Move Along

That photo is from April 2003, downtown Chicago, as Chicago's finest prepared to meet the (largely non-existent) mobs of anti-IRAQWAR protesters. I took this picture. I remember those days. I was there. (I was not, on that day, a protester. I was there for MPSA.)

The 10th anniversary of this disastrous war is a sad occasion. I predicted that the war would go badly, and it did. Largely in ways that I predicted. I take little satisfaction in that. There's no satisfaction to be had when so many died, were maimed, displaced, etc. Whether removing Saddam Hussein was "worth it", I guess we'll never be able to ask the 100,000+ dead Iraqis. Maybe they would've accepted their own deaths for Hussein's? We'll never know.

What I am saddest about is that . . . our country has gone mad, and I don't see a path to bring it back. Whether it's the impeachment of Bill Clinton, or the GWOT, or irrational fears about Obama . . . . Madness. March it is, so March Madness. But it's been 20 years and counting. Is there hope yet?

This one is from March 2003 and is from a brief protest at CWRU--students laying down in Euclid Avenue, and, in this case, being dragged off the road. Curat Lex will remember this.

Pope Frances!

Congrats, Frances. I had no idea you were even nominated! You must have made a big impression in your brief stint as a Mississippi Papist. Can they put a child seat in the popemobile?

A week ago I predicted to a group of colleagues that the Cardinals would look for "the Marco Rubio of Popes": a modestly more diverse face (hence, Latin American) for the same old reactionary policies. My more knowledgeable former-Catholics seemed to think it was going back to Italy. Ha! It's so rare I get a prediction right that I'm recording it here. (Wish I had done it a week ago, but oh well.)

FWIW, based on my vast wealth of understanding of all things papist (i.e., a few short articles from the last 24 hours), I suspect Bergoglio will be an exceptionally good pick, at least from the Romanist standpoint. He seems to exude a charm and humility Ratzinger never had, and he's got some decent populist bona fides on economic issues. Meanwhile, he's pretty hard right on all that sex stuff, which makes the old boys tingle with repressed excitement. They could have done a lot worse. Says the Presbyterian Democrat.