Against the day we know will come, when genuine justice can once again be served, let us make sure we remember the names of every one of Musk’s script kiddies, every recipient of Trump’s January 6 pardons, every member of every Texas or Florida governor’s rat squad, every fake elector put up by Republicans for the 2020 election, every member of every right-wing militia or lawless county sheriff’s posse comitatus, and every member of the U.S. Supreme Court who voted with the majority in Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. If we are ever to restore what the Constitution once promised us—to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—we will need them to answer publicly and completely for what they’ve attempted to do to our country.
Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi
Film Criticism (Of a Sort)
So I find myself netflicking again the other night, looking for something to rest my weary eyes on after another long day spent reading and writing on that radiant little iPad of mine. Ah, here we go then, a new one of those geriatric menaces with Liam Neeson in it. This time he’s to be a hit man (what else) retired in a village full of innocents the producer seems to have borrowed from the Banshees of Inisherin. It does also have Ciarán Hinds and Colm Meaney in it, though, so maybe….
Turns out it’s quite satisfying—serious enough to portray a character who has as hard a time as any of us figuring out if it’s his death or his life catching up with him, and wise enough to cast a superb Kerry Condon as the young harridan with a revolver who helps him with the final bit of calculation. It’s not quite Inisherin, but it doesn’t embarrass itself.
It’s called In the Land of Saints and Sinners, and it’s on Prime. It wouldn‘t kill you to have a look at it.
Unbidden Bits—November 27, 2024
Seeing behind the curtain isn’t easy for children, the poor, the otherwise marginalized. They simply lack the necessary resources. Recognizing that the curtain is there, though, is the first step toward liberation.
Metamorphosis/Metempsychosis
Ten years ago I was privileged to witness the emergence of a dragonfly from its nymph form. A creature that at first glance had seemed like a beetle to my untrained eye had crawled laboriously up from my back yard, attached itself to the side of the concrete step leading to the sliding glass door to my bedroom, and remained there, unmoving, tempting me to believe it had died.
I don’t remember exactly how long it remained there, but it was long enough for me to pass it a number of times on my way back and forth to the alley behind my house. Then, the last time I started to pass it, I discovered to my surprise that the back of its carapace had split open, and the dragonfly it had become was perched atop the empty shell that had sheltered it, had been it, and was now unfolding its wings in the afternoon sun. I watched until the wings, now fully dried, suddenly began to vibrate, then powered a beautiful, iridescent liftoff and arrow-like disappearance into the distance, a movement almost too fast to follow with the naked eye.
Being a child of the 20th/21st centuries, my first thought at witnessing this astonishing sequence of events was that any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic, my second that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Being a child of the 20th/21st centuries, I didn’t find those two thoughts to be incompatible. Now, ten years later, I still don’t.
Unbidden Bits—May 6, 2024
What if the panpsychists are right, and somehow even sand fleas and vegetables can feel pain? Makes the Christian doctrine of humankind’s essentially sinful nature even more soul-destroying to contemplate than it already is. Listen, I’m conscious enough of my very traditional transgressions, I don’t need to start worrying about how many carrots I’ve murdered in my eight decades of blissful predation. Either panpsychism or Catholicism, or better yet both, have to go. Meanwhile, I just don’t wanna talk about it….
Canta y No Llores II
Accounting
In my seventies, dreams have seized me.
Uncompromising, but not unkind,
Of more significance, now it’s come to this,
Than the judgments of my peers.
I embrace this purgatory of dreaming,
Consider it generous, a blessing even,
To be granted a good look at the bill
Before it comes due
Why Did This Man Have a Chicken On His Hat?

Ask Ron DeSantis. Also ask him why he wants to turn America into a place where he can wear one just like it.
Ask Newt Gingrich, the world-renowned historian. I’m sure he can explain precisely how and why we’ve all lost our way since the time when men could wear hats like this without getting laughed at.
Ask Sarah Palin or Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m sure they’d give up their present gigs in a heartbeat to be the consort of a man with a hat like this.
Signs
1. Putin’s table being longer than Trump’s necktie.
2. Representative Boebert mistaking her Glock for a sex toy on national TV.
3. Sinema verité (Interviews with bamboozled Arizona Democrats)
4. Chickenhawk on the menu again.
5. Republican state governors offering official sanction to volunteer vigilantes and informers. The Nazi term for this was Gleichschaltung. Look it up.
Freudian Slipperiness In the House
From CNN, Updated 1:38 PM EST February 10, 2022:
White House records obtained so far by January 6 committee show no record of calls to and from Trump during riot
“Whether it is the absence of data or phone logs or willing testimony, inevitably, we have different sources to get that information because these are conversations that require more than one participant,” committee member Rep. Stephanie Murphy said.
“So even if there is one node that isn’t forthcoming, there are inevitably other points of information that we can use to build a more fulsome picture of what happened on January 6,” the Florida Democrat said.
Ful⋅some /fulsəm/
adjective
1a — characterized by abundance
1b — generous in amount, extent, or spirit
2 — unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech
syn: buttery, oily, oleaginous, smarmy, soapy, unctuous
Il Miglior Fabbro
Today in the Guardian, a number of Bob Dylan’s fellow musicians contributed to a celebration of his 80th birthday by naming their favorite Dylan songs, and commenting on their choices.
In her comments, Gillian Welch said this:
I bought my first Dylan record – The Times They Are a-Changing [1964] – when I was 17, but to experience those early records in real time as he was releasing them must have been like being around when Shakespeare was creating new plays.
Yes. It was like that. Exactly like that. Unexpected. Miraculous.