A mishmash of informed snark, piquant opinions, refined nastiness, occasional schmaltz, & tawdry graphics, served up continuously since 2006 by COSMIC CONNIE, aka CONNIE L. SCHMIDT. Covering New-Age/New-Wage culture & crapitalism, pop spirituality & religion, pop psychology, self(ish)-help, alt-health hucksterism, conspiranoia, business babble, media silliness, Scamworld, politix, & related (or occasionally unrelated) matters of consequence.
I've been pretty quiet on this Whirled and on
social media for the most part; losing Ron last month has
taken the wind out of my sails. In case there was any doubt, it's not that I no longer
care about the world beyond me; I am still keeping up with what's
going on, and I still engage in private conversations, both on
social media and in "real" life, about America's
haphazard trip to hell in a hand basket.
(Or a handmaid's basket, as the
case may be.)
But for the most part I'm still pretty much ensconced in the
grief bubble. Or maybe it's not a bubble so much as a hurricane
of emotion that I can't go around but am obligated to find my way
through, while trying to sustain as little damage as possible.
Pick your metaphor. The point is that I have been even more
self-absorbed than usual as I struggle to adjust to my new
reality.
That reality got even more real for me this past Wednesday when a
dear friend whom Ron had known since high school, and whom he
considered to be a brother, drove all the way out to my
edge-of-nowhere location to bring me the box containing Ron's
ashes, along with the cremation paperwork and five copies of the
death certificate. We hugged, I cried, and I told him, "Shit
just got REALLY real."
He was very sympathetic but indicated that it had been really
real to him long before this, and that he had let Ron go several
months previously, when it became clear that the Ron we'd known
was gone forever. "But I'll always miss him," he said.
As will I.
On that same day, I received a letter in the mail from Texas
Health & Human Services, helpfully informing me that Ron is
deceased so he no longer gets nursing home Medicaid. Tell me
something I don't know, HHS.
After our friend left and I was sitting alone at my kitchen table
bawling over Ron's ashes and that inane letter from HHS, I looked
out the window and saw my first hummingbird of the season. It was
actually the first one I had seen in nearly a year because there
were no hummingbirds here at all last fall, not even one -- and
that is highly unusual since fall has normally been busy
hummingbird season in my neck of the woods.
I certainly wasn't expecting any hummingbirds this spring. But
then that little bugger showed up, saw there was no feeder, and
darted away.
When I told Ron's daughter about this, she said, "Maybe that
was Dad saying hi!" I replied that this was exactly what I
was thinking. I told her that it was like a message from him
saying, “Quit crying over my damn ashes, get off your ass, mix
up some sugar water, fill a feeder, and hang it up out there!”
So I did. And it made me feel a little better.
But after that, no hummingbirds showed up for several days. Then
on Sunday, a solitary bird showed up at the feeder, took a few
sips, and then took a few more, and then darted away. I hope
there will be more.
Hummingbirds have always been very special to me -- I would be
perfectly content to do nothing but watch them for hours on end
-- and Ron loved watching them too. He was endlessly amused and
impressed by their boldness, and by how they'd sometimes try to
dive-bomb him when he stepped a little too close to the feeders
and distracted them from their holy mission of viciously
attacking each other. I've always been impressed by their seeming
indifference to even the stormiest conditions; I've seen them
buzzing around the feeders in weather that was so scary it had me
huddling in the closest interior room.
I miss Ron horribly, but the occasional hummingbird, not to
mention the ongoing parade of visitors to the feeding station in
my front yard -- birds and squirrels during the day, and raccoons
and deer and opossums and bunnies at night -- are helping to take
the edge off the pain.
And even more than that, the love and support of friends who are
continually reaching out to me are helping make it all a little
more bearable.
So thank you, all of you.
Before you leave...
While money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can
make them far easier to bear. With Ron's passing, I will be
facing significant income loss and am scrambling to find more
work, but in an industry increasingly being taken over by AI, it
has been a challenge. Now more than ever, donations are urgently
needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:
Old but still good: You can
click on the "Donate" icon that currently
appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog
on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the
end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both
the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the
link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately
goes to the same place.
NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please
specify that your contribution is for "friends and
family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction
fee.
Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this
Whirled.
All those times we looked up at the
sky
Looking out so far, we felt like we could fly
And now I'm all alone in the dark of night
The moon is shining, but I can't see the light
I pray for the strength to accept
that lives most often end in tragedy,
that quests don’t always work,
that understanding is a long and lonely hunt,
that I can't reason my way to love,
eat gold,
or live forever,
And that none of this matters.
