The Bullet, the Ear and the Metaphysics

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When Donald Trump narrowly avoided an assassin’s bullet last year, many Christians, and Trump himself, ascribed the near miss to providential intervention. Trump’s ear did not go unscathed, but he rarely seems to listen to anything but his own voice, so it didn’t get much productive use anyway.

Unlike Naturalists I don’t view the universe as a closed system. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for an intelligent agent exterior to the natural universe to act on it; so I have no problem accepting that miracles have occurred or that they continue to occur.

MAGA (Make Anglicans Great Also as I like to think of it) enthusiasts hailed Trump’s survival as evidence that God really does want to make America great again. The most obvious problem with this is that America was never great in the first place. Obscenely wealthy, admittedly and that, in TrumpWorld, is much the same thing.

I offer a few possible explanations for what happened.

  • The whole thing was simple chance, a matter of physics, Trump’s neurons firing randomly – something that happens a lot – leading him to turn his head at just the right moment.
  • God did intervene because He wants Trump to survive. That in itself may be for a number of less than obvious reasons. Trump could be an instrument of divine judgement about to be visited on the West. It could be a precursor to Armageddon. MAGA evangelicals might think it is a precursor to revival, although that seems unlikely since Paula White is Trump’s spiritual advisor. If we are to be optimistic, it could be to protect the unborn, to support Israel, to usher in a new golden age where they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid. I’m not much given to optimism.
  • Satan intervened and turned Trump’s head at just the right moment. Those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome might well subscribe to this view. A variation on this would be that God permitted Satan to intervene or goaded him into it for one of the reasons I mentioned above.
  • Shelley was a prophet and Ozymandias was a type of Trump.

I have no idea which of these is the true reason, although I am inclined to the last.

One thing I am sure of though is that, as Tolstoy maintained in War and Peace, the more we think we are in control of our own destiny, the less we actually are. And the more worldly power we wield, the more that applies.

Buffoons are running the world

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Or should that be “ruining”?

The Signal chat security leak was remarkable in a number of ways.

Firstly, I cannot believe that the US government permits a commercial chat program to be used to plan military missions. I worked for IBM for many years, the last 15 of them at home. I connected to their mainframes using an encrypted VPN on a company supplied laptop. Personal laptops were not permitted to access the mainframes. Non-authorized programs could not be installed on the IBM supplied laptop. Unlike a VPN you buy for your home computer, where data decryption occurs at the VPN vendor’s server, my work VPN had end-to-end encryption. Any group messaging had to use an internal secure messaging program. And I was not planning the dropping of bombs on anyone.

To be fair, Signal does have end-to-end encryption.

Secondly, the people attending the Signal chat exhibited a degree of incompetence that would make the Dormouse and March Hare planning the Mad Hatter’s tea party look good. Did no one think to check who was in the chat? And these people are planning the dropping of bombs?

Thirdly, the preposterous spin and lies being tossed about in an attempt to make all this go away are so transparently stupid that only the stupid could possibly give them any credence.

Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy has a selection of comic characters that eerily echo the current occupants of the White House. While equally comic, I fear the real thing is more sinister. I strongly suspect that, rather like the hapless Apthorpe in Waugh’s trilogy, Mike Waltz has an unnatural attachment to a Thunder-Box stored in his attic.

Speaking of the journalist inadvertently invited to the chat, Waltz claims “I didn’t see this loser in the group”. In TrumpWorld there are only winners and losers.

As I write this, I see that Waltz has taken responsibility for this mess and, presumably, has joined the losers.

Trump of Toad Hall

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My mother read Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows to me when I was a small child. As soon as I could read for myself, I reread it. I’ve reread it numerous times as an adult; it is a wonderful book.

The animals in it all have human characteristics.  Badger is a crotchety secluded introvert, Mole and Rat are unlikely friends, Otter is a worried parent, Toad is a wealthy braggart – sorry, we should show some respect and call him Mr. Toad. If you haven’t read Wind in the Willows, you should. It has wit, charm, pathos, humour, mysticism and a final battle between good and evil.

In a previous article I compared Trump to Rex Mottram in Brideshead Revisited, someone with a fluorescent shell, empty inside but able to dazzle the unwary. I hesitate to compare Trump to Mr. Toad because Toad, in addition to being an egotistical braggart, has charm; Trump doesn’t. And I don’t want to insult the lovable Mr. Toad.

