Is DEI Driving Everyone Insane?

Today marks 4 score and a year that I've been circling the Sun. So like that guy from State Farm, "I've seen a few things!" Not all of them good. Forinstance, out of curiosity I once Googled the events of my birthday, December 17, 1942: "Revealed: 6 Million Jews Exterminated," screamed the banner headlines.

There were to be many more atrocities and naughty behaviors unfolding during my hiatus here on Earth: Genocides, Wars, Massacres, Natural Disasters, and Man-made Catastrophes: Assassinations, Homicides, Fratricides, Matricides, Infanticides with a side of Revolutions, Lynchings, Arsons, Rapes, Robberies, Burglaries, Corruptions, Injustices, Bamboozlings--etc., all too numerous to remember, let alone mention--you get the picture.

So what's a body politic to do? Well, we've resurrected a grand old idea: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This seems to ring a bell--a Liberty Bell--for wasn't this the idea(l) embedded in the Declaration of Independence? Well, it happens that what was good for the goose in 1776 is too saucy for the American Eagle in 2023.

For a myriad of reasons, chief among them pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth--pick your deadly combination of cardinal sins--we have tossed ourselves overboard--and are now furiously treading water, floundering in a rising tide of ignorance, despair, purposelessness, and dare I say, "DEI deprivation." In other words, nothing's really changed in 81 years. Or has it been 8,100?

To Humankind: "Can We Talk?"

"Fundamental to the moral law of Holiness are the two principles which lie at the basis of man's creative cooperation with God -- Justice and Righteousness, Justice being the negative aspect of Holiness; Righteousness, its positive aspect. Justice means the recognition of six fundamental rights. These are the right to live, the right of possession, the right to work, the right to clothing, the right to shelter, and finally the right of the person, which includes the right to leisure and the right to liberty, as well as prohibitions to hate, avenge, or bear a grudge."

"Righteousness is to manifest itself in the acceptance of duties, especially in the concern for the poor, the weak, and the helpless, whether friend or foe. It is also to show itself in the conception of earthly goods, the possession of which is to be regarded not as a natural right but as a divine trust. When a neighbor is in difficulty, a loan is to be made to him for which no interest is to be charged. If he is obliged to surrender his ancestral property, it is to revert to him. The difficulties of a man's neighbor are not to be used to increase his own income. Economic life in the Torah is thus to mean essential services to one's fellow man; and behind this ethic stands the law of love as formulated by the golden rule 'Thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself', which is expressly stated to include the non-Israelite stranger."

from Judaism by Rabbi Isidore Epstein.

Dis United Nations

From the Britannica World Review of 1975.

 "The escalation of Communist and third world "antiracist," "anti-imperialist" rhetoric reached a peak at the UN in October 1975, when the UN Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee passed (70 to 29, with 27 abstentions and 16 absent) an Arab resolution condemning Israel as the "racist regime in occupied Palestine," declaring that Zionism was "a form of racism and racial discrimination," and calling upon all nations to opposed Zionism as "a threat to world peace and security" and a racist and imperialist ideology."

" . . . In November the anti-Zionism resolution was adopted by the General Assembly."

The resolution was introduced by Pres. Idi Amin of Uganda.

Witch Watching

Swatch Out!

Three Witches Watched Three Wristwatches

Which Witch Watched Which Wristwatch?

That's a tongue twister on which to whet your whistle. I have long been warm to witches--ever since seeing Veronica Lake (of Tudor City) playing it coy and cute in I Married a Witch when I was just an awedful kid loaded with hormonious mischief watching the Early Show in the days when TV dinners were stillunborn. 

And then when I grew up, there was Arthur Miller (not my uncle, Arthur Miller, who drove a laundry truck and early succumbed for his pains) but Marilyn's other toy boy, the one who penned The Crucible. 

And then there was Gabby and his long spell of witchery to enthrall me with his heavy-handed brand of magicianship. 

And then along came John and Jack and The Witches of Eastwick.

And then Dame Atwood broomed in with a scary tale of a real live Succubus, Zenia, with The Robber Bride. She who has been named nastily disorders the lives and loves of three innocent women. After reading Atwood's deft portrayal of female betrayal I returned to unholy Mass to refresh my memory of the male take on the delicate sorcery close to his and Hathorne's heart with Updike's, The Widows of Eastwick.

