Music - Some New Some Old

I'd been on a self-imposed drought from iTunes. Until yesterday. I bought three complete releases, and here are some clips that show that I am still eclectic as ever. Hope you enjoy them.

Ray LaMontagne, from God Willing and the Creeks Don't Rise, "Repo Man"



Big Elf, from Cheat The Gallows, this is "The Evils of Rock and Roll" (I saw them open for Dream Theater last year, and they are really, really good - Black Sabbath meets Rob Zombie meets early Alice Cooper)



Finally, The Neville Brothers, Live From Planet Earth and they do a kicking version of this song (as if they wouldn't!), "Yellow Moon"

National Rumor-Panic (UPDATE)

Like many liberals, I've been by turns amused and confounded by the persistent oddness of many anti-Obama activists. Whether Tea Party members, Republican members of Congress who are just odd (like Michelle Bachman of Minnesota or Steve King of Iowa), or media figures like Glenn Beck or disgraced ousted Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, there are mechanisms and forces involved that defy easy categorization. While it is easy enough to rest upon the various anxieties brought on by recession, stubborn unemployment, and the sudden change in major-party leadership at a national level, including having a woman as Speaker of the House and an African-American President, these "causes" or "conditions of possibility" do not account for the persist belief in non-factuals - that the President and his Administration are either, or by turns, communist, socialist, fascist, radical liberation theologians, and Muslims; that the President of the United States was born in Kenya and raised in Madrassas in Indonesia; that he exhibits, in the odd turn of phrase Gingrich used last week, a "Kenyan anti-colonial" ideology.

Nor is it possible to dismiss these persistent public statements as the result of simple ignorance, or racism. It is not "the media's fault", because that would entail blaming not just those channels of information that reinforce these odd ideas - AM talk radio, FOXNews - but the entire gamut of sources from which we gain our information about the larger world, including the internet and the mainstream press both of which have done an admirable and persistent job exposing these claims as false. While the phenomenon of "agnotology" certainly accounts, at an individual level (and perhaps group level as well) for some of the persistence, it cannot account for all of it.

I have been re-reading, for the first time in several years, Jeffrey Victor's marvelous study of the Satanic cult conspiracy theory, Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. One key to unraveling the confounding persistence of rumors of Satanic cult activity - including ritual child abuse, murder, cannibalism, and the infiltration of government and society to undermine its values and mores - is understanding specific events as examples of what Victor calls a "rumor panic". He offers various examples of rumor panics as illustrative, a famous one being the Satanic ties of Proctor & Gamble. Now, at the link, this is offered up as an example of the intellectual heft of agnotology; even in the face of evidence that falsifies each and every claim made by those who insisted P&G was actually a front for Satanism. These beliefs persisted, boiling up every few years as those original fliers, over thirty years old now, continuing to circulate.

As the various mechanisms behind rumor-panics are explained, and as one particular rumor-panic - a Satanic cult panic in the far western New York town of Jamestown, in 1988 - is studied in detail (including a chronology of the development of the rumor panic dating from the previous autumn), it dawned on me that these mechanisms and social and social-psychological triggers might just be present in the various outbursts of strange statements and conspiratorial theories surrounding our President.

I think this is at least an interesting possibility, worthy of deeper study.

UPDATE: Oh my God. I think it safe to say that someone has replaced Doug Feith as the stupidest fucking guy on the planet.

I am including this as an update on this post because it demonstrates how truly stupid people somehow have seats of authority - in this case, the op-ed page of The Washington Post - abdicate their responsibility to think critically about our politics and society. This gobbledygook is really horrible. In a just world, Richard Cohen would get the ax.

Soak The Rich (UPDATE)

I was reading this post by Yglesias and I got thinking about all the fake outrage on the right over things like sex and gays and Pres. Obama instituting Sharia Law from his personal mosque at ground zero. You know who the real culprit behind our cultural malaise is?

Paris Hilton's Dad, who happens to be filthy rich.

If ever there were a poster child for the dangers inherent in too much wealth, Paris Hilton is it. She knows nothing, contributes nothing, yet we are inundated with images of her, clothed and otherwise. We are updated with her goings-on, flitting hither and yon with this young man and that, getting arrested in South Africa for marijuana possession, Las Vegas for cocaine possession.

Now there are wealthy people who also have some moral sense concerning their wealth. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, both among the wealthiest individuals in the world, are actually doing good stuff with all that cash. Plus, you don't hear them complaining that a return to Clinton-era tax levels are going to impoverish them. Or others like them, for that matter.

For the most part, however, our society and culture are being undermined not by undocumented immigrants, or gays and lesbians, or Muslims. It is rich white folk, who have no responsibility, no sense of obligation to the world outside themselves, and whose only goal is the creation of even more wealth by any means necessary. It is not poor who feel entitled to handouts from the government, but rich white folk who feel entitled to stay rich, and even get richer, without anyone ever questioning how that happens, or if the cost to the rest of us is worth their indulgence by the rest of us.

Even more than allowing the marginal tax rates to return to Clinton-era levels, I would return them to their far-more-progressive, pre-Reagan era levels, when the wealthiest paid as much as 70% of their income in taxes. Them that has, should pay up, after all. Why should the rest of us reward these folks, allowing them to have children who will grow up and flood our senses with endless images of their goings-on, their sexual escapades, and have to listen to their insistence they should be indulged simply because they are who they are?

So, yeah, basically, I think higher taxes, in particular for people like Paris Hilton's Dad, are nothing but a plus.

UPDATE: I hadn't even seen this op-ed piece by Paul Krugman, but it fits in well.

Yank My Doodle? Dandy!

It should come as no surprise that Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's position on masturbation - she's against it - is the source for much teasing from liberals. On the night she won her party's nomination in an upset primary win over Rep. Mike Castle, Rachel Maddow made much hay of O'Donnell's position.

Like the revelations that she claims to have "dabbled in witchcraft" when she was younger, however, I have to wonder why anyone really cares. So, she's against masturbation. Big deal. So, she claims to have spent time playing around with something teenagers call witchcraft. OK. What is far more important, to me, is that she has no ideas, no sense of public service, merely voices typical right-wing nonsense on all sorts of issues, and would be an embarrassment to the Senate, which can't afford too much more embarrassment, considering the members of the body from Oklahoma.

My guess is that Maddow aired the clips about masturbation for shock value, as well as an adolescent joy at pricking the pretensions of TV viewers. After all, isn't there a Beavis & Butthead quality to the whole, "She said 'masturbation'," thing? It would get Maddow ratings points, draw attention to a non-issue that indicates, if nothing else, an obsession with individual sexual ethics that is far outside most people's concern, and ensure that liberals, entranced by Maddow's show, would bring up this particular obsession throughout the campaign.

Our nation is in crisis and some liberals are going after one hapless Republican candidate because she sees stamping out masturbation as a positive moral crusade.

It is at moments like this I despair for the United States.

Franzen

I read this review of Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, and decided to settle, once for all, why it is I did not like his previous novel, The Corrections, and am further unimpressed by him as a writer, and even as a human being. I will grant that I understand why many people like Franzen, his writing, his subjects. As the author of the Freedom review notes, however, there are two general camps on Franzen: those who like or even love him, and those who cannot stand him. I was taken to task, derided as a culture-Philistine, for my adamant refusal to find anything worthy to say about Franzen's award winning book. Since then, I have read (or perhaps re-read, because I still subscribed to The New Yorker when it appeared) this essay (subscription required) by Franzen recounting the lingering death of his father. It echoes much of the fictional material in The Corrections. Finally, some personal experience and reflections have only reinforced my earlier, aesthetic judgment.

