prince Philip (Charles father) corners Diana at the Christmas party. The marriage is a shambles and everyone in the family knows it. He recounts his history with the queen and how difficult it was to take a lower position to her. His ego took a hit and they nearly separated a few times. Of course his extramarital affairs contributed quite a lot to it. But they figured out how to manage so the monarchy could survive and the queen maintained her role as central figure. He is really telling Diana that the maintenance of the Crown is the only thing that matters and she needs to realize it. In other words, you have your position, fame and connections because of it. He’s hoping that Charles and Diana can come to an arrangement and carry on, grow up a bit. Instinctively they know that royal divorces make the family look bad and might frustrate attempts from the public to keep supporting them.

With any of these true life stories you have to wonder how much is “true” and how much is fiction. The large events are certainly true, in both the lives of the royal family and the prime minister. But it’s impossible to tell a person’s life in movie form over the course of a season. It’s unfair by definition. So criticism of characters, stories and personalities are baked in with shows like this.

 I think it’s the best thing on Netflix right now.

King David's Heart of Desperation

 

Psalm 103

King David’s desperation for God is seen throughout the Psalms. We can learn from his complete reliance on the scripture for truth about Who God is and why our relationship grows in dependence on Him.

“Bless the Lord Oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits; Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies” (verse 2-4)

 It goes on because David relies solely on God as His strength. He doesn’t have a lot of people around him teaching him how to hear from God. There are certainly some like Nathan who correct him during his affair and subsequent murder, but nothing close to a group of intercessors exist. It’s why so often he calls God his “rock”, “shelter” and “strong tower”. These are words of dependence and consistency. Any ruler will carry a heavy burden of pressure and responsibility-doubly so when that ruler turns to heaven for answers.

 The Psalms are full of the king begging for justice from his oppressors, safety in storms, comfort from betrayal. We are fortunate today to have such rich teaching in the Word that we’ve probably lost a little of the David-esque dependence on the heavenly Father.

No question I’d rather have a rich tradition of worship and teaching and support. It fills the gap for those outside the faith. The simple gospel is a bridge to life and freedom. But we do rely on the external “benefits” of God's goodness to the point of weakness. We’ve forgotten how to hear from the Heavenly Father in a one on one relationship. We aren’t desperate the way the psalmist is. We aren’t needy for God’s immediate protection.

 I recently had the Corona virus and had to take a few weeks off. I spent a lot of that time in prayer for healing. But I won’t pretend I was desperate in the way that a dying man is desperate. I was a lot sicker than I imagined I’d be too. But even then I knew that I’d recover. The statistics for nearly everyone are around 98% or better to live, higher for the young.

I put my faith in the extreme unlikelihood that I’d need to go to the hospital or even need a ventilator. I’m not saying we need to be dying of a terrible illness to be desperate for God. Modern medicine is a gift. But few of us are in a position of deep reliance on God the way that David was. He lived there. He went to his Father for everything. It’s why he could list the benefits the way we list our family members and their kids. It was a source of strength and pride because he fought for it. He saw God’s mercy in his trials.  

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. (verse 12-14)

We don’t fear the Lord and so aren’t dependent on Him for strength, comfort, justice, healing. The fear of the Lord is a profound reverence and not a “fear” in the way a young child is afraid of the dark. It’s a core understanding that a just creator designed the world around us with boundaries. We are created in His image. That image comes with a built in recognition of who and what we are. Our software (if you will) contains code from our designer, Whose imprint is recognized by all living creatures. Our purpose is to reflect the design of our creator in what we accomplish and how we behave. If we ignore the design or try to replace it we tell lies to the next generation. We throw off restraint so much easier when we ignore what nature screams at us about Creation. 

We put up with the destructive notion that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. Just flip a switch, change the code. A wicked attempt to undermine God’s creation has hardly been conceived. It’s a direct threat to our kids and it needs to be resisted with boldness, not genteel discussions and compromises. It’s one example in a culture of many.

We need to find our desperation again. We need to seek the Lord and reset the imbalance in our lives. Let’s become like King David and beg justice for the innocent, comfort for the broken and restoration for the lost.  

“For as the heavens are high above the earth so great is His mercy towards those who fear Him…”( verse 11)

Hillbilly Elegy: Movie Review

 

This is usually where I tell you the book was better than the movie and the director didn’t understand the real thrust of the book. But Hillbilly Elegy hits the mark in tone and substance and paints a sympathetic portrait of the struggle to escape circumstance.

