Science As Metaphysics

Did you know that everything around you, for the most part, isn't really there?

Elementary particle physics makes it abundantly clear that, as we descend the ladder of the material universe, the various bits that make up physical existence are barely-there bits of stuff, in constant motion, with the space in between them occupying a far larger percentage of a given area designated for a particular "atom" or "molecule".

I urge everyone to test this theory by tossing a baseball through a window; better yet, do as my childhood friend once did and bash your head against a wall as hard as possible. Since the stuff isn't there, no problem, right?

Each and every meta-theory on the basic structure of the universe offers certain challenges to our common sense; whether it's Copernicus, or Newton, or Mach, or Einstein, or Bohr, or Heisenberg, or Hawking, we are challenged to consider again the old adage that the universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it's weirder than we can imagine.

Today comes word that, as the old saw goes, everything solid melts in to air:

"If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.(italics added)

2500 years ago, Plato posited that existence is akin to humanity sitting shackled, forced to stare at images on a cave wall; Plato, it seems, was the first to break these bonds and declare the images are just that, shadows without substance. Awake! Turn your head and see the way things really are!

The problem with these various theories about the way the Universe "really" is - microparticle physics as the Tao of all things; Bell's Theorem with its positing of a multiverse, each possible quantum state of each and every elementary particle since the Big Bang spinning off a new possible existence at each nanosecond of time; the physical unreality of all that is - require us to stand outside the world as we experience it. This is not to argue that holograph theory is or is not true; it sounds to me more like a certain mathematical model than anything else, most of which would be far beyond most of the people who read this blog. I am suggesting not so much that the theory is bogus as it is unfalsifiable. How would it be possible to falsify a theory whose very existence means assuming that entire Universe operates from its first principles?

Whenever I read somewhere that scientists deal with the way the world "really" is, I have to smile, because, far too often, theories like this are introduced that defy some of the most basic tenets of scientific inquiry. It may, indeed, be the solution to certain mathematical computations; that doesn't mean, however, it is scientific.

Ken And Me

I have had the name Ken Starr waved in my face a few times today, once in reference to an incident at Wesley Theological Seminary. Before he became infamous, when he was just Bush 41's Solicitor General, he spoke at the commencement in 1992.

The announcement that Starr would so speak was not greeted with enthusiastic cheers from the student body. I was reminded (again) that one student wrote to the student newspaper, and included the marvelous phrase "pale, male, and probably stale" to describe the choice. I was among many students who thought it might be possible to choose someone else.

I remember that commencement very well, precisely because it was one of those tempests-in-a-campus-teapot that seem so transcendentally important at the time, but really don't mean all that much in the long run. After all the hoo-hah and back and forth, Starr came and gave his little speech - spending, I recall, much of the first half half-heartedly defending himself against much of the animosity directed his way by students - and then sat down. Because I was in the student choir, I was sitting in the chancel, and Starr actually sat right next to me. I introduced myself, a moment I'm sure he recalls with fondness. I could be as polite as the next person.

The next year, when I graduated, Harry Blackmun gave the commencement address. Hard on the heels of his very public decision to no longer support the death penalty, and in light of his being the author of Roe v Wade, it received much less student angst. I had several opportunities to sit and chat with Justice Blackmun, because he attended Metropolitan Memorial UMC, where I also attended, and more than once sat in front or behind him. A very nice man, easy to talk to.

Anyway, having read Starr's name today, and being reminded of that incident, I thought I'd offer this apropos of nothing more than my own brushes with the infamous and noted.

Music For Your Monday

On Friday night or Saturday, I posted a Joni Mitchell video on Facebook, and one of my friends said that the only way one could really enjoy it was to be really high. I find that hysterically funny, all things considered. I decided to do some music I like that could very well be considered "only stoners like this stuff".

Miles Davis with the title track to his classic Bitches Brew:



Traffic's "Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys", which I picked as the entrance song for our wedding reception.



What's most interesting about this final pick, I think, is Robert Fripp's history of outspoken disgust with drug use among both musicians and fans. Yet, few bands were as trippy as King Crimson. This is "Larks Tongue in Aspic, Part II"

A New Wrinkle

Apparently, the lawyer advising the alleged Haitian kidnappers is wanted in El Salvador for participation in a child-smuggling-for-prostitution ring.

Nice.

I look forward to Craig explaining this one away. Those Haitian kiddies would, indeed, have such a better life in the U.S, blah, blah, blah . . .

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out (UPDATE)

I would have thought Evan Bayh would have stuck around if for no other reason than the folks who control the conventional wisdom in our nation's capital dearly love him and his constant idiocy. Apparently, though, he has a bit more integrity than, say, Joe Lieberman.

Like Sarah Palin, another darling of Washington insiders, Bayh is quitting, only with more integrity than Palin, who left after two years in office.
No other thought than good riddance to bad rubbish. His "statement" is a meaningless combination of self-flattery and nonsensical drivel.

"For some time I've had a growing conviction that Congress is not working as it should," said Bayh. As a prime example, he referred to the recent filibustering of legislation to create a bipartisan fiscal commission. What particularly bothered Bayh was that it was defeated by Senators who had previously been co-sponsors of the measure itself, but then blocked it for what he described as political reasons.

Just ugh. Imagine a political body using politics to do its job. This is a Louis Renault moment from Casablanca if ever I read one.

UPDATE: While I would probably replace "immoral" with "venal and self-regarding", Matt pretty much sums up why Bayh's departure is as awful as his actual tenure.

Between The Times

In the 1920's, a little theological revolution took place in Germany. With the publication of the second, completely revised edition of his commentary on Romans, Swiss pastor Karl Barth became the focal point of a small group of Christian thinkers who were seriously wrestling with their times. Understanding the impact of Romerbrief necessitates understanding that, even in the first edition, Barth was out in front of many European intellectuals in grasping how the First World War was not just a political catastrophe for Europe; it was also a cultural catastrophe. The self-congratulatory, triumphal attitude of European culture - its philosophy, its theology, its political approach to the rest of the world - had bled out in the trenches of Flanders and France, and Barth recognized that the ground which had seemed so firm, now soaked with the blood of millions, could no longer hold the brave new European poised to stride the earth.

Little noted beyond a small coterie of fellow churchmen and theologians, Barth continued to write and preach and eventually, with his close personal friend Eduard Thurneysen and the Lutheran Friedrich Gogarten, started a journal entitled Zwischen den Zeiten, Between the Times. It reflected their own view that the Christian life was not the culmination of the Kingdom; nor was it existence in some primitive cultus. Rather, it is a life lived in the constant tension between two temptations - the desire to chuck it all, as it were and the desire to proclaim the arrival of the Divine Rule and rest on one's laurels. History would not allow the journal to survive too long; with the rise of German fascism, and with many including Gogarten siding with the demons, Barth took his leave of both the journal and eventually Germany. He published one final, famous, essay in Zwischen, entitled "Nein!" - essentially a huge finger to all the Hitler apologists and those like his fellow Swiss Reformed theologian, Emil Brunner (with whom he refused to reconcile even when Brunner lay dying because Brunner refused to admit that Barth was correct in his criticisms of Brunner's thought) - and retreated to Basel on the triple frontier of France, Germany, and Switzerland.*

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. It marks the end of the first stretch of what is usually considered "ordinary time" in the Church calendar, from the Feast of Epiphany through Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. It marks the real beginning of Jesus' ministry. Not his baptism by John in the Jordan River, not his reading and preaching in the Nazareth synagogue, not even his calling of the twelve marked it out as clearly as this event. Harking back to other mountain tops, Jesus went up to a mountain where he was revealed in his fullness, standing around chatting with Moses and Elijah, the two great prophets of the Hebrews, who themselves knew something of events on mountains. The reaction of the disciples, in particular Peter, demonstrate how far they had yet to go in understanding, even in this fullness of revelation, what Jesus was to be about.

We do not, cannot, live on that mountain, in the fullness of the presence. Nor can we live at the foot of the cross, an event which Jesus predicted even as he descended from the mountain. We are destined to live in the far more ambivalent reality around us; the memory of that moment on the mountain, perhaps, staying with us as a reminder of who this Jesus really is, even as we still wrestle with what that "really" means in the context of the messy, sometimes horrifying, sometimes transcendent, always frustrating day-to-day in which we find ourselves immersed.

