All mixed up

Since they came up short by some millions of votes last November the demented half of the population have been more violent and unhinged than ever, the January 6 coup attempt being only the most noted example.  From all over the country come reports of people yelling at nurses even as they expire from covid, assaulting flight attendants, trying to force a doctor off the road because he supported mask mandates, and invading school board meetings to piggyback their anti-vax rants with anti-history rants.  People who didn't even know schools had boards are instant experts on critical race theory and why it will lead to baldness and impotence.  

One such outbreak caught my attention because it happened in York county, Pennsylvania, where my great-aunt taught for fifty years, beginning in a one-room schoolhouse.  When she started teachers didn't need a college degree, just two years of normal school.  And when she finished, in a modern high school, I guarantee she didn't unleash racist knuckleheads like these on the world.  

The Central York school district banned virtually all books by or about people of color -- "frozen," not banned, they weaseled -- at the insistence of parents, one of whom said, "I don't want my daughter growing up feeling guilty because she's white," as if Rosa Parks and James Baldwin lived only to hurt white feelings.  They also disapproved the autobiography of Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani campaigner for women's rights, which could only make members of the Taliban feel guilty if they were capable of shame.  Not very subtle, in other words.  

But their kids are evidently made of stronger stuff.  Hundreds of them protested under the name "Panther Anti-Racist Union."   (The Panthers is their football team but it's an amusing coincidence.)  And they got the ban reversed.  They learned about organizing and racism at the same time!  Aunt Ruth would be pleased.  As a white, I don't feel guilty because I read Nell Irvin Painter or Ibram X. Kendi.  I feel guilty when people who look like me behave like assholes.  Maybe it's critical intrarace theory.  Maybe it's why Rachel Dolezal passed for Black.

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Now here's a young fellow with real trouble:  For two years he had urine and semen coming out of his anus and flatulence and poo emerging from his penis.  He's described in this obviously serious scientific journal as "a 33-year-old male with a history of illicit drug use" under the Conan Doyle-like title "A Curious Case of Rectal Ejaculation."  ("'Holmes,' I exclaimed, 'where exactly are you injecting the seven-percent solution?'")  It's called a rectal-prostate fistula and I hope I never hear about it again.

France has resumed diplomatic relations with the United States.  Well, that was close.

Having taken Kamala Harris to the woodshed over her attendance at a football game, Rachel Campos-Duffy turned her scathing attention to the Bidens spending the weekend at their home in Delaware, riding bicycles and possibly even doing Netflix-and-chill while the world comes apart.  Because he's old and decrepit and just can't put in the hours of TV watching and pre-dawn rage-tweeting like Trump.  On a related note, today's Woodward-Costa tidbit concerns Biden's response when he came across the giant video screen where Trump got his exercise by pretending to play on various golf courses:  "What a fucking asshole."  (The White House has its own putting green built for President Eisenhower, ripped out by President Nixon and restored by President Clinton.   Twenty steps from the house is too far with lifts in your shoes, apparently.  Perhaps a gentle incline is involved.)

The Buttermilk Sky Organization joins His Holiness the Dalai Lama in congratulating Justin Trudeau on his re-election as prime minister of Canada.  We also thank the PM for shaving off his scruffy beard.  Men on every continent have grown scruffy beards with varying degrees of success, in most cases succeeding only in looking old and inattentive to personal hygiene.  (Yeah, you, Cruz.)  Let us hope this signals a better trend.

His other Holiness Pope Francis told a gathering of Jesuits in Bratislava that he is "still alive, even though some people wanted me to die" after major surgery in July.  Rumors circulated of "chronic" and "degenerative" disease and some called him a "communist" -- so Bill Donahue is using the anti-Hillary handbook? -- but he's fine with that as long as they don't attack the Church  ("the work of the devil").  You hang in there, Papa.  You're enraging all the right people.