I have a foreboding of America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all of the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; with our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
And when the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less, lowest-common-denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
— Marcus Aurelius
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
One reason various institutions are crumbling and the people in charge of them so unpopular is that the material reality they defend is so different from their own professed values. They claim to value the “rule of law” but only enforce some laws against some people some of the time. They claim to value “public safety” but pursue policies that make most people less safe. They claim to value liberty but jails hundreds of thousands of society’s poorest people solely because they lack access to cash. They claim to value equality but ensures a small number of people control nearly every major decision. They claim to value evidence but pursues policies that defy evidence. They claim to value health but let us all be regularly poisoned and then destroy the opportunity for most people to get quality health care. They claim to value merit but ensure that fealty to power is what gets rewarded in elite institutions. As a result, establishment politicians, university presidents, and pundits are constantly speaking gibberish instead of being real with people.
Explanatory note added by Quaker.org: Outraged by American military intervention in the Phillipines, Mark Twain wrote this and sent it to Harper’s Bazaar. This women’s magazine rejected it for being too radical, and it wasn’t published until after Mark Twain’s death, when World War I made it even more timely. It appeared in Harper’s Monthly, November 1916.
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.
“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — mustfollow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Reichstag Firewas an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was the culprit; the Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
In the wake of the unthinkable images and footage coming out of California over the weekend, it’s easy to feel insulated from the chaos if we happen to reside somewhere else in the country, as if our geography protects us.
Watching heavily-armed troops spraying civilians with rubber bullets and bombing them with tear gas for rightly protesting I.C.E.’s indiscriminate round-up of people working in local businesses, sitting in traffic, and showing up for their legal immigration appointments, it’s critical that we remember something.
This isn’t about Los Angeles.
It’s not about the bluest of the blue states receiving the wrath of a vindictive president.
It’s not about an outspoken Democrat Governor being intentionally targeted.
This is about the future of our Republic.
Los Angeles is a test by this corrupt Administration of how much illegality the American people will tolerate, how willing we will be to abide authoritarianism, how easily ordinary people will allow an arm of the government to be weaponized against us. It is a barometer of the intestinal fortitude of our citizenry.
Trump is always looking for his Reichstag Fire; his reason to bring the hammer of the Military down upon the nation. Declaring Martial Law has always been his endgame and his strategy as transparent: create an emergency where one did not exist and propose to bring Law and Order to a lawlessness and disorder of which he is the sole author. As California Governor Gavin Newsom correctly declared on his X account: 1) Local law enforcement didn’t need help. 2) Trump sent troops anyway — to manufacture chaos and violence. 3) Trump succeeded. 4) Now things are destabilized, and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
1. There is no such thing as settled law. There is law Trump and the broader right accept, and law that they don’t accept, and everything in the latter category will be relentlessly challenged.
2. There is no such thing as independence within the government. There is only loyalty to Trump and the cause.
3. Diversity is poison. It’s the job of the federal government not merely to arrest its progress where it is but to push it back, aggressively.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Ohio lawmakers are preparing to introduce the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act,” which would make it illegal for men to have sex without trying to create a child.
Two Ohio representatives, Anita Somani and Tristan Rader, posted a video to Bluesky detailing their plan regarding the bill, which was first introduced in Mississippi by Senator Bradford Blackmon.
“Fair is fair, right?” Somani said in the video. “If this legislature is so dedicated to regulating women’s bodies and their access to contraceptives and abortion care then let’s start policing men in the same way. After all, it does take two to tango, right?”
“Our bill would make it illegal to discharge semen or genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo,” she continued.
“If you find the language [in the bill] to be absurd, then maybe you should find any bill attempting to restrict reproductive freedoms absurd as well,” Rader chimed in.
According to WTRF, the bill is expected to make clear exceptions for contraceptives, masturbation, and LGBTQIA people.
The penalties for illegally discharging genetic material would be:
$1,000 for the first offense
$5,000 for the second offense
$10,000 for any subsequent offense
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
By Dr. Mark Crislip, Infectious Diseased Expert, Science-Based Medicine, Old Doctor Yells at Clouds, January 22, 2024
Half-assed was the term my father often used to describe the result of my chores around the house as a kid. In retrospect, I can’t disagree with his assessment. I wish I had asked him before he died if a good job would be full-assed or zero-assed. I guess it depends on whether the goal is full or zero.
But I have been impressed with how often the basics of medicine are perfunctory. Cursory? Desultory? Superficial? No, I’ll stick with half-assed.
What I am referring to is so many health care providers I am in contact with as a patient or an observer (such as when my wife or mother sees a doctor) do a half-assed history and maybe a quarter-assed or three-quarter-assed physical.
It is sad.
When I have a medical problem, I organize the history before I see the care provider so they get a classic presentation of the history of the present illness, like I learned as a medical student. Six minutes tops, succinct, and perfectly organized. So I know my providers are getting the right information to make a diagnosis. I do recognize there is the problem in that my presentation also includes my bias as to what I think my problem is. I am well aware that, in regards to my own health, I am not the most reliable of historians or clinicians. The doctor who diagnoses himself has a fool for a patient and an idiot for a doctor and all that.