The Corrections, for all that it attempts to encompass the coterminal collapse of a family, it's fortunes, the mental and emotional demise of its pater familias, and simultaneously comment on similar goings on in our culture and society, fails in my estimation for one simple reason - the characters exhibit no traits worthy of sympathy. Indeed, both parents, the two brothers and sister, their various struggles with life, mid-life, parenting, marriage, are rendered in a simultaneous attention to physical detail and absence of any human heart that left this reader feeling not just cold, but disgust. Reflecting the narcissism that is rampant in America in the post-war, and particularly the post-Vietnam, era, they are void of any center, searching for meaning without any emotional involvement; seeking equanimity and finding the chaos of life more a bother than an opportunity; there seems little to bind parent to child, or sibling to sibling beyond a vague sense that it has always been this way. They cannot even be called automatons. If they were, that would be understandable. Under the circumstances, they aren't even comprehensible, let alone pitiable.

Reading Franzen's article on his father's demise from Alzheimer's disease, I realized the one thing missing from both the fictional family disintegration and the factual account of his father's death - I got no sense that Franzen felt anything about what was happening. It simply was, like the detailed descriptions of the surroundings. In fact, I finished Franzen's New Yorker piece wondering why he had bothered. I got no sense that he did now in retrospect, or in the past, ever love his father. This was the story of an event, not a loss. It recounts the inconveniences his father's illness (as well as his mother's constant seeming badgering about it) created in his own life. I got the sense that Franzen would rather have not bothered. In The Corrections, I got the same impression. None of the characters exhibited any emotive qualities at all (beyond a vague anger and frustration over interruptions in their own never-ending search for meaning).

This past January, my father became acutely ill. I raced back to my hometown and, along with my oldest and youngest sisters and mother, sat and worried and wondered whether or not we were going to be present at the end. In the time since then, the general downward course of the physical, emotional, intellectual conditions of both my parents has been a source of sorrow, concern, and a much-vaunted topic of conversation among my siblings. I cannot speak for them, but in my case what shakes me to my core is the way the man and woman who occupy my childhood home seem so different from my mother and father as I recall them, I could be convinced they have been replaced by elderly changelings. Not just physically more taxed, even smaller, their emotional and psychological and intellectual capacities are withering each day. I think of who they were. My mother, with a friend being wary of men hiding in bushes only to discover in the papers the next day it was the FBI ready to nab the gangster "Greasy Thumb" Gulick; my father sharing a stage with Claude Rains and Eva Gabor and a TV screen with Boris Karloff, entertaining and educating a generation of 17 year olds; my mother taking care of me through a very bad bout of flu at the age of eight; my father running bodily in to Charles DeGaulle on the streets of New York in 1942. The man and woman they were is not negated by the reality of who they have become in their final years. Yet, I cannot help but feel that time and advanced age are robbing them both of something vital. Finally, all this, at least in my case, is rooted in a deep love and gratitude for both my parents, for being the wonderfully flawed persons they are, the wonderfully flawed parents they were and are, the marvelous human beings who came together and had the five of us and raised five very different human beings.

That is what is missing from Franzen's novel and essay. Quite simply put, I never sense that Franzen feels anything, most definitely love. Not for his father. Not for the characters in his novel, nor the characters for one another. While I recognize that there are, indeed, people like this in our world, I fail to see anything uplifting in holding them up as examples of Homo Americanus because we are, generally (I would like to think) better than that.

Religious Belief And Public Service II

The promised second part . . .
This article in today's Washington Post, while sparking all sorts of thought, has left me feeling ambivalent about its purpose. The Constitution is clear - there is to be no "religious test" for public office in the United States. At the time of the drafting and ratification, this meant that membership in a particular religious denomination was not to be regarded as necessary for being considered for office. It has become increasingly important, however, to offer the public an insight in to the religious life of candidates and elected officials as it has the potential to impact how they view their role and duty in office.

As stated previously, this at least has the potential of opening up a larger conversation on our changing perception of the nature of religious life and public service in a secular republic. At the same time, everyone seems to agree that there should be a dividing line between one's personal set of beliefs and practices as a member of a religious body, and one's duty as a holder of public office. Even George W. Bush, whose personal beliefs were often touted as a positive on his political cv admitted in an interview that, when considering the ramifications of sending the United States to war and what that entailed in terms of the destruction of human life, he set those beliefs to one side. This begs all sorts of questions, not just about Pres. Bush, but about the way even as committed a Christian as he (and I take his commitment as a Christian seriously, regardless of anything else) could insist it is possible to "set aside" a set of beliefs and practices, rather than, say, offer a view of public life as offering a different set of principles and how these two sets, intersecting and conflicting, created both tension and resolution.

The specific questions Linker offers in his article are, upon closer inspection, less "religious tests" than they are a way of gauging a candidate's perception of the very real, substantive ways that the conflicting calls and duties of religious belief and practice and public duty can impact one another. For example, does adherence to a set of religious beliefs that insists on a young earth, created by God over seven twenty-four hour periods disqualify a candidate for office if that office includes overseeing policies on geology, the environment, the impact of global warming, and general science policy? Would someone whose religious beliefs included acceptance of plural marriage - a Muslim or non-reformed LDS - be acceptable?

It is not just membership in more sectarian, or non-western, religions that offer the potential for serious conflict between religious faith and public duty. The mission statement of the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the country, reads "Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world"(emphasis added). How comfortable would non-United Methodists, or indeed non-Christians of any stripe, be with someone in a position of authority and power whose religious life entailed evangelism and "the transformation of the world"? Just as John Kennedy's insistence that he didn't take orders from the Pope helped win him the election even as it reduced his Catholicism to seeming to have no role in his life, would a practicing United Methodist, if confronted by this mission statement, be willing to deny its importance, and therefore the importance of his or her religious beliefs and practices, as a potential elected official?

It seems to me that we are embarking on a larger, potentially more thoughtful, discussion of religion and our public life. As long as we are willing to listen to all sorts of voices (even those voices that are angry at the very thought of public servants having religious beliefs impact their avocations), the possibilities for some kind of new consensus about religious belief and our life together are there. We have to be willing to take the risks.

Religious Belief And Public Service I

This is the first of two posts on this article in The Washington Post. Yeah, I know. The Post. Whoda thunk it?

The general tenor of our public discussion concerning the relationship between an individual's religious beliefs and his or her professional obligations as a public servant usually end up being nonsensical. For far too long the complicated nature of the role of religious belief and practice in the lives of individuals has been, in our public discourse, reduced to insisting that matters of belief are "private", which usually means they have nothing to do with an individual's duty toward others, toward their occupation or avocation, or their sense of justice, the demands of the ethical life, or the relationships within and between the various communities that make up the United States.

I think it is quite telling that many of those who insist that an individual should not, or must not (it is rare that the distinction is clear), consider his or her religious beliefs and practices as part of the guiding principles of public service usually end up quoting Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, whose importance as part of the Founding generation of the United States is immense, was among many other things, a species of 18th century religious belief known as Deism. Simplifying a bit, Deists affirm the existence of God (or perhaps, better, god) but more as an assertion without content. The specifics of the traditions and rituals associated with religious faith are set to one side as an encumbrance upon the rational life. That God is, is accepted. Who God is, what that existence means for us is left up to the life and thought of each individual.

