I have written several postings related to Various topics including the military, Voting, the economy, religion and etc in America. A list of links have been provided at bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address additional issues in these topics.

Table of Contents

-Trump Gets the Last Laugh

-Gender in the Bible

-Why do California’s Elite hate the Working Class

-Why do the Democrats Hate Black Conservatives

-My Conversation With An Astrophysicist and What I learned.

-Miasma Vs. Germ Theory: Why there is no Black and White

Trump Gets the Last Laugh

Trump Was Right, World Leaders Were Wrong: Russia Just Cut Off Germany’s Fuel Supply. Who’s Laughing Now?

‘I trust that Russia will return to 20% on Saturday, but no one can really say’

As the Ukrainian war rages on, Europeans across the continent are appalled to discover that the man they found shockingly repulsive, Donald Trump, correctly warned that over-reliance on Russia’s energy would cripple their entire way of life.

On Wednesday, Russia announced that it would be cutting off Germany’s gas supply via Nord Stream 1 for the next three days. According to German officials, all they can do is “trust” that they can handle the decrease in natural gas.

“I assume that we will be able to cope with it,” Klaus Mueller, the president of Germany’s network regulator, told Reuters after the announcement. “I trust that Russia will return to 20% on Saturday, but no one can really say.”

If I’m a German and I’m hearing that, the first thing I’m doing is starting to knit an extra thick Wintermantel.

The second thing I’m doing is wondering why the German leaders didn’t heed Trump’s prophetic words.

German leaders in particular literally laughed out loud at America’s 45th president at the United Nations when he criticized their energy relationship with Russia, claiming that they were totally dependent four years ago.

Instead, Germany opted to listen to folks like Greta Thunberg — a teenager fully indoctrinated by climate change charlatans —  and push green energy.

“Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course,” Trump said before the U.N. in 2018.

“Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers,” he added

The Left-leaning NowThis Twitter account claimed at the time that “Trump made some outrageous claims about German energy at the UN — and the German delegation’s reaction was priceless.”

Trump also stated that Germany was “totally controlled by Russia” because of its energy dependence.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebutted Trump, saying,  “I wanted to say that, because of current events, I have witnessed this myself, that a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. And I am very happy that we are today unified in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany.”

Merkel maintained that her nation was free, despite not having reliable forms of fuel.

At the same time, Merkel praised Thunberg for climate activism and encouraging kids to ditch school on Fridays. In 2020, Germany even began closing down its coal plants and instead promised to create a green energy utopia. In the interim, they would rely on Russia.

Germany was forced to reactivate coal plants in July 2022 precisely because they could not get green energy up to speed quickly enough.

Contrary to what the Left claimed, Trump’s U.N. claims were not outrageous. They were prescient.

As we speak, Germans are facing unprecedented energy prices before winter has even started.

“This is not normal at all. It’s incredibly volatile,” Fabian Rønningen, a senior analyst at Rystad Energy, said of high energy prices throughout Germany on Tuesday. “These prices are reaching levels now that we thought we would never see.”

The Europeans might not have seen those high prices coming, but those who believe in a true all-of-the-above energy solution that maximizes fossil fuels and clean energy, as well as energy independence, certainly predicted it.

For some reason, the Trump presidency made the entire world lose its mind. Leaders listened to children instead of taking an honest look at their vulnerabilities. Now, their people are paying the price.

US mid-terms 2022: Tracking Trump’s ‘extraordinary’ endorsement spree

Donald Trump has shown great pride in hand-picking the next wave of Republican stars.

Back when he was still in the White House, he wrote on Twitter: “As long as I campaign and/or support Senate and House candidates (within reason), they will win!”

In this primary season, he hasn’t been far off.

Over the past several months, candidates endorsed by Mr Trump have pocketed victories across the country, winning 92% of the time.

From his home in Palm Beach, Florida, the self-proclaimed “king” of endorsements has weighed in on almost 200 races, backing Republican candidates running for the US Senate, House or state governor in 39 out of 50 states. It is an unusually high number – during the 2018 mid-terms, he backed just under 90 candidates for those same positions, according to Ballotpedia. That same year, former President Barack Obama endorsed 94 candidates.

The election will see voters decide who gets to sit in Congress, as well as hold key positions in their home state. And come November, it is Mr Trump’s picks who will be representing the Republican Party on ballots across the US.

“It’s extraordinary, because most ex-presidents walk away,” said Charles Coughlin, a Republican party operative. “That’s not what he’s doing.”

As the primary season draws to a close, here is a look at Mr Trump’s full endorsement record – who he supported, how they did, and the races he could not swing.

While it is beyond doubt that Trump backs winners, there is an important caveat: many of these races were a sure thing from the start.

Some 54 (nearly one-quarter) of Mr Trump’s candidates ran unopposed.

And his record was boosted further by supporting a large majority (74%) of incumbents – tried and true candidates with Republican bonafides who had won their seats in the last election and were running for office again. In fact, only a single Trump-endorsed incumbent lost: the scandal-ridden Madison Cawthorne, who served two years as a House representative from North Carolina.

• Republicans oust Trump-backed Gen Z congressman

“He is clearly endorsing a number of people who are going to win anyway, so he can run up the percentage of victories. That’s just a smart strategy to run the numbers up,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican strategist.

“The endorsements make him the most prominent figure in the Republican party,” he added. “And it increases his influence when Republicans are constantly asking for his endorsement.”

In open seats, where there is no incumbent either because of retirement or redistricting, a Trump-backed candidate won 83% of the time. And in races where the winner would face off against a Democratic incumbent in November, his pick won 100% of the time.

• Can Trump’s ‘hillbilly’ win the Senate?

Mr Coughlin said the former president views “every candidate as a proxy for himself”. Their wins reflect back on him, and in many cases, they resemble him too. Of the new candidates that Mr Trump endorsed, who were not incumbents, roughly 80% were Caucasian and 70% were male.

And, like Mr Trump when he first ran for president, many (53%) were political neophytes, who had never held office before. The rookies ranged from celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, to former college football player Bo Hines, just 26 years old and now the Republican nominee from North Carolina’s 13th congressional district.

Loyalty was key in securing an endorsement. The majority of candidates promoted, in some way, Mr Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election. Many Trump-backed incumbents (42%) who held office in Congress in January 2021 voted to overturn the election results. Others, like Kari Lake, a former news anchor and Arizona’s Republican candidate for governor, have made Mr Trump’s false election claims central to her campaign.

“It’s a litmus test that you have to pass. You have to be an advocate for the idea that there was some fraud in the last election,” Mr Coughlin said.

An Achilles heel

In many ways, Mr Trump’s endorsements seemed to be less about providing support than a personal mission to banish his critics from office.

“His endorsement is really more of a threat to people: ‘You better stick by me, you better defend me, or I’ll work against you,'” said Cheri Jacobus, a long-time Republican insider who left the party when Donald Trump became its nominee in 2016. “It’s used as a weapon.”

No candidates were more aggressively targeted than the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr Trump for his role in the 6 January Capitol riots. Of the six who ran for re-election this year, just two prevailed: Representative Dan Newhouse in Washington state, and Representative David Valadao of California.

But going after people in his own party does not always pan out. When he backed a candidate against a Republican incumbent, he won only four out of 10 times, with five losses and one withdrawal.

This played out in Georgia – a critical swing state – where Governor Brian Kemp defeated former Senator David Perdue, handpicked by Mr Trump. It was a similar story in Idaho, where Governor Brad Little thwarted Janice McGeachin, the lieutenant governor with Mr Trump’s backing.

Eyes on 8 November

While the primaries are mostly a battle in-house among the most committed party members, November’s election will involve a full spectrum of voters – Democrats, Republicans and undecideds.

Some of the newcomers endorsed by the former president are likely to struggle, unaccustomed to the pressure and pace of a political campaign.

And in some races, notably in swing states that often go back and forth between backing Republicans and Democrats, the nod from Mr Trump may prove to be a liability if it forces voters to choose between a candidate on the right of the Republican party, and a centrist.

In Washington state, Republican candidate Tiffany Smiley – who had once courted Mr Trump’s endorsement during the primary, but did not get it – declined to say whether she would welcome his endorsement in November.

“I am laser-focused on delivering results for the voters of Washington state and I have been clear about that from day one. I am focused on the future and we have a state to save, there are real people suffering here in Washington state,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash.

Since winning their primaries, several Republican candidates including Blake Masters of Arizona and Adam Laxalt of Nevada, have deleted references to Mr Trump from their online profiles – changes first reported by US outlets, including the Washington Post and the New York Times.

For Mr Trump, who’s made it increasingly clear he wants to run for president again in 2024, how his candidates fare this autumn may provide a hint of his odds of returning to the White House.

Hard Right Stokes Outrage After Search of Mar-a-Lago

As they did before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the former president and his allies are fueling anger among supporters.

One week after a team of F.B.I. agents descended on his private club and residence in Florida, former President Donald J. Trump warned that his followers were enraged by the search — and that things could get out of hand if the Justice Department kept the heat on him.

“People are so angry at what is taking place,” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “Whatever we can do to help because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn’t, terrible things are going to happen.”

This week, one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, issued a similar warning that Mr. Trump quickly reposted on his social media platform. Mr. Graham, in a Fox News appearance on Sunday, predicted that if the search of Mar-a-Lago led to a prosecution of the former president, there would be “riots in the streets.”

The assessments by both men were worded carefully enough that they could be defended as efforts to spare the nation unnecessary strife, and on Monday, Mr. Graham tried to walk back his remarks, saying, “I reject violence.”

