NEW ERA DIARY

One Scary Dude
May 22, 2023

His name is Jason Graber. He is 29 year old. He dresses like he forgot what each component of his attire is for. His beard is not trimmed. His hair is balding and what remains never appears reined in. He has a limited third or fourth grade vocabulary. As you might expect, he is tiresome, pedantic, and unintellectual. What you likely would never guess (and what all seems to qualify him for this particular work these days) is that he is a preacher. He is the Pastor of Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane, WA. A “fundamentalist, evangelical, Baptist, and Reformed” church, located in what is becoming the nexus of a rat’s nest collection of bat-shit crazy extremist religions.

Oh. And (lol), Fundamentalist Pastor Graber just called for the killing by rifle shot to the back of the head of all trans folks, their parents and teachers. [NOTE: The Bible speaks of taking up the sword, so Graber is now suggesting that they put down the guns and pick up the sword and decapitate the enemies of Christ.] Trans because they are a sin against god; Parents because they are “grooming” kids, and teachers who are pedophiles. He is calling for the public execution of these people. You may ask, “On what evidence does he take such a fanatical stance?” Well, I will leave that to you. Here is a brief transcription of his April sermon with the (highlighted) relevant words on which he bases his opinions:

… And apparently… states back East, you know, they’re having all kinds of… this grooming stuff going on in schools today…

… Apparently in schools today, they’re literally grooming the kids to… be just ready to be taken advantage of…

… Any teacher that would… show this type of lewd… I mean, basically what I’ve heard is that
they’re… basically, they’re showing pornographic images to children. To young children. Which is against the law—I’m pretty sure it’s… I think it’s a felony—but, you know what? Preachers need to get up and say… well, teachers that do this, they should be put to death. They need to be taken out and shot in the back of the head. Because they’re… they’re pedophiles!

Any teacher that’s gonna show pornographic images to young children, they are a predator! And the reason that they’re doing that is because they want to take advantage of young children…

… And these teachers, they’re showing these pornographic images to these young children, and literally grooming them, those teachers need to have the fear of God put in them. And you know what? That’s what the government is for. In Romans 13, the Bible talks about that the government’s job is to execute judgment with the sword, okay? So maybe… we need to put aside the guns and we need to get the sword back out. And we need to make these executions public. We need to find these teachers that are showing pornographic images and grooming children, we need to find them, try them, get the television out, we need to get FOX News, CNN, every YouTube channel out there, put it on television. We need to show them being publicly beheaded.

That’s what needs to happen to these people. Because you know what? Otherwise our nation is gonna turn into a literal Sodom and Gomorrah.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…” I am pretty confident this nut case is not what Jesus intended. Sadly, I don’t think any of us anticipated this. It appears as if so-called preachers are attempting to gain notoriety, much like the Republicans are doing, by calling for more and more extreme and radical measures in the name of the Bible, or whatever is handy on random days. And, it is all a desperate, last ditch attempt to prevent a mixed-racial, liberal democratic America. In their eyes, if you have not been baptized, if you don’t believe in the resurrection, if you don’t speak in tongues, if you don’t worship snakes, if you don’t spank your children, and if your wife is not solely utilized for procreation and otherwise working to maintain the house, you are damned. You are the damned ‘other’. There is simply no place for you in their white Christian America. To help us understand what’s at stake: “Robert Jeffress, the head of 14,000-member megachurch First Baptist Dallas, a contributor to Fox News, and one of the earliest evangelical leaders to support Trump, presided over a congressional meeting. In Jeffress’ final argument, he reminded everyone — in apocalyptic terms — what their support would mean. “What I want to say in closing is this election is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats. It’s a battle between good and evil, light and darkness, righteousness and unrighteousness. . . . This is the last chance we have, I’m convinced, as a country to turn this country around.”

I find it ironic, and you will surely notice, that those who “sayeth” and “speaketh” the words of the lord, are purposefully, unapologetically, and as the foremost part of their job description, literally “grooming kids”.

