This past week has been a difficult one and that is particularly in Texas. Kate Cox was a normal Texan with two children and she and her husband were hoping for a third. 20 weeks into the pregnancy something horrible happened. They were given the kind of diagnosis that no one wants to hear. Their baby was no longer viable and it would threaten her life if it were brought to term.

The Texas law prevents abortions that late into the pregnancy. Cox asked for an exception since the baby was not viable, her health would be in danger, and performing the procedure now would preserve her ability to have children in the future. The district court heard the evidence and granted the exception.

Ken Paxton in his own special way filed an immediate appeal and threatened to have anyone that assisted her prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The Texas Supreme Court dragged their feet so Cox travelled to an unknown state and had the procedure done. Just to be thorough, the Texas Supreme Court then ruled that the district court’s ruling was null and void. There will be no exceptions.

As a cradle Catholic, I am really torn on this one. I tend to be against abortion in most instances. The key term is most. If the baby can be had safely and the baby is viable I much prefer adoption over abortion. However, I have to acknowledge two very important distinctions. The first is that all pregnancies are different and come with their own challenges. In Cox’s case, she wanted the baby, but that was no longer a legitimate possibility and the outcome was going to be crushing if not deadly.

Doctors and families are the ones that should make these calls. Is the mother’s life in danger? Is the baby in danger? Is this a case of the child having a abnormality that would impact its quality of life or will the child literally die shortly after birth? The fact is that no one carries a child to that point and chooses to have an abortion because the child is an inconvenience.

The second consideration is that abortion is a personal choice. I would never choose to have an abortion unless my life or the life of the baby were in danger. I will never be pregnant. It’s not my choice. If we believe in free will then we also believe that people ultimately have the choice to make decisions that we might think are bad ones. We may disagree with the choice.

In Cox’s case, that question is moot. The child wasn’t going to survive. So, what are we doing exactly? Why is Paxton being such a jackass? This was never about Cox. She had the means to go elsewhere to take care of her procedure. I think if you shot them up with truth serum they would admit that the law really wasn’t about her or women like her.

It was a signal to women in general. We have control over you. We control your reproductive health, your health in general, and your future. We make all of these choices for you because we can’t trust to make them on your own. It was a signal to everyone else that your situation doesn’t matter. You had your opportunity and you didn’t take it. The idea of prosecuting doctors for performing live saving care is beyond repugnant. You almost want to paint one of those curly mustaches on Paxton to complete the illusion that he is a megalomaniacal villain chortling in the background. We can do better Texas. We have to do better.

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Fervor is defined simply as intensity and passion of your feelings. We’ve talked a lot in this space about how cults and cult like behavior is predicated on the shutting down of the factual portion of the brain. The great irony is that the group that calls liberals snowflakes and talks about how we are governed by our feelings are completely taken over by their own feelings and irrational beliefs.

Their messiah said he would not act like a dictator. Well, that’s not entirely true. He would act like one on day one but only day one. He would invoke the Insurrection Act and marshal the forces of the military against its own citizens. Still, that would only be for one day. He says he would stop after that. He doesn’t want to be a dictator. Now, if anyone can parse out those two contradictory statements they can be my guest.

I cannot fathom how one avoids the cognitive dissonance of railing against the powers of the state and its desire to disarm the citizenry while championing a guy that wants to declare martial law. Yet, that is where we are. Let’s ignore the fact that we have heard all of this before. Let’s ignore that we know exactly where this leads because we have all seen it before. For those not cast under the spell of this fervor let’s consider where this goes logically. Who exactly is the vermin? Who are the undesirables? Who are the people that we want to round up like wild animals so that we can ship them out somewhere else?

Imagine the level of hatred that one must have to not only feel that way about another person (or worse a group of people) but also make serious plans on how to actually get this done. This was the fricking Heritage Foundation. It’s a conservative think tank. These are their brightest minds. These aren’t a couple of buddies sitting at the bar four martinis into the evening. This plan wasn’t scribbled on a cocktail napkin before stumbling to their Uber ride home. Project 2025 is that plan.

One can’t intellectually talk about the criminality of Joe Biden and his obvious mental decline with any rational seriousness. For one, one cannot possibly coordinate that level of sophistication and far-reaching avarice while also in cognitive decline. For another, one cannot rationally watch both men and come away that one is clearly on top of his game while the other is an addlebrained jackass. At least you can’t watch them and say that Biden is the addlebrained jackass.

This is all a psychological dodge. One has to develop a fairly intricate series of faux beliefs in order to justify this level of hate in their own mind. People generally aren’t this evil on their own. They don’t go around rounding up their neighbors or putting people in cages like animals. They have to convince themselves they are defending something. They have to convince themselves they are being invaded by some force they can’t quite understand or define. That’s fervor.

So, all cities are at the gates of hell. People are invading our country and are threatening to steal our whiteness (er identity or culture). Liberals in education and the arts are grooming our kids and turning them gay. There is a war on Christmas. There is a war on Jesus. Those murderous and dangerous brown people are coming for you, your job, and your vacation home in Minnesota.