I pray to understand that I am here to find my way back to
God, whatever that takes, and all the rest save love and duty is
an illusion. ~ John Taylor Gatto, educator and
author, New York
From the book, Prayers For A Thousand Years Let me say right off the bat that this
still-newish year of 2025 has been, so far, very rough for me. It has
not been the fresh beginning that most of us are indoctrinated to
believe, or at least to hope, nascent years should be. To the
contrary, 2025 has been a continuation of the utter suckfest that was 2024. For me it has been a double whammy not of fresh
beginnings but of sad endings.
First there has been my ongoing experience, shared
by millions of others, of being witness to the accelerating
demise of American democracy, which contrary to the Washington
Post slogan is not dying in darkness, but is being hacked to death bit by bit in broad daylight. And on a much more personal level, I am dealing with
the death of my soul mate, my best friend, and the love of my
life, Ron Kaye.
Ron, also known as Reverend Ron, Rev Ron, or simply The Rev (on his own
blog and on this one in its earlier
days), passed peacefully on Monday night, February 24, 2025, a
little before 11:00 PM. He and I had been together for going on 32 years.
The disease was a total nightmare for both Ron and
me because he suffered from hallucinations, delusions, and
paranoia in addition to the cognitive and functional issues more
commonly associated with dementia, such as memory loss and a
significant decline in skills. The hallucinations and delusions
and paranoia increasingly caused erratic behavior that at first was merely disruptive in dozens of different ways, but later
became frightening, violent, and dangerous. It came to the point
where it was no longer safe for him to live at home with me.
Accordingly, for the last few months of his life, Ron was in the
locked memory care unit at a nursing home, through arrangements made by the VA, under whose care he had been. Despite his
deteriorating cognition, he remained surprisingly healthy
physically, and he was constantly trying to find ways to escape
his confinement.
But in more recent weeks he developed serious
medical problems that he'd not had before, and he was in and out
of hospitals. Some of the problems he faced towards the end were
a sudden and very puzzling loss of his ability to walk, serious
heart rhythm issues, and life-threatening respiratory problems
brought on by a combination of pulmonary blood clots and
pneumonia.
It became more and more apparent that he was not coming back from
this, so during his last hospitalization I signed him up for
hospice care. That was on Saturday, February 22, and that evening
he was discharged back to the nursing home, where he died two
nights later.
Despite repeated efforts to get to his bedside on
that last day, I was not with my love when he passed. I have no
transportation and very little money, and my edge-of-nowhere
location, which is more than 80 miles away from the nursing home,
seriously limits my rideshare choices. The two taxi services
available out here charge at least 50 percent more than Uber or
Lyft.
I had been taking Uber with few problems, but on Ron's last day,
a series of glitches prevented me from doing so. First there were
no drivers available. I tried a little later and a driver was
available, but my payment wouldn't go through. After repeated
efforts I finally contacted my bank, and they said my card had
been temporarily frozen because there had been a series of
Uber-related frauds and they were erring on the side of safety
and security. I assured them that this transaction was legit, got
them to unfreeze everything, and then went back to trying to
secure a ride. But once again, no drivers were available. I tried
over and over and over and over throughout the day and into the
evening, with no luck.
In case you're wondering why I didn't try Lyft, it's because the
phone app is not compatible with my older model phone, and unlike
Uber, Lyft does not offer a web alternative.
I was frustrated and anxious, because I knew Ron didn't have much
time left. I felt an urgent need to be with him at the end, even
if he didn't know I was there. So I kept on trying. Then at about
11:30 PM, I got a call from the nursing home. He was gone.
I felt terrible for not being there with him, and I
expressed my regret to the kind and caring nursing home staff
member, as well as to the hospice nurse a little later. Each one suggested in her own way that my inability to get there was
actually a gift to me. The nursing home staff member said that
perhaps a higher power had intervened, knowing that I might be
too devastated by being in the room with him when he passed. The
hospice nurse, though choosing her words carefully, was a little
more graphic about the reasons that I might not have wanted to be
there.
And later on, a few of Ron's and my close friends said that it
was possible Ron himself did not want me to watch him die, and
that maybe he somehow had something to do with the glitches that
kept me from doing so. I did remember him saying to me, in
another context back when he was in the VA hospital in November
of last year, "I don't want you to see me die." So I
don't know.
What I do know is that my world will never be the same. Right now if feels as if I will
never be happy again.
* * * * *
Ron was a kind and gentle and brilliant person,
until the brutal disease snatched almost all of that away from
him. Even towards the end, however, up until the point that he
would no longer open his eyes, I could look into their depths
and see that he was still in there, somewhere. But it
was also painfully clear that he knew, at some deep level, how
trapped he was in his dysfunctional brain and increasingly malfunctioning body.
I was in despair, knowing that he knew, and knowing also that
despite his problems he could possibly linger on for years,
with his brain continuing to deteriorate. What kind of existence
could that possibly be? Just thinking about it was horrifying. So
it was not lost on me, nor on the other people who love him the
most, that the numerous medical crises that hurried his passing
were in their own way a blessing.