So, our public discussion of religious belief is beholden upon an antiquated, and intellectually vacuous, notion of "religion", "God", and how these ideas (as if God were an idea only) are part of the make up of an individual's life. Even as our understanding of the dynamics of religious belief, the variety of expressions of belief, the multiple communities that draw people in and nurture their faith, the marvelous swirl of various religions - not just the major branches of Christianity and Judaism, but the rise of Islam in American, non-Western and non-traditional beliefs, paganism, even atheism - our talk is trapped in categories that cannot accept the complex, subtle, and sometimes contradictory ways an individual's set of beliefs and practices impact his or her life.

While there is much to concern more thoughtful citizens when it is reported that a large plurality of Americans, and a majority of Republicans, believe our President is a Muslim, and this is considered a "negative", it does, at the very least, offer an entry to a more thoughtful discussion concerning religion and our public life. Why should it be thought a hindrance if the President, indeed, turned out to be a Muslim? What is distinctive about Islam that would make it antithetical to public service in the United States?

Now, since just two years ago, the accusation against then-Sen. Obama that he was a white-hating non-Christian who accepted the tenets of black liberation theology as practiced in his church in Chicago, it seems the current accusation that he is really a Muslim should be thought more an expression of concern by those who hold the beliefs over the fundamental strangeness of our President being a black man rather than anything particularly odd about either liberation theology or Islam. This is not an accusation of racism; it is, rather, an observation that so much of the angst and vitriol directed at the President and his Administration and policies is steeped in a vague sense that this difference is at the heart of it all.

Yet, even so, we can have a thoughtful discussion about the relationship between membership in a congregation that practices liberation theology as its mission and ministry to the community it serves and the larger public obligations of an individual in public life. Sad to say, too much of the talk about the black theology of liberation was rooted more in ignorance (remember Glenn Beck saying that it didn't have anything to do with Christianity as he understood it?) than a thoughtful consideration of its strengths and weaknesses. Why should then-candidate Obama have felt it necessary to give a speech distancing himself from the church and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright? What is it about the specific claims of liberation theology that might make it antithetical to the demands of public service?

These entry points for a more thoughtful discussion about the intersection between religious life and public duty indicate that at some level the antiquated Deism of Jefferson is no longer a tenable way of understanding. The mix of social and cultural changes, our ever-increasing understanding of the psychology, sociology, and theology of religious belief, and the demands of our Constitution forbidding a "religious test" for public office would seem to beg all sorts of questions and necessitate all sorts of productive - but certainly heated - conversations. I do not foresee any solutions or conclusions coming from such discussions, at least not once-for-all. At the very least, such discussions show that we cannot consider religion "private" in such a way that empties it of meaning. Precisely because so many are vexed over the question of the President's potentially different set of beliefs it should be clear that leaving religion "private" just doesn't cut it anymore.

Satire? Reality? Hard To Tell

With a generous hat-tip to my FB friend Les, this story at The Onion is actually pretty much on the mark. That it is also hysterical, well, that's just a bonus.

Pink-faced half-wit . . . Even the made up quotes about a multi-millionaire exploiting fear to make money . . . it's like our current politics and social scene are so far out there, satire can't catch up even when it sprints.

The Pope's Skewed Moral Compass

The current reigning pontiff spent much of the time during the reign of Pope John Paul II engaged in two activities - a very public attack on priests and theologians advocating liberation theology (including silencing then expelling Brazilian priest Leonardo Boff) and the far more secret cover-up of the endemic abuse of minor children by priests around the world. The Pope's obvious lie during comments made to the press accompanying his state visit to Scotland reveal - as if any further evidence was necessary - that Josef Ratzinger has serious problems with his ethical radar.

While no theological viewpoint is above or beyond criticism, and there were some excesses in the name of liberation theologies as they emerged in Latin America after the Medellin Conference in 1968, at its heart was a return to a view of the Christian faith as engaged with the very real lives of people living lives on the margins of society. Seeing how the Spirit could bring life, could give people who were viewed as of no value by the larger society a sense of worth, of value, of humanity, liberation theology was rooted in the Biblical witness.

On the other hand, ensuring that the institution of the Roman Catholic Church was not tainted by persistent allegations of sexual misconduct by the priesthood was far more important to then-Cardinal Ratzinger than supporting the pastoral ministry of priests in lands under the twin thumbs of economic and political exploitation and oppression. His sudden realization that he had no idea how widespread the sex abuse was, and that he's really, really sorry for it ring hollow. That much of this happened during the reign of a pontiff much loved should start a serious re-evaluation of the history of Pope John Paul II, as well as Ratzinger's role in his pontificate.

For the moment, though, it is enough to note that Pope Benedict, rather than being greeted warmly by Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral, should be considered an international pariah.

Bait And Switch - The Republicans And The Crazy

With Newt Gingrich's recent venture in to crazy land (not a first foray, to say the least), I have given a lot of thought to the relationship between the kind of oddball right-wing behavior on display and the corporate benefactors of the Republican Party (Think Progress has done a good job unearthing the connection between the Kock Brothers and the Tea Party movement; grass always does better with green fertilizer, I guess). While it is pretty evident there are a whole lot of folks - honest social conservatives opposed to abortion, what they call "the gay agenda", and what they perceive to be a kind of general cultural laxity; libertarian kooks who always seem just an inch or so away from really nuts; the usual suspects of hard-core bigots and publicity hounds - attracted to the odd rise of the right over the past year or so, recent experience should make them wary of celebrating if the Republicans take control of either House of Congress (again, I do not think that's going to happen, but one never knows).

Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress from 1994 to 2006. In those twelve years, with solid conservative leadership, there was never once introduced serious legislation addressing abortion (the partial-birth abortion ban is a kind of stand-alone monument to how far the Republicans will go), public prayer, let alone the kind of fiscal probity that seems at the heart of much of the current rumbling (along with a visceral hatred of the President, of course). To put it another way, corporations and private donors are quite willing to support Republican candidates whose views range from the mildly disturbing to outright insane as long as the end-results are Republican majorities.

As Matt Yglesias noted, the kind of conspiracy-mongering O'Donnell pimped during the Clinton years was mainstream. It should be noted that I do not believe for one moment any serious Republican figure really believed Bill Clinton was a criminal. They allowed the crazy folks, however, to push all sorts of insanity - from the murder of Vince Foster to the rape of a beauty pageant contestant in a limo (this last pushed by George Will) - in order to keep the public distracted from the massive transfer of money from public coffers to corporations, as well as continue the dismantling of the social safety net for individuals in multiple ways.

With the idea that a return to Clinton-era tax rates on the top 1% of earners (still historically low) is somehow a socialist scheme to redistribute income, we are closing in on the heart of Republican tactics. While there is much that is odd and silly and crazy and frustrating about Republican notions of governance (such as they may be), with the threatened sunset of Bush-era tax cuts we are see the real Republican Party emerging from the soup of nuts it funds.

Whenever we consider the oddities of our public discourse, it should always be kept in mind that, in essence (to quote Alan), this is nothing more than shiny toys to distract attention from the real goal of Republican Party - power and money. Period.

Christine O'Donnell's Manichaeism

This profile concerning Republican candidate for the US Senate seat in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell, and her awakening to chastity, contains a kind of standard script for the way some young people, besieged by guilt as they explore their sexuality, turn their lives around and embrace certain extremes of behavior. In the midst of the reflections, however, is an observation Ms. O'Donnell makes that is at once familiar and disturbing.

