Midlife Meditation

LaVoy Finicum addresses the press at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.  Note the pistol on prominent display. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." --Matthew 26:52 It's not over. Not nearly. There are still four insurgents occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, begging on YouTube for backup, demanding full pardons before they will lay down their weapons and surrender to the authorities. Meanwhile, a right-wing organization called the Pacific Patriots Network has issued a "call to action" for militants to "peacefully" travel to Burns to protest the shooting of LaVoy Finicum following his attempt to evade a traffic stop. So even with the occupation's ringleaders in custody, this is not over. There's no way of knowing whether the militant right wing community retains any enthusiasm for Ammon Bundy's nutty cause, and if anyone at all will respond to ...

First things first: it bugs me, too. The meme comes by way of "Brave New Films," and features this image: Violating a court order, Mary Ann Grady Flores continued to protest drone warfare at an Air Force Base in upstate New York. She was arrested and jailed, sentenced (over the objections of the prosecutor) to a year in prison, but as far as I can tell from a cursory Google search, is still out on bond while her case is being appealed. While most peaceful protesters are tolerated by authorities, it is not uncommon for them to spend time in jail. Jail time is, in fact, a key part of civil disobedience strategy, as it highlights the irony of a government that has to protect its enormous firepower from sign-waving grandmothers. And yes, there's no denying that the gun-loving, government-hating right wingers occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge post a far greater threat to government officials, ordinary citizens, and themselves than do any pacifists who have ever...

I was scrolling through Slate  headlines on my phone last Thursday, as I often do while eating lunch in the staff room. I typically start at the bottom, and work my way up the menu to the most recent story, clicking on those that catch my attention. The last thing I saw, at the very top, was this: " Oregon College Massacre."  I clicked on it, scanned the story, saw that a lone gunman had opened fire on a classroom at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, killing nine, then taken his own life after a standoff with local police. I did not visibly react: the staff room was full of teachers and EAs, cheerfully talking about the silly things their students were doing, what their weekend plans were, what they'd be having for dinner that night--standard stuff. I didn't want to rain on that lunchtime parade, didn't want to cast a pall over the rest of the school day. I knew this would hit uncomfortably close to home, and not just because of the Oregon dateline: our d...