It seems forever ago that I wrote this blog post about Ron back in 2009, in observance of
Veterans Day. It barely scratched the
surface of the kind and gentle and considerate and brave man he
was. In due time, I will have more, much more to write about him
and about this sorrowful road we stumbled down together until we
reached the inevitable pass that he had to go through alone. I
have plans to start a separate blog or a Substack, not only with
the narrative of our own journey, but also with information and
links that I hope can help others who are facing the same ordeal.
I will link to it when it's launched.
For the time being, though, I am alternately numb and deeply weary and
overcome with grief, which comes in waves. I let the waves wash
over me as I hold on to something sturdy and then continue
trudging through the hours and days, knowing that there is
a way past grief, eventually, but that, like so many things in
life, the only way past it is through it.
I would be remiss were I not to acknowledge the
people who have helped and are continuing to help me through my
grief: Ron's beautiful daughter; close friends who have been
Ron's and my family of choice; and many other friends whom we
only knew from social media. I love all of you.
Then of course there is the team of providers who recognized what
an essentially lonely journey this is and did everything they
could to make it a little easier: the kind and compassionate
doctors, physician's assistants, nurses, nurse practitioners,
technicians, sitters, aids, and social workers at the DeBakey VA
Medical Center in Houston; the staff at the nursing home; and the
hospice care providers, the latter of whom I only knew for a few
days but whose professionalism and kindness helped make Ron's
passing easier for both him and me. These people all deal with
tragic stories every day of their professional lives, and yet
they act in the knowledge that every story is different, and that the
individuals living through that story are more than just names
and numbers in a file. There will come a time, I know, when I will be
able to walk out at night and look up at the stars again without
being overcome by the vast and terrible sadness of Ron's absence,
and without the inevitable flood of "where-are-you"
questions. Or when I can bear to simply watch one of Ron's and my
favorite movies, and there are quite a few that we viewed so many
times together over the years that we practically knew the whole
script by heart. And maybe there will even be a time when I can
get through a whole day and night without crying. But I'm not
there yet.
For now, I need rest, so much rest. There's too much to deal with
in this new life without him, from emotional issues to scary
financial ones. With lots of help, I think I'll be able to handle them.
But I miss you, Ronnie Kaye.
Related on this Whirled:
For those who have served (November
11, 2009):
I'm linking again here to my tribute to Ron, written on a
long-ago Veterans Day. He was always a little embarrassed
by this post, and it wasn't false modesty; he just didn't
like people making a big fuss over him. From my
perspective, however, I didn't make enough of a
fuss over him.
Election Day musings: overall the US
is actually better off than it was 4 years ago, but it
will be much WORSE off if 45 becomes 47 (November 5,
2024):By the time I published this, I was pretty
sure that 45 would indeed become 47, but I thought there
still might be a smidgen of hope left. In this post, I
recap a conversation I had with a small group of veterans
on a VA shuttle bus. They were all in for Trump. I will
probably never see these gentlemen again, and in any case
I would never tell them, "I told you so,"
because I didn't actually tell them so (they'd already
early-voted for Trump). But I fear for them now.
Before you leave...
While money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can
make them far easier to bear. With Ron's passing, I will be
facing significant income loss and am scrambling to find more
work, but in an industry increasingly being taken over by AI, it has been a challenge. Now more than ever, donations
are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some
ways to do it:
Old but still good: You can
click on the "Donate" icon that currently
appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog
on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the
end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both
the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the
link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately
goes to the same place.
NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please
specify that your contribution is for "friends and
family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.
Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this
Whirled.
Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate it.
It's the Year of the Snake, according
to the Chinese zodiac, though not all countries that observe the
holiday follow that zodiac. But since we're on the theme of
snakes, I think it's a good time to recycle the song lyrics that I originally wrote and published
back in 2016, shortly after the
disastrous election that rocketed #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump to
undeserved power the first time. I've only changed a few words in
order to update it.
On the road to ruin one morning
Down the path along the lake
Some angry voters came upon a huge and leering snake
His skin was orange and glowing and he wore a bright red hat
"Oh my, " the voters cried, "Here’s something
new! Let’s vote for that!”
“Vote me in, o angry voters
Vote me in, for heaven’s sake
Vote me in, unhappy citizens,” smirked the snake.
They welcomed him so warmly even as he bared his fangs
They cheered his glowing orangeness and his odd combed-over bangs
They clapped and cheered at every hateful diatribe he spewed
For they believed that under him the realm would be renewed.
“Vote me in, unhappy voters
Vote me in, for heaven’s sake
Vote me in, you angry voters,” grinned the snake
And they did so with malicious glee. “Our hero!” they all
cried
"If Kamala had won, our dear Republic would have died!”
