Yesterday’s highlight was the performance of one of favorite holiday rituals, the Tannenbaum defenestration. This was only my second time observing the ritual. I’m Jewish, I might sing Christmas carols, but I don’t do Christmas trees, but I live with someone who does, and I enjoy second-hand Christmas. My roommate is Christmas Tree Orthodox, the tree stays up until Epiphany. She then spent a few days stripping it of its finery. Last night we got rid of it. We live on the second floor; our window faces the sidewalk. Instead of carrying the tree down the stairs or elevator I toss it out the window while she waits below and then she sets it out to be picked up. There is an anarchist joy to simply tossing something large out a window. I’m sure this lies at the heart of much rioting. You smash windows because you can. My alignment is usually lawful good but that’s not my nature. I am a guerilla warrior against reality who has a great affection for the absurdity of Bugs Bunny and Monty Python. Slide one, the larch.
I did some research; Tannenbaum literally means fir tree in German. You have to appreciate the irony of a pagan ritual adopted by Christians, has become a common Jewish last name. Do you know any Tannenbaums that are Gentiles? I don’t. I would not defenestrate any Jewish people, or any Gentiles for that matter. I would love to defenestrate a watermelon from a high window and watch it hit the sidewalk. David Letterman used to do things like that on his NBC show. What would you like to defenestrate? Don’t answer any person no matter how despicable they are. Leave the despicable things to despicable people. As we’ve seen so vividly words matter. You speak violently and there are always some that will take it as license to act violently. Err on the side of peace.
The loss of the air fryer has changed the way I eat. When I had it my most common way of making potatoes was fries, now it’s baked. I will have to work on my oven fries game. I could go back to pan frying them, that requires me using a lot more oil and is a lot more work. It’s not something I want to do routinely. I still greatly enjoyed last night’s dinner for a dark meat chicken quarter and a baked potato. My mother never learned how to cook either properly, though for other dishes she was a great cook. I love that I can now love chicken.
I want to say a short word on not politics, but the way people think about politics. One of the great dangers is falling in love with a political narrative and rejecting anything that threatens it and failing to consider perspectives that are independent of it. I’m a college educated, secular New Yorker. Most of my demographic is progressive, so I suspect most of My Gentle Readers are progressive. That makes it much easier for us to see it on the other side. Trump supporters see the world as ruled by intellectual elites that are against “real Americans.” That makes it much easier to accept that those elites stole the election, and that massive fraud was perpetuated. It’s easy for us to see how they grasp at straws and ignore contrary evidence. It’s a dangerous mind set. The people who wanted to reject the results of the election don’t see themselves as rejecting democracy but as protecting it from those nefarious pedophile elites.
People on the left are not immune to that sort of thinking. Remember back in 2016 all the people that hoped that electors would be unfaithful and vote for Hillary instead of Trump? I hope that you see the danger of that now. I read about the people the deluded Trump supporters on the news, but I see the progressives stuck in their narratives on social media, and in conversation. Capitol Police shot and killed an insurrectionist, one of them cops was killed and others assaulted. Yet so many can’t let go of the narrative that it was an inside job and that the Capitol Police let it happen. One video where you see a barrier moved, you can’t see who moved it, shows that the police let the rioters in, while the many videos of them fighting the protestors are ignored as they don’t fit the narrative. It’s tough but work at challenging the narratives you believe in.
I’ll save more thoughts on the Capitol Putsch for another day. Now I have to eat. I’m going for my follow-up appointment with my GI today. I might go for an omelet. I haven’t done that for a while.
Wise Madness 