But for some family members, I have witnessed the most superficial of history taking. I know why. The abdominal pain that brought them into the ER? Going to get a CT to see what’s going on. So why bother with a careful history when the technology and blood tests will likely reveal the diagnosis? I am old and old school. I was taught and practiced that a careful history determines the diagnosis and then the tests are ordered to confirm that diagnosis, not to make it.
And when the CT is negative, everyone looks baffled because they have not bothered to make a clinical diagnosis first. Surprise.
I also find that providers rely more on what they read in the chart than what the patient has to say. And that is always a mistake. I learned early that the best approach to a new patient was to go in mostly blind and gather the information needed from the source. I was kind of an asshole, for when I was called for a consult I told them I wanted no more than a 5-word question they wanted answered. I assumed everyone else had it wrong and the approach occasionally paid off.
And the exam?
How many heart /lung exams have I seen that were both brief and through the gown or shirt? Too many to count. One anesthesiologist’s stethoscope was not on my chest for a complete cardiac cycle. It is rare to get a cardiopulmonary exam done that I think would provide any meaningful information to the examiner.
And abdominal exams? Usually, a brief push on the belly while the patient is sitting up. I have yet to see anyone do the classic look, listen, percuss, and palpate.
Most of the time, I just laugh, as I know the exam isn’t likely relevant. I have no cardiopulmonary issues and do not need a heart or lung exam before surgery. It is not like they are going to find an undiagnosed aortic stenosis that might cause an issue with anesthesia. But it might be with the next patient if they bothered to really listen.
So why are the exams so half-assed? I think two reasons. One is that technology is better than the exam, although more expensive. You will get more information from an ECHO or a CT or an ultrasound or an MRI. Or even a chest X-ray. My pulmonary attending years ago said the lung exam is what you do while waiting for the CXR to develop. And I kind of agree with that.
But finding pathology is fun and, on occasion, you will pick up pathology that the technology will miss. Little things, but important. How many times did I note the patient had blue sclera and talking with the patient revealed they likely had Ehlers-Danlos, unnoted for decades? Or the embolic event in the nail bed that meant endocarditis? And the exam can confirm what you think is the diagnosis from the careful and complete history. If you bothered to take one.
The main reason these exams are half-assed? Docs can bill at a higher level if they do them. So even if you have no heart or lung issues, you will get a half-assed heart-lung exam to bump up that billing code. I never did that. I was told many times that I could bill more if I did, but I never thought it was ethical to provide unneeded care for the sole purpose of billing. Everything you do for a patient should only be for the benefit of that patient.
I should add there is a difference between the initial physical and the follow-up physical. An initial evaluation by your HCP should be complete. After that? Likely should depend on what the problem is.
I will say the exam is not always half-assed with all health care providers. The docs I see often do the exam correctly. But they are all old, at least in their 50s. I have found the younger the provider, the more half-assed. And, sadly, MDs are more half-assed than NPs or PAs.
Grumpy old fart grousing about the youngsters today. And get off my grass.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Secular Humanism is about humans and what’s good for them. Christianity is about Jesus and what’s good for him.
— Matt Dillahunty, The Atheist Experience, 2017
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
My partner, Amy Gustin, had a great idea the other day. This is not at all unusual for her. A lot of my columns begin with one of her great ideas, and this is one of them. The other day, Amy was perusing some books about the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet while contemplating the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe, and speculating about the Paleolithic origins of certain pagan European Christmas symbols, when she said this: “Environmentalists should take over Christmas.”
“What?” I replied. She explained that a lot of European pagan Christmas symbols celebrate the Boreal Forest and an arctic climate. We have Christmas trees. Christmas is the only time of year when snow is popular, and Santa lives at the North Pole and gets around on a sled pulled by caribou. All of these things remind us of the Arctic, and they should remind us that the Arctic is undergoing dramatic changes due to global climate change.
Can you think of a better symbol for global climate change than Santa Claus? First, he drives a zero-emission, carbon-neutral vehicle, and he’s been doing it for centuries. Second, everything Santa owns faces imminent destruction, unless we can stop the sea ice from shrinking. Santa, Mrs. Claus, all of the elves, and the whole toy factory are headed straight for a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean unless we stop global warming now.
….
Coca-Cola has done a great job of making the polar bear into a symbol of Christmas, and we should adopt that symbol wholeheartedly. Instead of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus, put a mother polar bear and her two cubs in your nativity scene. I’m all for wise men, if you can find any, but how wise can your men be if they’re standing next to a hungry polar bear?
The global climate crisis affects everyone, and it’s time to make Christmas into a holiday for everyone. From now on, Christmas is about the North Pole and the gift of a stable climate. Being born doesn’t get you a holiday, in my book. Jesus has a holiday — it’s the one he lived and died for, and Christians should go ahead and do Easter big. But Christmas is too important to let Christians hog it to themselves. Besides, Christmas is better without Jesus.
We’ve still got Santa Claus, but now Christmas is about saving Santa. We’ve got reindeer and sleigh bells, snow and Christmas trees and we’ve got all of the animals coming together to help their friend the polar bear. We’ve got the Nutcracker to help us crack the nut of global climate change, and we can re-edit the Charlie Brown Christmas Special so that Linus’ big speech reflects the holiday’s bold new direction. Everything you love about Christmas will still be there for you, but now Christmas has a mission.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
