The Texas Legislature only meets every other year for 140 days. That’s all we can stand. This session ends May 31st and they haven’t even started with redistricting. One member of the Lege describes today —

Best I can figure, that’s also pretty much every day.

The Lt. Gov, where all the real power in Texas government is vested, is already calling for a special session to begin in June.  Here’s his agenda.

The bills sought to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams based on their gender identity, prohibit local governments from using taxpayer funds to pay for lobbyists and punish social media companies for “censoring” Texans based on their political viewpoints.

Because, you know, those are major issues to the life and liberty of all Texans.  Plus, we ain’t got any other problems because they already passed that you don’t have to have a permit, background check, or training to carry a gun and made it super hard to vote. So, Texas is practically heaven except for those transgender people and that Republicans can’t recruit for their next insurrection on Twitter.

And under the category of Quit Forking Around, we have Comfort High School (just north of San Antonio) where half the senior class was suspended, including the valedictorian and salutatorian.

SUSPENDED❗️ Half the senior class at Comfort High School has been suspended after participating in a senior prank last week. The extent of the damage? See the pictures below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/OrDHmPfxE8

— Morgan Burrell (@Morgan_Burrell) May 20, 2021

They stuck plastic forks in the football field. No property was destroyed. They put balloons all over the floor of one classroom and tilted a mounted animal head.

I saying they were tourists.

If they suspended kids for doing stuff like that when I was in high school, I’d still be in high school.

You’ve seen this before. Someone complains about working hard and seemingly not making it while others get to sit on their duff and collect a government paycheck. I have to admit, it’s a tempting thought process. I allowed myself to go down that road one or two times. It can be a comforting place to be when you are struggling personally. It is a thought process built on two intricate cons.

First and foremost, life is not a zero sum game. My success or lack of success has little to do with anyone else. Sure, we have direct competitors for the jobs we want but most of the vitriol being spewed is spewed at people that have nothing to do with us. So, when I don’t succeed, that has nothing to do with 99 percent of the people around me.

The trouble is that the conservative con has made us believe that this is the case. So, when I don’t succeed there is usually someone (or a group) I can immediately blame for my lack of success. This is where the xenophobia comes from. Immigrants are coming to take your job. Of course, we all know that’s not true, but the con is an emotional con. We don’t think well when we’re angry and scared.

The second con is essentially a con of conflation. Look at all the free stuff people get. This con has been going on since the Reagan years with his Welfare Queens that are almost certainly black and driving around in their Cadillac. It’s a complex web they weave. It’s built on a number of lies and half truths but it focuses on misdirection more than anything.

Even if we consider ourselves enlightened enough to see through one of the major lies, we find ourselves vulnerable to the others. Sure, many of us know that most people on welfare are white. Congratulations. You saw through one of the major lies. The second question we have to ask ourselves is how good do they have it really?

Notice how few details you see. There are always stories of people buying Air Jordans, T-bone steaks, and lobster on their Lonestar card. Yet. there is rarely any hard and fast data about how much someone actually gets on government assistance. They really don’t want you to know. The dirty little secret is that it’s not much. It’s certainly not the kind of life 99 percent of us would want to lead.

It doesn’t mean there isn’t waste or people that game the system, but we really have to ask ourselves what that all matters. If that money goes away and returns to the government coffers does my life become any better? If we make their life miserable and force them to fend for themselves am I any better off? We really need to ask ourselves why we think denying others the basics of human life makes our lot in life any better.

A large part of the con is that this money has never made it back to us. That is unless you are in the top one percent financially. If you are then I’d kindly accept a donation to keep this blog up and running. Otherwise, it’s not going to you and me. So, when we find ourselves struggling to get by it is fair to ask what’s in it for me. It’s at this point that we have to remember both parts of the con.

First, this is not a zero sum game. You can help the vast majority of people all at the same time. That of course brings us to the second part of the con. When we are struggling it makes no sense to ask why they get help and we don’t. That diverts our attention away from us and onto them. It is more productive to simply ask why we don’t get help. Who is it that isn’t helping us? Who is it that actually is actively making our lives harder than it needs to be? The answer is usually related to those pushing the con.

This is one of those topics that I hesitate to write about. It’s a personal topic that some people have difficultly relating to. This is also not a space where we wallow in our own stuff. So, we walk a fine line between talking about our own issues and looking at issues dispassionately with no personal connection whatsoever. I have to admit that I got inspiration from another spot.

I realize that around these parts the topic of faith and Christianity in general might be taboo, but I drudge on anyway. The phenomenon Pavlovitz noticed has actually been going on longer than that. When I sat on the pastoral council of my old parish we noticed that church attendance and donations were down. This was long before 2016 when Pavlovitz’s writing began to take off and he began addressing this malaise more directly.