They cheered the huge orange reptile till reality intruded:
They saw he’d granted favors but that they were not included.
“Stop your whining, loser voters
Suck it up, for heaven’s sake
I’ve made our country greater,” leered the snake.
“We loved you, " cried the voters
“And you've screwed us so, but why?
You know the things you’re doing might just make our nation
die!”
“Oh shut up, stupid losers,” said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well just what I was, but voted me back in
You bought my lies, you losers
Every lie, for heaven’s sake
Unfortunately the prediction
implied in my lyrics, regarding Trumpcult members becoming
disillusioned with their idol, never came to pass during that
first disastrous term. In a sane world, they would have awakened
en masse back then -- or at least at some time during the four
years he was out of office but continued to wreak chaos and
incite violence -- and we wouldn't have been where we unfortunately are today. And the final line in my lyrics, regarding the snake
being "here forever," would have been moot.
This time around, however, there are signs of a growing
possibility that some Trump voters are maybe beginning
to experience voters' remorse as they see him and his new, much
more powerful, well-funded, and meticulously organized wrecking
crew at work destroying America.
At least some Trump voters are expressing shock at what he and
his cartel of thugs are doing, for they're seeing that his cruel
policies and actions could very well ruin their lives,
not just the lives of those they hate and fear.
Take immigration, f'rinstance. Although scads of hateful MAGAs
are nearly orgasmic because Trump appears to be keeping his
promises and threats to rid the republic of the
"illegals" who are "poisoning the blood of our
country," there are some Trump supporters who are saying,
"Oh, shit."
Then there's the totally illegal funding freeze that Caligula and the Cost Cutters attempted to foist
upon the American people, to the potential detriment of millions
-- including some of the poorest of the Trumpy poor. Despite a
court injunction to delay the freeze, the wrecking crew
apparently opted to go full speed ahead with it, but blowback was
so fierce that the White House actually pulled back -- for now, anyway.
But don't think that this battle is over. It will very likely
rise again in some form -- indeed, the White House claims that
their pullback is merely a rescission of the original memo issued on the evening of January 27. Moreover, even that surprise move was enough to cause
widespread panic and confusion and chaos, even among republicans.
In any case it's all straight from the Project 2025 playbook; indeed,
Trump's choice to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB),
Ross Vought, is one of the chief architects of Project
2025. Despite the cabal's cover story
about reducing government waste, freezing many billions of
dollars in aid and benefits is actually in the service of
centralizing power to the president in dangerous new ways.
And let's not forget Trump's outrageous wholesale
pardoning/sentence commutation of the violent January 6 offenders
who tried to overthrow the government, defaced the nation's
Capitol, threatened the lives of lawmakers of both parties, tried
to murder the Vice President, and viciously attacked numerous
police officers for doing their job. Even the largest cop unions, who for the most part had been reliably
Trumpist, were appalled by the pardons.
Given all of this, a growing tide of disillusionment with Trump
-- even among the more devoted MAGAts -- is not completely beyond
the realm of possibility. They may even acknowledge that yes, the
horrors were Trump's doing and not that of Biden/Obama/the
Democrats et al. And perhaps (oh, we can dream, can't we?) the
devotees will finally rebel in numbers large enough to actually
help move the country away from disaster.
Unfortunately, if Trump and his thugs have their way, the
uprising, should it happen, may very well be too little, too late. The damage will
have been done, and much of it may be irreparable. It's too early
to say. But make no mistake about it, these guys are hard at work
plotting to fix it so that they stay in power indefinitely,
transforming the land of the free and the home of the brave into
an oligarchic, white Christian nationalist Turd Reich. One
particularly devoted Trumpanzee, Representative Andy Ogle of
Tennessee, is so serious about it that he has proposed to amend the 22nd Amendment to allow his
idol to serve a third term.
"And now I'm here forever," jeered the snake.
* No offense is intended to actual
snakes, which serve a useful purpose in nature.
Cantaloupe Caligula is not by any stretch of the
imagination a godly man, notwithstanding the cynical branding efforts by some of his most
power-hungry allies (not to mention his own laughable branding efforts). But it's possible that he harbors sufficient
religious superstition to fear that the holy books might burst
into flame if he came in contact with them while uttering a
bald-faced lie. Or perhaps in a rare moment of public candor he
was simply expressing his genuine disdain for God's Word. Or
maybe he just resented the fact that his own grift bible wasn't the
prop of choice.
In any case, contrary to the desperate hopes and speculations of
some, there's no Constitutional requirement that a president put
his hand on a Bible or Bibles during the swearing-in ceremony.
