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| Klamath Falls. This shirt is available here. Photo by Judy Maurer. |
No Kings Day v.2, October 18, found us in Klamath Falls, Oregon. For some reason, I didn't expect much No Kings Day participation in Klamath Falls, maybe because in 2024 Klamath County voted for the current U.S. president by a margin of 41 percent over Kamala Harris.
As it turned out, participants made an impressive showing in Klamath Falls, lining along both streets, both sides, of a major intersection, and garnering lots of car-horn (and truck horn) approval.
The evening before, in a segment entitled "Older, Wiser," Rachel Maddow spoke on her television show with environmental activist and journalist Bill McKibben concerning the impressive proportions of older people in public actions such as No Kings Day. Back in 2021, McKibben launched an organizing campaign, Third Act, to mobilize people over the age of 60 for climate change activism. Among other things, McKibben said,
I think one reason that older people have been turning out in such large numbers, and they have been heavily overrepresented in these demonstrations, is because everybody can tell, with the heart, can tell that the Trump regime is bad news. But if you have 15 presidents, in your experience, you know that it's not just bad news. You know that it's utterly different from every president that we've ever lived through before, good or bad; that this is a complete rupture with the America that we knew. And I think that may strike old people harder. We've certainly noticed at Third Act that there's a huge willingness of people to be out in the street over and over again, and not just at these demonstrations.
I didn't do a count, but I'm fairly sure well over half of the participants in Klamath Falls were in the demographic group McKibben described.
In this archived interview, Bill McKibben describes his Methodist faith and experience.
While in Klamath Falls, we enjoyed a reunion with Klamath Falls Friends Church. We stayed with the pastors, Leigh and Joe Tolton, and enjoyed the incredible view of Upper Klamath Lake from their home.
This was our seventh visit to Klamath Falls Friends over the years, and we felt very much at home. Joe gave a sermon on simplicity (and how it differs from plainness), based on Matthew 10:7-14, and with illustrations from the life of Diogenes the Cynic. It evoked a number of fruitful reflections from attenders during the open worship.
Why Trump's demolition of the East Wing is so shocking. Is it shocking to you? Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott explains his own reactions.
The leader as builder is an ancient idea, older than the Egyptian pyramids, older than the great public monuments of Rome, older than Emperor Constantine’s clumsy effort to eradicate memories of his predecessors by repurposing and rebranding their works as his own. Photography reanimated this ancient idea for a mass modern audience, rendering the leader as a colossus relative to the toy-sized representations of his architectural legacy. For democracies and authoritarian regimes alike, the image projected competence, the power and skill to serve the people with public works and leave a lasting legacy.
...
Trump made speedy demolition his priority, and speedy construction of the new ballroom is essential to his symbolic purpose, to offer a stark contrast to the dysfunction of Congress and, by extension, the torpid rhythms of democratic self-governance. He is the master builder, the developer who can cut through red tape. That image, whether deserved or not, is why many people voted for him. But to shred precedent is simply to set new precedents. And the precedent he is setting is that history doesn’t matter; laws, procedures and customs are irrelevant; and there is no role for collaboration, transparency and review in the construction of new buildings. Buildings are gifts to the people from leaders who are infallible, not the organic expression of civic values and ideals.
I can't tell whether the visceral shock of seeing FDR's East Wing utterly destroyed helped distract us from an arguably more important story: the U.S. military strikes on boats in South American waters. Another instance of making "speedy demolition" a priority?—and again we see striking passivity among the representatives and senators whom we pay to behave as coequal participants in governing the country.
Julia Steinberg entered Stanford University as a progressive. Her path to conservatism began her first year. Her story, "The Appeal of the Campus Right: It's Not About Trump," interests me because I have a friend in England who has undergone a similar transformation.
Steinberg arrived at Stanford expecting to participate in the progressive community there.
As the school year got under way, however, I began to notice something that grated on me. Debates in the classroom, whether about socialism or Plato or the Quran, felt highly delicate, as if everyone was afraid of offending everyone else. Rather than “I disagree with so-and-so,” it was more socially acceptable to say “piggybacking on so-and-so’s point,” even if there was a disagreement. When I finally found someone willing to have an extended intellectual debate with me—my problem-set partner for a logic course—I was interested to learn that he was a staff writer at the Stanford Review, the conservative publication on campus. He invited me to a meeting during winter quarter, and, mostly out of curiosity, I decided to attend.
What I saw there was the opposite of what I’d found in my classes: Students were encouraged to disagree with one another. At each meeting, students had to present—and defend—the articles they were working on; then the group would debate three topics, such as how the U.S. should respond to the war in Ukraine and whether Silicon Valley’s relevance was waning. I kept going back to Review meetings, but I didn’t tell many of my friends—I didn’t want to be judged.
Why the eggshell-walking among progressives? (Yes, I've noticed this, too.) I think it is partly because of the compulsive need to be right, and consequently to one-up everyone who differs. Deviations on issues of effective anti-racism, for example, cannot be tolerated. I hunger for the arenas where differences can be argued on their own alleged merits and defects, rather than as reflections of your or my obvious and intolerable defects.
These tendencies have made their way into a number of progressive Quaker communities. If these tendencies toward monopoly-style rightness are not challenged, I see a real danger of decline and an eventual future as small clubs of Quaker specialness rather than genuine churches. If I'm worrying needlessly, please tell me!
As Britain Yearly Meeting's Advices and Queries advise us (under no. 17), "Think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I'm not asserting that these kinds of personalizing of arguments and threats of shunning don't happen among conservatives as well. I particularly think of the theobros.... But I hate to see it among those who claim to defend freedom of speech and thought, and trustworthiness of process, as crucial values for an interdependent community.
Much of MAGA is not conservative in any classical sense.
Becky Ankeny looks at the Beatitudes for their prophetic content.
What can we learn from these beatitudes and the Old Testament sources they derive from? We learn that centering our hearts on God’s character and God’s faithfulness is the place to start. (I’m trying contemplative prayer for this purpose.) It is always right to pray. It is not the last resort; it is the only resort in hopeless times. Prayer is the expression of hope when there is no basis for hope.
Death Bloom: a message of hope for times of transition. Amy Straub prepares to leave Zambia, not knowing what comes next. She reminded me of what it was like to realize we were approaching the end of our time in Russia.
More on powerlessness and prayer from Tricia Gates Brown. Her post reminded me of Anthony Bloom's words here (scroll down to the second quotation).
C. Wess Daniels on the power of the persistent widow—and on translators' choices.
Mike Farley on silence and language. "All of practice comes down to stillness in the end...."
"Needed Time" (Eric Bibb, surely a rerun here! But it's a needed time.)
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