As a council, we suggested that we conduct exit interviews (or a survey) to get to the bottom of why church attendance was dropping. Our pastor wouldn’t hear of it. He asserted that people were simply moving away. This was in spite of the fact that they are continually building new neighborhoods and new homes and people are moving into those homes faster than they can build them.

Statistics clearly show that church attendance and faith in general is on the decline. Obviously, for some this is not an issue at all. For some of us it is an issue felt deeply. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but what I see is a schism between the beliefs that most Christians have and how the faith is practiced in most denominations in the American church. When one can no longer reconcile a benevolent God with all of the hate being spewed by people that call themselves Christian they no longer go.

Complex problems have complex solutions and any number of people to blame. While religious conservatives have played the biggest role in this problem, I don’t think progressives can get off without blame. Jesus was a progressive. When you read the gospels there is no way to come out with any other conclusion. The values of helping the poor and showing compassion to all are clearly progressive planks.

Yet, we have allowed Christianity to be hijacked by conservatives. So, progressives that are also Christian really have three choices. They can stop being progressive and give into the conservative message. They can stop being Christian so they can adhere to a progressive message. The final possibility to continue to be both. However, that requires that they bang their head against both walls. I often feel like that is where I’m at.

The problem with allowing the numbers to get smaller is that those remaining have abandoned progressive ideals. It’s similar to what is going on in the Republican party. Think of it as the Liz Cheney problem. If Cheney gets primaried then gets primaried by a guy that impregnated a 14 year old when he was 18. It seems nice to just assume a Democrat would win, but that’s not likely in Wyoming. So, you replace an ultra conservative with someone more conservative and less reasonable. Multiply that a few dozen times and that’s what’s happened to Congress.

If the same things happens to the American church things will just get worse. I’d rather have a good portion of the church stand up and say in one voice that Jesus was a progressive. Jesus loved his neighbors and condemned no one. Jesus fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and healed the sick. Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, transgender, or any other wedge issue. He spent more time on social justice issues than railing against sin. Maybe if we say these things we can save more Christians from leaving the flock. Maybe if we say these things we can attract more people to the progressive side because we can convince them that voting progressive is a full expression of their faith and not something they do in spite of it.

The Texas state legislature and Governor Abbott have decided to abandon conservative principles, but then again what else is new? The mask has become the symbol for ideological warfare in America. There are all kinds of idiots out there, so there is little time to address them all. Suffice it to say, anyone that treats a mask as anything more than a piece of cloth or fabric is an idiot.

Enter Greg Abbott. The new law makes it illegal for a school or government building to require masks after June 4th. Considering the increasing rates of vaccinations and reducing positive rates it makes some sense on its face. Most adults are now fully vaccinated. So, there’s that.

The problem is two-fold. One of the problems exists on a philosophical level. Conservatives have been crying for generations about how much national and state governments have exercised too much control over local governments and the people. So, here the state government is barring the local governments and school districts from exercising local control. Does anyone else see the problem here?

The move at least follows a pattern with Abbott and the legislature throughout the pandemic. He is anything but consistent. From the beginning he has refused to lead in any positive way to limit the spread of the virus. He prefers to let local entities do the work. That would be fine except that whenever a local entity acts responsibly and safely he tells them they’re doing it wrong. This is another one of those instances.

The second problem is that while adults are getting vaccinated, children are not. Children under 12 cannot be vaccinated and those over 12 have just started. The good news is that by June 4th, most students and teachers will be home for the summer. Yet, there will still be summer school and who knows how many students will be vaccinated by August.

It is quite possible to overreact to something like this. For one thing, it is highly possible that most school districts would have reached this conclusion on their own. After all, the order doesn’t say you can’t wear masks. It just says that you can’t require it. However, some districts likely would have maintained the mask order if left to their own devices.

It also brings us back to the original point about masks. They have become a political symbol. I usually still wear one in public even though I am vaccinated. We have to wear one at work and it is just easier to do it rather than have to remember which places allow you to go without and which ones don’t. I increasingly get dirty looks in public because people automatically make an assumption about my politics based on my adherence to wearing a mask.

In this case they would be right, but that’s not really the point. The point is that a public safety measure shouldn’t be the flashpoint for a political debate. That’s true whether you look down at someone for wearing a mask or make fun of someone for not. Either way you are turning a piece of cloth or fabric into something it was never intended to be.

It happens slowly. It’s not unlike the tale of cooking the frog. See, you can’t put a frog in boiling water. It will hop out immediately. Slowly turn the heat up and the frog will be none the wiser. Sadly, many of us are no more observant or wise than the common frog.