Except it is all a lie. There are big lies and there are gigantic, gargantuan lies. The big lie was about the last election. The gigantic, gargantuan lie is an us vs. them lie. You don’t break that with facts. I’m not sure how you do it. All you can do is keep a close eye. They will come for us too. That much you can guarantee.

A long, long time ago, I heard an exhortation to sign up at a social media site called “Twitter”. It was the newest thing. At first, I didn’t because…why? But when I had to attend a social media in-service class in my old school district, the assignment was to enroll in every conceivable social media site we could think of, or ones on the list provided for us.

So I did.

I already had a MySpace account, so all I had to do was to create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Instagram, Reddit and others I have forgotten about.

I used Twitter exclusively for a year or so just to play a game on Comedy Central.

I actually won once.

Then Elon bought Twitter and the whole place went to H-E-double-hockeysticks as “X” and I opted out of what was becoming a sewer for traitors and porn bots.

And then I signed up for a new Meta group called “Threads”. Threads is fun like Twitter used to be. Yes, there are Trump Trolls there, too. But not as many. More often, you find self-meming memes on Threads, which just give me the giggles sometimes.

Like today’s

My guess is that former Congressman George Santos is not real happy about being George Santos right about now. Brought up on federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements (aka lying) to the FEC, but not convicted of anything, he was nevertheless booted out of Congress today.

That’s a first.

To-date, three congressmen have been sent packing for consorting with the enemy (aka working for The Confederate States of America), and two more had their hats handed to them after they were convicted of their crimes by courts for “job-related bribery” among other things.

But they just lowered the bar for ol’ George. Santos, who, like his favorite former president, has federal indictments, but as yet has no convictions. But congressional tolerance for his flagrant acts (what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is Only Fans, anyway) has flagged since the Ethics Committee issued their report on him.

114 of his fellow Republicans refused to throw George under the bus, including a former Fort Bend County Sheriff named Troy Nehls, who continues to not surprise me. My own current congressman, a despicable man in his own right, voted with nearly all Democrats to can his a$$. Don’t care. Still not voting for him.

I’m told that the dance card is filling up for the chance to replace him in a New York special election, including the guy who lost to him in the midterm. I was hoping for a spectrum of candidates for the NY CD-3 seat, and maybe we’ll get that.

Maybe.

Maybe. But only if Kitara Ravache throws her banana-bearing hat into the ring.

Yesterday, we were treated to the news that Hamas had officially violated the ceasefire when they took credit for killing three Israelis in a terrorist attack. However, there is some consternation of both sides as one side blames the other for violating the cease fire. Essentially, this is where this conflict has gotten us. The last couple of months has been a microcosm of the last 75 years since Israel was officially established by the United Nations in 1947. First, let’s take a step back for a second. The vast majority of animal behavior is predictable on some level.

Our cats and dog fight like, um, cats and dogs. One of them gets along with him (the dog) better than the others, but the dog weighs 100 pounds. He wouldn’t really hurt any of them, but they don’t know that. More importantly, they constantly fight with each other. You would think they could join together in common cause against the dog, but they can put aside their differences to do this.

This is where things are at in the Middle East. When you look at what Hamas has done it would appear that it is unprovoked. There were no direct preceding events that led up to their terrorist attack in October. However, there were tons of preceding events. Just like with my cats, there is a reason why one attacks the other. It may look like the victim was just minding their business, but it wasn’t always that way. The aggressor was responding to a time when he or she was the victim. So, even a seemingly isolated event has roots in something.

All human behavior is predictable. Even sociopathy is predictable and understandable once you get a fuller appreciation for it. Our ex-president’s behavior is predictable. Hamas’s behavior is predictable. Israel’s behavior is predictable. We respond based on previous experience and the facts on the ground as we understand them. If our experience is that you can’t be trusted and that you will attack beyond the scope of the current conflict then my response is certain to reflect that. So, here we are.

What is also predictable is our collective response. People that criticize Palestine are called Islamophobic. People that criticize Israel are called anti-Semitic. If you were to somehow criticize both then you would just be the world’s biggest bigot. This is where we are at. We cannot have a frank and honest conversation because those labels are going to be thrown around quicker than it takes you to finish this paragraph.

I fully understand the emotions involved. I feel deeply for the Israeli AND Palestinian people caught in the middle. Having empathy means actually mentally putting yourself in their place. Some have questioned why innocent people would not put themselves in harms way and turn in their neighbors if they knew they were Hamas and what they planned to do. How safe would feel turning in your neighbors? Maybe we could relocate across town in that scenario or in another state. These folks cannot.

On the Israeli side, they know they are the target of the Arab world. Most of the countries around them vacillate between reluctant tolerance and out and out hatred. If we put ourselves in their shoes it would make perfect sense to lash out at those folks to at least demonstrate strength and resolve. Knowledge and wisdom are two different things. Knowledge simply means I know all of this stuff. I’ve studied history enough to know this. Wisdom means I also know I don’t have a solution available. Humility also comes into play here. If they have been going through this since 1947 it makes perfect sense that someone would have suggested simple and obvious solutions before.