Trump trial highlights the incompetence and illegimacy of our federal government

The Trump trial begins.  The Democrat-majority House of Representatives sent Trump's impeachment case to the Republican-majority Senate.  The Senate already stated that they will align with the Office of the President.  In this article, the Senate leader already announced the outcome of Trump's trial, before it has even happened:

McConnell told Hannity that, "We know how it's going to end. There's no chance the president's going to be removed from office."

“My hope is that there won't be a single Republican who votes for either of these articles of impeachment and Sean, it wouldn't surprise me if we got one or two Democrats,” McConnell said.

That would disqualify the Senate as being biased.  The Senate is suppose to be unbiased so that the Senate could fulfill its duty of fairly trying the president.  The U.S. Constitution gives the Senate all the power to conduct the impeachment hearing.  The Constitution also requires that the Senators take an oath to carry out "impartial justice".  In light of Senator McConnel's words, the Senate is already tainted.  One Rep stated that the Senate is a "kangaroo court":

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., read part of McConnell's interview out loud during Thursday's impeachment markup, stating that: “In other words, the jury — Senate Republicans — are going to coordinate with the defendant — Donald Trump — on how exactly the kangaroo court is going to be run."

This will only hurt the American people.  Under the constitution of the United States, the people have a right of revolution (a duty to rebel) in cases where the government becomes harmful to the people.  As a nation have we reached this threshhold?  

LGBQ community complains about Dine ceremonies

This is an interesting post from the LGBQ community. ("Why are Diné LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit people being denied access to ceremony?") The article tells of one person's complaint that the Navajo medicine community will not perform a marriage for a gay couple, or a coming-of-age ceremony for a gay person.

In September of 2017, I asked my wife to marry me. We were determined to have a Navajo wedding and tried to find a traditional healer who would consider a marriage between two women. At one point, I found a medicine woman who supported same-sex marriages, but only if they were performed in a church or other non-Diné venue. She said that according to Navajo tradition, we couldn’t be blessed in the same way as a man and a woman, and she declined to perform the ceremony.

An interesting dilemma.  There is a lot of misconception and misinformation about this topic, both in Navajo and English.  The article says,

Traditional healers must talk about the Navajo creation story, understand and explain gender roles, use correct gender pronouns, and conduct ceremonies that honor multiple gender roles and different forms of relationships. Otherwise, we will lose those traditions for good.

If medicine people are the knowledgeable people of Navajo society, who are we to tell them to use the "correct gender pronouns"?  Maybe our understanding of correct gender pronouns is inadequate and they are using the correct form of pronouns since they are the knowledgeable people. 

The article talks about the Dine culture and the medicine community accepting "Nadleeh".  For the medicine community, maybe they have requirements that they need to follow in carrying out their ceremony, so it’s not a question of acceptance and discrimination.  We cannot just expect the medicine community to conform to Bilagana norms. The medicine community has its own rules which are different than our social rules. The medicine community does not necessarily follow the Bilagana social rules. They are independent from Bilagana. Perhaps the medicine community knows what it is doing, following their instructions as it was handed to them, and we need to try to understand and ask why they refuse to perform these ceremonies in these ways. We do need more education on this topic from informed individuals. 

I feel that we are just all ignorant, the blind leading the blind, and this article is no exception.

Happy Bilagana New Year

According to the Gregorian Calendar, the new year occurs in January.  According to the Dine Calendar, the new year comes in October.  So in a Bilagana sort of way, Happy New Year!