We need not idealize the past, talk about the "good old days," fondly remember the way things used to be, to realize that things HAVE changed, and changed in bad ways. There is no way back, and we are completely uncertain about now and the future.

 

The distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. Something has changed. Attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. Where is clarity now? We feel out of control. There is too much going on in the world now, or least we are more aware of more stuff now, most of it entirely superfluous. Let's get our focus back on what is important.

 

Yes, It’s Fascism

Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.

By Jonathan Rauch

 Mark Twain, who famously said a lot of famous things, said that he never let his schooling get in the way of his education. His words take a new, contemporary meaning. Example: Texas A&M

On Banning Socrates at TAMU

 It’s highly unlikely that the Texas A&M regents read Plato before drafting their policy. If they had, they would have discovered that, far from “advocating gender ideology,” he challenges all of our 21st-century ways of thinking about sex and gender. He is neither “left” nor “right,” because he lived thousands of years before those labels were invented. That is one of the reasons studying Greek philosophy has never become obsolete: In every generation, it allows people to escape the binaries of their own time and think things through from the beginning.

The belief that every student is capable of this kind of thinking, and deserves to experience it, was one of the noblest ideals of democratic education. Now that both democracy and education are under threat in the United States, philosophers may have to relearn the “prudence” that once seemed like a relic of history. Peterson is already employing a classic technique of esoteric writing: calling attention to what he is forced to omit. In his revised syllabus, when the students were originally supposed to read Plato, they will now be assigned a New York Times article about why they can’t.
-Adam Kirsch in The Atlantic

 My friend Javier just stopped by at Starbucks on his way to work at Margarita Grill next door. My kind of person: at work early, full of pep and energy, spreading good words and good cheer. There aren't many of us type of people left.

Locke or Hobbs

 If you want to know a political leader’s governing philosophy, you could cut through a lot of bluster by just asking them who their guy is: John Locke or Thomas Hobbes? Anyone who’s taken Poli Sci 101 will understand what this means. The 17th-century philosophers each offered a picture of human nature in its rawest form, and they came to different conclusions. Locke, whose ideas were central to the birth of modern democracy, thought that people were capable of reason and moral judgment. Hobbes, on the other hand, believed that we were vicious creatures who needed to be protected from ourselves by a powerful king. Whether a leader is Lockean or Hobbesian really does set the table for the kind of government they want.

One way to understand the head-spinning nature of being an American over the past couple of decades is that this debate—one that history seemed to have settled in Locke’s favor—is alive again. Barack Obama was a Lockean through and through—insisting, repeatedly, that if citizens were just given accurate information and a fair hearing, they would converge on something like the common good. Then came Donald Trump, Hobbesian extraordinaire, who has often portrayed life under anyone’s leadership but his own much as Hobbes describes the state of nature: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Nasty is even one of Trump’s favorite words).

-Gal Beckerman in The Atlanti

 

The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: The Common Scholarly View Today

January 8, 2026 by Bart Ehrman

In my previous post I discussed the traditional view of when the Hebrew Bible became a fixed canon in stages, with the final decisions being made at the end of the first century CE at the “Council of Jamnia.”

Today scholars tend to present a somewhat fuzzier picture of when and why the canon came to be formed, although there do seem to be some fixed points.

It is widely held that the five books of the Torah were accepted by nearly all Jews as a set canon by the fifth century BCE, in the early post-exilic period. One piece of evidence comes from the Bible itself, in a post-exilic book, Ezra. The scribe Ezra himself is described as being “skilled in the Torah of Moses that the LORD the God of Israel had given” (Ezra 7:6). This suggests that it was widely known that there was a “Torah of Moses” and that the educated elite were sometimes being trained in understanding and interpreting it. The Torah is and always has been the same five books, and they have always been given in the same sequence (Genesis-Exodus- Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy) because they trace a chronological tale. And so by the fifth century B.C.E., most Jews probably accepted the Torah as an authoritative group of texts connected principally with Moses.

The next sub-collection to be finalized was the Nevi’im, both Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve), and this appears to have happened by the second century B.C.E. Evidence for this comes from a range of sources. The prologue to the non-canonical book known as Sirach refers to “the Law and the Prophets and the others”; and books that were later to become the New Testament speak of the “Law and the Prophets” (e.g., Matthew 5:17, Luke 16:16).

The reasons for thinking that the Nevi’im were finalized by the second century BCE, and not later, is that there are books of the Hebrew Bible that could have been included in this collection—given their subject matter—but in fact are not. Thus, for example, Daniel seems to be a prophetic book, but it is not included in the “prophets.” Why not? Probably because the canon of the prophets was fixed already by the time the book of Daniel appeared on the scene in the middle of the second century BCE.