While we celebrate that moment on the mountain today, on Wednesday as we recall that we all are nothing more than dust and ashes, destined to die, we need to remember that our real Christian life, the one to which all baptized Christians are called, is a life between those two moments of the Transfiguration and the Cross. Like those so-called "dialectical theologians" of last century, we need to remember that ours is not a calling either to retreat or to final victory. Rather, we travel on, granting to the world its status as neither hell nor heaven, and serve as Jesus called us to serve, between those two poles.

*A detailed history of German theological life in between the World Wars and after is told in Christian Faith in Dark Times, which includes brief sketches of Barth, Gogarten Paul Althaus, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Emmanuel Hirsch.

Unpaid Profession

Matt Yglesias calls this piece by Leon Wieseltier "nonsense from top to bottom." I couldn't agree more.

What is especially awful is the seemingly high-brow attack on "bloggers" (Lord, how I hate that word).

Owing to its vastness and its velocity, no medium of communication and publication ever depended more desperately on “content”--the lifeless business expression for words and ideas--than the Internet. Some people celebrate this as a historic breakthrough for literariness in its various forms. They rhapsodize about the democratization of the writing life, about the demise of the “gatekeepers” and their institutions, about the pure and perfect autonomy of blogging and “self-publishing.” Who needs The New York Times if I can arrange for you to know what it is in my heart at this instant?

You read any writer on becoming one, and you see again and again, "a writer writes, and there's no way around it." The advent of the internet no doubt does reduce the mean intelligence of written material overall; it also offers opportunities for some to write. Some fewer gain an audience. Some fewer still actually manage to make something of a living at it.

All the same, Wieseltier's lament over the decrepitude of our culture is really nothing more than the realization that the barbarians are at the gates. I would feel bad for him, but I don't. The simple reality is that internet writing of all kinds attracts a relatively small audience. Most sites tend to play to a particular audience; they are nothing more than examples of market segmentation. The demise of the craft of writing as a paid profession is a bit overwrought because, as things continue to shake themselves out, there will be rewards in the form of pay for those who do the job well. Others, such as myself, are content enough to do what we do for the love of craft.

As a side note, Wieseltier's nostalgia for his avante-garde youth is disgusting. There never has been, nor ever will be, a "decent poverty". The very thought is vile.

The Trinity And Revelation

I shall state my thesis up front - The Trinity is a short-hand for the Christian understanding of how the God we encounter has chosen to reveal who this God is.

It's really that simple.

Now comes the hard part.

Part of the problem with any attempt to unpack trinitarian thought is the western Christian attempt to make of it something rational. It is not. There is nothing rational about the claim that God is three persons in one, one substance revealed in three always-present distinct persons, wholly separate yet never separated. Unraveling the knot of Trinitarian thought usually leaves only a few alternatives, most of them unattractive to a contemporary Christian. Falling back on the Nicaean-Constantinopolitan formula, usually referred to with reference to the Greek affirmation of Son and Father being "of one substance" (homoousios), with the procession of the Spirit added as an afterthought (at least in the west, where the procession of the Spirit became a bone of contention culminating in an official split with the Eastern churches in the eleventh century).

In defense of the original language of Nicaea, those present at that first, Imperially-decreed Church Council, had little else to use but the tools of neo-Platonism with which to work. In an attempt to clarify their understanding of the newly enthroned Imperial God's interaction with the world and people who were now officially Christian, they had no recourse but to use the technical vocabulary of substance and accident to express their insistence that, in the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, humanity encountered not just one among many possible Holy Men, a wonder-worker of both wisdom and sagacity, but something more, something, indeed, final and complete. In this executed Galilean miracle worker, once a rebel against an Empire who now demanded all citizens become believers in his message, the bishops gathered at Constantine's insistence made as clear as they could that Jesus was the Christ because, in him, humanity came to see and hear God, completely, unblemished, without any question.

All "orthodox" theology, at least as that term is generally understood, is nothing more than an attempt to distinguish itself from those theologies that make claims that do not seem to embrace fully and completely the reality of the Divine-Human encounter in Jesus of Nazareth. As early as St. Paul, we see the beginnings of the attempt to claim that in Jesus, we Christians have encountered the fully-realized exposure of who God is. Who God is can best be seen by understanding what this God does in Jesus Christ.

By the time of Nicaea, over three centuries of controversy, argument, morphing of belief, and exposure to a vast array of settings and contexts, had rendered discussions of Jesus and God, of who Jesus was and who his "Father" is incomprehensible to the original bearers of the message known originally only as "The Way". The big controversy between those who declared (according to detractors; the writings and teachings of Arius are lost to us, known only through the sarcastic recollections of his detractors) "there was a time when He was not" and those who insisted that the Divine-Human encounter made such a statement not only erroneous, but dangerously so, led the young Emperor to decide that a clearing of the muddle was necessary. The irony, at least from an historic perspective, is that the Arians, with their high vision of Divinity which rendered any talk of a fully-divine Jesus of Nazareth intellectually incomprehensible, were by far the large majority of Churchmen. Constantine's Christian mother was an Arian, as were many of his advisers. Yet, once the council was called, Arius' rivals managed to out-maneuver him; with the blessings of Imperial power, the claim that Jesus was somehow not-quite-God was not just declared wrong, but dangerous.

In the 1700 years since that time, the formula adopted at Nicaea, and affirmed over a series of councils in the century following that culminated at Constantinople, became less a touchstone upon which the Church could build a dialogue about who this God is we claim to encounter in Jesus of Nazareth, and more a relic of a dead age. Ensuing centuries saw the attempt to make sense of this declaration of God's threeness and oneness, and for the most part they lose themselves in far too much technical discussion, losing sight that, at its heart, the declaration that, as St. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, lies at the very heart of Trinitarian thought. When we affirm the reality of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - we are affirming that the God we Christians declare has claimed us in a unique way through Jesus Christ has chosen to reveal not something of the "whatness of Divinity" so much as something of the Divine mind and plan.

Protestant thought originally followed the scholastics in getting lost in all sorts of technical discussions concerning substance and accident, procession and interpenetration. By the beginning of the 19th century, however, there was a general recognition, at least by some, that far too much of this talk had become mere noise, a banging gone and clanging symbol. Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre disposed of the Trinity easily enough, adding it as an appendix, a mere afterthought. As late as the mid-20th century, another Reformed theologian, Emil Brunner, could declare in his own dogmatic musings, that the Trinity is not only not Biblical, but the affirmation of the Trinity was just not all that important. It is certainly not essential to salvation (which is really beside the point).

Karl Barth, on the other hand, returned Trinitarian thought to pride of place, putting it at the very beginning of his Church Dogmatics. Yet, over a century of neglect and ridicule had rendered even Barth's heroic attempt to revive the centrality of trinitarian language and thought somewhat off-balance. He tried to speak of the "persons" as "modes of Divine revelation", which could lead the casual reader (if he had any) to think that Barth was falling back on a time-worn error.

This is nit-picking. Because of his prominence, Barth's reversal of Schleiermacher's sidelining of the Trinity opened the door to a revival of sorts of Trinitarian thought in western Protestantism*. While they have varied in success and clarity, the return of the claim that we have to do with something unique in the God Jesus called "Father", and whom we declare has claimed us through the power of the Spirit at the very least offers the possibility of returning talk about God, about revelation, even about Jesus and the life in and of the Holy Spirit a little more coherent, if not always acceptable to a world where such talk no longer has much traction.

Which returns us full circle, I believe, to my thesis. The Trinity has always been nothing more (and nothing less) than a short-hand way of describing the Divine-Human encounter we Christian claim as our unique inheritance. From it flow all the discussion we will subsequently have - on who God is, on who Jesus is, on what it means to be human in Christian terms, on the Divine plan for humanity. No real grasp of my own approach to Christian confession comes without understanding this: I am a Trinitarian by choice, because in the declaration of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we declare the full story of God and creation in the simplest possible terms. Just as working through Scripture is always the starting point for real Christian thought, so, too, is the Trinity.

*I qualify this statement with "west" because the eastern churches have never lost their Trinitarian focus. Indeed, they are so relentlessly Trinitarian, they very often verge on a kind of tri-theism which is far preferable to the watered-down, muddled unitarianism and even Divine utilitarianism of the western churches.

Saturday . . . Well, Music

Sometimes, music evokes a moment in a life. Most people recollect the song that was playing the first time they kissed someone, the first time they made love, or the soundtrack to other life-moments. Sometimes, though, a performer evokes a mood. I cannot listen to the Allman Brothers Band, for example, without thinking of road trips. Their long jams, played very loud, are the perfect accompaniment for those long stretches of driving with the window down, turning them somehow from mundane to something not just fun, but perhaps sublime.