 I read the book years ago and thought it was perfect for anyone raised in rough circumstance because the struggles are similar.  You can trace the problems of poor white America to the same problems of poor ___ insert ethnic identity group here. There are dramatic exceptions of course. White’s never faced discrimination on anywhere near the level of blacks (in particular) or Native Americans. The laws were specifically written to exclude them and deny them basic rights. But family breakdown and addiction aren’t the sole problems of one group. Hopelessness feeds on poverty and runs through poor communities like a main road, reminding everyone where the demarcation lies.

 Hillbilly Elegy is a one man’s story about escaping the essential setback of a broken family with one parent who is an addict and the other one who is out of the picture.

J.D Vance is a struggling law student at Yale trying to get an internship with a prestigious firm. Right about that time he gets a call about his mother who nearly overdosed on heroin. He needs to leave his fancy dinner and help his sister out. While he goes home we see flashbacks to his young life and the difficulties of growing up with an abusive mother (Amy Adams) and no father. As the most stable person in his life, his grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close) pushes him to focus on his education.

The mistake people make with both the book and the movie is assuming it represents a culture or identity of poor whites. As a result the critics thought the portrayals of his mother and grandmother a little cliqued. Critics want to make every story an attack on some existing institution, the church, the government, the patriarchy. Hillbilly Elegy is great because it’s hopeful and doesn’t point fingers at institutions. It says “Life is tougher for some than others but with help and dedication you can overcome and achieve.” It’s a pro-American movie that accepts responsibility and proves that paths exist to leave behind that which holds you back.   

 J.D Vance tells the audience about his kin and lifestyle as he experienced it. I don’t believe he set out to write a book about hillbillies and their misunderstood lives. It’s really a tribute to his grandmother who, despite her limitations and nastiness, provided a stable environment from which to move forward. He moved forward thanks to her, but she only provided him a lift. He made a decision at some point to succeed and keep moving forward.  

There is a telling scene at the start of the movie. J.D. goes swimming just down the road from his uncle’s rural abode. The kids there dunk him in the water and try to hold him under. He fights with them of course but there too many. He is eventually rescued by his extended family and brought back to the house, bloodied and beaten. It’s a perfect picture of how a community (defined anyway you want) can hold us down. Vance struggles in high school with drugs and alcohol and partying with losers. His grandmother sees it and becomes his lifeline away from it. She also sees that J.D.’s mother can’t be the foundation for him, her frivolous lifestyle a recipe for destruction.

There is also a hint from the grandmother (Mamaw) of a failed experience with her own daughter Bev. We are reminded that Bev (J.D’s mother) was a promising student who was the salutatorian of her class and headed for better. This feels like a second chance for Mamaw to actually put past wrongs right. Her life as a mother was equally abusive and her kids saw their parents in countless domestic fights. Mamaw even set her kid’s drunk dad on fire! Here the film shows these abusive relationships as part of the deal in this community. I don’t believe it’s exclusive to white hillbillies and I don’t believe Vance was saying this either. 

It’s a great American story with great acting and a hopeful finish. Because of the personal responsibility ethic it gets low marks from the critics. I liked it and I recommend it.

 

The Peloponnesian War: A book review

 

With any long war comes the unmistakable slide into ugliness.

 I’m reading VDH’s book A War Like No Other about the Peloponnesian War from roughly 431 BC to 406 BC. It’s a military tactics and strategy book and it’s almost more than the average reader needs to know. There is a great deal about logistical difficulties and the broad nature of the conflicts that broke out across the Aegean and Ionian communities. The two powers at the time were Sparta and Athens but a lot of the fighting took place between allies of both.

Most historians understand the conflict as between a rising power and a declining one. Or rather, Sparta attacked Athens before it could become an even bigger threat.

Athens as the great sea power had a lot of port cities that paid tribute to its sprawling empire. Not all allies of Athens wanted to fight for them and actually tried to switch sides. Sparta didn’t initially have a big navy. They were a feared infantry force (hoplites) with no equal across all of Greece. Had the Peloponnesian War been a series of battlefield clashes Sparta would’ve won in a few years. The conflict wasn’t exactly 30 straight years of fighting. There were years of calm and truce (Peace of Nicias) even with smaller city states warring with each other.

But the war is characterized by sieges and disease with the occasional hoplite battles going head to head. Sieges were easier for the Athenians to use, given their naval superiority and wealth. Sieges could take years if the community being surrounded had enough supplies to outlast an occupying force. A lot of cities used stone walls to surround their population and wait it out. During this time in history, no one was adept at making proper ladders to scale barriers or effective battering rams. It would be another hundred years until armies like Alexander the Great’s figured out how to scale walls effectively.