But the statements could also be perceived as fanning the same flames of outrage they claimed to be trying to avert. They carried a distinct echo of Mr. Trump’s calls after the 2020 election to do what was needed to keep him in office, signals that contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol soon after he urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”

In a broader sense, the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago has emerged as the latest rallying cry for those on the right who have long been suspicious that the powers of the federal government could be turned against them. It has prompted calls to dismantle or defund the F.B.I. and furious denunciations of what far-right supporters of Mr. Trump increasingly portray as an overreaching national security apparatus.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump spent much of the morning reposting messages from known purveyors of the QAnon conspiracy theory and from 4chan, an anonymous message platform where threats of violence often blossom. Some were outright provocations, such as a photograph of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi with their faces obscured by the words, “Your enemy is not in Russia.”

Over the past several years, intimations of violence have become more common in the Republican Party, a trend fueled in large part by Mr. Trump’s lies about his election loss. Threats of violent responses from the right have also shown up around policy changes such as the recent gun legislation signed into law by Mr. Biden and surrounding hot-button social issues like transgender rights and the teaching of antiracism themes in schools.

Now the response by Mr. Trump and some of his allies to the search at Mar-a-Lago — including statements laced with fury at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. — is underscoring yet again the degree to which threatening undertones are creeping into Republican political speech, raising concern about words spilling over into violent action.

After the search, the F.B.I. reported a spike in threats against its agents, and a Trump supporter who was reported to have been in Washington on Jan. 6 tried to break into the bureau’s Cincinnati field office, subsequently dying in a shootout with the local police. Within days of that attack, another man, who mentioned it in social media posts, was arrested on charges of making a round of threats against agents.

The threats are not limited to the F.B.I. or the Justice Department. Bruce E. Reinhart, the federal magistrate judge who approved the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, has been the target of online attacks, with some people posting messages threatening him and his family.

Shortly after the search, Judge Reinhart’s synagogue in Florida, citing the threats, canceled its Friday evening services. Similarly, officials at the National Archives, in an internal email first reported by The Washington Post, described a surge of angry rhetoric directed at its staff.

At least so far, extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, both of which are being prosecuted for the roles they played in the Capitol attack, have not publicly echoed Mr. Trump’s rants about the F.B.I. in any significant way. But pro-Trump websites are regularly filled with violent posts about doing harm to employees of the bureau.

In an appearance in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Mr. Biden condemned “friends on the other team” who have predicted political violence in the wake of the search. “It’s never appropriate,” he said. “Never. Period. Never, never, never.”

From the Russia investigation to two impeachment trials, Mr. Trump has often tried to demonize his adversaries, portraying their efforts to hold him accountable for his behavior — or even to examine it — as outrageous attempts directed by political foes to deprive him of power.

“The Raid on my home, Mar-a-Lago, is one of the most egregious assaults on democracy in the history of our Country,” Mr. Trump wrote this weekend on his social media platform, Truth Social. He went on to say that the nation was “going to places, in a very bad way, it has never seen before!”

The former president’s response to the Mar-a-Lago search, which prompted a tidal wave of anger on the right, is just one example of how he has portrayed those who are investigating him as malicious and warned of the consequences of their actions.

“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C.; in New York; in Atlanta; and elsewhere,” Mr. Trump said in January at a rally, “because our country and our elections are corrupt.”

He was referring to the three Black law enforcement officials who are leading separate inquiries into him, including possible fraud at his company in New York and his actions in Georgia to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

The consequences of provocative statements by Mr. Trump and his allies were placed into sharp relief by the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. In the months that preceded the riot, Mr. Trump used tactics similar to those that he employed after the Mar-a-Lago search, incessantly whipping up his followers by telling them that he — and they — had been wronged, and that they could not let the situation stand.

He used a Twitter post to summon his supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 and made clear that blocking or delaying congressional certification of the Electoral College outcome was the last opportunity to keep him in office. At midday on Jan. 6, he directed them to the Capitol and focused his ire on Vice President Mike Pence, leading to calls by the mob to hang Mr. Pence.

“Trump said things in advance, and in the aftermath, of Jan. 6 that look a lot like what we heard after the search at Mar-a-Lago — that people were and should be angry,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies political violence. “He told people that their power had been taken from them illegitimately, the exact sort of thing that would make them angry. But he erased the fact that he had any role in nudging the anger along.”

On Jan. 6, the nation watched as thousands of Trump supporters responded to his words by traveling to Washington and storming the seat of Congress. Many of them, according to hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the riot, went to the Capitol believing they could rectify the supposed wrongs that had been done to Mr. Trump.

When asked, the former president’s spokesman, Taylor Budowich, did not address the question of whether Mr. Trump was concerned that his words could be, or were being, interpreted by his supporters as calls to action. He said instead that Mr. Trump was “disgusted by how the Democrats are destroying once great institutions, like the F.B.I., in their never-ending quest for absolute power,” adding that he “recognizes that the only way to save these institutions is to encourage the good people within them to speak out and restore truth!”

Experts in political violence say that while there is evidence that violent rhetoric, especially online, is running high, it is difficult to know how often — and precisely when — such language will lead to attacks.

Still, the recent surge of fury toward the F.B.I. is another palpable example of anger on the right seen in both public appearances by high-profile Republicans and in posts by Trump supporters on the internet. The outbursts have come after years of Mr. Trump and allies casting the bureau’s repeated investigations of him as baseless political attacks, a tactic that has served to defend Mr. Trump from blame while stoking fear and anger in his base.

The attacks against the F.B.I. from Mr. Trump and his supporters began in earnest in 2018 after agents searched the office of his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, for evidence of campaign finance violations. After the search, Rudolph W. Giuliani, another lawyer close to Mr. Trump, went on a warpath, declaring that the F.B.I.’s office in New York — with which he had worked closely during his time as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan — had behaved like “storm troopers” in conducting the raid.

Since then, Mr. Trump and his allies have attacked the F.B.I. for its role in investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia; for purportedly failing to thoroughly investigate issues surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop; for using federal informants to infiltrate a group of militiamen charged with — and partly acquitted in — a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan; and for supposedly instigating the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Just this week, Mr. Trump included several of these F.B.I. attacks in a single post on Truth Social, repeating a claim by some of his favored media sources that a top agent in the Washington field office who had worked on the Hunter Biden laptop case and had tried to open an election-related inquiry into Mr. Trump had lost his job.

In the post, Mr. Trump sought, without evidence, to hold the former agent responsible for the search at Mar-a-Lago, too, calling it an event that had “created anger and hostility toward the FBI and DOJ.”

The F.B.I. declined to comment on a personnel matter, but the former agent retired after more than 20 years at the bureau. He had previously worked on high-profile public corruption investigations involving a former Democratic congressman convicted of bribery and the Clinton Foundation.

In a statement on Tuesday, the former agent, Timothy Thibault, said he voluntarily retired from the F.B.I., adding, “Claims to the contrary are false.”

Mr. Trump has managed to create a dynamic among many of his followers where the F.B.I.’s actions are, by necessity, regarded as nefarious, yet another crime in a litany of grievances. That is why, after so many examples, this latest instance of targeting the F.B.I. could present a danger, experts in political violence said.

Shannon Hiller, the executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University, which tracks political violence in the United States, said she had hoped, after the attack on the F.B.I. field office in Cincinnati, that Republicans in particular would have “sobered up” and been reminded that violent rhetoric can have often real consequences.

But that has not happened, and Ms. Hiller remains concerned that unrest could continue and even increase if a prosecution of Mr. Trump were to come.

“There are credible reasons why a country might want to investigate a former leader and that can increase tensions in the short term,” she explained. “But it is important to do so to gain accountability and create credibility in the long term.”

“Unfortunately,” Ms. Hiller added, “in this country, it’s looking like it might be a long road.”

Gender in the Bible

Gender and Sexuality

DEFINITION

Sexuality refers to God’s anthropological design and pattern for the procreative relationship between male and female and to the experience of erotic desire within that design. Gender refers to biological differences in male and female embodiment and the different cultural ways in which the creational distinctions between male and female are manifested.

SUMMARY

Sexuality refers to God’s anthropological design and pattern for the procreative relationship between male and female and to the experience of erotic desire within that design. Gender refers to biological differences in male and female embodiment and the different cultural ways in which the creational distinctions between male and female are manifested. The creational narrative of Genesis 1–2 provides the Christian with the foundational truths behind these distinctions: God created humanity, male and female, in his image for one another. To deny any part of this teaching is to subject God’s purposeful design to the desires of humanity. While much of modern culture desires to deny these distinctions and to untether gender from sexuality, the New Testament reaffirms the Old Testament’s teaching on this topic and brings the male-female distinction to its culmination in the Christ-Church relationship.

A Christian framework for gender and sexuality begins with understanding that each find their origin, structure, and purpose within God’s will for creation. Gender and sexuality, from a Christian perspective, are enchanted realities imbued with divine meaning and purpose. But as the drama of Scripture unfolds, gender and sexuality become impacted by sin. Yet, in light of redemption, the original design and purpose of gender and sexuality are reaffirmed and heightened as the New Testament explains their ultimate telos—to reflect the Christ-Church union. The assumption that gender and sexuality are ordered by God, and for God, stands in stark contrast to modernity’s view that divinizes gender and sexuality, understanding both to be ordered to, and determined by, consent and human will alone.

Sexuality and Gender in God’s Design

When speaking of sexuality and gender, what is meant by these terms?