Daniel was accepted as a Scriptural book eventually, of course. It just could not belong to a portion of the Bible that had already been “fixed.” It and the other books were loosely connected with one another—unlike the Torah, the Former Prophets, and the Latter Prophets, which all cohere closely to one another in terms of subject matter.

But even after the Law and the Prophets had been accepted as canonical texts, there were these other writings on the “margins”—the eleven books of the Kethuvim. That some of these were seen as authoritative by the second century b.c.e. is shown in the passage from Sirach quoted earlier, which speaks of “the others” (or “the other books”) without giving them a firm designation. So too, Luke 24:44 speaks of “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms”—a threefold categorization of the sacred Scriptures, the third part of which is identified by its longest and presumably most important book, the Psalms.

There were uncertainties about which books to include in this third group of Kethuvim. This is suggested, among other things, by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls were numerous copies of biblical books—some 200 of the scrolls contain books of the Bible (usually in fragmentary state). Every book that eventually came to be included in the Bible can be found among these scrolls—except for the book of Esther. Even though Esther is not found there, the scrolls contain numerous copies of a book known as “Jubilees” that some Jews considered to be a sacred text as well. Did the Jews at Qumran accept Jubilees as canonical but not Esther? It is hard to say.

Other books of the Kethuvim were debated among Jews. The Song of Songs, for example, was a secular book celebrating the sexual love of an unmarried man and a woman. Was that really to be seen as part of canonical Scripture—even if Solomon did write it? Eventually Jews came to interpret the book in a different way, as we have seen, so that it no longer referred to human sexual love but to God’s deep and profound love for Israel. There remains even today the question of whether the Song of Songs was eventually accepted as part of the canon because it was interpreted in this way (and so was relatively harmless as a love poem) or whether it was interpreted in this way because it was accepted as part of the sacred canon.

Most scholars agree that by the time of the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, most Jews accepted the final three-part canon of the Torah, Nevi’im, and Kethuvim. From that time on, books could not be added and books could not be taken away. This was a twenty-four-book canon that came to be attested widely in Jewish writings of the time; eventually, the canon was reconceptualized and renumbered so that it became the thirty- nine books of the Christian Old Testament. But they are the same books, all part of the canon of Scripture.

Grounds for Inclusion

It is very hard to know what criteria ancient Israelites used to decide which of their books should be accepted as parts of Scripture, in no small measure because we simply do not have any records of their discussions, debates, and disagreements (unlike for the New Testament). Some scholars have suggested that there were several criteria that were almost certainly applied by various Jewish leaders in making these decisions:

• Only books written in Hebrew (even if they had portions in Aramaic) could be accepted. None of the Jewish books written in Greek, for example, would be considered part of the sacred canon.
• Books had to have venerable authority. They could not be recent compositions. And so only books written before the fourth century B.C.E. could be accepted (books that were in fact written later—such as Daniel—were mistakenly taken to be older, as we have seen).
• The books that became the canon were the ones most widely used in Jewish communities as authoritative tradition. In some ways, the formation of the canon is a grassroots phenomenon: if books functioned as Scripture for a wide range of Jewish communities, they were eventually accepted as Scripture by the leaders who could make such decisions.

The Final Product of the Tanakh

The result of the Hebrew canon is what we have seen throughout our study. The Jewish Scriptures are a treasure trove of ancient Israelite writings. They were written at different times, by different authors, using different sources, embracing different points of view, and advancing different understandings of major issues. They embrace different genres and they serve different functions. Together, they may make up one thing—the Hebrew Bible—but in fact, they are an entire array of things, the corpus of writings that cover the traditions, creations, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions of generations and centuries of ancient Israelite authors

The Ugliness of Donald Trump is Pure Americana

 We are only one week into 2026, and already the execrable nature of 2025 is overflowing into the new year. Adjectives like “horrible” or “gruesome” fail to capture the full texture and energy of what Donald Trump and his MAGA forces are doing to the country’s democracy and to the American people, and yet too many Americans still insist “this is not who we are.”

They are wrong. Decades — and at least 150 years — of historical evidence proves that Trumpism is an American-made phenomenon and not something transplanted from abroad or brought here from another dimension through a crack in the time-space continuum. This is exactly who the nation is. Otherwise, Trump would not have been elected twice by tens of millions of people — many of whom would gladly put him back in office for a third term if given the opportunity.

At its core, the Age of Trump — distilled in the ugliness of the president’s second term in office — is a moral calamity that demands a great reckoning if our democracy is to even survive in 2026 and beyond.