Nevertheless, the comparison is illuminating. If you can’t be bothered to listen to Trump’s address to Congress yesterday, here is a panegyric of Toad to himself which nicely summarizes the Trump speech:

“The world has held great Heroes,
As history-books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!

“The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr. Toad!

“The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
Their tears in torrents flowed.
Who was it said, ‘There’s land ahead?’
Encouraging Mr. Toad!

“The army all saluted
As they marched along the road.
Was it the King? Or Kitchener?
No. It was Mr. Toad.

“The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
Sat at the window and sewed.
She cried, ‘Look! who’s that handsome man?’
They answered, ‘Mr. Toad.’”

And here is Toad’s Homecoming Song having defeated the evil weasels with the help of Mole, Badger, Rat and Otter. To be recited upon re-entering the White House as Leader of the Free World:

The Toad—came—home!
There was panic in the parlours and howling in the halls,
There was crying in the cow-sheds and shrieking in the stalls,
When the Toad—came—home!

When the Toad—came—home!
There was smashing in of window and crashing in of door,
There was chivvying of weasels that fainted on the floor,
When the Toad—came—home!

Bang! go the drums!
The trumpeters are tooting and the soldiers are saluting,
And the cannon they are shooting and the motor-cars are hooting,
As the—Hero—comes!

Shout—Hoo-ray!
And let each one of the crowd try and shout it very loud,
In honour of an animal of whom you’re justly proud,
For it’s Toad’s—great—day!

 That Zelensky Trump Meeting

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When Donald Trump won the White House for the second time, I was not unhappy with the result in spite of his evident character flaws so blatantly – even proudly – on display. I agreed with many of the things he attempted to do in his first term and the alternative candidate was so much worse.

The credit Trump accumulated in my mind was squandered yesterday in his meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky.

Even during Trump’s first term, he struck me as a character extracted from a comic book; a cardboard cutout, two dimensional, a Marvell hero or villain, depending on your viewpoint. If I were to compare Trump to a character in literature, it would be Rex Mottram in Brideshead Revisited. Here is Mottram’s wife’s assessment of her husband:

“He wasn’t a complete human being at all.  He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.”

One could argue that Trump’s arrogance, braggadocio, pomposity, and hyper-inflated ego are all part of the package, as is the frequent nonsense he spouts with such relish. After all, it’s the end result that counts. I probably did say that to myself; but no more.

The pilgrimages foreign leaders have been making to the Oval Office remind me that in the exercise of raw power, nothing ever changes. Just as weaker kings used to bring offerings to stronger kings to appease them, so they continue to do so. Kier Starmer’s was the most nauseating, particularly when he produced the Letter From the King. Trump lapped it up.

Zelensky’s visit was very different. He didn’t grovel enough. He was insufficiently grateful for the beneficence of the dominant super-power. He didn’t say thank you enough.

When Zelensky attempted to make his case in a language that was not his native tongue, he was shouted down, bullied and ejected.

Quite possibly Trump’s attempt to come up with a peaceful solution was genuine; perhaps Zelensky should have abased himself more thoroughly. Either way, what we witnessed was the exercise of raw power of the strong over the weak.

Although one probably shouldn’t apply this to nation states, Malcolm Muggeridge had a point when he used to say “You can have love or power, but you can’t have both”.

Peter Hitchens was correct in this article published today:

Well, at least the silly myth that America is the world’s kindly sugar daddy has been killed off forever. I do not like Donald Trump and I feel quite sorry for Ukraine’s President Zelensky. But Friday night’s White House melodrama will be good for the world, if only we heed it. And if you think nothing like it has ever happened before, you are gravely wrong.

It is indeed a wake-up call for Canada and Europe. The US is not our friend; nation’s do not have friends, they have allies; sometimes the allies are rather disagreeable regimes. Whether the US is Canada’s ally remains to be seen; either way, we can no longer depend on the US to be our sugar daddy.

Anglican Church of Canada attendance decline

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In 2023, Christmas and Easter attendance was down 20 and 26 percent respectively compared to 2017, and up 50 and 41 percent from the 2020 and 2021 COVID panic years.

Average Sunday attendance fell by 9 percent in 2023.

You can read more in this article which attempts to grope for strands of optimism amid the gathering gloom.

The odd thing is that the ACoC is more preoccupied with attendance numbers than it is the number of people who, though its ministry, have become Christians.

Could it have something to do with money, salary and pensions?