January 6th happened. We all saw it happen live. We all know exactly how we felt while watching it. We remember the combination of fear, horror, and seething anger. What’s more, we saw all of the lawmakers on that day. We saw all of them cowering. We saw the fear and anger in their eyes. In many of them you can still see it.

Yet, for some the effort has already begun. Like the frog, they didn’t completely deny it immediately. No one would have bought that. We’re much too smart for that. It started with simple conflation with a little bit of gaslighting thrown in. Those attacks weren’t any worse than the Antifa attacks on our cities. After all, those “terrorists” caused more property damage and loss of life than the “misguided patriots” that attacked the capital.

Misguided patriots. I’m sure you caught that too. I’m sure your blood boiled just a little when you heard that phrase. Defense attorneys are already working overtime to exonerate those charged with the insurrection. It wasn’t their fault. They were duped. They are America loving patriots that just got sold a lemon by a barking con man. Of course, what gets to happen to the con man? Well, he gets secret service detail and he can look for voter fraud in every sand trap at Mar Lago.

If it stopped there it would be one thing. In the abstract, we all acknowledge that lawyers have to earn a living. Defense attorneys levy ridiculous defenses every day in court. It’s their job. When truth is not on your side you resort to any other means you possibly can. Yet, as we know it didn’t end there. The opposition is slowly turning up the heat on the frog.

Now, they are saying it wasn’t an insurrection at all. It was a normal, average day at the capital. The protesters were simply acting like any group of tourists would. Of course, this theory is pure fiction, so it gets a few variants. One such variant has the MAGA crowd as fine, upstanding citizens just protesting while Antifa operatives sewed discontent and performed most of the violence. Sure. Makes perfect sense until you actually think about it.

Others still acknowledged that something happened and yet want to conflate it with “all of the other violence” going around the country. That’s what happened when most of the GOP caucus opposed a 1/6 commission. They were given their demands. They got equal representation on the commission. Both parties have subpoena power. Still, they think the commission should be investigating Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

A political party that spent millions of tax payers money and hours of precious time investigating Benghazi think that an event with a similar death toll and far more injuries deserves little to no time. Seems just about right. This one was only an attack on our very own government. It was an attack on our very own soil. It was in an attack in a building that hasn’t seen one in its storied history. It was an attack on the very institutions that keep our government humming.

It’s been only a few months. Just wait until a few years have gone by. Just wait until a few decades have gone by. What was the scariest collective moment in many of our lives will become another footnote in history. It will become a mild mannered protest where a few people got hurt. Maybe it will rise to the level of a Kent St. in some people’s minds. Maybe it will completely disappear from others. At least that’s the goal and that is why the opposition must keep the story line going. Nothing as obtrusive as a commission seeking the truth can get in the way of the “truth.”

Mariselle Quijano was running for reelection to our school board in position two. As an employee of the district we are somewhat dialed in to these things, but I don’t live in the district where I work. So, I try not to get involved. Quijano had served for 12 years, but it appears that the term is coming to an end. At least that is what we thought.

It was a 51/49 percentage account, so by all accounts it was close. Now, the school board president is refusing to seat the winner. The district has an official statement I have highlighted below, but it has turned nasty. Crystal Davila (the winner) has complained publicly about the process and if you simply read the statement below it would seem that the issue shouldn’t be in doubt.

When you go to the official school district website this is what they have on the election results. They have already had two meetings since the election. In one of those meetings the board voted to give all of us a three percent across the board raise. So, in other words, they are doing some pretty significant stuff.

This is where we get into the politics of it. Davila ran as part of a cohort of current and former educators that thought there should be more teacher representation on the board. Beyond that, labels of liberal and conservative rarely ever enter into it on this level. At least that’s true in Pasadena. Candidates never have a letter by their name and few mention anything that would hint of larger political issues. That changed during this race.

The school board president lobbied hard for the three incumbents in the race and labeled the three challengers as wanting to install a socialist agenda. I’m not exactly sure how one does that on a school board, but who knows. While she did not specifically label Davila as a socialist I suppose the implication was clear enough. Now, she is refusing to seat her. I can only wonder where they are getting this idea from about recounts. Is there anyone out there that they are deriving their inspiration from to stonewall the process? Can anyone think of anyone? Obviously, I don’t know if the current board are Trump supporters and that’s not my implication.

The implication is simple. When you see someone do something and it seems to be successful then it gives you rise to do it. That might be the most dangerous outcome from the 2020 election. Now, everyone has cause to challenge an election when the results come back differently they think they should have. Again, I’m an innocent bystander here. I didn’t vote in the election and really didn’t have an opinion until I was bombarded with talk about socialism. Now, it seems the citizens of Pasadena are not being adequately represented because a few on the board don’t like the results. That’s not how America works. At least that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Maybe the last presidential election will change all of that.