America’s collapse into neofascism is more than a crisis of America’s political and social institutions. At its core, the Age of Trump — distilled in the ugliness of the president’s second term in office — is a moral calamity that demands a great reckoning if our democracy is to even survive in 2026 and beyond. This work begins by making a moral inventory of Trump’s abuses, a list that is long and still growing. It is overwhelming by design. 

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 By Oona A. Hathaway

Professor Hathaway teaches law and political science at Yale and is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the president-elect of the American Society of International Law.

President Trump’s decision to launch a secretive predawn military operation in Venezuela to grab President Nicolás Maduro is a blatant assault on the international legal order. The action threatens to end an era of historic peace and return us to a world in which might makes right. The cost will be paid in human lives.

Last year marked the 80th anniversary of the 1945 United Nations Charter, a document signed by 51 nations at the close of World War II. The signatories pledged to act “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The great powers have not gone to war with one another since, and no U.N. member state has disappeared as a result of conquest.

But over the past decade, that peace has begun to unravel. Today, it is on the precipice of collapsing altogether. If that happens, the consequences will be catastrophic. We can already see the devastating cost: According to my calculations, from 1989 to 2014, battle-related deaths from cross-border conflicts averaged less than 15,000 a year. Beginning in 2014, the average has risen to over 100,000 a year. As states increasingly disregard limits on the lawful use of force, this may be just the beginning of a deadly new era of conflict.

Retro Trumpian Imperialism

 MAGA is primarily a personality cult, the objectives of which evolve to suit Trump’s capricious moods. Yet his pivot to new wars of conquest is not some shocking reversal. The “Donroe Doctrine,” as he calls his assertion of regional supremacy—a Trumpian extension of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which established the United States’ claim over the Americas in order to keep Europeans out—is in fact consistent with his deepest beliefs. In some ways, it represents the ultimate expression of the world order he hopes to engineer.  

                                                                                                       A desire to dominate—an eagerness to bully his counterparties into submission—is perhaps the essence of Trump’s character. Trump’s unexpected political resurrection and return to the White House have emboldened his ambitions, which have spread outward. His threats against Canada, Panama, and Greenland, and his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, have little to do with national interest and everything to do with reifying a new order in which he’s the boss and the leaders of neighboring countries are his cowering subordinates.

-Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic

 Jefferson and Emerson wrote from the point of view of the middle and upper classes. Booker T. Washington from the view of those who first needed to make a living before they could be liberally educated.

 Two surprises already this morning. First of all, I woke up, always the best surprise. Secondly, the sun is out where I bivouac, shining brightly, bringing forth happiness and good cheer after a somber post Christmas disappearance. Let us have peace and prosperity. (So happy to see the sun I'm getting carried away)

Before We Bid 2025 a Fond Farewell

 Before we bid 2025 a fond (?) farewell, Santa having come and gone, returned to the North Pole (unless he got sidetracked in Detroit on the way back for some reason) let us pause to look at ourselves in the mirror and take stock.

Are you a better person today than you were a year ago? Probably not, but did you at least try your best to clean up all of your bad habits and forgive those who have trespassed against you?

Have you tried to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes even if they don't fit?

Is your conscious clean from 2025? If not, take some time today and clean it up before you venture into 2026.

Are you brave and courageous heading into 2026? If not, it's okay that you are scared like the rest of us. I just thought someone I know might set an example and be a role model.

Finally, remember that there are meds for acid reflux and panic attacks as you try to forget 2025. And if all else fails, act like you're crazy. At least you'll blend in with your surroundings.

The End of the Dinosaurs

 The most significant day in Earth's history occurred 66 million yrs ago when the planet was struck by a visitor from outer space that wiped out almost all of life on earth including the dinosaurs. Here is a brief except from The New Yorker 3-19-19 which summarizes the damage. Puts perspective into our existence today as you go about your piddling life.

The damage had only begun. Scientists still debate many of the details, which are derived from the computer models, and from field studies of the debris layer, knowledge of extinction rates, fossils and microfossils, and many other clues. But the over-all view is consistently grim. The dust and soot from the impact and the conflagrations prevented all sunlight from reaching the planet’s surface for months. Photosynthesis all but stopped, killing most of the plant life, extinguishing the phytoplankton in the oceans, and causing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere to plummet. After the fires died down, Earth plunged into a period of cold, perhaps even a deep freeze. Earth’s two essential food chains, in the sea and on land, collapsed. About seventy-five per cent of all species went extinct. More than 99.9999 per cent of all living organisms on Earth died, and the carbon cycle came to a halt.

Last Night

 I was pulled to starting the Larry McMurtry biography,  It really hit home, talking about Larry's penchant for understanding a sense of loss.