Joni Mitchell brings to mind, for me, high spring. I have no idea why. I hear any of her songs, and for some reason I find myself in the May of life. As we are now in the midst of the harshest of winter's attempts to make us forget the possibility of spring, I have found myself thinking more and more of those May days when the sun is bright and warm and sticks around later and later; those May nights when the breeze takes the edge off the heat without leaving a chill.

In 1976, she released Hejira, finishing a turn to jazz fusion. The most important performing addition on the album was the tragically wonderful Jaco Pastorius, bassist for Weather Report. Mitchell included not just Pastorius but also jazz guitarist Pat Metheny in a tour that showcased not just their talents as musicians, but their ability to subsume their own incredible abilities toward the end of making music for others. She had already worked with Tom Scott; now, with Pastorius and Metheny, she showed she was not messing around.

For me, there isn't a cut on this album that misses the mark. It is hardly "hip and cool", as the writer of the overview at allmusic.com claims. Even at her upbeat best, or her more contemplative down-tempo, thoughtful recordings, Mitchell isn't "cool" in any conventional sense, because she is so deeply, personally engaged with the songs. Here she is, performing the song "Amelia", with Metheny, Pastorius, Metheny's long-time keyboard collaborator Lyle Mays.

The Death Of An Institution

I follow many narrative threads on the internet upon which I rarely comment. The liberal murmuring about the on-going public embarrassment that is The Washington Post is something that needs a comment, I think, if for no reason other than it still sits on my link-list.

The meaningless "liberal media" nonsense of the right is easy enough to disprove; all one need do is point, say, to Eric Alterman's book-length analysis about the reality of media bias to show up that particular urban legend for the nonsense that it is. More than that, however, with the rise of editor Fred Hiatt, the Post has taken a deliberate turn, not so much away from a liberal slant to a more conservative one, as much as it has quite openly courted a certain group who, at one time, certainly held the reins of power and could be considered the shapers of conventional wisdom in the nation's capital.

Anymore, however, those men and women - David Broder, George Will, Kathleen Parker, Michael Gerson - are more and more exposed as either irrelevant, intellectually dishonest and bankrupt, or morally and politically confused. With the addition of Marc Thiessen, and a seemingly deliberate anti-science stance vis-a-vis climate change, the paper whose fame was sealed when two of its reporters hounded a sitting President and his advisers until their entire house collapsed under the weight of public exposure of wrong-doing, is now, as one internet writer called it yesterday, "fish-wrapper".

While an argument could be made that the editorial stance of the paper is distinct from its reporting (one hears this all the time in relation to, say, the Clinton-era Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages were filled with conspiratorial drivel, but whose news pages were actually quite well-written with a careful attention to factual detail), but just a glance at the on-line front-page today shows how that distinction, which has always seemed to me to be largely artificial, cannot possibly be taken seriously.

I will not harp on the "conservative turn" of the editorial page or op-ed page. I will not carry on about what journalism "should be" (a habit of far too many non-journalists that exposes their ignorance more than any bad habits of journalists). I just note all this to say that I do and will keep the Post on my link list. Nostalgia? Perhaps. Hope that it may yet change not so much to a liberal stance as an intellectually honest and coherent one?

No, I don't hold out hope for that any time soon.

Reading II (UPDATE)

I find it inconveniently necessary at this point to do something I find dreadfully dull - say a few words about "method". In Langdon Gilkey's Reaping the Whirlwind, he stops the flow of discussion on the topic at hand to offer an over-long chapter on "method". I kept thinking to myself as I read it, "You know, I could figure this stuff out on my own, but now I have to read all about it." Except, that's not very fair. Gilkey was offering an honest assessment of his own position, giving the reader a chance to understand his own position, and how it had changed since his earlier writings.

So, as I was thinking of how to move forward, I realized that I hadn't really set out, except in some vague general ways, any "method". Instead, I just kind of started writing this. So, in the interest of transparency and intellectual honesty, I guess I should say a thing or two, not so much about method as such, but just generally stake out my own position.

As one could gather reading the first "Reading" post, the Bible is central to my own understanding of the Christian faith. Nothing shocking or surprising there, I suppose (well, maybe to some people). Yet, beyond some vague discussion that the Bible is the starting point, I failed to move forward and say how I read it. Recognizing the diversity of literary styles, the vast time spans covered by a consideration of discrete authorship and specific audiences, it would seem that any attempt at a coherent "reading" of the Bible is, as many scholars have indeed concluded, pretty much a non-starter. There was, for a long time, a vigorous "Biblical Theology" movement (it still exists; WTS's recently retired academic Dean, Bruce Birch, wrote one a couple decades ago). Yet, as Biblical scholarship has continued to move on, the old "New Testament/Old Testament Theology" writing has not only ground to a halt (mostly), it looks kind of quaint. Gerhard von Rad's work, while important, has been superseded. Rudolf Bultmann's Theology of the New Testament, while an important historical document, really doesn't satisfy much anymore.

Recognizing the splintering of any attempt to paste a coherent narrative on the whole of the canon, however, leaves the question still begged - how do you read the Bible, then? I think it is important to say that any attempt to do a cohesive reading of the Bible runs up against the simple fact of diversity of authorship, diversity of literary styles, and the sheer weight of two thousand years of commentaries. For example, I do not subscribe to the typical Christian belief that all sorts of Old Testament passages are actually predictive of, or refer in some way to the Christ event. Part of honoring the reality of the Bible is reading, say, Isaiah, chapters 40-55, as what it is - the celebration of the release of those held in exile in Babylon after the Babylonian Empire was destroyed by the Persians (the Emperor Cyrus is actually referred to with the Hebrew word "meshach" - the same word applied to David, "anointed by God", roughly transliterated as "Messiah"). Too often read during Advent as referring to the birth of Jesus and all that entails theologically, I think we miss the deeper meaning of these texts if we set aside the reality that these poems are songs of joy from a people who have been dreaming, and upon awakening discover their dream is coming true. Shifting the focus of these texts to a Christian context - "they're all about Jesus!" - strips them of meaning, and power.

As always, there is a "but" here. One can, I think, make a general comment about how to read the Bible without impinging on the textual integrity of various passages in and of themselves. I think it isn't a stretch to say that, even those Biblical passages referred to by one scholar as "texts of terror" are part and parcel of the on-going project of people wrestling with their own understanding that they have encountered something Other, an Other that has claimed them in some way. This Other is not some vague "idea" of "Divinity"; it isn't (as I read far too often by people who think they're being oh-so-radical but are really kind of stupid) "the sky fairy". This Other, this very specific, concrete experienced Other has been given the title "God", and a name was offered by this God. The specificity of this name, the specificity of the events in question and how they relate to these people's understanding of who this God is (as opposed, as always, to the very real claims made upon these people by other gods), should, if one is paying attention when one is reading, make clear that, from the stories of the creation of the Universe in the first two chapters of Genesis through the concluding "Amen" when St. John of Patmos declares his vision of the final consummation of this same God's plan for creation at a close that this God can be known. Fleshing out "this God can be known" is going to be the content of the rest of these related posts.

UPDATE: As serendipity would have it, I was pointed to this post, which covers, in a general way, issues that are central to the question of Scriptural centrality in our understanding of the faith. Just go and read it, if you would.

Galileo II

Galileo became famous not only because he invented a telescope, or was the first human being to see the four large moons of Jupiter, or all sorts of other things. He became famous because he managed to force a trial before ecclesiastical big-wigs that ended up with him spending the rest of his life locked in his house, retracting everything he claimed, and (according to one legend) muttering as he walked out after the final verdict was read, "Still, they move".

What's interesting about the whole Galileo episode, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Copernican Revolution, was the theory of optics under review - Galileo's that is - was not only hardly established, it was indeed quite dubious. That it resulted in findings at variance with accepted cosmology was not the only issue; it seemed to violate common sense. Galileo had no answer to the counter-question that the "stars" he saw moving about Jupiter might not just be a trick. They only had his word on the matter, and an optical theory that wasn't even fully fleshed out.

Now, it is clear from the vantage point of several centuries, the whole thing makes the church look bad. The thing is, it could very well have turned out otherwise. What the optical theory Galileo used had going for it was the possibility of being improved upon through the use of tools of various kinds. All the Church elders had was Aristotle and Ptolemy.