You're either very good or evil.

In the context of the whole unfolding of her conversion from typical college student with a free attitude toward her life to a strict moral code rooted in the peculiarities of American evangelical Christianity (and, I suppose I should add, Roman Catholicism, considering her upbringing and her current religious affiliation), this statement reveals the presence, sadly never rooted out, of moral dualism in American Christianity.

It is just not the case that there "is" only "very good" or "evil". Our best actions are always tainted by sin; our most vile moments are always done under the shadow of the wings of a gracious God. While I would never gainsay Ms. O'Donnell's decision to alter her life in the name of living a more holy life, neither would I say that such a decision is rooted in some basic moral structure in the Universe. There is much, in fact, to laud in turning from a life of emotionless sex to a far more disciplined sexual life (I would even include refraining from masturbation under that theme). On the other hand, taking such an approach to one's life and insisting that this particular set of ethical values is necessary for an individual's life precisely because "there is only very good and bad", rather than to proclaim the power of grace within the Body of Christ for helping one through times of trial and to discover the gracious benefits of a disciplined sexual life is repugnant to me.

Rooted in dualism, her view of life is antithetical to the Biblical witness, to any notion of God's grace, let alone to a broad-minded approach to sexual politics. While I recognize her position resonates with many Americans, and her views will certainly commend her to conservative voters in Delaware in two months, her position, rooted in an unreflective moral dichotomy, seems to me to offer very little guidance for a more thoughtful approach to sexual politics.

There is very little in Ms. O'Donnell's view of the world, her history of statements on everything from the Clinton-era fake scandals to creationism, and now her sexual politics, to commend her as a serious political figure. At least I can understand why Sarah Palin endorses her. . .

A Really Self-Indulgent Post On My Life

I've been struggling with life-stuff now for a while. Moving this summer has created a whole new set of life-expectations, not to mention a new setting for living my life. In the past, each move has brought the promise and peril of looking for work/figuring out if I wanted to just look for work, la-di-da-di-dum. This time, however, I kept my regular night job, with the added warm fuzzy of a much longer commute. So, my whole "set", as it were, of what a move is supposed to be, has been thrown off-kilter.

For the past month, I must admit, I've been in severe-angst mode. My life has seemed to be out of control. Indeed, "control" has been so far beyond reach that there has not even been the comfort of incipient depression against which to react. Part of that has been that I keep telling myself that my whole "life-worry" thing is small potatoes compared to, say, people losing not just their jobs, but their homes (in the latter case with the added bonus of having used up their savings to try and save their homes, so what are they supposed to do about living somewhere?). I haven't returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with a head trauma and had my VA benefits denied me (let alone refused a Purple Heart Medal). The peculiarities of my situation are such that any serious crisis is just ridiculous, quite out of proportion to my actual situation.

Telling myself that last has helped. For about a day. Two at most.

See, I keep running up against all sorts of hints and clues and, of course, my own conscience, that can be summed up this way - When I am on my death-bed (should I be so lucky as to have one), do I want to fade out wishing I had done something different with my life? Make no mistake, for all that I have been grateful to have kept my job through the worst of our current recession while nine million of my fellow Americans have lost theirs, I have neither the intention nor the desire to retire from Wal-Mart. Not that there's anything wrong with it (well, there are all sorts of things wrong with Wal-Mart, but we shall leave all that to one side for the moment because this post is about me). Circumstances, however - by which I mean the economy, for the most part - seem to be in the driver's seat.

Of course, that's not all. I have recently attempted to do some "serious" writing. That is to say, I started a couple "book reviews", mostly for the sake of practice (I doubted very much if they would move much beyond the stage of being exercises in writing something different, allowing myself to be critiqued/edited) and ended up, after submitting one to an on-line magazine, giving up. The thing is, the editors general note was, in short, "There is good stuff. Rework it so the good stuff is there, and the other stuff ends up in the recycle bin, and we can use it." Encouraging, right?

Pretty much every time I sit and try to do something a bit "more" - more serious, more length, more thoughtful - than this silly little hobby-writing of mine, I end up becoming more discouraged the encouraged by the reality that quite a few of the folks I've come to know via the internet are not just published, but great. Every time I click a link, I think, "Damn. Much better than anything I could ever do." Perhaps not the healthiest reaction to the experience of delight in reading others, but I console myself with the thought that it is normal.

So, anyway, that is my current situation. On the one hand, I feel unable to do much about my current life-situation, as discouraging as it might be. On the other hand, I feel completely incapable of doing the one thing I want to do because every time I try, I have this big FAIL sign blinking in my head.

Forgive the "oh-poor-pitiful-me" tone of this post; I did it, after all, to keep the blues at bay.

Awesome New Website

I have to thank Denise, via FB, for linking to this post. From there I wandered around and discovered a marvelous, funny, irreverent, honest take on being a Christian.

Well, you know what to do. Check it out. Especially the story about him losing his virginity to his teacher. It reads like fiction, or perhaps superannuated adolescent fantasizing, but he claims it really happened. The whole leg-shaking thing sounds too real not to be honest.

The Source Of Gingrich's Insanity

Yesterday, I noted Newt Gingrich's racist Tourette's outburst. Today, I come across Adam Serwer's account of the source of Gingrich's insane blather. It wasn't just "an article" in Forbes. It was, in fact, the cover article, which means that Forbes has jettisoned any pretension as a serious periodical.

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.

Serwer dismisses this nonsense succinctly:

[T]here's no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama's parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don't want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage an argument with liberalism on substantive terms, they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black. It has been two years since a black man was elected president of the United States, and for a group of conservatives clinging to their cultural superiority, this was a moment of apocalyptic existential crisis, a moment that refuted all they had come to know and understand about themselves, about black people, and about this country.

I am not suggesting that every person opposed to the President is racist. I am saying that there is enough of this kind of thing floating around on the right to be safely counted as a major source of conservative rage and opposition. Those on the right who refuse to acknowledge it, and call it what it is, well, isn't that telling us an awful lot about them?

Why Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Muslim Politics Is Not Christian

Trying to sort out the contradictory voices that label themselves "Christian" can lead those outside the faith bewildered, ready to shake their heads and surrender. In this particular moment, when nominally "Christian" folks are supporting the desecration of the holy book of another faith, denouncing the President as a member of an alien religion, and supporting the expulsion of undocumented immigrants from communities across the country, I think it's time one still, small voice spoke up and said, "Uh, no."

Yesterday in church, there was the announcement of a gleaning field trip, open to all, under the auspices of The Society of St. Andrew. Seeking to help alleviate hunger, SoSA receives permission to pick up the leavings after harvest from fields, orchards, and farms, providing food at low cost to the hungry. There is Biblical precedent for this; in Deuteronomy, planters are told to leave the part of their crop they can't or won't use for the poor to glean for their food. Specifically mentioned, along with the ubiquitous widow and orphan, is "the stranger", i.e., the alien, a foreign national in the land.

Taking a step back, reading Deuteronomy as a whole, the "stranger" is seen as a particular target of national hospitality. Each time "the stranger" is mentioned, Moses (the ostensible speaker of the text), offers as his rationale the fact that "you were once strangers in Egypt." Weighted as that phrase is with history and meaning for the people poised on the brink of entering the land promised by the LORD, there is much significance here. As an alien people in Egypt, the Hebrews were not treated with special consideration and care; they were enslaved. By offering up "the stranger" as a group for whom special care and attention should be reserved, the author of Deuteronomy is reminding the people about to become the Israelites that, precisely because they were once a mistreated foreign people in a foreign land, they should take extra care to offer deference and hospitality to the alien in their midst.

