The Death Squirrel (Not?) From Bethlehem

Great Gods of Garlic Gumbo, the derangement is worse than I thought. I am now forced to bring you another episode of Unclear on the Concept.

A couple days ago I created a post expressing my annoyance with particular problematic practices that I have observed frequently to occur in discussions about the so-called Historic Jesus. I was even quite clear that I wasn’t talking about actual historians writing in actual journals:

I won’t contest how this [methodology] is used in the work of peer reviewed historians. Perhaps that is even the best method, certainly it must be among the better methods or professional historians wouldn’t use it. However in the work of professional historians, I think they better understand exactly how limited is the claim that HJ existed.

Outside of arguments in journals, however, I think that this argument ill suits these less professional audiences.

Got that people? I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE JOURNAL ARTICLES WRITTEN BY PROFESSIONAL HISTORIANS, SO ASKING ME TO CITE OR CONSIDER THE PERSPECTIVES OF PROFESSIONAL HISTORIANS IS A BLATANT SIGN YOU HAVEN’T EVEN TAKEN THE TIME NECESSARY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT.

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Axios buys my premise

Earlier today I wrote about Trump’s capacity to destroy the Republicans from within just by remaining active in the party and doing what he do.

Of course, an important premise of that piece was that Trump could and would remain a powerful player, in my mind, the frontrunner, for the 2024 GOP nomination. KG called out that premise in the comments:

I think Trump is going to be fully occupied trying to stay out of prison.

While I take KG’s point, it wasn’t something I hadn’t thought about. It was merely something I had thought about but chose not to include any analysis on within that piece.

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The Charge of the Right Brigade

So, Trump is the kind of idiot who can’t handle losing, but is too megalomaniacal to notice when he doesn’t have a chance. In addition, part of the original allure of Trump was that he was a winner, and that was only enhanced by pro-incumbent bias in the electorate.

So, now Trump is going out a loser and many people are hoping they’ll never have to think about him ever again. I beg to differ. I want to see him back in 2024, and if necessary in 2028.

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Historical Jesus is a Squirrel

That said, I find this post-election weekend to be a good one for random distractions, so let’s have some fun by taking inspiration from the discussion of Historical Jesus raised by Sarah at Geeky Humanist on Saturday.

My first and biggest problem with everything Sarah has said is that we don’t have a good definition of Historical Jesus anywhere in her post. To be Historical Jesus, does one need to have been publicly crucified? Because lots of people were publicly crucified.

To be HJ does one need to have preached some stuff? Because lots of people preached some stuff.

To be HJ does one need to have been born in Bethlehem? Because lots of people were born in Bethlehem.

Et a number of ceteras.

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GEORGIA!

Holy fuck! Georgia, have you always looked that hot & I’ve just been ignoring you for the first 90 minutes of the movie because you let your bangs hide your face? Because I totally want to take you to the prom now. Seriously. I know I was feeling all “fuck the prom, it’s stupid & I’m not going” for a minute there, but really, all of a sudden I feel like I’m over North Carolina. She was never right for me, but I guess you’ve known that since the beginning anyway.

 

It isn’t up to us to win

I first became politically active when the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance put a citizen’s initiative on the ballot to declare in law that “homosexuality” was “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse”. Measure 9 was itself an abomination, one that treated anti-discrimination laws as if they were discrimination against bigots, which was somehow supposed to be an unconscionable thing, what with how unfair that would be to the bigots.

Measure 9 lost. The OCA (which then featured Scott Lively as its highly visible 2nd in command) lost. But that doesn’t mean that queers “won”. We spent money and energy and made ourselves visible, made ourselves targets, so we could be attacked intensely for an election season in the hopes that sacrifice would make us safer after the election season. That isn’t victory. Honestly, it was a lot like being in abusive relationship, something I knew a lot about, and provoking abuse as the “walking on eggshells” phase of the relationship grated horribly on one’s nerves. Sometimes one’s fears of what abuse comes next are worse than the actual abuse when it occurs. I had to reasonably fear being killed by my abusive partner, but as it turns out, I was never murdered.

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