I bring up this sad chapter of the history of the science/religion divide because we are experiencing it now. Rather than science/religion, though, it is a conflict between science and industry, science and politicians, and science and blabbermouths. All of the global-warming-deniers seem to rely on the same argument, which always boils down to, "Well, it isn't very warm here, so it's all crap." Which, in a way, was all the Church court had against Galileo; "We don't feel the earth move, and if it did move we'd all go flying out in to space. Besides that, you say you saw those stars move, but we didn't, and besides that, we have no way of proving it's anything more than a trick."

In the long-run, the climate-change deniers are going to look venal, ignorant, and power-mad. The major difference between then and now is the fate of millions of people didn't hang in the balance on the question of whether or not there were moons orbiting Jupiter. While there is little on the table right now that will address the issue as aggressively as it needs, at the very least an acknowledgment the problem is real would be nice.

BS Express

There are a series of short blurbs at Talking Points Memo on recent GOP attempts to make the President look bad on everything from health care to how the Feds handled the Christmas plane bomber. What stands out more than anything is the utter disregard for fact, for consistency, or for propriety.

This is why I don't really worry all that much about the November elections. While the Democratic Party is a sad failure, they aren't wedded to insanity and lies and hypocrisy the way the Republicans are. The simple facts defeat the Republican smear campaign every day. At the very least, if they took a principled stance on an issue rooted in facts, they might be easier to fear. As it is, well, they're a rectum right now spewing out offal at an alarming rate. It's actually kind of funny, because the only politicians the American people are more unhappy with than the Democrats in Congress are . . . Republicans in Congress.

One final thing - I so hope the Republicans get Newt Gingrich front and center this fall because their demise will be even bigger.

I will even start taking bets. Any takers?

Reading

I hold the Bible to be authoritative for the rather banal reason that it is the single best source for an understanding of our faith. "Authority" in my understanding rests on nothing more than, "What else do we have as a starting point?" We can certainly quibble over non-canonical texts, texts declared heretical by the early church, early post-Apostolic writings that almost made the canon. Some of them are certainly fun to read. At the same time, the Church was deliberate about the structure of the canon, and it seems to me the writings of both testaments (the Protestant rejection of Greek parts of the Old Testament is interesting, to be sure) do a fine job as a starting point.

And a starting point is what the Bible is.

I was asked a long time ago how I read the Bible. I said, without any sense of sarcasm, "One word at a time." How else do we read? How else should we read? I have cited, at various time, my conditional acceptance of the Rortyan view of language - as a tool and nothing more; marks on a page (or screen) or sounds - but I want to make the conditions more explicit here. Words have meaning not just because I make them meaningful. Others have found them meaningful as well. How have they been meaningful? Indeed, what is "meaning"?

This is the kind of circular argument and questioning that gets us all bogged down in interesting tangents. Something is "meaningful", words have "meaning" because we respond to them. Should someone attempt to call my name in Urdu, say, or Togalog, I'm not going to respond because those sounds, meaningful to some, would not be so to me. The Bible is meaningful in the same way - it gets us to respond to its words.

I'm not sure how else to put the background to all this.

Anyway, the Church has said over the millennia that the Bible is the source of our faith. It is to be read, to be studied, allowing its words to inform our lives, to challenge our lives, and (one hopes) to change our lives. And we do this by reading. One word at a time.

There is no magic formula for this. There is nothing in the Bible itself, no holy secret sauce that is going to grab this or that person and make him or her suddenly grasp what it is the Bible is offering. We approach the Bible always with the understanding that it is also approaching us. It is a collection of writings from all sorts of places and times, the authors of which are often unknown to us, the original intent of which is also often opaque. Speculating on authorship or original intent might be helpful to some; we can grasp some of the original intent of, say, the Pauline corpus, or the Gospels, without too much difficulty. I say "some" because I am skeptical of ever getting to the point where we read them as their original audience would read them (or hear them, should they be read to an audience).

Like reading any text that no longer serves its original audience, we should always approach "meaning" with the proviso that, with time like a river, layers of meaning have been added to the words, layers we very often can't see. We need to respect all those layers of meaning - even those we aren't aware of - by at least acknowledging their existence. The Bible has been read around much of the world, over the course of two thousand years, sometimes in ways and languages that still surprise us (an ancient Chinese text dating from sometime in the 3rd or 4th century was uncovered not very long ago, suggesting Christian missionaries, or perhaps just caravan members, were moving in to China far earlier than is usually thought). When we approach the Bible, we aren't a "self" in the current understanding of that word. Rather we are just a small part of the whole host of readers, past and present.

Unpacking a Biblical text has more requirements, however, than surrendering the illusion of our autonomy. Part of recognizing the distance in time and space that exists between the text and us means accepting the original language, and understanding that our reading in our contemporary idiom is as much an issue of interpretation as our reading of it. There is no escaping, at our distant remove from the original settings of the writings themselves, the question of interpretation. With this in mind, we should always read consciously, which is why my original answer, "One word at a time," was meant in all seriousness. Each word has weight, if we open ourselves to the possibility. The sum of the linguistic parts is certainly greater than those parts, themselves, but if we disregard those parts in search of some whole, it becomes detached from it.

The Bible is the first source of our understanding of what it means to be a believer. It is the deep root and trunk of our faith. In it we encounter kings and queens, slaves and whores, abandoned children and murderous siblings. We see how God has worked through all of them to bring about God's desired end of communion with us, the creatures God declared to be "very good" at the end of Creation.

In the Bible, we encounter the One whom we declare is our Savior, our Judge, the embodiment of the Divine Word that Created us and sustains us.

How we unpack what these events might mean, well, that's the subject of much of the rest of my planned posts. For now, it is enough to state up front this is the position taken herein.

Deep Background

The postmodernist is in every way a child of the romantics, one who stand alone in nature, defying demands upon the self and searching for that which will satisfy. The difference is that the postmodern self no longer harbors hopes of discovering truth or secure principles. Instead, driven by the ideals of therapy and consumption, it seeks, by whatever means will work, to provide satisfactions for the unencumbered self; it strives to reduce all individual moral actions to matters of choice for which there are no authoritative guidelines or binding principles. In the culture of therapy and interpretation, there is nothing to direct the self except its preferences. There is no goal for the actions of the self save the fulfillment of its desires.

Peter Lundin
The Culture of Interpretation:Christian Faith and the Postmodern World, p. 75

When the first volume of Douglas John Hall's Christian Theology in a North American Context, entitled Thinking the Faith was released, I had many, many faculty at Wesley Theological Seminary insist it would be a landmark. I bought it, and was, to say the least, underwhelmed. It has several things to recommend it, not the least of which is he states the problem of much of contemporary American theology quite succinctly; seeing academic theology blowing in the winds of fads and fashions, most particularly liberation theology, he desires to set forth a statement that is true to our own zeitgeist, while respecting countervailing theologies.

For all that, however, I have numerous problems with his work. First and foremost, he is Canadian. While he strives earnestly to link America and Canada under the rubric "North America", it falls kind of flat. Also, generally speaking, there just seems no methodological center. He insists he has one - the old Lutheran theology of the cross - but it doesn't really inform his musings and thoughts. He outlines it perfunctorily and then just leaves it there.

On the other hand, one thing he does quite well is insist that, before we get to the theological meat, we need an appetizer of a descriptive outline of our "context" (I wearied of reading that word . . .). I believe he failed quite masterfully at this - his main source if a long-dead Canadian psychotherapist - but he at least offered the attempt.

In that vein, I believe it important to state upfront and quite clearly, my own position as to where I believe the Church currently sits. What is the world, as it is currently understood, to which the Church claims to offer a word of grace, of hope, of love?

I offer the epigram above with more than a touch of irony. I wonder about the epithet "postmodern", to be honest. How can we be "postmodern", since we really aren't sure what "modern" is, or perhaps was? It is a lazy way of suggesting that the modernist project has run its course, to be sure; yet as a general way of describing the current state of philosophy, art, and culture in general, I think it is far too broad and ill-defined. Furthermore, while I think the general description Lundin offers - a rootless, monadic self, etching meaning on the walls of a meaningless universe always with the proviso that it is nothing more than a passing fancy - is correct (and would further add that even the heartiest philosophy is nothing more than that; it is our hubris which makes us believe we have reached a stopping point we can call "true"), I think it is banal.

I also do not think it captures the essence of our current culture. There are those who subscribe to this way of living in the world; I do not believe most people would be so bold as to put it this way. The possible exception, of course, are fundamentalists who think this kind of nihilism is pervasive, indicative of the secular mindset, and destructive of our common religious and moral heritage.