In our time and place, "alien" is not univocal. Not just referring, in a semi-legal sense to a foreign national, in a broader sense the word refers to any difference, anything strange and outside what is considered the norm. In that sense, the anti-Muslim sentiment currently amok in some quarters of our land is as unChristian as the hostility toward undocumented workers.

If it were only certain passages in Deuteronomy to which I could point as the source of a Biblical injunction toward particular care and openness to those among us who are different, I think the accusation of cherry-picking and proof-texting as a criticism would be warranted. The entire Biblical witness, summed up by Jesus as the twin and related love of God and love of neighbor includes these particular injunctions within them. In other words, it isn't just Moses in Deuteronomy. It is the entire text of the Bible that witnesses to God's ordinances and commandments for hospitality and openness toward those outside our community.

I don't think it's too much to say that any other claim is erroneous.

Just . . . Wow (UPDATED)

I saw a blurb for this, so I read the whole thing.

Our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

This in insanity. Simple as that.

Of course, Newt has issues if he's reading Dinesh D'Souza anyway.

But, this . . . In-fricking-sane.

UPDATE: It isn't just me.

Obama Derangement Syndrome can take some strange people to some strange places. Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in all his pseudo-intellectual glory, has become so enveloped in his own garbage, he appears to have suffered some kind of severe head trauma.

--snip--

I care about this, not because Gingrich is a lunatic, but because Republicans and the media establishment continue to treat Gingrich as a sane, credible visionary. I think it's fair to say most reasonable people would charitably describe his attacks on America's leaders as idiocy, but the problem is, it won't make any difference.

Given the way the political establishment is "wired" for Republicans, there simply aren't any consequences for this kind of abject stupidity. In the first year of the Obama administration, the most frequent guest on "Meet the Press" was Newt Gingrich. Despite having left office more than a decade ago in disgrace, he remains a leading figure welcome in polite society.

There's literally nothing the man can say to lose his platform to spew nonsense.

One wonders when the tipping point is.

Honoring And Remembering

I don't want to pick a fight. Quite frankly, I'm tired of pointing the finger and saying, "It's all messed up because of these guys." I'm sick to death of the grousing and growling and yelling and hatred.

Today, of all days, I want to remember that we are one country. We are one people, united not by creed or color; not by birth or wealth. We are one people because we live in this great land. We are a free people. We are a giving, caring people. We are a people who feel to our depths the pain and suffering of those in need, and seek to help however and whenever possible.

Today, of all days, I do not want to hear a word against anyone. I do not want to read any words blaming some "other", some "alien", whether by dint of their country of origin, who they love, or the name they call God and how they worship that God. I want to remember that, in the midst of our shared grief, the world turned to us and offered us their hearts and help. I want to remember the men and women who rushed in to those burning teetering towers - black and white men, Jewish and Muslim and Christian men and women - even though they might have known they wouldn't make it out.

I want on this of all days for all of us to remember that we are Americans. All the ways we call ourselves American - African-American, Muslim American, WASP - only show the how great we have become. By adding all those different ways of being American together, we are stronger than if we divide ourselves by focusing on the differences.

For just one day, I do not want to hear any sour words. For this day, a day I know I shall always remember with sorrow, I want us to remember also, with pride, that we are all - all of us who call this great land our home - one people who can, indeed, be great. We can be Americans.

Let us honor those who died, those who gave their lives to save those who were dying, and those who continue to sacrifice in far away lands for our sake by putting aside our differences of the moment. For just one day, let us honor those who died by living as one people.

Hearing Other Voices

A source of my current angst regarding our country's moment of intolerance, the specter of the rest of the world seeing the darker side of our national soul as the only "real" America has led me back a couple years to the album Scarsick by the Swedish band Pain of Salvation. Dedicated to George W. Bush, the albums is a concept piece giving an outsiders view of our country. I do not consider it "anti-American"; rather, I consider it an attempted wake-up call to the United States. Hearing the voice of someone outside saying, in essence, that we can be better than we have been, is both a moment of judgment and an opportunity to redeem ourselves.

If we have the courage to hear the word.

Here's "America".

No Sense Of Responsibility

In comments, Craig offers an interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, alternative to my own position that the right in general has created an atmosphere where the burning of the Q'uran becomes an acceptable act of political defiance. The reason why I am not persuaded that this is the random act of one stupid man and his flock of 50 or so followers is summed up in this post at Talking Points Memo:

Speaking just now on MSNBC James Zogby made a very good point -- and pressed Andrea Mitchell on it. His point was that sure, this Pastor Jones fool is one guy, who's managed to get worldwide attention for his stunt. But you cannot separate him, as I noted below, from the whole climate of hate speech and anti-Muslim agitation from the Newt Gingriches and the Sarah Palins and the rest of them.

At that point, Mitchell jumped in and said, wait, Palin said she disagrees with the Koran burning. To which Zogby replied, something to the effect of 'C'mon'. ANd that's just the right reply. This is the standard approach of race haters and demagogues. They keep stirring the pot, churning out demonizing rhetoric and hate speech. Then some marginal figure does something nuts and suddenly ... oh, wait, I didn't mean burn Korans. Where'd you get that idea from? We were just saying that Islam is a violent, anti-American religion and that American Muslims should stop building their mosques and focus on apologizing for 9/11 and maybe get out of America. But burn the Koran? No way.

That's a bit much.

Precisely because media figures like Gingrich and Palin and Beck are quite clear that Islam is, at heart, a religion that is antithetical to American values and political practice, it creates an atmosphere where there is more than tacit approval for outrageous acts of defiance. After all, if Islam is, indeed, a religion whose views do not conform to acceptability, why not go out of one's way to protest the mere presence of Islam, as well as the the role of that religious belief in an act of horrid terrorist violence against our country?

As with so much else in our current social and political milieu, I am quite disgusted by the whole thing. For the most part, I am concentrating on other matters in my life. I did not think it appropriate to let this particular event pass without some comment of my own (not that it's worth much).

Along with the refusal of Republicans to take responsibility for eroding our political and physical infrastructure; for refusing to go along with any proposal of the Obama Administration, to even consider them on the merits; for displaying an ignorance of economics in our current moment that is breathtaking in its potential for finishing off what they started; and for fomenting hatred and disgust toward gays and lesbians int he latter's pursuit of state recognition for their unions; in all these things plus the climate of hatred against Islam, the right and the Republican Party recognize no responsibility, feel no shame, see only an opportunity for regaining political power and control without any sense that it might be important to have a plan to get our country working again.

I mention all this because it is of a piece with our current historical moment. The Republican Party represents nihilism - nothing at all. It is only the pursuit of power for its own sake, and the sake of its wealthiest benefactors and supporters. Period. There is evidence enough for this, and the tacit approval given to the burning of the Q'uran is the final evidence that, in the end, the Republicans hold nothing of value, see no ethical problem with a particular act the direct result of which will be, in all likelihood, an outburst of anti-American violence across the Muslim world. It wasn't always like this, of course; if the Republicans were truly "conservative" in some Burkean sense, it would have some set of values upon which to rest for a plan not just for governance but for speaking out on matters of social and cultural concern. Their lack of any ethical or moral sense is now clear for all to see.

Our country may just go up in those same flames that will engulf the Q'uran on Saturday. It is that dangerous. And not a single large-name Republican has gone so far as to point this out.

