Pandemic stress dreams

I dreamed last night I went without a mask into a crowded restaurant where nobody else was wearing a mask, and realizing I probably had just signed my own death warrant.

I didn't sleep well last night.

The sources of Donald Trump's shame

The Week: "In his first one-on-one interview since the general election, President Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo over the phone that he is "ashamed" he once endorsed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R)."

Let's see:

He's not ashamed of committing adultery on numerous occasions.

He's not ashamed of failing the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He's not ashamed that his Iran policy has failed so spectacularly.

He's not ashamed of running his businesses into the ground, or of acquiring massive debt.

He is ashamed of once endorsing a guy who failed to assist his cheating.

Whatever.

A little theology for Sunday morning

From The Atlantic:

Rev. William J. Barber II: Well, I was trained in theology that whatever you call your spiritual experience, if it does not produce a quarrel with the world, then the claim to be spiritual is suspect.

Sounds right to me. 

Maybe it is time for the NFL to give up on this season

The astonishing thing is that it has taken this long for professional and college sports to arrive at this point. I wouldn't have guessed anybody could get very far this year, and I was wrong about that, but football -- with its rosters of fifty-some-odd people -- has too many moving parts for this not to happen.

 

To schadenfreude or not to schadenfreude?

I am torn by hoping that Republicans' cynical and false allegations of voter fraud come back to bite them by persuading their voters there is no reason to vote again -- costing them elections they might've won -- and a believe that democracy isn't sustainable if a huge chunk of the population doesn't believe the results are legitimate.

Today on the Kansas River

 

One small step to putting civilians back in charge at Defense

NYT reports that Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired Army general, is under consideration to lead the Department of Defense under Joe Biden. I'd prefer not -- not because of anything necessarily wrong about Austin (I know literally nothing about him) but because Trump tried to blur the whole distinction between civilian and military control of the military, which has been a pretty important principle of our democracy. That's how former General James Mattis became Trump's first secretary of defense, even though he required a waiver to do so. There are civilian Democrats with expertise in national security. Pick one of them.