I think the world in which the Church currently lives faces far less a threat of cultural nihilism than it does the twin threat of exuberance on the part of some members who seem to believe Christian faith is necessary to our society, on the one hand, and the vocal opposition of at least a committed minority who see any expression of religious belief as a threat to our society. These extremes, to be sure, have limited appeal (as extremes always do), but they at least have the virtue of offering a vast middle ground wherein we Christians can stake out a position that challenges both.

To the fundamentalist, I would offer the insistence that to be the Church we are to live as those called out, set apart. To the secularist, I would simply ask how a world without the religious imagination in general, and specific, concrete religious expressions, would look. The fundamentalist disregard for the "Otherness" of the Christian community ignores the historic idea that we Christians are to be the salt of the earth; as Jesus himself asks, what happens when that salt loses its savor? It is to be cast aside and trodden underfoot! The idea that our society, our culture, can only be our society as long as it adheres to a particular, Christian, ethic and way of believing ignores the impossibility inherent in really being Christian that, at its heart, is part of the dilemma we all face. Since this fundamentalist insistence usually accompanies an insistence that Christian faith be reduced to a kind of middling morality - an obsession with sexual propriety, personal behavior to the almost total disregard of the social implications of love for neighbor, and a peculiar regard for the human fetus that borders on compulsion - it is easy enough to mock. Yet, we need to do more than mock. We need to be clear as to why this position does not address the Scriptural, historical approach that sees belief as a Christian as a witness to something other than prevailing norms.

To the secularist, the answer is completely different. While refusing to disregard the reality that Christians have been the authors of much horror, we would offer the unrepentant, "So?" The first attempt at a rational state, the French Republic after the Revolution, ended up at the logical conclusion of the Terror. I find that hardly exemplary, even from a humanist perspective. Any ideology is inherently totalitarian, which is why it must always be tempered with the acceptance of criticism. I fail to see where non-religious ideologues have offered anything remotely human, or anything that in the long run does not end with a mass grave.

While the caricature of the post-modernist as the romantic monad does have some validity, my own perspective is that uprooted self cannot exist. We are part and parcel of an historic stream, in to which we are born and from which we depart. We are rooted as human beings existing as part of that history - not History as some grand narrative, or overarching force driving us collectively forward or backward, but very concretely as the events of our times as reactions to past events, and creators of new reactions in the future - which keep us grounded. It is true that far too many Americans, most eloquently Emerson and Whitman, believed history was a chain binding us to a kind of ontological and ontic slavery from which we Americans must needs escape in order to be American. The impossibility of this, just on a practical level, is evident all around us. The constant striving to exist as a people outside the whims and fancies of time and history leads to unrealism in our approach to being a nation among nations, an unhealthy belief in our uniqueness, politically, socially, culturally.

Quite apart from any metaphysical argument, the simple reality is we as human beings exist as historic creatures. The attempt to actually live a life uprooted from history is, in the end, to choose not to live at all. It isn't even existence.

More than any other single thing, I believe this idea - our peculiar American notion that we do, or can, or should, exist outside our collective national and world history - is the most pervasive ideological stumbling block we face. From it we stream all the rest - our racism, our destruction of the native populations, our imperial wars in Central America and the Caribbean, the Pacific rim and southeast and southwest Asia, our refusal to allow others to be our guides as to how best to coexist with other nations, the pervasive insistence that ours is not only the greatest nation ever, but that all other nations desire to emulate our way of life. Both fundamentalism and secular ideologies hold these ideas; they are both rooted in our American claim to exist, in some way, outside of history.

Thus, our postmodern condition is only partly correct as a diagnosis, precisely because it, too, shares this delusion.

Music For Your Monday

In honor of American's First City of Music winning the Super Bowl, well, you know . . .

Jelly Roll Morton's "Finger Breaker":



Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five's, "Heebie Jeebies":



Mac Rebinack, known as Dr. John, plays old-time, New Orleans-style jazz and boogie-woogie, a purist to the core. His CD Going Back To New Orleans is a masterful celebration of the sound of a city. Here he is from 1986, doing "Mac's Blues":



Last and best, here are The Neville Brothers. If you listen close, you can hear zydeco, jazz, blues, funk, and even some serious rocking. These guys are among the greatest American bands of all time. "Fire On The Bayou":



If the Colts had won, what could I have done? John Mellencamp and David Lee Roth . . .

As Good A Place As Any

So, I was thinking if I'm going to do this whole "positive statement" thing, it might be a good idea to start. A good place to start is to anticipate a couple questions that usually come to the forefront when addressing the whole questions, "What do you believe? Why do you believe it?"

According to Albert Outler, John Wesley added to the traditional Anglican triad of Scripture, tradition, and reason. With experience comes a way of reflecting upon how these other three impact our lives as individuals, and individuals who are answerable to one another in and for the faith. I like this so-called "Wesleyan Quadrilateral" precisely because, potentially, it encompasses the Bible, Church history, theology, and our own growth in the faith. In fact, I have thought for a while a great, 40-week course (like the Disciple Bible Study and Christian Believers series the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship has developed, both of which are successful) using the Quadrilateral as a model: ten weeks on the Bible; ten weeks on church history; ten weeks on theological thought; and ten weeks on the spiritual disciplines. Then, if one is interested, turn to the Disciple series of Bible studies, the Christian Believer class, and perhaps develop other curricula as well, centered on the history of the Church and the spiritual life.

In any event, at its heart, those are what are often referred to as the "norms" of my reflections. Scripture. Tradition. Reason. Experience. If you want to push me, "scripture" refers to the canonical texts of the Protestant Bible; tradition is the whole broad, deep, and wide history of the faith and its expressions; reason is the multitude of ways people throughout time have wrestled with this whole thing they call "faith", and expressed it, sometimes well, sometime poorly; experience encompasses not just mundane "experience", the everyday living of life, but also and more specifically prayer and worship, the place of the sacraments in one's life, and how this is pursued, with or without a certain discipline, but always answerable to our brothers and sisters in the faith.

I have spent the better part of 20 years of my life reading, studying, discussing, thinking, arguing, and trying to understand theology. I have done so not as a disinterested observer, as if it were an interesting intellectual exercise, but rather as a deeply personal desire to understand others' attempts to come to terms with their faith. Even if I don't always agree with them; even if I find their conclusions questionable, their methods narrow, and their sources in need of some serious reconsidering, I still benefit from their struggle.

A friend said that his own theological inquiry was rooted in the question, "What do the Cappadocians have to say to Bedford-Stuyvesant?" My initial response to that was, "Probably not much." I think I would change that ever so slightly and say that I am searching for my own perspective, and while I can see where the Cappadocians - or St. Thomas, or William Ockham, or Zwingli, or Tillich - might come in handy, it would only be as deep background. They spoke to their time and place, and spoke well, to be sure. For that reason alone they have an authority to be respected. Yet, their dialect and idiom, their world and time are all strange to us. We can only use them so much before their words cease to have meaning.

Even a more recent Christian thinker - Reinhold Niebuhr, say, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer - might offer insights that seem, at first blush, to be right on the mark. After carefully considering them, however, we might come to see a word or phrase, or even whole works, as being answers to questions we do not understand. Part of respecting one's sources is respecting the distance in time and space, the very real milieu in which this or that person wrote and taught, lived and died.

Even a passing familiarity with the history of the Church* should humble anyone who thinks that his or her voice has anything significant, let alone original, to the conversation we continue to have on belief. Very often, all we have is a reshuffling of the deck, a change in emphasis at most. I offer no belief either in my own originality or even persuasiveness. All I offer is what I have, and since I am offering it, not to you, but to God, well, I know it won't be good enough on any merits. Because I understand grace to be both prodigious and prodigal, however, I don't worry.

*When you see "Church" capitalized, I am referring to all the various expressions of communal faith we call "churches" - Orthodox and Roman, Evangelical and Reformed, Pentecostal and Anabaptist. Some might disagree and think writing in this way is too abstract; I think it's a lot easier than writing all that out time and again.

Stripping Down

I have spent the better part of the past couple years standing aside from much "churchy" controversy. I have been highly critical of "theologies" that I find either purposely obtuse or obscurantist. I have concentrated a bit too much, I think, on left politics and my own music fetish, and not enough on any kind of positive statement of what I believe, how that belief guides my life.

I was reading Karl Barth's lecture, "Gospel and Law" this morning and I realized, like Barth did at some point, that "Nein!" just isn't enough. In a far more colloquial, vernacular way, I hear, "OK, wiseass, what do you believe?" I want to stammer, "But . . . but . . . can't you figure it out from what I've written so far?" If the answer is "No", then, well, I can't blame you. Positive statements have been few and far between here.