Read This

Sigh. This is the kind of thing I have always sought. Not just the intelligent, thoughtful initial post, but the lengthy, occasionally funny, always intriguing, comment thread that follows. So, rather than do "my take", just click the link below, and read the whole thing.

Whoever says there is no room on the internet for serious intellectual inquiry and thoughtful back-and-forth should take a gander.


Getting the microfoundations right – some comments and a bleg by Chris Bertram on September 8, 2010

From Crooked Timber

Terrorist Propaganda

It should probably not need be said, but obviously I find the planned burning of the Holy Q'uran on Saturday by the leadership of Dove Ministries Church in Florida to be not just politically horrible, but unChristian in the extreme.

Far more than the issue of demonstrating small-minded bigotry, however, one has to wonder why so many on the right are currently playing in to the hands of Al Qaeda. All along, they have been saying the, despite our rhetoric of openness and inclusion, the United States is fundamentally hostile to Islam. Of the few things for which I can praise George W. Bush, his insistence (at least in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks) that our conflict was not with Islam was one that I found to be marvelously on target and consistent. The right, however, has decided that we are, indeed, at war with Islam. Out of ignorance and fear, we label Islam not a religion, but a cult of violence - towards women, towards dissent within its ranks, toward those of other faiths - that needs to be opposed. The right wishes to take a moment on Saturday as we remember the honored dead (including the Muslim dead) to register its visceral hatred of Islam by taking its only truly holy relic, the Holy Q'uran, and burn it. To the Muslim world, where we have tens of thousands of troops still engaged in combat, seeking to win over local populations to our good will in order to work with them to combat the forces of tyranny that seek to trample the good name of Muhammed under the feet of a murderous desire for power and control, this will only prove that ours is a fundamentally hostile country.

While I do not believe Gen. David Petraeus recent comments are kosher - any warning like the one he gave should have come from civilian commanders (up to and including the President) - his reasoning is sound.

Even if our troops were not directly intermingling with Muslim civilians thousands of miles from home, this act of stupid hatred should be condemned. Of course, condemnation is all we can do. Which is even more sad, really. For all that our troops are fighting and have been fighting to protect and even impose (!!) freedom (don't get me started on why our troops are here or there, because that would take too long), that includes, sad to say, the freedom to become propaganda for those who hate the United States and want only death for our troops, our country, and our way of life.

So, alas, we arrive at the moment where rhetoric and reality meet and create not just irony but danger. Those who insist they are burning the Q'uran as an act of defiance against those who seek us harm are only going to be fueling the fires of hatred against us, becoming recruiting poster-boys for suicide bombers and jihadi-fighters all over the Muslim world. The image of the flames engulfing the pages of the Holy book of over one billion people around the world may just spark far more death than any sane act of defiance against the real enemy.

I do hope the folks who do this understand that they will come away from those fires not just smelling of smoke and covered in ash. They will come away stinking of death and covered in the blood of Americans, including American troops.

Funny Bible Passages

And Paul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed, 10said in a loud voice, ‘Stand upright on your feet.’ And the man* sprang up and began to walk. 11When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, ‘The gods have come down to us in human form!’ 12Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. 13The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city,* brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice.
Acts 14:9b-13

I'm not sure where to go with this particular passage. I'm still chuckling over it.

It's the pagan equivalent, in some respects, to Peter's reaction to the Transfiguration. Remember, after seeing Jesus revealed for who and what he really is, rather than realize what is happening, Peter says to Jesus, "Let's build a tent so we can stay here, us few disciples who you allowed to see it, and you and Elijah and Moses!" One is perhaps grateful that Jesus was not a violent individual, because dope-slapping Peter certainly seems appropriate in this instance.

Paul and Barnabas do a verbal dope-slap for the poor folks in Iconium. Even so, this particular passage ends thus: "18Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them." It's enough to make you tear your hair out!

In some ways, this is similar to blogging. You sit down and figure out what you want to say, say it to the best of your ability, and some commenter comes along and says something way out of left field concerning what you have just written. You patients type a response that can be summed up as, "No, sir, I didn't say x. If you look carefully, you will see quite clearly that I said y." Usually, though perhaps not always, the commenter will respond by saying, "Well, you may believe you said y, but quite clearly you said x." Wall and head then meet.

Communicating across all sorts of gaps - religious, political, social, cultural, linguistic - makes for odd moments, frustrating moments, and sometimes hilarious moments. These certainly well-meaning but misguided worshipers of the pagan deities were interpreting what they saw in light of the categories by which they interpreted the world. Nothing wrong with that at all.

We contemporary Christians experience these moments all the time. We are told we are talking about scientific stuff, psychological stuff, moral stuff, impossible stuff. We respond, quietly but firmly, that we are actually talking about living-for-God stuff. Usually, though not always, we are told (sometimes in patronizing tones, sometimes in barely controlled fury) that we are ignoramuses who have no idea what we're talking about. Head and wall meet repeatedly.

We can take it to heart that this particular type of miscommunication has Biblical precedent, and chuckle at it.

Trying On A Hat

This post by an economist on the basic issue at stake in our current recession - idle workers and idle productive capacity - is a marvelous rant. All the same, down in comments this basic structural reality is put in context.

Karl, I find your analysis interesting. However, lower capacity and lower utilization are the end result of collapsing demand. From 2000 – 2010 the U.S. has experienced two major economic (credit) bubbles. The first, was driven by the stock market and had a minor impact on the economy. The second was driven by real estate. This had a major impact on the economy. When the typical homeowner’s major wealth collapses, a major spending collapse follows.

As I understand it, the collapse in demand followed on the heels of the collapse of the collective value of real estate. As the commenter said, all that wealth just went up in smoke. People want to buy stuff, whether it's food, or little electronic gadgets, or a new lawnmower, or some trinket for the significant other. Demand is low not because people don't want to buy stuff. Demand is low because people don't have the money to buy stuff.

The various proposed solutions have been ineffective because the influx of money has not been adequate to replace the combined lost wealth from the collapse of the value of real estate. With the sudden concern over federal spending adding to the burden of decreased demand, we have the specter of what little stimulated demand may have resulted from earlier increased federal spending drying up. That is why Karl's rant about his frustration over questions such as economic stimulus and fiscal versus monetary solutions is misplaced. The whole idea behind the stimulus, as well as Pres. Obama's proposition to spend $50 billion on infrastructure projects, is to put money in people's pockets so they will say, "Hey, now I can afford that new toy for my child/replace my old car/fix the roof . . ." and people who make toys and cars and do construction will have jobs. Of course, both the initial stimulus - $800 billion - and the additional $50 billion are far too small to replace the wealth wiped out in the collapse of the mortgage bubble. Yet, the notion itself is sound.

That is why many are complaining that the sudden rise in concern over fiscal policy by Republicans (and some Democrats) is so frustrating. While it may be true that our operating budget is in the red for now, since the goal of this spending is to get people to spend stuff to put other people to work making stuff, thus getting paid, thus paying taxes, this isn't a structural deficit like the ones we had in the 1980's or under George W. Bush. Rather, they are temporary shortfalls of federal income to be offset (so goes the proposition) once the economy starts to move forward again.

So, what Karl calls "second order arguments" are central to understanding how we deal with the first order issue of idle workers unwed to idle productive capacity.

If Only . . .

This conversation between Rick Perlstein and Mark Schmitt, offered as an assessment of the first year of the Obama Presidency, limns the outline of what has emerged as the left-wing critique of Obama's failure as leader of the Democratic Party.