Sexuality can have broad and narrow meanings. In a broad rendering, sexuality refers to God’s anthropological design and pattern for the procreative relationship between male and female. In a narrower scope, sexuality refers to the experience of erotic desire. Accordingly, in Scripture, sexuality is a constitutive part of human nature and human experience shaped by God’s will for creation; it is not the singular defining aspect of human identity itself.

Gender can also have broad and narrow connotations. More broadly, gender refers to biological differences in male and female embodiment. Narrowly speaking, gender refers to the creational distinctions between male and female manifested in culture (e.g., baby girls adorned in pink; baby boys adorned in blue). Gender should be understood as the cultural reality resulting from God making men and women biologically sexed and distinct. Christians need to understand that as partakers of God’s good creation, we are to acknowledge and participate in culturally-appropriate gender distinctions. This is because each culture discovers culturally-defined ways to reflect the biological and created difference of men and women. This means Christians should abide by the gender norms set by their culture insofar as what the culture dictates does not transgress God’s moral law for upholding the sex distinction between male and female. For example, cross-dressing is sinful because it violates the creational boundaries between male and female that come to be expressed in culturally-appropriate gender norms. We ought to care about the gender distinctions our culture holds up since gender distinctions are a common grace mechanism for acknowledging the innate differences of males from females.

Sexuality and gender are first made known in the creational accounts of Scripture. In Genesis 1:26–28, we read of God creating man and woman in His image. Equal in their dignity, but different in their design and calling, the man and woman are then commissioned to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion.” Genesis 1 communicates both the identity of male and female, and that this identity is oriented toward a procreative union meant to populate the earth. Seen through this light, gender and sexuality are substantive pillars in fulfilling what theologians refer to as the cultural mandate.

In another rendering of humanity’s origins, we read in Genesis 2 that it is not good for man to be alone; that a helper was needed. This helper is both similar and dissimilar; similar in her humanity, yet dissimilar in her design. The man and woman—as counterparts—are intended to form a complementary union. In 2:24, it is written that “Then a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This language is at once both figurative and literal; figurative in that it describes the establishing of a distinct family unit; literal in that it testifies to the bodily union for which male and female anatomy are designed. This sexual pattern is the archetype for the Bible’s expectation for human sexual arrangements.

Several axiomatic truths related to gender and sexuality are found in the Genesis 1–2 narrative.

1. God created. A Christian understanding for gender and sexuality begins with a foundational assumption about the universe itself. The Triune God is a God of order, not chaos, and random combination. Christians believe that the Triune God alone brings reality into existence. Reality and human experience are not self-creating or self-constituting. Christians confess that the God who creates the cosmos is the holy, sovereign, and just God who orders all aspects of reality—including sexuality and gender. Gender and sexuality are not evolutionary quirks; both find their origin in the creative will of God.
2. God created humanity. A Christian understanding for gender and sexuality also begins with a foundational assumption about human nature. God is the creator of humanity, and as such, has the right to speak authoritatively over our lives. We are his subjects, and sexuality and gender are constitutive aspects of God’s rule over humanity. We are not self-creating or self-constituting. Sexuality and gender, then, are not plastic and endlessly malleable to fit human preference. Rather like the body, Christians believe that gender and sexuality are purposefully ordered to fit God’s will for humanity (1 Cor. 6:13). This means obedience and a commitment to living in line with God’s creative will is where holiness and human flourishing form an intersection.
3. God created humanity in His image. Genesis speaks of God making man and woman in His image. Theologians debate all that being made in God’s image entails, but in general, we can say that we image God in our relational dimension, our structural design, and our functional capacity. While exercising caution to not reduce sexuality and gender as the defining marks of bearing God’s image, it is appropriate to assume that they contribute to the entirety of what it means to bear God’s image. Humanity existing in male and female iterations implies that our sexual design and gendered existence are participants in the fundamental nobility and dignity that human beings are said to possess because of being made in God’s image. To be made in God’s image means that no part of our humanity is purposeless or irrelevant to God’s creative intention.
4. God created humanity male and female. When God created humanity, He did not make us sexless monads. He made humanity in male and female forms. This means that gender, and gender identity—if such a construct is at all intelligible—is an embodied reality. Male and female self-conception are not constructed from psychology alone. Male and female, according to the biblical portrait, are fixed, bodily realities; meaning they are not interchangeable or eradicable. They are objectively known; such that the identity of who we are as sexed humans is not a mystery. Lastly, male and female imply substantive differentiation. This differentiation is observed down to the chromosomal, anatomical, reproductive, physiological, and emotive levels. This physical difference starkly manifests itself in the anatomical design of male and female, which makes procreation possible and the fulfillment of the cultural mandate actionable.
5. God created male and female for one another. God commands sexual activity to be experienced exclusively within the marital relationship of one man and one woman. The sexual distinction in Scripture bears witness to the sexual and procreative union that male and female bodies are capable of engaging in. In Scripture, sexual union ratifies the marriage covenant, signifying the existence of the marriage union intended to be permanent, monogamous, and exclusive. Notice in Genesis 1:26–28 that the creation of man and woman in Genesis both is structural and dynamic. As male and female beings made in God’s image, their design is ordered toward a particular purpose—filling the earth, subduing it, exercising dominion. More specifically, that purpose is accomplished by male and female design—that the act of being fruitful and multiplying hinges on, and springs from, their respective sex distinction. In this account, general revelation parallels with special revelation. As each of us knows, sexual intercourse is capable of producing children, and this reality is exclusive to only one reality, male-female complementarity.

The Bible and Creation’s Manifold Witness of Gender and Sexuality

At least in contemporary debates on these issues, Christians are often tempted to treat our vision for sexuality and gender as ethical matters relevant and pertaining to Christians only. This is not a biblical way to approach such subjects. Such a view is a truncated account for explaining why Christians’s convictions on such matters are not only Christian, but universally applicable. The Bible casts a vision for sexuality and gender that is true on both special and general revelation grounds. As biblical scholar Richard Bauckham writes, “biblical commands are not arbitrary decrees but correspond to the way the world is and will be. When Christians discuss gender and sexuality, they must understand that the design for gender and sexuality in Scripture is the design that all humans are obligated to live within, even if they do not appear most the natural or easiest in light of sin. What Christians believe about sexuality and gender is not an “in-house” argument for debate among Christians only. The Bible understands gender and sexuality as creational realities that determine whether a society will organize itself in subjection to God’s authority or in rejection to God’s authority.

As ethicist Bernd Wannenwetsch writes, “The Christian doctrine of creation is precisely such a way of explaining why there are aspects of reality that are invested with normative moral significance” . This means that the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality are not sectarian. These teachings are not built on fideistic decrees or fiat. Instead, the Bible speaks to created reality in both a sinful and redeemed state—because the Lord Jesus reigns over creation and unites both creation and redemption in His gospel. Gender and sexuality do not require an exclusively Christian epistemology for their authority or intelligibility, but insofar as sin warps human perception, the Bible’s teaching do require explanation in line with the full drama of Christian doctrine. A vision for gender and sexuality that fails to satisfy the demands set forth in Genesis will be subject to endless redefinition, which is why revisionist accounts of gender and sexuality—such as same-sex marriage and gender fluidity—retain no coherent limiting principle.

Sexuality and Gender in Revolt

The five axioms above are the backdrop that explain Scripture’s prohibition on sexual practices and gender displays that transgress God-ordained creational distinctions and creational boundaries. Sin’s impact demonstrates how each of the axioms are assaulted.

1. Concerning axiom one, a culture of unbelief either rejects God’s existence or God’s authority. Man’s agency, in this paradigm, is the measure of all that is. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the never-ending redefinition of sexual morality and ensuing gender confusion. Since there are no binding rules, sexuality and gender are a matter of personal will and preference. Sexuality and gender are self-chosen, issuing from the autonomous self. Since humanity is not bound by a code of objective and universal morality, what Christians consider sexually immoral or out of step with God’s intent for gender expression, is shorn of all taboo and prohibition— whether pornography, bestiality, polygamy, lust, adultery, orgies, non-monogamy, rape; pedophilia, homosexuality, fornication, incest, prostitution cross-dressing, effeminacy, androgyny, illicit seduction, transgenderism, and sexual abuse.
2. In axiom two, humanity denies that it is a divine creation born of an intelligent and divine will, or inscribed with any inherent, fixed meaning. Any sexual arrangement is thus allowable insofar as consent is present; and any gender expression is permissible insofar as it comports with a person’s self-perception. Since humanity may or may not be the creation of a divine being, saying that a particular sexual arrangement or gender expression is prohibited is simply a product of social convention.
3. With axiom three, humanity divests itself of any particular calling in light of being made in God’s image. Since we are not special creations endowed with a mission to exercise dominion, we subsist by vain expressions of human autonomy and self-seeking justification. Our liberation from God’s constraints becomes our abolition.
4. In axiom four, humanity denies that male and female are objective and fixed realities. Instead, gender fluidity and suppression of sexed realities paint a portrait of gender and sexuality that is endlessly malleable and psychologically grounded. This allows such sins as transgenderism.
5. In axiom five, the beauty of male-female complementarity is denied, meaning that the creational guardrails for sexuality are nullified. This licenses such sexual sins as homosexuality. It is not that homosexuality is worse than all other sins; but that it narrates through vivid and graphic portrayal an expulsive rejection of God’s authority concerning creational design and boundaries.

In all five axioms, what is at the root of humanity’s assault on God-defined expressions of sexuality and gender? God’s authority over sexual desire and sexual relationships, and God’s design for how gender is conceived and expressed, is cast off. As it is with every issue of ethics and morality, the idea that any objective standard exists and is binding begins and ends with whether God exists and whether He intends to hold individuals accountable for their actions.