 The most common way for a besieged city to fall was for someone inside to open the gates and let the invading army in. It was usually the oligarchs or wealthier patrons making deals with the surrounding force. There were so many sieges it’s tough to list them all. They frequently became expensive to maintain for the invading army more so than the occupied city, and didn’t add much in the way of spoils. They tied up men and materiel for years.

If the siege proved a success, you could capture and kill the men or force them into your depleted army. But training and lodging took time and became a burden cost wise. You could sell the women and children into slavery and make a few bucks, but it wouldn’t be enough to overcome the cost of years spend surrounding the place. Play out these scenarios over the countless cities and you begin to see the problem. A lot of little wars, skirmishes and sieges made a long war into a conflict of attrition. There wasn’t much to be gained by surrounding a walled city and waiting for them to surrender. But it became the default method of fighting, despite the few hoplite battles in Delium and Sicily.

 Athens fell victim to a plague early in the war (430-429) and wiped out significant members of the military (1/3), including the great general Pericles. If not for the outbreak I think Athens would have won the war. But they never really recovered from the devastating pandemic.

It’s a fascinating read but it’s tough to keep track of all the disparate city states and regions and their allies. Hanson uses multiple definitions too for the same groups (democrats, Athenians) and introduces a torrent of new concepts and words I wasn’t familiar with before. This book requires a little prior knowledge and whatever I knew before about the war (not much) it wasn’t enough to keep up.

He doesn’t organize the text chronologically either. He sections it off in separate elements of fighting, horses, sieges, disease, hoplite infantry battles, naval warfare. I find it easier to follow along in a chronological fashion, if not only to understand the history told like an unfolding story. I found the overall reading difficult but not impossible. 

Do this. Open a map of ancient Greece and trace your finger along the Aegean sea and notice all the cities. Do the same with the Ionian Sea and imagine each city or tiny island is a sovereign territory with citizens and an army and an oligarchy. It’s impossible to keep track of them all.

If there is a general theme to the war it’s this. Warfare is ugly across all human societies and descends into increasingly worse behavior as it goes on. The collective conscious of any community at war is beset with memories of what the other side did. After a few years nearly everyone has a story about some tragedy. This bitterness increases across generations and leads to bloodier battles and outright slaughter, even whole scale genocide in some cases. It’s easy to see how this happens. When war is necessary we always want a quick resolution, so that the vitriol doesn’t set in and consume generations.

The Peloponnesian War failed in this regard and dethroned Athens as the great democratic power of the 5^th century. But their legacy is philosophy and democratic governance. They also had the first historian (Thucydides) who chronicled much of the war. If you love ancient history and warfare A War Like No Other is for you.

God's Truth or Familiar Patterns

 

What’s to be done about life’s ugly cycles of disappointment and loathing? Everyone has their own emotional tripwires that explode and render us helpless, incapacitated by thoughts of past failings. Those previous bad decisions can stack up chronologically like an encyclopedia of mistakes.

For me, past failures play out in my head like a bad movie I’ve seen too many times. It’s on a loop, reminding me of the poor decisions and lack of effort leading to increasing failures. If only I could find the stop button, or better still the delete button.

As a kid I remember walking out of baseball practice after getting shelled by a batter who zeroed in my fastball. Instead of figuring out what to change I plow ahead, angry, frustrated. All it took to knock me out was a patient hitter. Sports are perfect for exposing flaws in our character because competition is a cold hard teacher. We establish notions about ourselves early in life and getting over the false image we create is a big challenge. I’ve always envied those people who don’t obsess over loss of failure, I admire their ability to put difficulty behind them and move forward.  

I went fishing with my Dad this past summer. I never catch a lot except for carp (always the frigging carb) and usually spend the time trying to unsnag the line out of the tree branch sunk below the shoreline. Or we spend time changing bait and looking for a hole where the bass hide. I'm betting his lake is over fished because we’ve covered it multiple ways, it’s not that big. The poles and gear all his I just go along for the ride and try to watch a couple and real in just in time for the fish to flop off the hook. Dad likes to tie the line to the leader a particular way. I never quite figured it out, didn’t care too. But it’s supposed to be better so I watched him do it. I couldn’t get it after a couple of tries so I quit. I’m a kid in baseball practice again, not wanting to learn from coach. I’m too upset to learn how to throw the curve. Forget it, I quit. I don’t care anymore anyway. I can’t do it anyway what’s the use.

It’s a pattern I hate about myself, it’s childish. Every “failure” no matter how silly is a reminder of how I don’t measure up and never have. I guess it’s why the baseball reference is so apt. Whatever your first memory or failure or embarrassment is will haunt you like a blind spot, a red flashing light of embarrassment. When we don’t find out how to work through problems and solve them we find pathways around. We find side paths through the woods that push us further off the main trail. The issues don’t go away but they do define how we will interact with similar problems in life. Suddenly we’re on paths of our own making still heading in the right direction but avoiding a lot of the barriers we’re meant to climb. The familiar patterns determine our path.