So, over the ensuing days and weeks, I shall be pursuing, in a rather unsystematic way, what it is I believe, why I believe it, and some of the roots of that belief. Just one caveat. As this is a blog, not a theology seminar, if it seems incomplete or haphazard in some way, that is more the nature of the medium than anything else. If a point seems off, or ill-conceived, or not thought through, make a comment and I'll address it best I can.

I would outline the way it's gonna go, but since I only have the desire at the moment to address these issues, and no plan in place, I guess we all will be surprised with what comes out, won't we?

Cue The Wrong Buzzer

This piece at Media Matters sums up more of my frustration over some liberal press-bashing.

I'm getting the feeling that if Tea Party conventioneers told the Times' Kate Zernike that the world was flat she'd run with it.

Uh, what was that?

As noted earlier, she referenced Tea Party organizers who claimed "millions" had marched at Tea Party protests within the last year; a figure that appers to be fabricated.

Now in a follow-up piece, Zernike writes

Susan and Gil Harper from Cushing, Me. — she a lawyer who telecommutes to New York, he a furniture maker — said they had limited their political involvement to voting. But Mr. Harper said the bank bailout outraged them, and pushed him to his first Tea Party rally.

By Christmas, he told his wife that what he wanted was a ticket to the Tea Party Convention. When she gave it to him, she said she would go along, but only incognito, wearing a hat and sunglasses.

“Because of Nancy Pelosi calling people who believe in the Tea Party movement Nazis,” she explained. “My grandfather’s family, as Polish Jews, escaped Nazism. To call us Nazis is an abomination.”

Fact: Nancy Pelosi never called Tea Party supporters "Nazis." Period. But the Times quotes a conservative making that slanderous claim. The Times treats the outlandish allegation as fact.

No. It treated that outlandish allegation as an attributed quote.

What, exactly, is wrong here? The doofus isn't the woman from the Times, who, after all, is only doing her job. It's pretty clear the doofus is this woman from Maine who believes that Nancy Pelosi has spies who are going to arrest all the Jewish Nazis at the Tea Party convention.

What else is this woman supposed to do? Attribute the quote by adding, "said the insane woman from Maine who apparently has no idea she has bought a bunch of bull"?

I'm honestly foozled here.

Well-Intentioned Idiocy

The report of American "missionaries" attempting to take Haitian "orphans" back to the US - including sneaking them across the Dominican border - is just another example of people believing that "doing the right thing" trumps laws, both national and international, as well as common sense.

While I believe these folks had their heart in the right place, it might have been nice if they had decided to go through the proper hoops and loops of Haitian and American law before deciding, on their own, to just "rescue" these children. A point against them, I think, is the pretty-clear understanding they had that they were doing something illegal.

As the story moves on, my guess is it will become a focal point of conflict between hard-core fundamentalists and other right-wing Christians who will defend them, and the anti-religious folks who will see this as yet another mark against Christians. In the process, the facts of the story will become lost, and the real people involved, American and Haitian, will disappear entirely.

It is for this last reason I hope this is my only comment on this particular bit of news. They were, most assuredly, doing what they thought was "right". They were doing it badly, with the full knowledge that it was also quite illegal. Doing good is not a defense, so my guess is the Haitian courts will not be open to hearing it as a defense.

The worst part, for me, is no one will come out of this a winner. Not the Americans, who may end up in serious legal trouble in Haiti; not the Haitian children, who were stolen from their homes and families without their consent, and still face the prospect of having to live through the long recovery in an impoverished country; and not the churches and their allies who are seeking to help the Haitian people and will now be regarded with suspicion by all parties because of the thoughtless dumbness of a few claiming to act in the name of God.

Personal

On January 5, I received a call that my father was hospitalized. It was quite serious. I left the next morning and spent three days helping out my Mom, being with my siblings, and making sure my father would make it. When I returned home, I went through two migraines, got a nice boil on my tush from sitting for 24 of 120 hours (two twelve-hour travel days), and then I passed a kidney stone.

The next Friday, our whole household went through a weekend of GI virus. We spent more time in our bathrooms than any group should.

Our beloved 15-year-old cat died, suddenly, without warning, one evening.

Last night, our older daughter, Moriah, was diagnosed with pneumonia, along with a probable torn intercostal muscle, causing a sharp pain in her left shoulder.

Right now, I am trying to fight off (a) depression, (b) a mild persecution complex, and (c) the thought that what lies around the corner will be just as crappy as what has recently happened. Along with a pretty busy schedule at home, these have combined to keep me from blogging as much as I usually do, and with enthusiasm.

In Which I Register My Frustrations

So there I was yesterday, going back and forth a bit with someone on Facebook, calling David Horowitz a nihilist, when it occurred to me that I was confessing, in a way, my dissatisfaction with the current state of "liberal blogs". First of all, I hate that second word. I rarely use it, even when I talk about the stuff I do. What's more, I don't think of a lot of different sites as "blogs" - The Huffington Post? Crooks and Liars? Nah . . . - but rather just various facets of new media. More important, however, than whether or not this or that website qualifies as a "blog", was the question of who is or is not "liberal". In the context of the discussion, Glenn Greenwald's name came up, and the people with whom I was having this brief little back-and-forth agreed that calling him "liberal" is wrong. He is a kind of left-leaning libertarian.

Then, of course, I had to add my two cents. I took it a step further. I also dropped digby's name, adding it to my own personal list of those whom I don't believe are really "liberal". I offered my opinion (to which there was no specific reply, so I don't know how my interlocutors felt about this particular observation) that they aren't really "liberal". I said that I felt that they were just critics, pure and simple. Far too often they wrote as if they occupied some perch high above it all - I referenced Hegel's remark on some other philosopher that he wrote from an "angel's" point of view - and were able, without any effort at all, to pronounce a pox on all houses because they had nothing invested in current issue debates, public discourse, and the like.

One of those with whom I was writing back and forth made the remark that liberals, unlike conservatives, base their politics on "thought"; the latter are rooted (in this person's view) in emotion, which makes dealing with them far more difficult. I disagree 100% with this particular point-of-view, but he at least offered as evidence the thought that far too many liberals believe (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that there exists some one single piece of evidence that, if generally known and accepted, will make conservatives (and probably the rest of America) smack their collective foreheads and exclaim, "Golly, you're right! We all need to listen to these liberals after all!"

This last observation is the source of part of my frustration with self-described "liberals" and their websites. You peruse the above-mentioned folks, or Crooks and Liars, or Think Progress, or The Daily Howler, you can see this dynamic at work. One site, Media Matters for America, is entirely predicated on the idea that, providing the various ways mainstream media obfuscate, occasionally lie, and (in the case of right-wing blabbermouths on AM radio) are even quite scary, we shall shun them and their nefarious ways for sources of information that are more thorough, more honest, more based in reality (please note, I use this final phrase with irony).

For all their earnest, indeed tireless, efforts, however, FOXNews is still on the air, Rush Limbaugh still does five days a week, and conservatives (who at least have the advantage, as minorities usually do, of having someone to unite against) seem quite determined to act, well, as conservatives.

What's more, the constant invocation of their perspective, their failures, their constant untruths (and, one should add, the way those various rhetorical crimes end up manipulating hapless, spineless Democratic politicians) leads one to believe that they might not be paying attention. It is easy enough, as too often happens, to call out a public figure for hypocrisy. They haven't noticed, I believe, that it is not only easy, but old and tired. Furthermore, it doesn't work. The constant barrage of, "I know you are but what am I?" garbage ends up as mere bitchiness more than anything else after a while. If these folks were paying attention, they might notice that they aren't moving the conversation forward, they aren't changing habits of reportage or commentary, and they might just be losing some folks (like me) along the way.

The biggest pet peeve I have isn't the repetition of, "Boy, look how much the right-wing is lying today!" It is the aggrieved tone, the implication of the old phrase (one doesn't read it too often these days, but a couple years ago or so it was quite in vogue) "the reality-based community", as if we liberals have the skeleton to "reality" that our political opponents do not. Now, it is quite true - before anyone slobbers over their stuttered, "But. . . but . . ." I will come clean right up front - that I often make observations on how odd this or that statement or position by some right-wing individual is; I make the case (usually) that my own perspective comes from the not-exactly controversial position that the specific statement at issue has no basis in fact, is quite often poorly reasoned, or perhaps the source has a history of being in error, or have certain biases I find troubling. I hope, however, that I have not crossed the line from specific observations on this or that particular case to a kind of general tone that boils down to this following: "I'm so right and the rest of the world is so wrong, and yet no one seems to care; apparently the rest of the world is crazy or stupid or both."

