FirstPunch

By jettisoning science and reason in favor of superstition and medieval storytelling, Donald Trump is leading the West, like a combination ransacking American Visigoth and Christian monk, into a new dark age. And many Americans, especially the MAGA crowd, either are oblivious to it or willingly embrace the descending veil of ignorance. During the early Middle Ages, as the decline in knowledge of Greek cut off the western world from Classical knowledge and science, theology was elevated to the status of 'queen of the sciences', and science as we now understand it was demoted to theology’s servant or handmaiden. Contemplations on and investigations into nature and the world in general were less concerned with applying observation and the scientific method to understanding it, than uncovering the mysterious Christian truths and symbolism embedded like a cryptographic message within world around them. One of my favorite examples revolves around medieval contemplations on t...

I just returned from a weeklong trip with my father to his home town of Lewistown, Montana. It is a small bump in the road along the Big Spring Creek, a scenic agricultural town of around six thousand snuggled between the Judith Mountains to the northeast and the Big Snowy Mountains to the south. And it is, in fact, smack dab in the middle of the Big Sky state with the official marker designating the exact spot located in the basement of a local cowboy saloon. And before you ask, no we didn't go hunting and fishing like a superannuated Andy and Opie, though the weather was perfect for it. We instead spent most of my limited vacation away from Silicon Valley in a twenty by twenty, overheated senior center apartment trying to convince an eighty-five pound, ninety-six year old, stubborn as hell old lady, also known as my grandmother, to move to an assisted living center in California near my parents. Think of the old lady in American Gothic but with less of a sense of humor and a...