Which on the one hand (so to speak) is good, because it confirms
the essentially secular intent of the founders. But on the other
hand, it also means that Trump has now been legitimately
empowered to dismantle and reassemble the republic according to
his and his broligarchic allies' wishes.
* * * * *
The coup might be complete, but the guest list at
today's momentous ceremony was apparently incomplete, most likely
to the deep disappointment of the newly crowned Lord of All. From
the Katz piece (here's that link again):
Today, Donald Trump took the
oath of office inside the Capitol his supporters ransacked
four years ago, backed by every living former president and
the gazillionaire CEOs of every major U.S. tech platform. But one
powerful ally who’d really liked to have been there was not
in the crowd. Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil,
was stuck at home, under arrest and indictment for a raft of
alleged offenses, including money laundering and trying to
instigate a January 6-style coup attempt of his own1 . The Brazilian Supreme Court denied a plea to
reinstate Bolsonaro’s passport; his wife was expected to
attend instead.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, another Trumpy
president—Yoon Suk Yeol2 —is also in custody and
facing trial for his declaration of martial law in what
appeared to be yet another failed self-coup. Yoon was, unlike
Bolsonaro but like Trump, the sitting president at the time
of his attempt. In fact, he is still the president, though
his powers have been suspended and he is facing possible
removal. In South Korea, trying to overthrow democracy in
plain sight is considered a grave enough threat to justify
throwing a sitting president in jail. How quaint.
Katz's point, with which I must reluctantly
agree, was that President Biden and allies could have done so
much more than they did to possibly prevent today's lamentable
coronation.
...the simple fact is this: Other
countries have found ways to hold their anti-democratic
presidents accountable and prevent them from taking office
again. America did not.
I would say that it's going to be a long four years, but my fear
is that we're in for many more years of hell than that.
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made...
~ Paul Simon, "The Sound of Silence"
We are all stuck with that garish god,
including, unfortunately, the many millions who always saw him
for what he truly is and always voted accordingly. But even as
grim as things look now, I refuse to give up hope. And it is my
hope that you feel the same.
"The demonstrators who
infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American
democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and
destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who
broke the law, you will pay." ~ Donald John Trump, January 7, 2021
January 6, 2021 was a day of atrocities, and to
state otherwise is either idiocy, willful blindness, or
gaslighting. Most of us recall that in its immediate wake, J6 was
widely acknowledged not only by the news media but also by both
political parties for the horror it was. Even Trump himself condemned the Capitol Hill violence
the day after it happened, although he
did so only after intense pressure, delivering his message in
that robotic, completely TelePrompter-dependent style utilized
when he's mouthing words he doesn't actually believe, and he
completely avoided mentioning his own role in inciting the mob.
(Here is a link to his (falsehood-imbued) statement.)
Of course we also know how quickly the J6 Trumpublican narrative
changed, with Trump aggressively plowing forward with the Big Lie
(which he has never abandoned) and ultimately praising his
violent mob as heroes and patriots, and with most republicans of
any note falling on the side of J6 whitewash and denialism. As William Kristol and Andrew Egger wrote on The
Bulwark today, the shock of what
happened four years ago has been replaced by the shock of how
that day has become accepted by so many.
...The January 6th truther-in-chief
will be our next commander-in-chief. And his administration
will be staffed by individuals who range from January 6th
apologists to January 6th celebrators.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Trump’s party are full of such
people, as is suggested by the fact that the leadership of
the Republican House has refused to install a plaque honoring
Capitol Police officers for their brave actions on January
6th, as required by a federal law signed in March 2023.
It is in a way fitting that one of the first acts of the new
Trump administration will be presidential pardons or
commutations for many of the January 6th felons. Why not?
Their leader will be president. Why should they languish in
prison?
Jonathan V. Last, also writing on The
Bulwark, observed that all of this adds up to a tragedy worthy of Euripides.
Last framed his opinion piece around a comparison of the roles of
then-Vice President Mike Pence in 2021 and President Joe Biden in
the intervening years.
Now maybe no president could have
subdued Trumpism. I’m open to that possibility. But we don’t
get to run the counterfactuals. We can only judge based on
the results. And the result is that President Biden succeeded
in nearly every aspect of job—except in the one that
mattered most.
Mike Pence enabled authoritarianism. But succeeded in
stopping Trump’s coup.
Joe Biden returned normalcy to political life and governed
wisely. But he presided over the resurgence and total victory
of the forces of Trumpism.
It’s a uniquely American tragedy.
Last is no fan of Pence and in fact is an
admirer of and advocate for Biden, so this was undoubtedly
difficult for him to write. He does make some valid points,
however, and lists a few things that Biden could have or should
have done that might have prevented Trump's victory. But
we'll never know if even those strategies would have been enough
to stem the toxic tide of Trumpism. In my more cynical moments I
tend to doubt it.