[W]hat I worry "being like Barack" truly means is that the knockout never comes. That the patience and the building of trust is, in fact, the end in itself. "Our Barack doesn't do mean," means, "Our Barack doesn't make the strategic choice to defeat a reactionary adversary even when that opportunity manifestly presents itself to him." This is Leadership 101, and, I fear, Obama is flunking.

The discussion seems to be hinting toward what has become the idea that Obama's "patience", his refusal to engage in soundbite politics (to "win the morning, win the afternoon" in Politico terms), and to believe that given enough time, the Republicans will string themselves, collectively, with the very long rope handed them by being patient, reticent, and thoughtful.

During the 2008 Campaign, I saw this quality and called it (before it got picked up by other larger bloggers with more readers), pace Mohammed Ali, "rope-a-dope". Perhaps, Obama believes this same strategy will work this time around. Perhaps he just doesn't care all that much whether or not the Democrats maintain control of Congress. After all, Bill Clinton was far more productive and popular as President when he had the Republican majority as foil.

Whatever may or may not be going on behind the scenes, many of us who supported Pres. Obama two years ago are wondering where the dynamic leader who offered us a vision of ourselves - and by "ourselves" I mean America - as better than we had been; as more courageous; as willing to sacrifice and work together to fix the problems we faced - has gone. The Democrats in Congress, for all their problems and limitations, would be a far better partner than a Congress led by the lachrymose John Boehner and the puffy Mitch McConnell. Unless Obama is far less intelligent than we had all thought - and he has yet to give any indication that he is - I, for one, want to say to him, "Mr. President, you seriously need to get your head out of your ass."

Even if Obama comes out this fall in full rhetorical swing and saves the bacon of the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party, the long list of "if only . . ." will still be hanging there, needing to be addressed. It isn't enough for the President to pull out all the stops, a President ex machina. We - the whole damn country - have been in dire need of his leadership, and he has, as Perlstein says quite bluntly, failed its most basic test.

The Autodidact In Me

So I just heard about this book. It offers the interesting but, to me at any rate non-controversial thesis, that monogamy in human sexual relationships is not "natural" in the way, say pair-bonding in many species that mate for life seems to be. By comparing human sexual behavior with that of one of the two most closely related primate species - the bonobo - the authors offer the notion that, in fact, having multiple partners over the course of a lifetime is far more in keeping with what is "natural" about us than is sexual monogamy.

In a column at psychologytoday.com, one of the coauthors of the study takes on "critic" Megan McArdle, who has written a "scathing" (and largely uninformed) review.

I have to admit I am intrigued by the thesis, and look forward to reading this book. Precisely because, at the current moment I am reading Helmut Thielicke's Evangelical Faith, and am dealing with the whole issue, as he puts it, of "address", the issue of the meaning of words, most especially "nature" and "natural", are forefront in my mind. How we understand these words, how we live them, is important for the sake of clearly understanding the question of address.

Furthermore, I am always open to the discoveries of new research. Even if I am not always in agreement with them, it seems to me that we Christians have a duty to have some kind of even rudimentary understanding of the way our understanding of our world has changed and continues to change.

So, kudos to Ryan and co-author Cacilda Jethá for their work.

Bullying

Started a small discussion at Facebook when I asked for thoughts on an evening program at my older daughter's school. In a couple weeks, they will be featuring an author of two books, writing on how she "survived" bullying. The new "thing", well, over the past few years, has been focusing on bullying as a serious problem in schools to be dealt with far more vigorously and self-consciously on a policy level than heretofore.

I just cannot get behind it.

First, an adult who writes not one but two books on "surviving" bullying has issues that go far beyond the result of schoolyard pranks. Seriously.

Second, in general, the larger social discussion over "bullying" muddles real distinctions among different phenomena, roughly distinguished with the labels "teasing,", "bullying", and "harassment". While they are all related to a larger, mostly unconscious, creation of a social hierarchy that even kids do to set the boundaries in the milieu of their own, somewhat separate, society, they are very different things. Yet all get tagged under the rubric "bullying", which is actually a fairly narrow phenomenon, and can be dealt with easily enough by parents, teachers, and school administrators.

Finally, I just don't think we are doing right by our children when we not only offer the chilling prospect of life-long psychological damage done by "bullying", but offer the services of state functionaries (teachers and school administrators) as intermediaries in the social world of children. While I am all for even children's social life to be more open and accommodating to difference, the reality is that it is little different from any other society. It takes time - which includes getting older - for the society of the school yard to learn to be open. Legal intervention to force an openness it might not be ready for will not create openness, but rather resentment.

This is not to say that there aren't instances where such intervention isn't warranted. On the contrary, the harassment of girls by boys and sexual and racial minorities are instances when such intervention - up to and including involving law enforcement - are necessary. That, however, isn't bullying, unless you are willing to extend that word's definition beyond recognition.

When my older daughter was in third grade, she came home sad one day. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that some kids were teasing her because she was shorter and thinner than everyone (she will be grateful for the whole thin thing in just a year or two . . .) and I told her that, the next time some dork called her "shrimp" to just say, "Well, I may be short but you're ugly and I'll grow". This adaptation of a Churchillian bon mot was not well-received, but the principle I was trying to instill, I think, is good. First, such teasing is really not worth getting one's panties in a wad. Second, it is important to push back a little. While teasing is usually done seeking some kind of response, ignoring it doesn't necessarily work; pushing back, however, is a pretty clear signal that it isn't going to be tolerated, and the particular target isn't necessarily a good one.

Giving our children the tools to function in society includes giving them a little bit of a backbone in the face of social conflict outside the boundaries of clearly defined guidelines of legally-accepted understandings of right and wrong. That, too, is a part of parenting. It isn't always easy for a parent to hear that his or her child is either the victim or perpetrator of bullying; on the other hand, giving our kids tools to deal with success with these situations is far better than turning to our schools and screaming at them to police in fine detail all the going's-on during recess.

Memo To Michael Gerson

In your latest column, you write of "[p]rotests against the construction of mosques". In Tennessee, it wasn't a "protest". It was harassment and arson.

This isn't a quirk of evangelicals and fundamentalists. Quoting someone from an ostensibly "Christian" organization (in this case, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association), has little to do with the Christian faith. You are as much a part of the problem, fuzzing the lines between specific instances - a Church in Florida seeking publicity by burning the Holy Q'uran) - with a larger phenomenon - anti-Muslim hysteria on the right that is rooted more in the usual bigotry and ignorance than in any religious ideas.

It is the fires of hate, always smoldering in this country, that are flaring up in these instances. Just call it what it is, man. That's all you need to do.

The Heart Of The Matter

President Obama is hosting face-to-face talks between the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President. Listening to discussions of the President's speech last evening after an introductory dinner (that included the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan, the only Arab nations to have full relations with Israel), I heard quite a few commentators talk about how Obama was pushing hard because he sees himself as a "transformative figure". Quite beside whether those two words have any meaning, let alone how they specifically refer to Obama or Obama's view of himself, the President's approach is one I believe is long overdue.

It is really quite simple: Deal with the central issues between Israelis and Palestinians - the West Bank occupation; the status of Palestinian property confiscated after the founding of Israel in 1948; the status of Jerusalem - as well as secondary but no less important matters such as access to natural resources (most especially water) and the current blockade of Gaza.