Sexuality and Gender in Redemption

While this essay has strived to present an argument for the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality that is true on both general and revelation grounds, it would be incomplete if it failed to examine how sexuality and gender are understood within the horizon of the gospel.

1. The New Testament reaffirms the vision for gender and sexuality taught in Genesis. The gospel offers the promise of the Holy Spirit’s guidance to live lives of holiness; the gospel does not create a radically new or disjunctive expectation for sexual morality and appropriate gender expression. In Matthew 19, Jesus affirms that the creational pattern for male and female set forth in Genesis 1–2 remains authoritative and binding for humanity. In Acts 15, the earliest church leaders confirmed that obedience to Old Testament law was not expected for Gentle Christians, but Christians were expected to uphold the same standard of Old Testament sexual morality inaugurated at creation. The pattern for sexual relationship and gender expression laid out for the early Christians thus validates the pattern begun in Genesis. Furthermore, New Testament prohibitions on sexual practices (e.g., homosexuality, incest) are echoes of the Old Testament’s sexual ethic. This ethic is grounded in God’s moral law and cannot be discarded or excused as pertaining only to Israel. The New Testament makes clear that sexual rebellion and rejection of appropriate gender boundaries renders culpable before God’s judgement.
2. The gospel brings fulfilling clarity to the vision for gender and sexuality taught in Genesis. The storyline and arc of the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality is one that relies upon narrative climax. In Ephesians 5:22–23, Paul explains that the union of husband and wife is meant to foreshadow the most visceral union in the cosmos—the Christ-Church union. Nowhere is the explanation of the Christ-Church union meant to overwhelm, supplant, or eradicate the underlying validity of male-female complementarity set forth in Genesis. The story of the gospel’s relationship to created nature—which includes our sexuality and gender—is that created nature would be led in the direction it was always intended. Though sexuality and gender remain creationally intelligible despite the fall, as Christians, we believe that both are ultimately designed to reflect the union of Christ and the church.
3. The gospel empowers Christians to live in accord with the biblical vision for gender and sexuality taught in Genesis. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ calls us to glorify God with our bodies because they were purchased by Him. This purchase comprises the whole man. We are called to honor the Lord Jesus and to submit to Him our sexual desires as well as our conduct. We are to flee all forms of sexual morality. We embrace appropriate gender norms so as not to scandalize or give offense with impropriety of gender expression. Christians believe that we are not our own, and that we owe every facet of our existence—our gender expression and our sexuality—to Jesus Christ.

What The Bible Really Says About Gender

What the Bible says about gender is what most of us always took for granted — namely, that there are only two genders, male and female, and those two genders are directly related to our biological sex. It’s as simple as that. In the beginning, God created the human race as male and female, starting with Adam and Eve. Ever since then, those are the only two categories that have existed, right until the present day.

That’s why, throughout the Scriptures, reference is made to men and women, fathers and mothers, boys and girls, and grooms and brides. A biological exception to the norm (such as someone with ambiguous genitalia) did not change the norm, nor did it create a new gender or sex. Male and female were the only available categories, always.

In fact, in all the languages of the Bible — Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek — every word must have a gender, from people to animals to inanimate objects.

In Hebrew and Aramaic, there are only two choices: male and female. In Greek, there are three choices: male, female, and neuter (the last category is often reserved for physical objects).

But when it comes down to people or animals, there are only two possible choices: male or female. That’s it.

So, in Hebrew, a male dog is kelev; a female dog is kalbah. A male child is yeled; a female child is yaldah. A king is melekh; a queen is malkah.

If an adjective is used to modify the noun, then it must be male or female to agree with the noun. The same with a verb.

A good boy is a yeled tov. A good girl is a yaldah tovah.

Everything in the grammatical structures and vocabularies of these biblical languages requires a male-female distinction. Even when it comes to words like “you” or “they,” there are masculine and feminine forms.

Accordingly, gender and sex distinctions are presupposed on every page of every book of the Bible. That’s just the way the languages and cultures operated.

That’s also why the only sexual unions approved in the Bible are those of a male and a female. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians in terms of whether or not to marry, “Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” There were no other options available. A man married a woman; a woman married a man.

Even in the case of polygamous unions, the formula was the same: only males and females could marry.

As for eunuchs, mentioned a number of times in the Bible and referring to castrated men — except in Matthew 19, where Jesus also spoke of people born as eunuchs, meaning, born without sexual capacity — there is not a syllable about another gender or sex. Not even close.

The idea that a person’s gender is whatever they perceive it to be is as foreign to the Bible as the idea that Elvis Presley is the Messiah. Being male or female is a matter of biology, not perception, without exception. (For my article on alleged multiple genders in the Talmud, see here.)

You can read the Bible cover to cover multiple times in the original languages and you will not ever find reference to an additional gender or sex. Not a single one.

That’s why Deuteronomy carried this prohibition: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.”

Gender distinctions were not only real, but they were also important to maintain. Cross-dressing was considered abhorrent in God’s sight.

As for categories such as MTF (male to female) or FTM (female to male), they no more existed than did categories such as MTR (male to rock) or FTH (female to horse).

Today, however, holding to these biological and theological realities is a sign of being close-minded and even backward, as illustrated in a Washington Post article that disparagingly refers to the worldview of conservative Christians as “one with two genders, no abortion, a free-market economy, Bible-based education, church-based social programs and laws such as the ones curtailing LGBTQ rights now moving through statehouses around the country.”

Oh, a world with two genders. Imagine that.

Women and Gender in the Bible and the Biblical World: Editorial Introduction

In the introduction to her lengthy volume on reading the women of the Bible, Tikva Frymer-Kensky asks: “how can a book that teaches the common divine origin of all humanity and the sacred nature of each human being reflect a social order in which women are systematically disadvantaged and subordinated?” Neither the question nor the answer are straightforward, but it is a question which has been asked in many forms and many times before and since Frymer-Kensky first posed it and which has its roots in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. When God first creates humans in the garden, he does so without prejudice or preference. In fact, the Hebrew suggests a singular creation of humans by God:

“So God created the human in his image, in the image of God he created it; male and female he created them.”

Most translations render this verse in the masculine: “So God created the human in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” but this is a somewhat questionable translation. As Robert Alter notes, in Gen. 1:27 the pronoun “him” is grammatically masculine but not anatomically masculine, therefore the creation of humans is synchronous, not separated. Yet, our stubborn history of translating that verse in the masculine has set in stone an ideology in which men are created first and women second. As such, a social hierarchy is conceived in which women are supposedly inferior to men. The second account of creation exacerbates this. Here, man is created first, and woman is formed from his rib by God, in much the same way that potters create forms with their hands. Woman is created as a “helper” for the man, though this too is a notoriously difficult passage to translate and has been interpreted as “helpmeet”, “sustainer” or sometimes “a helper against him.” The identity of man’s helper leads to gendered connotations in which woman exists not only in a position secondary to man, but in a role which functions to serve him. These short passages from the book of Genesis have been used not only to implement and uphold a hierarchical social structure in which man occupies the apex and women are secondary, but they are also frequently used to enforce an ideology that gender is a binary construct therefore challenging and excluding the idea that there exists a multiplicity of genders. The history of interpretation and reception of Gen. 1:27 is a blood-soaked and troubling one which has been used to subordinate and oppress not only women, but trans communities, nonbinary people and anyone who does not fit neatly into the binary of man and woman.

Frymer-Kensky’s question draws upon this history, alluding to that first creation narrative in respect to the idea of a “common divine origin of all humanity.” The second part of her question relates to that second creation narrative when a social order is imposed upon humanity. In it is a call-to-arms, an indictment against hetero-patriarchal assumptions, and an inducement to think deeply about the ways in which the sacred texts of the Bible have been used to subjugate those who have been deemed inferior or non-conforming. It is hoped that such deep thought will spur the thinker into actions which may challenge that hierarchical system, and this special issue of Open Theology is one of the results of our thinking about this subject.

Our aim in curating this special issue of Open Theology was to encourage a multiplicity of voices and a range of responses which might consider a wide variety of themes and topics, but which would all connect via a singular focus: that of women and gender in the Bible and the biblical world in ways which speak to a history of both the subjugation and liberation of women’s voices from the pages of the Bible. We were not disappointed. From articles on the reception of biblical women in culture to issues of social justice such as exploitative marriages in the Hebrew Bible, to political and social issues relating to identity, questions raised by historically androcentric translations of the Bible, and reading beyond cisnormative gendering in Genesis, the special issue considers the fluidity of gender and ways of constructing our humanity beyond a rigid gender binary.

Some collections attempt to gather together papers on a specific theme or topic. That was not our intention: beyond the undefined descriptors “women,” “gender” and “Bible” we did not seek to impose any further structure on the collection. So many narrowly defined collections in academic publishing represent androcentric interests and this leads women scholars – and perhaps queer scholars – to encounter difficulties getting their work published. We were keen to encourage submissions that might not fit neatly into projects being conducted elsewhere (we also have some questions about categorisation as an androcentric project which, intentionally or unintentionally, excludes the female, the feminine and the gender-fluid). Nevertheless, we notice the emergence of some common themes that reflect the current concerns of scholars working in these broadly defined areas.