The tone of aggrieved, earnest pleading - no one seems to understand that these folks are right and the rest of the world is just wrong wrong wrong! - is the main reason I have stopped reading Noam Chomsky. I will defend his voluminous works on the merits, both factual and ideological, to any and all comers. But, for myself, I have wearied of the beleaguered tone he has adopted in recent years.

Alleged "liberal bloggers" far too often in recent days and months have started adopting this idea. What's more, the barrage of reports on the various "failures" of the mainstream media - and some of them, indeed, are failures, not just ideological quirks - leads me to believe that, underneath the celebration of "alternate media" one read about not long past (like when I started perusing the internet, almost four years ago now), what really motivates far too many of these folks is a desire to pierce the mainstream bubble of noise and get their mugs on television, their words spread across a larger platform than the internet. Rather than setting up a kind of alternate network of reporting and commentary, it seems that what is really going on is a concerted effort to become the newest face of teevee or voice in print. One detects more than a little envy at the thought that someone as quite obviously ridiculous as David Brooks or borderline sociopathic as Bill Kristol pull down huge salaries as commentators, while these folks, tirelessly typing away in the quiet of their homes, are so much better at commentary, so much more insightful, so much more right.

Yawn.

So, I've stopped reading digby, whom I used to read pretty religiously. Ditto, Glenn Greenwald (and his pose has passed the tiresome stage and reached the annoying; "I'm right, everyone else is wrong!" only works for so long before it pisses off pretty much everyone). Crooks and Liars and Think Progress should drop the whole, "Look at the hypocrite-of-the-day and how the media ignore is and us in the process!" crap. Yes, Bill O'Reilly is quite awful, and might actually be a borderline personality. He isn't going to lose his job for all that. Even someone as odd (and occasionally creepy) as Chris Matthews will continue to be a media force, no matter how often his errors and occasional flights in to la-la land are pointed out.

There is still the possibility that the internet will provide a platform for developing alternative, virtual communities united around a common vision for the country, providing information and commentary that differs from the mainstream. At this point, however, the entire self-described (and too often erroneously so) political-social-cultural left on the internet is sinking in to irrelevance precisely because they have foregone the celebration of their own possibilities and expend too much effort celebrating their own alleged merits and pleading their own purity.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to vent.

Hometown Dumb

When I was a child, my hometown of Waverly, NY had three elementary schools, Lincoln Street, Ithaca Street, and Elm Street (although Elm Street school actually served as a kind of lower middle school, having 4th, 5th, and 6th grades exclusively). The school district offices were housed in an old school building, Mary Muldoon, the former high school (my father graduated from that school in 1939). At some point when I was in high school - I don't remember exactly when - the school district decided that, enrollments shrinking with the end of the Baby Boom, they wanted to consolidate the elementary schools and economize in other ways. They sold both Muldoon and and Ithaca Street schools. Muldoon was sold, over a period of years, to everyone from the county (it housed Village branch offices of a variety of county and state services), to various private owners who used it as office space (although they kept the gym in the basement; I remember playing pick-up basketball games there a few times). Ithaca Street became, first, a kind of nursing home ("extended care facility" I think it was called), then the offices of an independent laboratory, I don't know what all else.

Now, the Village wants to buy Ithaca Street School to house the Village offices because the building currently used in the business district doesn't work very well. Muldoon, which has sat empty for more years than it was actually in service by various owners, including the school district, is now owned by some developers who wish to turn it into . . . you guessed it, senior housing (they received approval from the zoning board for a special use permit).

The reason I've titled this post "dumb" is two-fold. When Ithaca Street was sold, my father was frustrated because, as I recall him saying at the time, either the school district or the Village would want the building back at some point. Sure enough, they are having to buy the building back, and have to spend quite a bit of taxpayer money to bring it up to code in the process (they applied for state and federal money to help out and were denied).

On the Muldoon school business there is a bit of hilarity in the linked article that kind of points out the absurdity of renovating the building for use.

The only concerns presented were from Pennsylvania Avenue neighbor Wendy Lougher, who asked about the property’s sagging wood fence and about plans for dealing with the wildlife that currently reside in the vacant building.(italics added)

When the current residents of a building are "wildlife", you know there are issues.

What makes this "dumb" is the property, which sits just east of the center of the village, includes a small park, complete with a bandshell. When I was a kid, the Village would make a little ice rink for kids to skate there; I don't know how long ago they stopped doing that, probably for reasons of liability, but that piece of land is now Village owned; with the arrival of a "senior residence", will the park go the way of the ice rink? In fact, I have to wonder about keeping the building in place all these years, vacant, a hotel for raccoons and opossums. The property could have been sold years ago, the building torn down and the entire thing made park space - trees planted, playground equipment, maybe that ice rink in winter, summer concerts in the bandshell - but, instead, the whole rigmarole of zoning board meetings, waiting on the new owners to get public monies for their renovation efforts (that's another point at issue; the current owners have applied for assistance for the renovation, and I have to wonder how far forward this is going to move if that money isn't forthcoming).

It's really kind of stupid.

Of course, local politics in most communities, large and small, is chock full of short-term thinking like this, infinite complications, and the always-fun waiting game for budgetary help from various state and federal agencies. That doesn't make it any less aggravating.

Untangling Pretzel Logic

I have been thinking, for several days, how I would approach this article from American Thinker. Do I write a shorter? Do I attempt to address it point-by-point? Do I just laugh at how absurd it is? Do I point out numerous, glaring, factual errors, straw arguments, and failures of analysis?

I kept trying and I realized that the piece is such a complete mash-up that I couldn't do it justice. It's garbage. My guess, which is all I have, is that the book under review by Thomas Sowell, is most likely equally bad (a highly educated scholar at an elite University writes a book in which he castigates highly educated elites for offering their talents to the commonweal; that, at the very least, is what I got from the review; that much cognitive dissonance would give me a migraine for a week).

Rather than put my brain through the torture, I have just decided to point out that this kind of utterly horrid business is praised by many on the right. Consider the name of the website, after all. This is what passes for "thoughtful conservatism" these days.

An object lesson in truly crazy.

Voting With My Butt

Today is primary day in Illinois. I am registering my frustration by not voting.

The Democratic candidates for governor include our well-intentioned but ineffectual current Blago-replacement, Pat Quinn, and a couple also-rans who have been waiting in the wings for a while. The Republicans feature two suburban moderates and two right-wing nut-jobs, one of whom will be the likely candidate. None of those seeking the office, I believe, have what it takes to do the job that needs to be done, which includes reigning in the state legislature, and paying our state bills (they have been in arrears for a while).

I may actually sit out the general election in the fall, too, depending upon who the parties decide are their standard bearers. I have been unhappy with state politics in Illinois since I moved here; I voted against Blagojevich in the primary in 2002, and voted a third-party candidate in both general elections when he ran. I feel I at least have the satisfaction of not voting for someone I knew, even then, would be a disaster for the state. Being right, however, is little comfort, considering the sorry state of party politics in my chosen state of residence. My Congressman is a Republican who is so anonymous even when the House was run by a Republican from his state, he didn't get a committee chair. My current state representative, Ron Waite, is stepping down to run for judge, and is so stupid, he actually had a campaign brochure with an "endorsement" that contained a glaring grammatical error on the cover. It's actually kind of funny.

I am depressed with our current status quo, politics-wise, in the state. Sadly, with the Republicans in thrall to kooks and crazies, and the Chicago pretty much in charge of the Democrats, I'm not what one would call hopeful.

Should the primary voters surprise me, though, I might change my mind. At the very least, sending Ron Waite in to retirement would be nice.

Defense Details

One of the details emerging from the QDR is the decision by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to replace the beleaguered F-22 Raptor fighter program with the so-called Joint Strike Force F-35. The advantage to this is the F-35 was specifically designed to be able to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier.

Like most major Defense Department projects, however, the F-35 has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. One of the reasons for canceling the F-22 was the plane cost quite a bit more than was originally estimated. Unfortunately, so has the F-35 program. It seems Gates understands this and has now done something about it.

See this guy? Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz? He’s the program manager for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program plagued by cost overruns. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, just fired him.

One reporter called it a “bombshell” in a still-ongoing press briefing. But Gates canceled the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet in favor of making the JSF the replacement jet, as, among other reasons, it’s operable across both the Navy and the Air Force. But defense reformers have pointed to the JSF’s ballooning costs as similarly problematic. Gates just said that the program’s coming under fiscal control. But he said he couldn’t put the program back in order “without people being held accountable.”