According to data available as this issue was being prepared, attendance at Anglican Church of Canada Easter and Christmas services rose by 41 and 50 per cent respectively in 2023, even while average Sunday attendance fell by nine per cent over the same period—substantially faster than the decline of about 2.5 per cent per year before the pandemic, says the church’s statistics officer, Canon Neil Elliot.

Attendance statistics for 2023 are the most recent available as it typically takes dioceses some time to gather, consolidate and report data from all of their parishes. Even so, only 26 of 30 dioceses had reported their 2023 attendance numbers as of early January. Where data were not available, Elliot used 2022 numbers to complete the picture, meaning the numbers may be different in the final tally.

The figures for Christmas and Easter, Elliot says, are still 20 and 26 per cent below 2017 levels, suggesting the bounce-back has not reversed the overall trend of decline. Still, they represent more of a recovery than he had expected from the pandemic-era low points of 2020 and 2021. When he released the 2022 statistics, Elliot said he thought it was unlikely the church would see much more of an increase in attendance, as it seemed safe to assume that people who wanted to return to church after COVID-19 shutdowns had done so. But the surprising increase in holy day attendance in 2023, he says, is evidence the church remains in an unpredictable time.

St. Alban’s and chaos in Sandy Hill

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In 2008, St. Alban’s church in downtown Ottawa voted to join the Anglican Network in Canada, at which point the building was turned over to the Anglican Church of Canada.

The church runs Centre 454 for homeless people, a program that was started in 1979. Now the residents of the Sandy Hill neighbourhood are “urging the city to cut off funding for a drop-in centre they blame for sowing fear and chaos”.

The city is considering moving it elsewhere. It will be interesting to see if the church survives if its funding and raison d’être are removed.

From here:

St. Alban’s rector Rev. Michael Garner said the centre first opened in the church in 1979, relocated to Murray Street, and then returned to the King Edward site around 2012.

It was bursting with activity when CBC visited on Wednesday. Young said demand has doubled in the past year.

“The need is increasing,” she said. “Abject poverty, lack of affordable housing, increased cost of food, a very toxic drug supply are some of the things that are contributing to some of the behaviours that are more visible, because more people are suffering.”

But for four neighbours who appeared at a city budget meeting on Tuesday, those behaviours are intolerable. They blamed Centre 454 for a wave of theft, violence and intimidation that has left them terrified. They said the centre’s clients harass and threaten them, break into their properties, defecate in their gardens and use drugs on their laneways.

Sandy Hill resident Susan Khazaeli said Centre 454 staff are unresponsive to the community’s concerns and take no accountability for their clients once they walk out the door.

“Centre 454 is responsible for endangering the welfare and security of everyone near it,” she told council’s community services committee. “I am begging everyone here to defund this service. It does not belong here.”

Handel’s Queer Messiah

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It took Handel a mere three or four weeks to compose his masterpiece, Messiah.

It’s taken 280 years to make a mockery of it.

London’s Foundling Museum, an enterprise dedicated to being a force for change, is celebrating Christmas with A Queer Georgian Yuletide: Handel’s Queer Messiah, an evening of intellectually-informed fun. Rather like a root canal without anaesthetic.

The Foundling Museum is funded by the UK government, the Arts Council England and takes its inspiration from the Lord of the Flies, Prince of Demons.

Anglican Church of Canada statement on the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury

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Here it is:

We have seen the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has resigned, having acknowledged personal and institutional responsibility in relation to “the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth” that had been exposed by the Makin Review. Our hearts break for the children and young people who were abused by Smyth and further victimized by the lack of meaningful action on the part of the church.

In 2022, the Archbishop of Canterbury visited Canada to listen to residential school survivors and to issue apologies for the church’s role in the abuses at residential schools. We mourn that today’s news will add to the pain of survivors, and we hold them in our prayers.

The Anglican Church of Canada is committed to continuing the work needed to make the church a safe place for all, in keeping with our baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being. We pray for the humility, courage and wisdom needed for this all-important work.

It’s difficult to miss the irony that Welby “visited Canada to listen to residential school survivors”, an alleged scandal that he was not tangled up in, yet failed to meet with victims of a scandal he was.

Note this tweet from the Anglican Survivors Group. Note in particular the word “lie”:

Justin Welby’s other problem

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As bad as the Justin Welby/John Smyth scandal is, a survey at YouGov illustrates what might be an even bigger problem for the Church of England: 42% of the population has never heard of Justin Welby.

What can this mean other than  an indicator of how utterly irrelevent the church has become to almost half the people in the UK?