In the first article of this special issue, Koplowitz-Breier explores the work of five poets who retell the story of Jephthah’s daughter in her own words, giving her a voice and an emotional dimension. Recent Jewish women’s poetry instantiates a tradition of remembering Jephthah’s daughter as she is supposed to be remembered, according to the biblical text. She has no name in Judges, and no progeny to tell her story. Her life, either ended by sacrifice or circumscribed by confinement, receives a midrashic re-visioning in which these women poets claim a place in traditional ways of constructing interpretation. Such a move centres Jephthah’s nameless daughter in her own story but also draws attention to the contributions which Jewish American women/feminists have made and continue to make with regards to interpreting difficult biblical texts. This article speaks to the cultural location of those female poets who have sought to re-envision Judg. 11:30–40, as well as the cultural afterlife of Jephthah’s daughter and the result is emotionally engaging and significant.

The theme of cultural locations of women is also presented in Loader’s article on the intersection of social justice, gender and the Bible. The striking and slightly unsettling opening sentences of Loader’s article are indicative of his exhortation to pay careful attention to the Bible’s culturally located understanding of the status of women. “Acknowledging the difference in nature and status did not mean any less respect or love,” he writes, and yet of course this sentiment has been the basis for evangelical constructions of the family in which ideas of complementarianism and male headship are encouraged in the family and replicated in the church. Women’s submission to male authority is not just encouraged but required and policed in ways that are neither respectful nor loving. However, Loader’s point is that the biblical construction of the fundamental inferiority of women cannot be legitimately ignored: it is important to take scripture seriously, and to listen to how it reflects ancient understandings of sexual behaviour as well as of the status of women. Therefore, enacting social justice – a “core value” of scripture  – in the here-and-now rests on understanding today’s constructions of sex and sexual orientation as “new situations and new knowledge”. Drawing a parallel with the early church’s discourses about circumcision, Loader anticipates protest at such an approach to the Bible, but responding helpfully to “the genuinely gay” may be best served in this way.

Quine draws attention to the little-explored instances of the absence of maternal grief in 1–2 Kings in contrast to narratives in which maternal grief is a key part of the story. Grieving mothers in 1–2 Kings are unnamed and non-royal, whereas named royal women do not grieve at the deaths of their sons. Indeed, these queen mothers are presented as non-maternal and masculine, consistent in character – but not in narrative appraisal – with Assyrian narratives of royal womanhood. In this way, 1–2 Kings critiques the political system “by elevating motherhood over queenship”. Although the stories of unnamed grieving women are traditionally understood as stories about kings and male prophets, the contrast with named royal women exposes an ideology which constructs devotion to children as quintessentially maternal. Thus, Bathsheba’s (indirectly expressed) grief for her dead son in 2 Samuel constructs her character’s narrative approval, whereas Maacah’s introduction of an Asherah, taken together with the absence of a description of maternal grief for the death of Abijam, implies an illegitimate claim to authority. Jezebel’s usurping of monarchical authority is even more clearly coded masculine, underlined by implication in her failure to mourn her husband or show maternal concern for two sons in life-threatening circumstances: she is “polemically portrayed as illegitimate in both genders”. And Athaliah’s extraordinary performance of masculinity, wiping out a whole house in order to reign by herself, presents her as “an anti-mother” who also cannot fulfil the masculine role of ruling and is appropriately slain without burial. These contrasts with the unnamed, non-royal, appropriately grieving mothers constitute a “narratological politics” which seeks “to redefine female royal power” and to undermine the legitimacy of gender fluid performances of that power.

In the next article, Henderson-Merrygold uses a reader-response approach to consider the effect of assuming gender by means of introductory glances, thereby finding in Sarai’s characterisation the possibility of a gender-diverse reading. The inconsistency of Sarai’s presentation is rationalised by third parties in attempts to reposition her “in the cis normative world”, but these attempts inevitably fail and serve to highlight more clearly the instability of narrative constructions of her gender. Thus, the concentration of the male gaze (Abraham, the Egyptian men and Pharaoh himself) on Sarai’s feminine beauty cannot be sustained: Sarai must slip out of view for her own safety in case her beauty is misread as mimicry, and she loses her name behind designations of her relationship to men. Her beauty is subject to racialised expectations in addition to gendered expectations, allowing her to “typify hegemonic beauty standards” which play to gendered expectations while also exposing their white supremacist basis. However, it is Sarai’s childlessness that arouses significant cispicion: Abram’s willingness to give up his wife to another man’s harem becomes intelligible through an understanding that both he and Sarai are fully aware of her inability to have children. Sarai refuses to confirm or deny expectations about her gender, maintaining an incomprehensibility that not even the attempt at retcon in Genesis 20 can overcome despite its introduction of new information about Sarah’s background – because this construction of cisnormative presuppositions is simultaneously obvious and unstable.

In her paper which focuses on comic book adaptations of the story and figure of Rebekah in Gen. 24:15–67 and 25:19–28, Domoney-Lyttle also explores themes relating to the construction of identity but in reference to the cultural afterlives of biblical women. Traditional biblical scholarship (in the shape of historical criticism, form criticism, source criticism and so forth) has often perpetuated limited ideas of the role and function of women in the Bible. While feminist criticisms have gone some way to challenge more conservative and conventional scholarship, Domoney-Lyttle argues contemporary retellings like comic books offer the chance to revisit and challenge dominant ideologies pertaining to women and gender since they are well-positioned to “undercut the monopolisation of traditional scholarship”. Such an argument takes into account not only the social and cultural location of the biblical text, but the position of the comic books creator and the reader of the comic book. Therefore, such contemporary retellings are part of a reception history of the Bible which seek to understand how meaning is made from biblical texts, rather than in biblical texts.

Kozlova’s article does investigate the ways in which meaning has been sought in biblical texts, in reference to midrashic derivations of Hebrew names. Taking issue with the scholarly tendency to understand Rahab’s name in terms sexual innuendo based in the narrative’s description of her as a sex worker, Kozlova advances a compelling alternative: the name suggests Yhwh’s promise to Israel of breadth of territory at the point of their entry into Canaan. The principle of nomen est omen, the idea that a name is indicative of some aspect of a person’s status or character, is familiar throughout the ancient world, and the literature of the Hebrew Bible is no exception. Since the spies and the king of Jericho remain unnamed, Rahab’s name takes on a particular significance. The verbal derivation connotes breadth or wideness which has been interpreted with prurient synecdoche as a reference to Rahab’s anatomy, even though it is masculine in form. This detail suggests a more likely theophoric origin involving a Canaanite deity on the model of in which the breadth of the land (rather than Rahab’s body) is suggested. In this way, the name picks up on themes of land and Torah from the immediate context Joshua 1, and also reflected throughout the book. Acknowledging postcolonial readings of the narrative, Kozlova notes the linking of Rahab to the Torah via the Deuteronomic formula in Joshua 2:11: a form of words spoken elsewhere only by Moses and Solomon. Her role in liberation places her “in co-operation with, and as a proxy for, YHWH himself”.

The naming (or anonymising) of biblical women is a significant area of study in biblical scholarship which can illuminate or reframe the reader’s perception of women characters as demonstrated by Kozlova. Though it is an area of study which has been discussed elsewhere,^[8] little attention has been paid to the subject of the next article, by Hartmann. Hartmann’s focus is on the grammatical nuances of translating IOYNIAN in Rom. 16:7 since it can be either feminine or masculine (i.e. Junia or Junias). Most frequently, the name has been translated in its masculine form since scholars have struggled to reconcile someone labelled as “outstanding among the apostles” with the feminine for a variety of reasons including androcentric perspectives on the role of women in both the church and home life. Hartmann argues, however, that IOYNIAN is most likely feminine. The significance of this article is the way in which Hartmann carefully traces the history of translation of Junia/Junias linking it to contemporaneous perspectives of the social and domestic role of women. It is only with evidentiary-based scholarship that a conclusive argument is made to overturn those centuries of prejudice allowing Junia to emerge as the most realistic translation. Such a study is demonstrative of the ways in which biblical scholarship must continue to be scrutinised through a variety of perspectives if we are to challenge heteropatriarchal assumptions about women and gender in the texts of the Bible.

As the reader can see, this special issue of Open Theology is broad in scope but deeply explores various aspects of biblical women in the texts of the Bible and their afterlives. Of significance is the fact that many of the papers deal both with women’s experiences and with underlying questions of what women are expected to be: mothers, wives, daughters, sisters as well as subject to objectification, scrutiny and unrealistic expectations. Esther Fuchs argues that the patriarchal framework of the Bible means women are prevented from becoming fully fledged human role models, while its androcentric perspective means that women are frequently limited to literary roles. This issue is an attempt to address centuries of both patriarchal and androcentric ideologies which have sought to undermine and often demean biblical women by viewing them in light of Adam’s helper instead of marvelling at the ways in which biblical women are, in fact fully able to be understood as humans who are integral to the stories of the Bible. Most of the time, this is achieved best by examining the afterlives of biblical women, but sometimes it is achieved by investigating the history of translation, or by applying a feminist- or queer-lens to the texts.

Furthermore, it is an attempt to address Frymer-Kensky’s question posed at the beginning of this editorial: how can a book that teaches the common divine origin of all humanity and the sacred nature of human beings reflect a social order in which not only women, but LQBTQ+, BIPOC, disabled and socioeconomically disadvantaged people are systematically disadvantaged and subordinated? One special issue of a journal cannot fully answer Frymer-Kensky’s question. Nor can the decades of feminist biblical criticism which precede this issue. However, by drawing on those studies that have gone before and building upon them, it is hoped that we have – in a small way – demonstrated that there is a different way to “do” biblical scholarship which need not replicate traditional or conventional structures which uphold patriarchal and androcentric worldviews. This issue is not just an intellectual exercise or indeed, a spiritual exercise about understanding the Bible and its world; it is also a political exercise about understanding our own world and how it impacts our reading of the Bible. Such conversations are now, more than ever, vital to remind us of the need to challenge and dismantle hierarchical systems which undermine or oppress many.