Forgive and forget?
It remains to be seen whether or not Trump will in fact pardon
and/or commute the sentences of January 6 insurrectionists on his
much-touted "Day One." To do so would be a profoundly
disgraceful act, and anyone who supports it cannot truthfully
claim to be a backer of law and order or of those who risk their
lives to preserve law and order. In a January 6, 2025 opinion piece published on The Hill, former Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell, who was
seriously injured by J6 rioters, wrote:
My colleagues and I who protected the
Capitol that day don’t have the privilege of forgetting the
Jan. 6 riot. To me, it still feels like it was yesterday.
I served in the U.S. Army and witnessed violence in combat,
but I never thought I would see similar brutality inside the
U.S. Capitol. I was assaulted by rioters for five hours. I
was barricading the tunnels with my body, receiving blow
after blow from rioters using makeshift
weapons and stolen police gear.
By the end, I was covered in my own blood. Exhausted,
overwhelmed and trampled, I did not know whether I would make
it home to see my wife and child. Those horrible memories are
seared into my brain. I will never forget that feeling.
Like many other officers who served that day, I’ve spent
years in mental and physical therapy — and have undergone
two surgeries to heal from those wounds — but that feeling
has never truly left me. It has altered the trajectory of my
career and my life. Trump and his rioters not only stole my
health but also the livelihoods of me and my fellow
officers.
According to Trump and MAGA Republicans, Jan. 6, 2021, was a
“day
of love.” If being
beaten and trampled by a violent mob is love, then Trump and
the insurrectionists who attacked me under his banner nearly
loved me to death. While serving that day, I wasn’t focused
on the implications of the attack. I was simply doing my job.
Let me be very clear: Republicans in Congress do not support
law enforcement if they support the pardons of those who
attacked police officers and attempted to overthrow our
government — the antithesis of law and order.
Rewriting history can't change what
actually happened
What is clear now is that there is an enormous cultural divide
between those who see J6 for what it truly was, and those who
think it was no big deal.
Some go beyond thinking it's NBD and apparently even find it
cause for hilarity. The reich-wing satire outlet Babylon Bee
recently produced a mockumentary, The Most Deadliest Day,
which conveys the message that J6 coverage was driven by leftist
hysteria and that the event itself was indeed NBD. I get that
this is satire and that satire can be offensive, but this
particular satire misses the point because its underlying premise
seems to be that those who were appalled by J6 considered it to
be the worst day in human history. None of us ever said or
implied any such thing; we only said it was one of the worst
events in modern American history -- an event that shook the
guardrails and truly imperiled democracy in a way that we'd never
seen in our lifetimes.
And yet Trump and his allies continue to work very hard to
rewrite that history. From a January 6, 2025 opinion piece in Newsweek, written by David Faris, Associate Professor at
Roosevelt University:
Trump's years-long Orwellian
disinformation campaign justifying the riot as legitimate
political expression and lionizing the perpetrators as heroes
suffering from unjust persecution succeeded in muddying what
should have been crystal-clear waters. After getting wound up
with one of Trump's patented speeches featuring
a firehose of lies,
non-sequiturs and bombast, thousands of brainwashed MAGA
die-hards descended, lemming-like, on the United States
Capitol Building, scaling the walls, roaming the halls and
creating violent mayhem. Some of them were armed with guns,
carried zip ties and had plans to capture and possibly kill
members of Congress. Others likely believed they were along
for some kind of twisted joyride and seemed to be having the
time of their lives.
But no sentient person illicitly roaming the halls of
Congress—while elected officials and their staffs ran for
their lives and hid from them—could possibly have believed
that what they were doing was acceptable or legal. Four
rioters died
or were killed at the
scene, a U.S. Capitol Police officer lost his life the
following day after sustaining injuries during the melee and
several other officers committed suicide in the days and
weeks that followed. One hundred forty other police officers
were injured in the mayhem.
Faris also rips apart the common MAGA
whataboutism argument that the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter
rioters weren't treated nearly as harshly as the J6 perps:
The comparison also happens to be...factually wrong. More
than 17,000 people were
arrested during the summer 2020 protests, and more of them
have served
actual jail time than the
Capitol rioters. Importantly—and I can't emphasize this
enough—this is in spite of the fact that none of them were seeking
to murder the vice
president of the United States. If you can't accept that
trying to kill members of congress is worse than smashing a
window at a Cheesecake Factory, I just don't know what to
tell you.
Remember and resist
All spin aside, January 6, 2021 was in fact a day of shame, and
millions of us will never forget, even though for years we have
been scolded and told we need to "get over it" and
"move on." With King DonOld ascending the throne on
January 20, there will almost certainly be even more of an effort
to sweep the atrocities of J6 under the rug, coupled with
attempts to retaliate against the bipartisan committee of true
patriots who investigated January 6, held hearings, and issued a
massive report about what really happened. Regarding the threats
of retaliation, J6 committee principal Jamie Raskin, one of my
personal heroes, has said, "Bring it on."
