Becket and More

 Content warning: grief, anger, parental death Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash  Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my mother's death. I am angry with God because I don't know who else to be angry with.  And I am so very angry.  I'm angry with the fact that I'm angry.  Who am I that the fact that I lost parents at the ages of 90 and 88 is something to be sad, let alone angry, about? They lived long lives, happy lives. They left the world better than they found it. They loved each other to distraction, and they loved my brother and me in such a way that it was impossible to ever even imagine otherwise. I didn't even have any outstanding emotional issues, thanks to years of therapy. Nothing was left unsaid, no unfinished business.  So why am I so angry? Maybe it's just how the power of my grief manifests. If I've ever had any choice about how to feel, if any sort of anger were available, that's what I've chosen. Anger's ani...

 Here's my thing with the turmoil going on with the Mountbatten-Windsors over in the UK: This is a family in which members have literally murdered each other. It's a proven matter through the historical record. From the Godwinsons, to King John, to Richard III, to William and Mary. The founding member of the state religion did so JUST so that he could get a divorce. And if he couldn't find an excuse to divorce a wife and she proved problematic (see: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard), he had her executed by the state.  "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest," was a substantial  rewrite of what Henry II actually said about Thomas Becket, which was, "Will none of you losers nut up and kill this disrespectful pain in my ass, already?!" (I paraphrase, but not by much.)[1] Victoria openly and vocally blamed her son, the eventual Edward VII, for her husband's death and badmouthed him to anyone who would listen. Comparatively, some in-family plotting...

 Beloveds, oh, my beloveds. I have tried to watch and live-tweet the vice presidential debate going on as we speak. I couldn't. I was annoyed when Kamala Harris wasted her opportunity to tell America what a Biden/Harris administration  would do about COVID-19 on Day 1 by rehashing the current administration's complete lack of competence thus far. On the other hand, I couldn't look away. It reminds me too much of my days as a rookie teacher in a special ed classroom for emotionally disturbed kids. The first year always sucks, I don't care who you are or how prepared you thought you'd be. It's awful. And I lost control of my classroom on more than one occasion. That's what's happened to Susan Page tonight, and it's what happened to Chris Wallace last week. That's right, I'm gonna stand up for the moderators. Because the Commission on Presidential Debates  (CPD) gives them less power than a substitute teacher gets. The problem is that the CPD gi...

Hey, guess what?! A few weeks ago, the GDP dropped to a new low. Like, a low  low. Like worse than the Great Depression low. What's that? You did't hear about it? Well, I'm not surprised. See, the same day that report came out, Donald Trump first tweeted his suggestion that the election be postponed. A suggestion that, rightfully, took over the news cycle like Godzilla took over Tokyo. This event lead us once again to the eternal question: do these media slights-of-hand reveal 45 to be a political genius, a puppet of diabolical handlers, or a very lucky idiot? Personally I argue some combination of all three, the exact composition changing on a day-to-day basis. Although, I'd never accuse Trump of genius , per se. All political acumen requires a high degree of low animal cunning. That day, the day of the GDP drop and the election mishigas, he was mostly a lucky idiot. Given the economy's  COVID-19-induced free fall, bad economic news is more or less a daily occurren...

  Beloveds, I miss Molly Ivins like hell. There just hasn't been anyone like her writing on politics since she passed in 2005.  No one else has that fierce joy, or that sense of the ridiculous. No one else has that way of bringing us all together, making us think, and making us laugh out loud all at the same time.  *shakes fist at cancer yet again* Gail Collins is a little too silly (and lets Brooks and Stephenson get away with too much), and Dog knows Maureen Dowd can't laugh at herself. E. J. Dionne , while awesomely talented and intelligent (and my current favorite non-fiction Catholic writer), is so very earnest, and Eugene Robinson , at least right now, is too important. Besides, Molly's voice was a woman's, which is still in short supply. As I sat recently contemplating my navel and these unfortunate circumstances, a stray thought occurred to me: Could I be the Molly Ivins I wish to see in the world? Let's find out.

