Friday, May 26, 2017

Why?


At Lehigh, about forty years ago, there was a no doubt apocryphal story circulating about a philosophy professor at some university.

All semester, he hammered his students with very tough reading assignments and provoked them into defending any assertions they made in class.

The final was worth a heart-stopping 50% of the grade. After passing out the blue books for their answers, he wrote the test on the chalkboard.

"1. Why? (100 points)"

While most students wrote really worthy responses for which they received generous partial credit, only one student aced the test.

That student's answer?

"Because"

It was a neat story at the time but, in the forty or so years since I've dealt with many issues - as have all of us who are paying any sort of attention to life.

Why did a friend of mine, in apparently good health, pass out and drown in barely a foot of water on the canal trail?

Why do I (and others) have inexplicable issues - physical, mental, emotional - with which we've either been born or that developed from experiences so ancient that they are completely beyond recall and which can only be managed rather than healed?

Why does so much of suffering going on in the world, currently but really throughout all lives at all time in history, seem so senseless?

Even a Christian belief in providence doesn't make the question vanish, as the Book of Job attests.

The fact is, whereas "because" may not be a terribly satisfying answer to what philosophers call "limit questions," it IS a sufficient one for Christians, other religious folks, and the secular.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

I Confess...


Messrs Mike Talotta, Luther Bond, Kim Ticke, Will Diefenderfer, & others:

I CONFESS…

...that as a Democrat operating under not-so-deep cover in the Republican Party I and I alone crafted the Trump-Russia Collusion story.

Why should I deny something in which I take great and - if I say so myself - deserved pride.

In January of 2016, after careful study on the propagation of memes, I posted a photo-shopped picture of Trump shaking hands with Putin with the caption “Thanks, Putin!” and then posted it on the Deep Web.

Holy smokes!!

WHO KNEW the buzz from that simple meme, no doubt picked up by some bored-out-of-his-mind FBI intern would get passed up the chain of command to the:

  • FBI
  • CIA
  • NSA
  • Justice Department
  • Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the Treasury Department (specifically into Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone)
  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
  • House Intelligence Committee
  • House Oversight Committee
  • Senate Intelligence Committee
  • Senate Armed Services Committee
  • Senate Foreign Relations Committee

...as well as a few others whose acronyms I forget.

They jumped on the story, of course, because they are all bleeding heart liberal institutions that still have this quaint belief in the rule of law and other democratic silliness.

Oh, and of course, they GENEROUSLY LEAKED what they were finding to the rubbish newspapers.

Not credible sources like InfoWars, Breitbart, Russia Today, and Sputnik but to rags like the Washington Post, the NY Times, Newsweek, as well as cable trash like CNN and MSNBC and phony newswires like Reuters and the Associated Press.

I think we can all agree there are some REALLY STUPID people in the world to buy that crap!

Sincerely,

Bill Bekkenhuis 
(Work-name: B.F. Diehl)

Thursday, May 18, 2017

SPECIAL COUNSEL: What has (and hasn’t) changed


What hasn’t changed.

I still believe Donald Trump is unfit to occupy the Oval Office and must be removed via impeachment, the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, or resignation as swiftly as possible (which no doubt means months or years).

First and foremost, this administration has attacked and undermined both governmental institutions such as the professional civil service and the judicial system as well as non-governmental civic institutions such as a free and independent press. Going beyond even these affronts to civil, democratic society, this administration has attacked peer-reviewed science and appears to threaten the very idea that there are such things as objective facts.

In the second place, aside from our complete ignorance of the worldwide scope of his financial investments and indebtedness, there is - to my layman’s eyes - a blatant disregard of the Emoluments Clause.

Lastly, as with Nixon and as with Bill Clinton, a case can be made regarding Obstruction of Justice whether or not he is indicted and convicted under law. (Neither Nixon nor Clinton were indicted under law at the time Articles of Impeachment were drafted, though Clinton was held in civil contempt after impeachment proceedings.)

What has changed

A frightening number of constitutional safeguards had failed and civic institutions supporting that constitution were severely stressed.

The Electoral College failed: not by overturning a popular vote (that’s what it was designed to do to prevent a tyranny of the majority) but in the electors not acting to prevent a person obviously unqualified in terms of knowledge, experience, and - most importantly - temperament to the Oval Office.

The executive branch was in the process of being defeated through White House involvement in an FBI investigation in which the administration itself was a possible target.

The Republican-led congress was subject to gaslighting, intoxicated by the prospect of forcing its long-cherished, minority policies on America to the point of accepting the most outrageous assaults on the constitution and American civic institutions (including the destruction of the credibility of the House’s Intelligence Committee’s investigation) as the new normal.

With the appointment of a Special Counsel I feel increasingly confident that there is sufficient political will and resources to thoroughly investigate the Russian attack on the 2016 election as well as whether any Americans colluded to support that attack independent of the powers that be in the White House. [Yes, Trump could take action to fire Robert Mueller, but his administration’s life would no longer be worth a plug nickel.]

And if Mueller’s investigation should find - as it might well find - that while there was a lot of bad judgment and shady dealing going on between the Russian government and its government-controlled oligarchs and the Trump campaign, there was nothing that could be successfully prosecuted beyond a reasonable doubt, then so be it.

At least Americans such as myself would have confidence that due diligence was done.

And nothing substantial will have changed for the case that Trump must be removed from office as quickly as possible whether through impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or resignation.

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