Why do California’s Elite hate the Working Class

California’s Never-Ending War On The Working Class

California’s new utopian dream of banning new, gas-powered cars is symptomatic of a brand of progressive politics that is good for messianic rhetoric but dreadful for the lives and pocketbooks of everyday citizens. Progressives are oratorically concerned about income inequality, yet they aggressively implement policies whose consequences make it far worse. 

Last week, the state of California continued its needless but never-ending war against working-class citizens.

Keep in mind: California has already seen the highest or second highest gas prices in the entire country, depending on the week. California has already experienced a severe housing shortage and is currently building 110,000 fewer housing units than what is needed to keep up with demand (and has continued to prodigiously do so for 30 years). California has already undergone energy shortages — officials last May candidly revealed they had doubts that the state’s electric grid had the capacity to keep the lights on during the summer months. California is already in the clutches of a cataclysmic, Biblical-level drought. And, finally, California already has sky-high taxes, byzantine regulatory practices, and is generally considered to be one of the most hostile business climates in the country. 

But don’t worry. California is trying its best to make things even worse for working-class citizens under the auspices of fighting climate change by stealthily enlisting 39 million citizens as obedient eco-warriors. Last week, California released a timetable for banning new gas-powered cars — that are, to use the sanctimonious parlance of the Left, deeply “problematic” — by 2036.

Though, if you read the fine print, you’ll see that the bureaucratic zaniness quickly jumps off the regulatory page. If car manufacturers want access to the California auto market, then in just four years’ time 35% of cars and light trucks will have to be electric. Sounds great until one realizes that only 16% of the California car market today is populated with electric vehicles; thus, to meet this hefty goal, California would have to experience a meteoric 119% increase in electric vehicle demand in just four years.

Keep in mind that the average electric vehicle now sells for roughly $66,000, an increase, by the way, of 13% from just a year ago — not exactly an affordable option for working-class families, even with the 1.8 billion in California rebates and incentives. Add in the $7,500 tax credit from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and there is a good chance electric cars will continue to be out of reach for middle-income California families. As Joel Kotkin in National Review has rightly observed, “Like many other current green policies, the shift to electric cars will also threaten the living standards of working- and middle-class households. As the prices of rare metals and computer chips surge, the prices of EVs have grown.”

But even if Californians were to empty their pocketbooks with a righteous sense of environmental euphoria and suddenly flock to electric vehicles, there are pesky laws of economics, scarcity, and infrastructure development that stand in the way. California’s plan has been labeled “audacious” by The New York Times. The word “foolhardy,” or even “hubris,” is more appropriate.

To find out why, ask some very basic questions:

Where are these millions of electric cars going to be charged?

If eight million new electric vehicles are going to be on the road by 2030, then almost 1.2 million new charging stations will need to be installed and functional in less than half a decade, a state report found. How many charging stations currently meet these criteria today? A mere 70,000. And the ones that do exist often do not work. According to research firm J.D. Power, one of the primary reasons consumers currently eschew electric vehicles is the lack of availability and reliability of current charging stations. And what about people who park on the street? Do we ask them to sell their cars and get on the city bus forever?

Where are the minerals and materials to make these millions of new electric engines going to come from?

One of the chief components of EV batteries is lithium. China controls at least two-thirds of the world’s capacity for refining lithium, and it produces 75% of all lithium-ion batteries. If the aim is to recalibrate the American economy from a historic dependence on Middle Eastern OPEC oil to Chinese-made lithium batteries instead, California is certainly doing its part. Consider that over 98% of permanent magnets come from China. While the Golden State’s earnest hope is for automobile companies to develop economies of scale in the mass production of electric cars and light trucks, thus bringing down costs and boosting affordability, the more likely scenario is that skyrocketing prices of rare earth metals will make them even more of an extravagance. Prices of lithium carbonate have risen almost tenfold this year, and cobalt is up 150%.

Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions certainly play a role in this bonanza of environmental largesse. And for what it is worth, Newsom seems to gleefully play the role of a Green New Deal cowboy, happily herding millions of progressive Californians into his laboratory of public policy experimentation. And why wouldn’t he? California voters rarely seem to balk at the scope and cost of his ambitions, overwhelmingly rejecting the attempt to recall him last fall, despite the absolute senselessness of his sprawling and harmful COVID policies. He is certain to win re-election by a large margin in just a few months.

However, Newsom would be wise to remember that while voters outside of the Golden State don’t mind being nudged — conservatives like solar panels and clean air as much as West Coast cosmopolitans — they don’t particularly appreciate being hastily shoved in a direction they cannot afford. Public policy by executive fiat that is rooted in ideological utopianism, unmoored from the laws of economics and prudence, might make for great rhetoric.

Mr. Newsom will surely claim to be saving humanity and Mother Earth with his Green policies. But it is also making Californians leave their state in droves. Nothing is more of an indictment of one’s tenure as a governor than the fact that no one wants to live in the state he has had free-reign to govern. “I’ll do for America what I did for California.”

No thanks. No one can afford it.

Working-class Americans have become objects of contempt for liberal elites | Opinion

President Donald Trump won the white working class in 2016 by embracing them not looking down upon them.

Some things in American society are changing fast.

Twenty-seven years ago, when I immigrated here, some things I liked and learned from were the egalitarianism and dignity of labor on display in everyday life here.

I noticed that a plumber is equal to a lawyer is equal to a firefighter (at least aspirationally). Underlying this were the ideas that it takes all kinds of work to make a society go around, and that whether you were a working class person or a professional, you were worthy of equality and respect.

My native country, India, has some great cultural merits, but one of its societal flaws is its feudalistic, casteist outlook.  Working-class people there still are either invisible or mistreated, and even when treated well are not considered equal.

Gradually, I internalized these quintessential American values: You are not “better” than someone else, and certainly not simply because you went to college and work in an office.

Elites make light of people’s humble beginnings or economic struggles

Ironically, those ideas are under assault in America today, and surprisingly from some liberals at that.

Recently, Alec Baldwin mocked Sean Hannity as this  “Long Island, working-class” guy.  

Hannity can be criticized for some things, but “working-class” shouldn’t be one of them.  If anything, he is worthy of respect for rising from his humble roots and becoming a successful TV host.

Then there was Bill Maher ranting recently on his HBO show:  “The flyover states have become the passed-over states… There are two Americas.  And it seems like one is where the cool jobs are, where people drive Teslas and eat artisanal ice cream.  

“We have orchestras and theater districts and world-class shopping. We have Chef Wolfgang Puck. And they have Chef Boyardee. Our roofs have solar panels. Theirs have last year’s Christmas lights. We’ve got legal bud. They’ve got Bud(weiser).”

I’m not suggesting that all liberals and Democratic Party leaders think this way.  Matter of fact, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg have taken pains to address working and middle class concerns. 

But if you read/listen to commentary in much of the national media, you do see a trend that sees  rural and/or working class voters as backward and as the losers in today’s global economy.

Hillary Clinton, too, after her 2016 loss, joined the refrain. By boasting that a majority of her voters came from “dynamic” areas that represented “two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product” she implied that voters coming from poorer, rural backgrounds had less value.

Trump showed he could connect with white working class Americans

How and when did “working-class” become a pejorative?

There has been a gradual shift in both the Democratic Party and in our society, in general, on two counts.

One, in the last 15 years, as globalization grew, manufacturing jobs went overseas, and the American economy gradually shifted to a knowledge and service economy.

And two, the Democratic Party shifted from its working-class, labor roots to become more a party of city-dwelling, educated, professional-class liberals.

Gradually, the stench of contempt toward “the other America” has developed.  And just as contempt toward a marital partner can be fatal in a marriage, contempt from a party toward some of its voters can be fatal too.

The dilemma for some Democratic leaders is they don’t much like white working class voters but want their vote anyway.

But no amount of proposed economic sops will be enough if voters in Middle America feels like they are looked down upon.

But coming back to our snooty elites:  Some of them are so out-of-touch that they don’t even know they’re out-of-touch. Pity toward them feels like the appropriate emotion.

To these fancy-pants people I’d say: Real cosmopolitanism and true education are not defined by being well-traveled, by being able to look, dress and talk the part, or at being able to afford overpriced, pretentious food and designer accessories.  

It is, rather, at seeing worth in every individual you encounter, and at treating everyone with the same dignity and respect, be they a waiter or a CEO. 

One big irony here is that Donald Trump, for all his flaws, has truly connected with ordinary, working Americans in Middle America, has recognized their economic woes, and doesn’t look down on them.

This part of him is authentic, and won him the 2016 election.

To me,  the real  deplorables are some elites whose views on class are un-American and unclassy.  

Why do the Democrats Hate Black Conservatives

Winsome Sears Explains Why Democrats Feel ‘Hatred’ For Black Conservatives

Winsome Sears, the black former Marine who Virginians elected lieutenant governor in a stunning Republican wave last year, blasted Democrats for taking minorities for granted in a powerful recent interview.

 The 58-year-old Jamaican immigrant who, along with Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Mayoris, flipped the Old Dominion from blue to red, told New York Post columnist Cal Thomas why Democrats have contempt for black conservatives like her.

“In order for Democrats to continue to win, they need to get 80 to 90% of the black vote,” Sears explained. “That’s why they are so full of hatred when conservatives like me, or libertarians, don’t think the way they do. We don’t really care.”

Sears told Thomas blacks must break the grip Democrats have on them.

“The slaves did not die in the fields to be beholden to the Democrat Party,” she said. “They wanted their freedom . . . their families to be reunited . . . and their children to get a good education.”

