Category Archives: Agni ad Bellum/ The Lamb’s War

Nikki Haley’s Got A Lot of Nerve; She Really Needs a Waffle

A good friend works the late shift in a 24-hour diner near here. During the slow hours, the diner is a stopping place for homeless people. For the last couple of nights, one particular homeless man has come in. Last night he handed over a grimy five dollar bill and ordered some eggs & bacon.

Halfway through eating it he stood and asked for a  take-out box. When  handed it, he walked around the nearly-empty diner, scooped into it all the scraps and leftovers from plates that hadn’t been cleared, then left.

Such scavenging is strictly against the house rules; but my friend studiously ignored it. She’s become particularly permissive since she got acquainted with two young women camping out behind the dumpster in the back parking lot.

She met them during the recent dry weeks. Then the rains came for several days, often pelting and blowing, and the young women are gone. We’re in the third week of another dry spell, and newcomers are here, crouched behind a different dumpster by the gas station up the block. They sweat through the mid-nineties days and scrounge for food that’s enroute to becoming trash.

Which brings me to Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the UN, who just threw a fit because that body’s poverty investigator (aka special rapporteur) after making an extensive study trip cross the nation,  dared to call for examining poverty in America.

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Culling a Clue about Kids from our Carolina Crackpots

Wouldn’t somebody in that batsh*t crazy crowd around the White House have realized –ahead of time– that this plan would blow up on them? That it would produce thousands of heart-rending images of kids under threat? That it could even upset some evangelicals?

Evidently not. In fact, their anti-immigrant inside guru, Stephen Miller bragged to the Atlantic just the other day that this plan was a guaranteed political winner.

Maybe he knows something I don’t know. After all, Miller’s in the White (supremacy) House, and I’m just a geezer in — well, I AM in North Carolina.

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A Visit to the Border

I’m a long way from the Mexican border. But like many others, I can’t tear my eyes away from it, via  the media. Many journalists are doing fine work this week, bringing the rending of families there into sharp focus. Here’s a sampling; hope the images and text make some impact. From the Jackson, Mississippi … Continue reading A Visit to the Border

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Is 45 Making Jesus Great Again?

For a long time I’ve felt that much of the deepest internal struggles in American culture have religious roots.
Sure, there’s also politics, class, race, gender and empire involved as well. But take off your Bubble-colored glasses and look closer, and religion pops up in most of these contexts too.
Further, one passage, Romans 13:1-7, has long been close to the center of these conflicts. It equates worldly rulers, and  their use of “the sword”, with God’s divine order. and has long been used to support whichever ruler a preacher most favors.
Blogger Doug Muder, who on most Mondays puts out “The Weekly Sift,” reviewing the past week, has an excellent brief summary of the current version of this larger struggle, summed up in the question: “Is Trumpism Becoming a New Religion?”
In technical terms, my  initial answer to Muder’s query has to be “No.” That’s because whatever it is, this new cult is definitely not “new.”
But on Muder’s main point, if there’s a religious character to what we face, and a struggle between gods, or at least idols, my answer is not just “Yes,” but “Hell, yes.”

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After Blowing Up The Iran Deal: Anybody Feeling a Draft?

Thinking about the “backing-up-new-Iranian-sanctions-with-War” scenario, I did some searching &quickly came across several disquieting facts:

1. Iran’s population is at least twice as big as Iraq’s;
2. it’s also more homogenous, linguistically, culturally & especially religiously (90+% Shi’a Muslim; Iraq, 60/40 Shia vs Sunni); further,
3. Iranians tend to be quite proud of their country & culture even if they despise their government . . . .

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