“We welcome any further investigation
of Jan. 6 that they want to engage in,” Rep. Jamie Raskin
(D-MD) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol
recently. “I've not seen an attack on even the smallest
detail, so if they could come forward with a couple of those,
then I might be able to accept what they're saying is
something other than just idle political rhetoric.”
Few of us have the large platform of a Jamie
Raskin or a Liz Cheney, but I think that all of us who believe in
the truthful telling of American history can do our part to keep
the Trumpublicans from rewriting that history. And in so doing we
can possibly help push back the rising tide of
authoritarianism/fascism that threatens not only America but the
world at large. But it's up to us, as "God" Himself wrote on His January 6, 2025
message:
The problem isn’t just Trump—it’s
the machine propping him up. It’s the money, the corporate
media, and the revisionist storytelling that’s erasing what
actually happened on January 6th. And if this is how we deal
with an insurrection, what happens next?
No one is coming to save us. Not the corporations. Not your
elected leaders. It’s truly on us. We have to unite against
the billionaire class that is just fine with using fascism
and propaganda to keep us all at each other’s throats.
Amen to that, God.
Related on this Whirled
July 6, 2021:Day of Rage: The most in-depth look yet at
pro-Trump riot on January 6, 2021 Published on the 6-month anniversary of J6, this
post highlights a must-see documentary that truly exposes the
horror of the Capitol Hill riots. The embedded video is no longer available, but the
YouTube link works, although the video
is now age-restricted due to its intensely graphic nature. It's
worth the effort to go through the steps of confirming your age
in order to view it.
Before you leave...
This past year has been a nightmare for me on several counts. While
money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can make them far
easier to bear. Now
more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly
appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:
Old but still good:
You can click on the "Donate" icon that
currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of
this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation
link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the
case of both the icon and the links on the older posts,
as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my
husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately
goes to the same place.
NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal,
please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as
opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a
percentage for their fee).
Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting
this Whirled.
If I had to guess the cause offhand, I'd say that
long term anabolic steroid use finally caught up with him.
But that is pure speculation on my part, so don't quote me. I
really do not know. I will update when/if I find out. I did
notice that Ray's brother said that Ray's wish was to be cremated
and that he didn't want people to make a big fuss about his
death. I wonder if there is even going to be an autopsy, and if
not... why? That might be something worth exploring, though at
this point it's a little early.
So far, as I'm writing this at nearly 10:30 PM Central Standard
Time, the news media do not seem to have gotten wind of the news;
if you Google or Bing "James Arthur Ray death," you
just get scads of results about the deaths he caused and
for which he was convicted and imprisoned for a couple of years,
not his own death. Nor is Ray's passing mentioned yet on his
Wikipedia page. [NOTE: SEE UPDATES AT THE END OF THIS POST.
~CC]
But some folks were paying attention, and that's how I
learned about Ray's demise. Through their organization, Seek Safely, the family of Kirby Brown, one of Ray's Sedona death
lodge victims, made a statement, which said
in part:
While there could be some small measure
of relief in knowing that Ray will no longer be able to harm
anyone, it is, truly, very little comfort. It became clear to
us early on after Kirby’s passing that Ray was just one
operator in a multi-billion
dollar per year industry
built on the exploitation of those who would improve their
lives and find fulfillment. The rot in this industry has
always been much greater and more complex than the actions of
a single so-called “guru.” James Ray was one among
countless exploitative and dangerous self-help providers.
SEEK Safely was founded in this reality—that an entire
industry, not just one man, was responsible for Kirby’s
death.
Greater than any sense of relief is a feeling of
disappointment that Ray could have played a unique role in
helping to define both the problems and the solutions for
this industry. But rather than demonstrating true
transformation, he remained stuck in the paradigm of an
industry built on manipulation and mistruth.
We can only, at this juncture, remind seekers that no “guru,”
or program, or mindset is larger than life or without fault.
That a journey of self-improvement is noble and vulnerable.
That we must always remain in charge of that process of
growth and change, rooted in our values, our worth, and our
right to seek free from harm.
That's exactly right. Ray's death won't clear
an entire industry of its rot, any more than Trump's eventual
demise will, after all the years of damage, clear America and the
world of Trumpism/fascism. There are no neat and tidy endings. While it would be inaccurate and certainly crass
for me to say that I am giddy about James Arthur Ray's passing,
it would also be inaccurate for me to say that I'm sad about it.