The devout Christian and ardent pro-lifer said it is mostly Democrats who are fighting to keep abortion legal, which she said takes a disproportionate toll on people of color.

“And they call me a white supremacist for saying we want more black babies,” she mused. “Democrats have to make up their minds.”

Sears told Thomas former President Trump did well with black voters because his policies created jobs and increased black entrepreneurship. She also praised the 45^th president for increasing funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

But Sears, whose running mate Youngkin has sparked some presidential talk, stopped short of saying she would endorse a 2024 run by Trump.

“I’m going to hold my fire,” she said. “I want to see what he says, what he does and who else is out there.”

Sears is the first woman of color to hold statewide office in Virginia and is also the State’s first female lieutenant governor. A former electrician in the Marines and director of a Salvation Army homeless shelter, Sears served a term in the state’s House of Delegates two decades ago before mounting an unsuccessful bid for Congress. During her extended absence from politics, Sears ran her own plumbing and electrical business in Winchester, Virginia.

Speaking off herself in the third person, or perhaps channeling the thoughts of critics who cannot fathom her success, Sears said her rise is a repudiation of claims blacks cannot get ahead in America.

“Winsome wasn’t born here,” she said. “This is not her country, not her culture, and yet here she is — second in command in the former capital of the confederacy. The KKK must be turning over in their graves.”

Sears accused Democrats of pandering to blacks with staged events and photo ops like President Joe Biden’s recent commemoration of “Slave Remembrance Day.” Sears said she prefers to look to the future.

“If you want to live in the past, go ahead,” she said. “Just don’t drag me back with you.”

Democrats Treat Black Americans Like Political Pawns. No Wonder We’re Jumping Ship

Amid the overwhelmingly dark prognostications for the Democrats, one data point is making the Left especially nervous. There’s been a precipitous drop in support from what was once the Democrats’ most loyal base—Black Americans—and it has many searching out explanations.

You don’t have to look far, though. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore how the Democratic Party relates to Black America, by cynically exploiting our history and struggles to advance their political aspirations. It feels like whenever the Left is in a bind, its leaders know it can always use the Black community to score valuable political points against the opposition.

African Americans have long been a means for Democrats to gain and maintain the upper hand against Republicans in cultural and political battles. To put it simply, the Left views Black folks as political weapons, not people or even constituents. Whenever a controversy arises, Democratic politicians and members of the activist media trot out Black America to wield as a cudgel against the bad guys who dare to disagree with them.

You’re going to see a lot of this in the discussion around abortion that’s taking off in the wake of the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court that seems to spell the end of Roe v. Wade. You’re already seeing a lot of Democrats arguing that this is a “racial justice” issue and will “disproportionately harm” Black women, when the truth is, the Black community is deeply ambivalent about abortion in interesting and complex ways that the Democrats will never allow to be aired.

Because to them, the Black community is not made up of constituents whose desires and opinions matter, but simply a collection of props for their battles against those they disagree with.

The move to call racism when losing an argument is baked into the American Left these days. Think of what happened last week to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has made known his plans to buy Twitter. When it became clear that Musk would likely become the social media platform’s new owner, the Left responded with wailing and gnashing of teeth. These people are terrified by the notion that conservatives could be given a level playing field for political discourse.

And when this wailing failed, they went for—you guessed it—allegations of racism.

The liberal Twitterati began pretending en masse that Musk leading Twitter would somehow have a harmful effect on the Black community. Numerous Op-Eds were published in which the Left-leaning commentariat insisted that Elon Musk taking over Twitter would somehow spell the end of Black Twitter and would allow for the rise of white supremacist thought on the platform.

The New York Times went so far as to try to dig up anecdotes about Musk’s childhood in Apartheid South Africa, an attempt that failed to deliver because Musk had Black friends at a time when that was rather rare for a white kid. Not to be deterred, the Times went out of its way to give the impression that racism had left a mark on Musk, absent any data.

But this is only the latest example. There are plenty of others. Remember when the Cancel Culture Community™ went after podcaster Joe Rogan in January? In their most recent attempt to ruin his career, this same contingent took issue with Rogan’s decision to invite Dr. Robert Malone on his show. The problem? Dr. Malone does not parrot the Democrat-approved narrative about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines and has been highly critical of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite being a well-known authority in his field, progressives cried “foul” and launched yet another campaign to destroy Rogan. They pressured Spotify, the company that hosts the comedian’s podcast, to cut ties with him over the supposed spread of “misinformation.”

And when that didn’t work, the cry-bullies resorted to Plan B—for “Black.”

They dug up old clips of Rogan using the N-word mostly while quoting other people or discussing racist behavior. They savaged him as an anti-Black racist and engaged in a rather obnoxious form of performative outrage.

These people didn’t care that Rogan, a white man, used the slur. Others created a compilation of some of the Democrats’ favorite heroes, including the Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian and President Joe Biden, using the word much in the same way as Rogan had, and noted that while some of these folks faced backlash, there were no widespread campaigns to put them out of work.

So who gets a backlash and who doesn’t? It’s a political question, not an ethical one. They were again wielding the Black community as a political weapon, this time against a podcaster who expressed unacceptable views on the coronavirus.

But they don’t only do this when trying to cancel people. Take the voting rights issue, which the Democrats pushed to the forefront at the beginning of the year. President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers attempted to shove two pieces of voting rights legislation through Congress with the excuse that evil, white sheet-wearing Republicans were trying to stop Black Americans from voting. They were fighting “Jim Crow 2.0,” they had the audacity to claim, in their latest attempt to exploit Black trauma for their political gain.

There is absolutely no way Democrats truly believed they could pass these two legislative proposals, given that they only possess a razor-thin margin over Republicans in both chambers of Congress. But Biden and the gang needed an issue to distract the electorate from their abysmal performance over the past year, so it was time to bring out the Black folks to smear conservatives as racist.

It’s a tale as old as time. And while once there was significant racism come out of the Right, those days have long been in our rearview mirror.

Even while enjoying overwhelming support from the Black community, the Democrats have refused to enact policies to affect real change for one of their most valuable voting blocs. Instead, they are content to use us in political battles without offering solutions. It is a wholly one-sided relationship in which Democrats are the only ones who benefit.

Perhaps this is why so many Black folks have become disenchanted with the party. A recent Wall Street Journal poll revealed that more African Americans are willing to give Republican candidates a chance than have in generations. It’s not quite a mass Black exodus from the Democrats, but it is significant nonetheless. If the trend continues, it could easily become the beginning of the end of Democrats enjoying 90 percent of the Black vote. The question is: Are Republicans ready to take advantage?

My Conversation With An Astrophysicist and What I learned.

I am an ICU nurse so most of my patients are unable to speak to me. On this one occasion I was fortunate enough to not only have a patient with an amazing background, but one who talk as well. While I am a person who loves to learn new things, there are certain subjects that pique my interest more than others. So when I found out that my patient was an astrophysicist I was beside myself. This was too cool. Not to mention he was a really nice guy, who didn’t mind my questions. I tried warning him that I had a lot of questions for him, he said “no problem.”

So I asked him about the Big Bang Theory. He said that he believed that there was not one focal point where the universe originated. He felt that there were multiple sites or multiple events that took place. I must admit that this was the first time I had heard of this idea.

I also asked him about the speed of light. He said that he believes it can be bypassed by instantaneous teleportation. Through worn holes. He said that time travel was also possible through these same portals.

When I asked him what he thought about the future of universe was? Were we destined to expand forever until it just died, or we going to expand and then contract. He said that our universe would continue expanding and contracting in cycles.

When I asked him about there being multiple versions of our universe, he said that he was not convinced of this idea.

When I asked him about dark matter, he said that there is a lot that we have not discovered yet and that is why the mass of the universe was enough to cause our universe to eventually start contracting.

When I asked him if he thought that a sentient being created us or that a God Particle existed, he said that anything is possible and that if I kept on looking eventually I would discover the truth. Well I am not so sure about that, but it was nice of him to say that.

I talked about red and blue shifts which determi es whether or not an object is moving towards or away from you. Like me previous instructor told me there were instances of blue shifts, but they were more rare than red shifts.

I finally asked him about his educational background and he said that he did not have PhD. He said most of the greatest scientists in the world did not hold that degree.

Miasma Vs. Germ Theory: Why there is no Black and White

The miasma theory enunciated by the Italian physicians Giovanni Lancisi, is an obsolete medical theory that diseases such as cholera, chlamydia, or Black Death were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of “bad air” also known as night air.

According to germ theory discovered by French chemist Louis Pasteur, the diseases are spread and caused by the presence and actions of specific microorganisms within the body through many mediums such as water, food and contact. He proved that food spoiled because of contamination by invisible bacteria.

There was much debate in the middle of the nineteenth century about the origin of diseases.  Although many British physicians thought that smallpox, measles, and syphilis were contagious, opinions were more divided on cholera, typhus and typhoid — the most feared epidemic diseases.  Thomas Wakley, editor of The Lancet, captured the confusion on cholera in an 1853 editorial when he raised the question, What is cholera?:

…all is darkness and confusion, vague theory, and a vain speculation.  Is it a fungus, an insect, a miasm, an electrical disturbance, a deficiency of ozone, a morbid off-scouring from the intestinal canal?  We know nothing; we are at sea in a whirlpool of conjecture.

– Wakley T. The Lancet II, 393, 1853

During this time there were three main theories to explain infectious diseases in general and cholera in specific.