Have you noticed that the definitions or qualifications for ‘other’ have widened? I am reminded of the ‘quote’ from Pastor Martin Niemoller. (Originally, cited as a poem, First They Came, is actually taken from a series of talks he gave after being freed from a concentration camp. His quote is now memorialized at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since its opening in 1933. it serves as an indictment of passivity and indifference. In his many speeches and lectures, Niemoller confesses his own inaction and indifference to the fate of the Jews and all victims of the Nazis. He stood by…until they came for him.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a socialist.

Then, they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-because I was was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.

Niemoller fails to mention that they came for homosexuals, the frail, foreigners, mixed-race individuals,
dissenters, political opponents, and ‘degenerate’ artists. The reason I include the group of degenerate artists is that the treatment of this group poses an exacting example of how discrimination works…then and now. “In a sense, the concept of “Aryan” art was defined by what it was not: anything that was ideologically problematic (that did not fit with the extremist beliefs of the regime) was removed until there little left but an academic style that celebrated youth, optimism, power and eternal triumph.”

This process of selection by elimination is happening today. Republicans are attempting to eliminate anything they oppose in defense of what remains…whatever remains. There is no ideological basis. There is no philosophical thesis. There is only destruction, civil unrest, and internal war. Whatever scraps remain, at least they and their compatriots will be in control. That seems all that matters. Then, cruelty will be defined as necessary, killings will be explained as cleansing, racism as purification, and so on.

It is not that pretend pastors or corrupt politicians exist. That has always been the case since the beginning of human history. It is that we waited too long to speak out. To act. To say NO. I beg of us all to undertake one task a day to speak out. Call you Congressman. Call your senator. Join an organization that supports your values. Our future depends on it.

NEW ERA DIARY

AGING AUTHENTICALLY
May 20, 2023

I was shocked and not a little bit unnerved at my first glance of the latest cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2023 Edition. It has a picture of Martha Stewart, at the age of 81, clad in a bikini top that plunges in front displaying the better parts of her equally aged breasts represented by the magazine editors as “celebrating an aging woman”. The problem is that the woman does not reveal decades of graceful aging rather an air-brushed photo of a woman enhanced by years and surely millions of dollars of surgical touch-up to her face and body. She appears to me a virtual reality of herself. This is Martha Stewart’s life long interpretation of aging, or as Jessica Define writes in her Substack on May 1`9, 2023, “My general takeaway: It doesn't count as “celebrating an aging woman” if you're celebrating her for still looking young and fuckable.”

What struck me as most sad were the responses to Define’s article (a woman who has excoriated the media, the male dominated structure that messages and defines female standards, and the degree to which women have either allowed themselves to buy into or naively accept those absurd notions of beauty that so gravely impact women. This ‘enhancement’ is sold as beauty augmentation and lifestyle improvement, like a soldier who loses a leg in a war and can now receive the latest in prosthetics. One doesn’t have to lose a limb nowadays for this aesthetic refashioning. One only has to lose their soul… and possess an adequate bank account.

Martha Stewart as she wishes to display herself.

And, did I say impact women? How dare I. Men have not only gone along for the ride, but are at the helm. There is an adorable parlance describing this phenomenon: “When a man marries a woman, he wants her never to change. And, she does.” / “When a woman marries a man, she wants him to change. And, he doesn’t.” Sadly, I get this to be the case. Society accepts a man’s aging - sagging belly, wrinkles, disheveled, unkempt, rickety body and all. But, a women is expected to defy gravity. A male who attends to aging remains agile not pretty, is flexible not fawning, is healthy not harnessed. Contrarily, female health is associated with youthful appearance, unnatural attractiveness, keeping any show of aging at bay. Or, as Define insists, this is “ageism masquerading as age inclusivity.”