I rest my piece. The jury's out.

What a Revoltin' Development This Is!

As I begin to ruminate, or fulminate, or maybe better, percolate upon the development of this post post-haste I'll get straight to the point--whenever I hear someone say "the developing countries," I am puzzled, and quite frankly not a little bit annoyed. Aren't all countries always, like marriages, "developing," for better or for worse? Hemingway asked a guy who had once been rich and had become a panhandler living on the down-low what happened. The guy told him that "it happened to me in two ways, first gradually and then all of a sudden."

Like life itself, "developing" gradually until something sinister seems to happen suddenly. To be sure, inevitability sucks, but what's a body to do?

I'll keep ruminating, keep fulminating, keep percolating, and keep posting.

Maybe you'll learn to stop worrying while I apply the balm.

You Can Depend On It

Here I am. It's the 4th of July, 2023, and as I have the following opinion: "Let me say this about that."

You know, I'm past playing with, observing, or sharing anything but my disdain for our annual national obsession with setting off fireworks.

I think that since the arm of the law has deemed it necessary to restrict the sale of wedding cakes and websites to undesirables (detestables?) then it certainly would be in the common interest of society to ban explosives from getting into the remaining fingers of those people demonstrably unfit to manage their safe use.

As well, pets have no say in the matter (free speech not applying, in particular, to those voiceless creatures, our best friends).  O but I am sure that they would appreciate us putting an end to their personally traumatic experience that they are forced to endure every time that their loving masters celebrate their nation's birth by noticeably blowing things up.

I have nothing to say about the daily use of guns to cull our population, as it appears to me to be our duty to protect ourselves from one another. 

Mustard or Ketchup that is the question!

Be happy in your continued Independence.

Another Erection Season

Well, here we go again.  We are kicking off another spiraling, uninspiring episode of the potlatchian turmoil we allow to consume us every time our time-honored political system has decreed that it must cleanse itself of the failures of the current administration, or at least give a new administration a chance to exhibit their laundry list of hopey, unrealistic, promises to serve us better, stronger, smarter, and make us more satisfied over its guaranteed to be, happily, a short-lived period of continuing misrule.

I don't know about you,

but I'm totally enrapt,

and you should be, too!

Let the games begin!

Mayday Mayday

Dearie,

Cheery beats bleary, dreary, weary,

and yet what if in fact we are

--in theory--

@ the .

where our good intentions have

eXXXceeded

our ^

to fulfill them?

--Amorphously,

Chet GPA

Three Blind Mice. See How They Run.

All of these 'yes-men' are as new to our national life as to our vocabulary.

Their appalling uniformity and timorousness of views threatens to sweep up whatever shards of our democracy yet remain.

At bottom, they value only the gravy-train they rode in on, and not the despoiled landscape upon which the tracks have long been spiked.

Aye Aye

Auden hadn't had a clerihew

He'd bitten off more than he could chew

When he tried to warn off Yeats

The barbarians were inside the Gates 

Swan Lake

There is a lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood that I have many times walked about and around. It is home I am sure to many ducks and geese, because I have seen them paddling and diving in all kinds of weather. I saw, only once, a large turtle slowly make its way up the muddy shore only to be rudely scooped up by a State Park employee and dumped unceremoniously into the back of his pickup truck. I won't forget that, not really, although it wasn't the worst thing I witnessed on that lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood. I saw a dead swan, an arrow--yes--an arrow protruding through its body just below its long, limp neck. What a sight! Not nearly as sorrowful, however, as its mate paddling itself in ever smaller, solitary circles--a  figure of true desolation in all its fine feathery, whiteness. Such other swans as there were upon this lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood moved in pairs.

Now, years later, I perambulated about the lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood and saw the several pairs of swans, the ducks, and the many geese, all happily paddling away. It was an uncommonly mild mid-winter day. I saw, too, the still lonely swan upon the lovely lake surrounded by a goodly wood. It was still circling in ever smaller, solitary circles.

The Remains of Our Day

The detritus one encounters

While walking once familiar roads.

One has to wonder--

Casually tossed there?

Thrown with intent to harm?

Dropped unwitting?

One walks on wondering--

By a walker like you?

Surely not--

Solely.