While this is a good sign, reigning in costs will be accomplished by more than just firing the guy in charge of the program. Resetting the entire procurement process for this particular plane might not be a bad idea. The idea of a JSF fighter is long in coming - duplication of programs is part of the problem with the DoD - and reducing the competition among the services would go a long way toward reducing costs.

It's a good first step, and Gates needs to be applauded for making it.

Music For Your Monday

I do not, nor am I advocating, drug use. Yet, I find it more than fascinating that some of our greatest musicians have been, not to put too fine a point on it, pot heads. Leaving aside folks like Jerry Garcia and contemporary artists like Snoop Dogg, the use of marijuana has been part and parcel of American music for well over a century. Its slightly hallucinogenic effects, the way it seems to expand the perception of time, certainly offers to users the opportunity, within themselves, to explore various musical ideas with a sense of freedom they might not otherwise have.

The singular genius of Louis Armstrong was aided, in no small part, by his daily use of marijuana. Arrested for possession in Hollywood in the early 1930's, he was bailed out and fled to Europe where he toured for quite a while as his manager (a fringe member of organized crime) and attorneys sorted the issue out. Armstrong thanked his manager by dumping him for another with even closer connections to the mob, and in the process pissing off one of the great sociopaths of the underworld, Dutch Schultz (way to go, Louis). Here is one of his signature recordings, with the Hot 5's, "West End Blues":



One of the more famous consumers of cannabis is Willie Nelson. Growing it on his ranch, being quite open and honest about his use, Nelson is another of those singular American voices, transcending the limitations of his genre. Here he is with Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Kris Kristofferson looking on as he plays "Funny How Time Slips Away".



Around the time the next song was released, Paul and Linda McCartney were busted in Japan for possession. What's funny is they were completely unphased by it. Comparing their marijuana intake to their vegetarian lifestyle, they saw absolutely nothing wrong with it (which, I suppose, would fit with a couple who, like the others here, used it on an almost daily basis). While not as interesting a songwriter as George Harrison, or as provocative as John Lennon, McCartney's output has been quite strong (although perhaps not warranting nearly $1000 for a concert ticket!). Also, with Wings, he gave former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Lane a second chance. This kind of pop fluff is what McCartney is best known for, "Silly Love Songs":

Defense Spending And The Proposed Spending Freeze (UPDATE)

On FOXNews today, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh complained about the horrid "left-wing blogs" who are attacking the Obama Administration's proposed spending freeze. As it was outlined, at least so far, the freeze itself would be limited to what is usually referred to as "non-defense discretionary spending". So-called entitlements - which really aren't entitlements so much as they are long-term obligations - aren't to be touched. Yet again, however, neither is spending for the Department of Defense (although it is reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that Defense spending should be on the table).

Tomorrow, the Department of Defense (DoD) releases the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which the DoD website calls "a legislatively-mandated review of Department of Defense strategy and priorities." In the preview of QDR, the DoD reports that, along with ending some programs and focusing on developing new technologies and expanding existing ones to deal with future threats, there will also be a focus on the troops and their families. This last is good news, considering that giving military families more money was like pulling teeth during the allegedly "military-friendly" Bush years and Republican control of Congress.

Yet, should one consider a budget more than merely "spending money", but a way to understand priorities and even underlying assumptions, the preamble to last year's budget offers a glimpse in to the thinking behind current military spending. These assumption remain, in essence, unchanged from nearly two-generations of Cold War notions of American military dominance.

For example, the United States currently maintains 10 aircraft carriers and their attendant battle groups. Carriers are platforms for projecting American power outward, in effect extending the borders of the United States to whatever point on the globe they occupy (there are actually eleven carriers in service, but one is only for training purposes). These extremely vulnerable ships - they have a fleet of ships around them including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines not only as offensive platforms, but to protect them as well - while in many ways the pride of the American fleet, are a two-generation-old idea of naval superiority and power projection that look impressive, but create multiple problems. Indeed, the whole question of the need for a Navy is rarely asked; after all, countries have always had navies as an expression of national pride and power.

Behind all of this sits the idea of American military supremacy as a necessary concomitant of American political dominance. Yet, as this handy-dandy website shows (the figures are for FY 2009, but my guess is the incremental change is probably negligible), of total global military spending, the United States alone accounts for nearly half.

Think about that.

There are roughly 220 nation-states in the world (give or take the occasional failed state). Among those include potential adversaries like Iran and China; our allies in the European Union, Australasia, and South America; and potential battle-ground areas such as Pakistan. Even as Iran and China and Russia, even Venezuela, are touted as potential military rivals, one should consider the simple fact that, in 2009, the United States budgeted $711,000,000,000 for the military. China budgeted $122,000,000,000. In other words, for every dollar China spent on their military (including their enormous standing army), the United States spent six. Iran, considered as part of the larger group of Middle Eastern and North African states, accounted for 5% of global military spending. That is to say, it was a fractional part of a fractional part of total global military spending.

What makes these staggering figures even more astounding is the following consideration from the Center for Defense Information (a think tank dedicated to military reform, created by former military personnel):

The articles that newspapers all over the country publish today will be filled with [military spending] numbers to the first decimal point; they will seem precise. Few of them will be accurate; many will be incomplete, some will be both. Worse, few of us will be able to tell what numbers are too high, which are too low, and which are so riddled with gimmicks to make them lose real meaning.

Looked at another way yet, consider this:

Commenting on the earlier data, Chris Hellman, noted that when adjusted for inflation the request for 2007 together with that needed for nuclear weapons the 2007 spending request exceeds the average amount spent by the Pentagon during the Cold War, for a military that is one-third smaller than it was just over a decade ago.

So . . .

Even though the United States currently has American troops in harms way in two regional theaters (the Middle East and South Asia), it seems to me that there is no reason whatsoever that the assumptions behind the defense budget need to be addressed in a fundamental way. Not only for reasons of budgetary sanity, but to reset our entire set of national priorities. Even if we cut our defense spending to 78% of its current dollar amount*, the United States would still account for nearly 40% of global military spending, which would still be twice the amount of the next-largest military-spender - our combined European allies, who account for about 20% of global military spending. We would still maintain overwhelming global military superiority (including such outmoded weapons platforms as aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and ICBMs). We would also be unable to face, in any kind of strategically or even tactically coherent fashion, the current threats from non-state actors (precisely because these aren't exactly military, or completely military, threats).

UPDATE: Here is the QDR in .pdf format. Under the heading, "America's Global Role" (as if such a thing were unquestionable), this just jumped out at me:

America's interests and role in the world require armed forces with unmatched capabilities and a willingness on the part of the nation to employ them in defense of our interests and the common good. The United States remains the only nation able to project and sustain large-scale operations over extended distances.

While I have not had time to examine the review in detail, based just on this little snippet, it seems there is little "review" of the far-more fundamental question of the place of military spending within the larger question of the decline of American power and influence, and how a more chastened American nation relates to the rest of the world.

On the other hand, Matt Yglesias reports that, as far as China is concerned, the QDR strikes a realistic, even chastened, tone (at least compared to, say, neocons who continue to insist they are the next big threat to our global interests):

China’s growing presence and influence in regional and global economic and security affairs is one of the most consequential aspects of the evolving strategic landscape in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. In particular, China’s military has begin to develop new roles, missions, and capabilities in support of its growing regional and global interests, which could enable it to play a more substantial and constructive role in international affairs. The United States welcomes a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a greater global role. The United States welcomes the positive benefits that can accrue from greater cooperation. However, lack of transparency and the nature of China’s military development and decision-making process raise legitimate questions about its future conduct and intentions within Asia and beyond. Our relationship with China must therefore be multidimensional and undergirded by a process of enhancing confidence and reducing mistrust in a manner that reinforces mutual interest. The United States and China should sustain open channels of communication to discuss disagreements in ordert o manage and ultimately reduce the risks of conflict that are inherent in any relationshop as broad and complex as that shared by these two nations.

Translation - there is no earthly reason to consider the Chinese a potential strategic adversary, and we have a host of resources to keep our relations with the Chinese on a non-threatening level. In other words, the folks at DoD are much more sanguine about the prospects for our relations with the Chinese. That's a good sign, I suppose.

*I fixed this. My math was stupid, and I realized it sometime last night. Cutting the overall dollar amount to reflect a 10% cut in proportion to total global military expenditures would not be a 10% cut in the expenditures. That's an elementary mistake. It took me longer to find a calculator than to fix this. Sorry.