This is commercial phoniness, selling the idea that a woman near death should not only care about what other people think of her, but at all have in mind a desire to project any ambition to appear like a magazine idol or young swimsuit model under the pretense of making women feel better about getting older. The egotistical slobber is beyond belief. Really, how many women can afford (if they had any inclination in the first instance) the sheer quantity of injections and length of “scalpel-ing” (my word) and healing that goes along with the look of un-natural aging. Not to mention the extreme risks and consequences to all this surgery or implementations - appearance-related anxiety, depression, dysmorphia, disordered eating, self-harm, and worse.

And, what is natural looking about that? Or, as Matt Labash states in his reflection on the MS look, “And now, of course, Martha Stewart is doing the sexy grandma act, with her drooping décolletage and strategically placed upper-arms wrap, meant to cover the skin that slackens in us all as we age, part of nature’s cruel and inevitable process. I don’t like the Laws of Nature, either. But I didn’t write them, I just have to live by them. As do we all.” There is nothing self-empowering about resisting this inevitability.

Adele’s graying and my belly on full display in Santa Fe.

Then, she had the unmitigated gall to tell Variety Magazine in an interview that she has never had cosmetic surgery. But, whether true or not, who needs plastic surgery when technology can falsify every reality with Apps that can lift, shine, shape, tighten, and hide…oh hell, make you look exactly like Elle McPherson if that’s your desire. Who cares how you got to look fake when you look fake? Who cares that a piece of you is destroyed when you believe you are better for not being you? And, this is not to say that a man or woman cannot or should not pay attention to their aging process as a reflection of health and well being which can imbue a positive outlook, or provide personal pride in attire, and the like. But, who the hell and why would anyone want to emulate being a kid, a twenty something when no matter how you present yourself it is, in the end, an embarrasment.

A passage in the book Light Years by James Salter stands out, “The light was mild. A mole near her jaw had darkened. There was no question, she looked older, the age of one who is admired but not loved. She had made the pilgrimage through vanity, the pages of magazines, through envy itself to a vaster, more tranquil world. Like a traveler, there was much she could tell, there was much that could never be told. Young women liked to talk to her, to be in her presence. They were able to confess to her. She was at ease.” To be at ease is to be greatly admired.

I would be remiss if I pretended the mass of media messaging had not affected me. It had. Adele named it: Delilah. Delilah was everything from allowing myself to be distracted by other women, to feeling that Adele was not enough, or that she needed fixing, or someone else could fulfill me more or was more compatible. I don’t believe it was immaturity alone. My sense is that the pervasive and invasive nature of these ideas solely for advancing profit becomes societally absorptive. Repetition lends a banality to thought and blind acceptance. It is dangerous in that we lose how we are perceiving and treating ourselves in the process.

Aging, to me, is a gift. It is an astonishing and extraordinary experience I have come to accept. It has changed my relationship with my wife and with women. I used to think that despite my age I could be cool in the presence of young women. But, not only was that inauthentic, it was humiliating. I wasn't fooling anyone. My superiority routine, my success pretense, my semblance of sophistication and worldliness all were coverups. Charades of insecurity. Being myself has made me available to all the beautiful aspects of aging - greater acceptance, growing wisdom, the ability to express honestly my thoughts, a willingness to expose my heart. I view Adele through that prism. She is so much more to me now as I appreciate fully all that she means to me in her complexity. I have taken responsibility for the dance between us being made aware of the third entity in every relationship - the WE. The ineffably concrete presence that we are both accountable to.

And, yes, I still think Adele is lovely, attractive, has the softest skin to the touch…and looks great for her age. But, most importantly, she has been a devoted mother, an absolutely committed partner, and my friend. She is wise and smart. She is the person who I love doing absolutely nothing with. She is the person with whom I can say nothing to and communicate. She is the person who has no expectation any longer of who I am or could be. Thus, my desire is simply to sink more deeply into all aspects of her and our lives.