But did I mention ... bananas!
Mar. 5th, 2021 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
Bitching about how slowly vaccines are being rolled out when a large proportion of vulnerable people have already received one of several vaccines that have been proven effective less than a year after everyone knew vaccines would be needed is:
(a) bonkers
(b) very helpful in reinforcing the message that getting vaccinated is desirable
(c) both
You are correct! The answer is (c).
However, (b) is the correct answer to the question "what is getting all demonstratively outraged about people getting vaccinated early by queue-jumping or privilege-wielding or whatever?"
Oh I don't know, do you want to know something about the bible? OK, how's this: yesterday I read the first 1/88 of a bible's worth of Joshua; in there, this thing happens where, after the elaborate magic trick where God makes the walls of Jericho fall down, Joshua gets some spies to go to the city of Ai; they come back and say Ai is practically defenseless, only a small force, two or three thousand guys, is needed to take Ai, so Joshua sends a small force, which is immediately routed. So Joshua is like OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING, and God says, one of your guys took some stuff from Jericho, which I said not to, find that guy and kill him and then the Israelites will smite everyone again--and though obviously I could just tell you who that guy is, for some reason we will have a dramatic made-for-TV reveal, where you all draw lots to narrow it down further and further until the guilty guy is left. So they do that, the guilty guy draws the last lot, he confesses, they're like OH THANK GOD and find the stuff he took and stone him and his daughters [1] to death and then set them and all his stuff on fire. And so on to smiting Ai: Joshua now sends 30,000 guys, with a clever strategy: most of the guys will act like they're attacking Ai just like before, the Ai guys will think oh those guys again and come and chase them into the countryside when they all run away again, but meanwhile 5000 other Israelite guys will be waiting behind Ai to sneak in and burn it to the ground. And that's what they do, and the guys from Ai come back, too late, and the Israelites kill them all, along with everyone else in the city, which is a total of 12,000 people. So, I don't know, are we not supposed to notice that the whole business of the guy taking the things is not needed at all to explain why the first attack--with a small force and no strategy--failed, while the second--with a force that massively outnumbered the defenders, and a clever strategy--succeeded? How can we possibly not be supposed to notice that?
Speaking of noticing things, after the second-last time I read the bible, Howard Adelman, pointing me at this article here, drew my attention to the fact that through most of Deuteronomy the whole idea that the exodus generation of Israelites is supposed to die out before they can enter the promised land is absent. Reading it again this time, I notice that it is specified so many times in Deuteronomy that it was you, you people here right now, not your fathers, you who came out of Egypt, that (a) I find it kind of, I don't know, demoralizing that I never picked up on that myself before and maybe still wouldn't have now if not for Howard, and (b) this has really got to be a deliberate contradiction of the punishment-for-the-Eschol-spies narrative, doesn't it?
Speaking of spies, another thing that happens early on in Joshua is the Rahab episode: Joshua sends some spies to Jericho, they spend the night at the house of Rahab the harlot, Rahab hides them and misdirects the guys looking for them (who the king sent straight to her house, because, look, we know where guys go when they come to Jericho) into the countryside, and she makes a deal with them not to kill her family when the Israelites smite Jericho. So the Israelites come and smite Jericho and do in fact spare her family, and Rahab is a great hero to the Israelites and "has lived in the midst of Israel to this day." So, according to Joshua 6:25, at the heart of Israel is a treasonous whore. I mean, objectively speaking.
[1] The text specifies his daughters, which I am guessing is out of deference to the fact that, earlier, God had decided that sons were not to be put to death for the sins of their fathers. Cf. Abraham and Isaac on one hand and Jephthah and his daughter on the other.
--
Currently under my porch: -2.9. Currently at Belmont Lake: -3.6. High there today: -1.8. The crows came back last week, and the mourning doves started cooing. Tapped my maple trees a couple of days ago. Thought I might have seen a chipmunk out of the corner of my eye last week; today there was one vacuuming up seeds on the porch.
(a) bonkers
(b) very helpful in reinforcing the message that getting vaccinated is desirable
(c) both
You are correct! The answer is (c).
However, (b) is the correct answer to the question "what is getting all demonstratively outraged about people getting vaccinated early by queue-jumping or privilege-wielding or whatever?"
Oh I don't know, do you want to know something about the bible? OK, how's this: yesterday I read the first 1/88 of a bible's worth of Joshua; in there, this thing happens where, after the elaborate magic trick where God makes the walls of Jericho fall down, Joshua gets some spies to go to the city of Ai; they come back and say Ai is practically defenseless, only a small force, two or three thousand guys, is needed to take Ai, so Joshua sends a small force, which is immediately routed. So Joshua is like OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING, and God says, one of your guys took some stuff from Jericho, which I said not to, find that guy and kill him and then the Israelites will smite everyone again--and though obviously I could just tell you who that guy is, for some reason we will have a dramatic made-for-TV reveal, where you all draw lots to narrow it down further and further until the guilty guy is left. So they do that, the guilty guy draws the last lot, he confesses, they're like OH THANK GOD and find the stuff he took and stone him and his daughters [1] to death and then set them and all his stuff on fire. And so on to smiting Ai: Joshua now sends 30,000 guys, with a clever strategy: most of the guys will act like they're attacking Ai just like before, the Ai guys will think oh those guys again and come and chase them into the countryside when they all run away again, but meanwhile 5000 other Israelite guys will be waiting behind Ai to sneak in and burn it to the ground. And that's what they do, and the guys from Ai come back, too late, and the Israelites kill them all, along with everyone else in the city, which is a total of 12,000 people. So, I don't know, are we not supposed to notice that the whole business of the guy taking the things is not needed at all to explain why the first attack--with a small force and no strategy--failed, while the second--with a force that massively outnumbered the defenders, and a clever strategy--succeeded? How can we possibly not be supposed to notice that?
Speaking of noticing things, after the second-last time I read the bible, Howard Adelman, pointing me at this article here, drew my attention to the fact that through most of Deuteronomy the whole idea that the exodus generation of Israelites is supposed to die out before they can enter the promised land is absent. Reading it again this time, I notice that it is specified so many times in Deuteronomy that it was you, you people here right now, not your fathers, you who came out of Egypt, that (a) I find it kind of, I don't know, demoralizing that I never picked up on that myself before and maybe still wouldn't have now if not for Howard, and (b) this has really got to be a deliberate contradiction of the punishment-for-the-Eschol-spies narrative, doesn't it?
Speaking of spies, another thing that happens early on in Joshua is the Rahab episode: Joshua sends some spies to Jericho, they spend the night at the house of Rahab the harlot, Rahab hides them and misdirects the guys looking for them (who the king sent straight to her house, because, look, we know where guys go when they come to Jericho) into the countryside, and she makes a deal with them not to kill her family when the Israelites smite Jericho. So the Israelites come and smite Jericho and do in fact spare her family, and Rahab is a great hero to the Israelites and "has lived in the midst of Israel to this day." So, according to Joshua 6:25, at the heart of Israel is a treasonous whore. I mean, objectively speaking.
[1] The text specifies his daughters, which I am guessing is out of deference to the fact that, earlier, God had decided that sons were not to be put to death for the sins of their fathers. Cf. Abraham and Isaac on one hand and Jephthah and his daughter on the other.
--
Currently under my porch: -2.9. Currently at Belmont Lake: -3.6. High there today: -1.8. The crows came back last week, and the mourning doves started cooing. Tapped my maple trees a couple of days ago. Thought I might have seen a chipmunk out of the corner of my eye last week; today there was one vacuuming up seeds on the porch.