I’ve seen avoidance play out in other areas of life from careers to house work. There is hope for change in everything but it takes recognizing the personal challenge and working towards improvement. How? First thing is to find a Bible verse that speaks to who you are as a person. You didn't think I was going to recommend another tiresome self help class did you? You have to know what God says about you and rest on that. Here is my power verse. It works every time. I'm replacing a negative with a positive.

“Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phillipians 1:6)

 You must repeat it to yourself whenever that attitude of self-loathing or depression or regret pops up and tries to drag you down. Say it out loud and repeat it as often as necessary until your mind is back on the path. Stop wandering around in the woods looking for your own way. God is with us wherever we end up, but His path is the one we walked away from while wallowing in failure. In other words, it’s a better idea than going alone and a lot less work.

As Christians we need to get used to fighting again; fighting the attacks on the mind and fighting to stay on the path. I’m convinced everyone has a personal battle rooted in past regrets or failure or cringe-worthy decisions. I can be so honest about it because struggle is a common to everyone. We have a way out. We can have victory through scripture that’s designed to change our thinking and renew our minds. It’s a life long struggle but we do get better at recognizing negativity and falling into familiar patterns. So when you feel that familiar "here we go again" self talk, take control and speak the Word over yourself. 

The idea is to replace false belief and insecurity with God's truth and show others how to do the same.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Whining about Trees

 

 

I’m not sure why my trees are the last ones in the neighborhood to drop their leaves. 

I live on the corner so I have a little more yard than most of my neighbors. I own 3 and half full grown trees that all drop quite a lot of leaves. The “half” is because I share one with my neighbor. I’m not sure where the property line is but the tree likely splits it. The colder weather up north means by early November the leaves are mostly on the ground. Here I don’t lose them all until about mid-December, which seems very late. Of course we don’t get a lot of snow so running into huge piles of the stuff that cover the leaves isn’t likely.

If I had the money I’d cut the big maple in the front down. It’s rotten right down through the middle and the branches droop lethargically and snap off with a stiff breeze. I spend each day following a storm cleaning up the weak ones that gave up, tired of being connected to the dying trunk. They lay scattered in peace around the green grass, the trash can their final resting place. A year ago I had a tree guy drive up and offer me a deal to cut it down. I wasn’t in a position to spend that much, so we settled on a few dead limbs near the top. He took a big chunk out of it but did away with some really dangerous “widow maker” limbs. That would have to do for now.

I’ve cut two trees down since moving here. I can’t imagine why the original owner went so crazy planting them. Two were very close to the house and I’m only surprised a massive limb didn’t crack a crossbeam on the roof. The first one I cut out within the first year of moving in. The heavy limbs leaned ominously over the roof waiting to crash down on it. The second tree was too close as well but hadn’t really developed heavy branches that would cause major damage. The worst thing that happened was during a summer storm. A blast of wind came through and cracked a good size limb from the base and pulled down my electric line running from my riser to the city utility pole. It also crushed my chain link fence. After the clean-up I decided the tree had to go. It took another year or so before I found the money, but I managed. Actually my neighbor offered to split the bill since it was near the line. It was a generous move, especially since the limbs always fell on my side. We still have one tree between us but it’s not much trouble.

This past summer I had another large limb crack off my pear tree in the back. Pears are notoriously weak trees and although they grow fast they rarely hold up in high winds. In Oklahoma that’s certainly true. We get some monstrous storms here that will make you wish you’d cut them all down. I like what trees offer, shade and cover. Old neighborhoods with big leafy trees that line streets show off the maturity of the homes but can be a lot of work. Most of the homes around here don’t have a lot of large trees and I think I know why. The storms make it tough to grow them sturdy.

I’m my wildest dreams I image having a big lot with trees around the property line. As Americans we like to move up in careers and status, big houses and estates are a part of that. I imagine everyone has an ideal home and setting in their mind. Some want sprawling green space with tree lined driveways and long showy gardens. Others like small lots with spacious rooms, theaters and man-caves for games and sports. Everyone has one key item or centerpiece to their dream home. For me it’s a pool. Not just any pool but a massive in-ground salt water filtered party space with grills, and outdoor dining. I get that pools are a lot of work, but I’d get a lot of use out of it from family and friends. You can keep the game rooms and the man cave and the big gardens, I’ll take a massive (how did you afford this type) pool that begs to be used.

Oh and I’ll take a gardener to clean up the trees in the yard after a big storm.