Welcome to the first of what will inevitably be a very long series of my white self yelling at other white people about racism!        This meme is a problem:        Worse, the problem is the point.      The way I read it, there are two possible/simultaneous messages here. First, that George Floyd’s death was a tragedy completely independent of race. Okay, interesting. Wrong, but interesting, and I’ll get into those details later. The other message is that if “people” (generally understood to be people of color, specifically Black people, and their allies) would stop bring race into everything, racism would disappear.      The first problem with that, and it’s so glaring that it can be seen from space, is that it blames African Americans for their own poor treatment.      Oh, not explicitly. Never explicitly. The people who create these memes would never be so g...

Okay, there have been a few things being batted about the media about how weird and/or shocking it is that Protestant Christians and Roman Catholic Christians are diverging. Call the fire department! Clutch your pearls! See, here's the thing, though. It's only in the past thirty-five to forty years that Evangelical Protestants (who are the Protestants who are understood to be the other party here) and Roman Catholics have found common ground. On  anything. Why? I'm glad you asked. Stand back. *ahem* EVANGELICALS DON'T LIKE CATHOLICS. THEY STILL CALL US THE WHORE OF BABYLON. You see, Catholics  happened  to become useful to Evangelical denominations in the 1970s and 1980s, when we provided warm bodies to their right-to-life rallies, and again in the 2000s during the fight against marriage equality. (We were on the wrong side. Big shock.) Other than that, Evangelical and Catholic dogma and theology have about as little in common as pos...

Carrie Fisher? Really 2016? I may be figuring out who and what I am and what I want to do, but I know for sure one of those things is to be an awesome, smart, funny writer and advocate like her .

I turned 43 recently, and over the past couple of years I've realized a couple of things about myself that just are. They're just part of the fabric of my personality and they're not going to change. I am a very messy person except where my closet space is concerned. I have never really liked any kind of beef stew, however many different ways I try to make it. I am an extremely angry person. I say the last with no particular pride or shame--it just is. It can be somewhat daunting to realize that one would be better placed in the Red Lantern Corps rather than the Green Lanterns, or even the Blue. But it's just kind of there. And while I've had an interesting relationship with anger my entire life, I've been circling it a little more closely lately. Anger has been a good friend to me. It has given me energy and purpose when I could otherwise find none. Anger has also been an obsession, impeding my progress and tainting relationships. The tric...

Day 2 of the Resistance was kind of underwhelming.  My usual rage was hijacked by the flexeril I'm taking for a spasming back. I have continued, however, to post pictures and stories of newly emboldened misogynists and racists on my Facebook feed.  I want every person who voted to Trump, Stein, or Johnson to know exac tly what they've done. That even if that man said those things to get attention, people took him seriously. That this is what third-party voters' special snowflake principles helped to bring about. Swastikas are popular, as is groping. An entire kindergarten chanted, "Build that wall!" Homophobic graffiti abounds. African-Americans have been threatened at gunpoint. Jesus Christ, there have been suicides , both of transgender people and people who have lost hope regarding their health care and figured they might as well end their lives sooner than later. DO YOU GET IT, YET? Lives have been utterly destroyed, and he hasn't even been sworn into o...

So, yeah. That happened. That person is now President of the United States. I'm still not entirely sure I'm not giving up on the shit show[1] that the American Experiment has become. I continue to reserve that right, but I know for sure that in the meantime I have to speak up. Loudly. Often. So, *spreads arms* here I am. And I am angry. Furious. Wrothful. I am at the end of my rope with many of my fellow Americans, and, like the man said, I'm not going to take it anymore. Appropriately enough, I turn 43 in 41 minutes, and my main resolution for this upcoming trip around the sun is to stand up and fight:  the patriarchy, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia... At this point, if you name it and it marginalizes a group, I'll take a swing at it. I do not anticipate this being difficult, as I have run out of fucks to give[2]. I have named this blog for my two favorite historical shit-kickers, St. Thomas Becket and St. Thomas More. Both spoke truth to power. Both f...