Ray had many chances to try to redeem himself after causing the
deaths of his followers; instead, he never stopped making their
deaths all about him and the wrongs he had
suffered because people were unfairly blaming him for "a
tragic accident." Now, on the surface it may have seemed
that he took responsibility, especially since the introduction to
a book he penned a few years ago, The Business of Redemption, began with the sentence, "I am responsible for
the deaths of three people." Then he goes on to write about
how deeply this hurts him every single day.
But instead of actually taking responsibility, he found ways to crapitalize on his imagined status as a
drawn-and-quartered martyr: a survivor
of a trial by fire (literally and figuratively) who was
abundantly qualified to guide others, for a hefty price of
course, on their own journeys from darkness back to light. And he
was still flogging that hero narrative to the end. In December
2024 he was featured on a conspiranoia/alt-health podcast called
The Ripple Effect, hosted by a guy named Ricky Varandas; the blurb for the promo clip on Varandas' TwitterX page read, "From Prison to Purpose: My Hero's Journey
to Redemption." Gimme a break.
I know that Ray had people who loved him. But again, I would be
lying if I were to say that I'm sorry he's gone.
UPDATE 5 January 2025:
Some of the Arizona news media have picked
up on the story since I published this post last night
(January 4, 2025) at 10:43 PM Central Standard Time. NBC
affiliate 12 News (KPNX, serving the greater Phoenix
area) posted news about James Arthur Ray's death on Saturday night, January 4, at 10:25 PM
Mountain Standard Time (11:25 PM my time), and updated it
at 11:10 PM MST (12:10 AM January 5 my time). No cause of
death has been mentioned as of this time. News 12 cited
the same sources I did: the Xitter statement by Ray's
brother John, and the Seek Safely statement.
AZ Central (Arizona Republic) posted a brief
story as well today, January 5,
at about 3:30 PM my time (2:30 Mountain Standard Time).
As was the case with the 12 News story, the only sources
cited were the Xitter statement by Ray's brother, and the
Seek Safely statement. No cause of death has been
mentioned as of this time.
The Wikipedia page for James Arthur Ray
was updated on the morning of January 5, 2025, and now mentions his death, but only the date; the source cited is the Arizona News 12 story listed above. No cause of death has been
mentioned as of this time.
UPDATE 6 January 2025:
Some former followers who knew James Ray
personally have privately speculated to me that his death might
have been due to drug overdose or interaction. And some folks,
myself included, have not been above wondering, if only in
passing, if perhaps Ray was in some deep trouble and, with the
help of his family, faked his own death. That sort of scenario is
normally a little bit conspiranoid for my taste, but sometimes
you just wonder...
In a post on X, his family announced
that Ray died “suddenly and unexpectedly” late last week
but didn’t specify the cause...
...Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in
Nevada where was Ray residing, said it had received a death
report of a man matching Ray’s name and age.
I got a few free moments and decided to send an
email to the Clark County NV coroner today, asking for
confirmation of James Arthur Ray's death, and inquiring whether
cause of death was known yet and if there would be an autopsy.
Here's the reply I received:
Hi
Connie,
The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner does
not have jurisdiction over this case. I can only confirm the
CCOCME did receive a report of a decedent with the name of
James Ray, age 67. The date of death was 1/2/25.
Not all deaths in Clark County are CCOCME cases. Some
examples of non-coroner cases include those where the
decedent was in the long-term care of a doctor and/or had
extensive medical history.
I'm
guessing there won't be an autopsy, and if he's really deceased
there won't be a body to poke, only embers.
I thought it was interesting that according to the email, the
report the Clark County coroner's office received said the date
of death was January 2, 2025. But brother John's tweet was dated
the morning of January 4, and he clearly said that James had
passed away suddenly and unexpectedly "last night' -- which
would have been January 3, not January 2. It's possible that John
was just copying and pasting an earlier message that had actually
been written on January 3, and when he posted to James' Xitter
feed on January 4 he neglected to edit it to reflect the actual
date of death. In any case, Wikipedia has his date of death as January 3,
2025, but the source they cited was probably using the post on
James' Xitter feed as a reference.
But to me the main issue is the cause of death, and the mystery continues... And I do need to state that in general I
respect a family's right to privacy, especially regarding medical
matters. However, when a public figure like Ray brands himself as
an expert on physical as well as mental and emotional and
spiritual health, and then dies "suddenly and unexpectedly," his public has a right to know what killed
him.
Before you leave...
This past year has been a nightmare for me on several counts. While money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can make them far easier to bear. Now
more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly
appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:
Old but still good:
You can click on the "Donate" icon that
currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of
this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation
link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the
case of both the icon and the links on the older posts,
as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my
husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately
goes to the same place.
NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal,
please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as
opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a
percentage for their fee).
Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting
this Whirled.