MIASMA THEORY

The most widely accepted notion of infection was the miasma theory. It held that under certain circumstances, air became charged with an epidemic influence which in turn became malignant when combined with the emissions of organic decomposition from the earth. The resulting gases or miasms produced diseases.  Supporters of the miasma theory felt that cholera was one such condition caused by noxious odors of decayed matter. 

The miasma theory was very appealing to English sanitary reformers.  It explain why diseases were epidemic in the undrained, filthy and stinking areas inhabited by the poor. The existence of miasms was central to the orthodoxy of the new public health movement, focusing attention on environmental problems rather than on those of personal health and infection.  Included as supporters were Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890), the great social and sanitary reformer; William Farr (1807-83), the famous statistician; Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the prominent nurse and hero of the Crimean War; and Sir John Simon, the first Medical Officer of Health for London.  

BLOOD GENERATION THEORY  

The second theory was that of spontaneous generation of disease within the blood.  This theory was essentially chemical, and as such, denied contagion.  The most active supporter of the theory was the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) who held strong views on “fermentation” of the blood. The blood generation theory received negligible support in England.

GERM THEORY  

The third notion was the germ theory, or infection was caused by a living organism, a contagium vivum.  While not new, the theory was well formulated by the German pathologist Friedrich Henle (1809-85) who wrote in 1840: 

The material of contagions is not only an organic but a living one and is indeed endowed with a life of its own, which is, in relation to the diseased body, a parasitic organism.

– Henle, FGJ. Von den Miasmen und Contagien und von den miasmatisch-contagiösen Krankheiten, 1840

This theory for cholera was supported by observations and epidemiological studies of John Snow (1813-58) in London and William Budd (1811-80) in Bristol, England. The supporters of the miasma theory were unconvinced by Snow’s and Budd’s findings due to the absence of an organism and the lack of conclusive experimental proof.  While the organism (Vibrio cholerae) had been discovery in 1854 by Italian anatomist Fillipo Pacini, nearly all English scientists and physicians were unaware of his work.  

Minds changed in the early 1860s when French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-95) demonstrated the existence of pathogenic organisms. More conclusive for the germ theory of cholera was the work of German physician Robert Koch (1843-1910), a former student of Friedrich Henle at the University of Göttingen. Koch in 1884 rediscovered, isolated and cultured Vibrio cholerae. The findings were circulated worldwide, following a famous dispatch to the German government and German press emanating from Calcutta, India.  

The germ theory for cholera was finally established, although earlier changes in the sanitary environment, called for by the erroneous miasma theory, had actually done much to reduce the transmission of disease. London provides an example of how useful a wrong theory (miasma) can be for addressing an epidemic (improvement of air, solid waste and water supplies), in this example cholera.  While the sanitary reforms following the miasma theory were effective at containing cholera, full acceptance of the scientifically valid germ theory would have saved even more lives. 

From miasmas to germs: a historical approach to theories of infectious disease transmission

Germ theory denialism is alive and well – and taking the nuance out of scientific debate

Back in February 2019, when the pandemic was still far from most people thoughts, the Fox News programme Fox & Friends aired a segment in which contributor Pete Hegseth revealed he had not washed his hands in ten years. Far from being appalled, the show’s hosts burst out laughing.

As it turns out, Hegseth’s poor hand hygiene was not so novel. According to the World Health Organization, only 19% of the pre-COVID world washed their hands after using the toilet. The reasons for this ranged widely, from a basic lack of clean water to forces like peer pressure or overinflated optimism about one’s health. But that wasn’t Hegseth’s reason. He said his decade of hand-washing abstinence was based on his belief that germs did not exist. If he could not see them, he explained, they were not real.

Even pre-pandemic, a pronouncement like this sounded alarm bells. Whether Hegseth realised it or not, and whether he was serious or not, he was reciting the creed of germ theory deniers, a mixed group whose beliefs range from hardline renunciation of germ theory – in which the very notion that germs exist is denied – and the softer disavowal of the significance of germs to explain disease.

In the late 19th century, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Joseph Lister and others established that disease was caused by living organisms that invade the body. But the theories that Pasteur and the others promulgated were not yet very nuanced or completely coherent. Indeed, as historians have pointed out, it is more appropriate to speak of the “germ theories” of the late 19th century, and to some degree the early 20th. There was still much to work out. For example, if only some people got sick when exposed to a specific pathogen, didn’t that mean that germ theory only held in some cases?

It was also unclear in these early years how the theory might be useful. Its predecessor in disease causation, miasma theory, which traced disease to “bad air”, had spurred sanitation movements that had vastly improved public health. The resulting reduction in disease did not necessarily validate miasma theory, but it made it clear that, whatever its theoretical shortcomings, it held practical power. Germ theory couldn’t immediately say the same. It is in the uncertainties of this early, confusing environment that germ theory denialists situate their claims.

Bitter crank

Though historians have drawn out the nuances of how scientific knowledge was created and contested in the late 19th century, denialists have been more interested in locating the path not taken – or, as they see it, covered up. They have found this in the work of Antoine Béchamp, a chemist, Pasteur contemporary, and by some accounts “bitter crank”, whose theories concerning disease focused on the state of the host rather than microbes themselves.

One much-referenced text about Béchamp is a 1920 book that tells his story as a “lost chapter in the history of biology”. It describes his notion that microbes were not the malicious invaders that germ theorists claim (why else would they not cause disease always and everywhere?). Instead he thought illness essentially depended on “tiny molecular granulations” called microzymas, which only become pathogenic when a change in environmental balance or function made them so. It was from this change in the bodily “terrain”, and not from germ invasion, that illness arose.

Many germ theory deniers are adherents to this terrain theory, extrapolating from Béchamp a variety of alternative therapies specifically tailored to reduce toxins and rebalance the body. The therapies promise to create a corporal environment rendered immune (though they would not use this term) to microbes because it lives peaceably with them.

This is an idea that inflames many of those who police the lines of medical and scientific orthodoxy. Yet, as diametrically opposed adherents to germ theory and Béchamp’s terrain theory seem, the two ideas have not always been considered mutually exclusive.

Over the mid-20th century, the prominent immunologist Thomas Magill gave voice to a growing concern in his field when he pondered the idea that germ theory, with its rather reductive depiction of disease as the result of antagonistic microbes attacking a passive host, had obscured scientists and doctors from understanding. In 1954, he wrote: “The concept is difficult for us to accept that the host may be the aggressor, taking undue advantage of the reasonably peaceful microbe, many times, to be sure, to the host’s own disadvantage.” Terrain, Magill implied, might matter after all.

You don’t even need to look that far back to witness the coexistence of these two views. Traces of terrain theory underlie our contemporary obsession with the so-called “good” bacteria of our digestive tract. Prebiotics and probiotics claim to do just the sort of work Béchamp suggested, returning “balance” and “diversity” to our guts as a way of bettering not just our digestive systems, but our overall health.

Along the way, germ theory has continued to survive as a theory because it explains so much and because, unlike in the earliest decades of its existence, it has profoundly effective practical applications. Antibiotics are often lauded as the most revolutionary of these, though they are only the tip of the therapeutic iceberg.

But though germ theory has become much more stable since the late 19th century, it has not ossified. As scientific theories are made to do, germ theory continues to adapt and change. The recognition of the vital role of our gut’s “terrain” (our “microbiome” as we are more likely to call it) is not seen as an attack on germ theory but rather as a finding that is integral to it.

What is perhaps most troubling about germ theory denialism is not really the strength of its claims but the tenor of the debate that it inspires. For though deniers’ claims about germ theory are misleading and not well substantiated, the bright line between germ theory deniers and defenders they create sets up a rhetorical opposition that forces upon germ theory – and science more generally – a rigidity and fixity that it does not have.

Resources

Trump Gets the Last Laugh

dailywire.com, “Trump Was Right, World Leaders Were Wrong: Russia Just Cut Off Germany’s Fuel Supply. Who’s Laughing Now? ‘I trust that Russia will return to 20% on Saturday, but no one can really say’.” By Tim Meads; bbc.com, “US mid-terms 2022: Tracking Trump’s ‘extraordinary’ endorsement spree.” By Holly Honderich & Robin Levinson-King; nytimes.com, “Hard Right Stokes Outrage After Search of Mar-a-Lago: As they did before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the former president and his allies are fueling anger among supporters.” By  Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman.

Gender in the Bible

dailywire.com, “What The Bible Really Says About Gender.” By Michael Brown; degruyter.com, “Women and Gender in the Bible and the Biblical World: Editorial Introduction.” By Sarah Nicholson and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle; thegospelcoalition.org, “Gender and Sexuality.” By Andrew T. Walker;

Why do California’s Elite hate the Working Class

dailywire.com, “California’s Never-Ending War On The Working Class.” By Jeremy Adams; tennessean.com, “Working-class Americans have become objects of contempt for liberal elites | Opinion: President Donald Trump won the white working class in 2016 by embracing them not looking down upon them.” By Saritha Prabhu.\;

Why do the Democrats Hate Black Conservatives

dailywire.com, “Winsome Sears Explains Why Democrats Feel ‘Hatred’ For Black Conservatives.” By Greg Wilson; newsweek.com, “Democrats Treat Black Americans Like Political Pawns. No Wonder We’re Jumping Ship.” By Jeff Charles;

My Conversation With An Astrophysicist and What I learned.

Miasma Vs. Germ Theory: Why there is no Black and White

infezmed.it, “From miasmas to germs: a historical approach to theories of infectious disease transmission.” By Marianna Karamanou, George Panayiotakopoulos, Gregory Tsoucalas, Antonis A. Kousoulis, George Androutsos; theconversation.com, “Germ theory denialism is alive and well – and taking the nuance out of scientific debate.” By Caitjan Gainty;

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