Since, first, President Carter's successful peace negotiations between Pres. Sadat of Egypt and PM Monachem Begin of Israel in 1978, then the Oslo Accords, final agreement on these most basic and contentious issues has been postponed, although both peace processes saw themselves as constructing a framework within which larger, long-term issues and a final settlement of outstanding matters could be worked out. Both have been abandoned. The Camp David framework was rejected completely by the Reagan Administration when it came to power, leaving nothing in its place. The Oslo Accords became a tool used by Israeli hardliners to beat the late PM Yitzak Rabin with (he was assassinated by a hard-line Israeli during a peace rally), and was completely ignored by the Clinton Administration, in particular in Clinton's last-hour, personal push for a comprehensive accord in late 2000.

Rather than settle for nibbling at the edges, Obama's approach - stop dicking around and get serious - is a marvelous change. There is no way either of the parties involved can duck or hide, blame the other for failure to deal with the central bones of contention when that is all that is on the table.

On that note, let me say that one thing the Bush I Administration did that I have always admired, and wondered why it was never repeated, was carry out a threat of withholding foreign aid to Israel if it continued to build settlements on the West Bank (and, also, destroy Palestinian homes there to make room for the settlers). Then-PM Yitzak Shamir tried calling Bush's (and then Secretary of State James Baker) bluff. In a brief meeting at the White House in 1991, Bush told Rabin that the money tap was now "off". Rabin stormed out of the White House, and Washington and America, in a huff.

It is this kind of hard-line that needs to be taken. No more acrimony; no more airing of grievances, either current or ancient. The laundry list of charges and counter-charges is well-known, and recalling all of it does nothing to advance the process of negotiations. Obama is doing what Bush did, on a grander scale. He is going for the long bomb, precisely because, at this point, that is all that can be done. A final settlement will, in the end, be a boon for the two states, Israel and Palestine, as well as for the United States. No longer a running sore, the Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians will cease to function as a propaganda point.

It's Not Just The Economy, Stupid

As the discussion with Feodor suggests, I neglected an aspect of the appeal of Glenn Beck and the "Restoring Honor" rally that I should have made part of the discussion. The racial and cultural changes, based in demographic shifts, is an undercurrent of much of our contemporary moment, as it was a decade and a half ago. An aging white upper-middle class, dominant since the founding of the country, has found itself in numerical retreat demographically. The rise of popular movements granting greater social and civil rights, therefore access to power, to minorities, has offered opportunities to all sorts of folks who once stood outside the corridors of power. This whole dynamic - of a declining white power structure clinging to the last threads of its authority, by any means necessary - has has gone from a grumbling to a screeching with the Presidency of Barack Obama. While many of his supporters were and are moved in part by his place in history as our first African-American President, his detractors are even more aware of the significance. Thus, "Restoring Honor" includes "Restoring White Folk".

The so-called "culture wars" of the 1990's were at least as much about the decline of a certain version of secularized Protestant mores and the social and cultural as well as political power of white Protestants as they were about the morality of abortion, sexual morality, and the depiction of various themes in popular and fine art. Shifts in demographics have led to the gradual decline in the efficacy of appeals to these particular matters (with the exception of the general social acceptance and approval of same-sex marriages). The cultural expression of difference and its acceptance or rejection, has become far more a generational than a racial matter these days; younger whites are far more inclined to have social and cultural attitudes akin to others of their own age cohort rather than to defer to racial identity.

These shifts were bound to happen, and the reaction of the old-line power structure was predictable. Considering the violence of the southern power structure to the rather modest demands of the Civil Rights movement - there is the indelible image of spittle-flecked whites haranguing a young woman attempting to integrate the Topeka Schools; Bull Connors' dogs and fire hoses set upon a group of young people marching for voting rights for their parents - the recalcitrance of the white power structure in its dotage is understandable. Of course, the general targets now are "illegal immigrants", Muslims, and gays and lesbians.

This general cultural wariness and fear has been exacerbated by the economic malaise in which we find ourselves. I focused a bit too much on that aspect of the matter the other day to the detriment of any understanding that fills out the picture. I hope this rectifies the situation.

Strength

These two songs are the ending of Spock's Beard rock opera/concept piece Snow, about a young man whose life becomes a muddle because he is seen to be a miracle worker. Falling in love, only to be spurned, he comes close to death only to be rescued by the God he previously preached without much belief. "Wind At My Back" is a recapitulation of a theme from the end of the first act, only performed with deeper feeling because it stems from a real faith. These two pieces have served, over the years, as a way to return me to the most basic reality for me - the call of God in the midst of trouble, and that the strength for making it through comes from resting in that comfort, rather than any virtue or strength I might believe I possess.

Just wanted to share this, is all . . .

Proverbs Of Ashes

12 Your maxims are proverbs of ashes,
your defences are defences of clay. (Job 13:12)

As Job girds his loins, first against his so-called "friends" who insist that he must have done something to deserve getting crapped on by God; and second, to demand an audience before God to answer his plea, he rebukes the three who sit just outside the midden-heap, "defending" the LORD's actions.

In light on my current frustrations with (a) the pusillanimity of the Church, and (b) the exploitation of fears over our current social state by those seeking personal gain, it might be well to consider Job's budding courage in the face of the counsel of the foolish. Listening to the words of the ill-informed only muddies the waters. It is long past time for persons who believe (rather than know) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are accounted children of God through the power of the Spirit sent by the risen Christ to stand up and simply call out those who, through ignorance or a lust for power and control, would turn us from what we believe.

For someone like Glenn Beck (Glenn Beck!) to insist there is nothing "Christian" about Liberation Theology is almost unworthy of rejoinder. All the same, it would have been nice if Chris Wallace had asked Beck the liberation theology he had actually read and studied. Cone? Wilmore? Gutierrez? Boff? What about these authors is unChristian?

Beyond those questions, if he even had an answer, one should simply dismiss him. Beck is one of those people to whom Job is speaking when it is written in 13:5, "If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom!" There are others, to be sure, but this rebuke, it seems to me, is sufficient.

That part of me that continues to struggle is strengthened by the courage Job shows in telling off the counsel of the foolish, demanding his place before the Divine throne. I doubt if Job's "friends" shut up, anymore than I doubt those who claim to speak for God in our day will quiet their words of ashes and defense of clay. All the same, the Church does have the duty to make clear that, like Joshua, our House will serve the LORD.

A Word I Need To Hear

31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’
John 8:31-32

Yesterday, I decided that I needed, for my own faithful sanity, to spend some time this week reflecting on the daily office. I am grateful that there is an easily accessible source for the daily lection readings.

In the past, when I have consulted this site, I have been amazed at the way some lesson has leaped off the page at me. Whether a Psalm, something from St. Paul, or one of the Gospel readings, a passage spoke to me in a way that was immediate.

Today, I am faced with the conundrum that this didn't happen.

Part of the problem is I was looking for something that would reach that place within me that is enraged by current events. I wanted something that would either dissipate or channel that anger. Instead, I got triumphalist Psalms and the beginnings of the Gentile mission in Acts; Job's apologia for God even as he sits on his midden heap covered in sores just doesn't cut it, because it is, in a way, a kind of naive faith. He hasn't challenged God yet, which would give a greater profundity and depth to his faith.

I kept returning to the passage from the Fourth Gospel, though, in particular the ending. Part of me wanted to pick it up and run with it in a particular direction, yet that just didn't feel right, so I sat and pondered the passage, and came away . . . empty.

So, I did something I realized was necessary. I prayed.

After praying, it dawned on me that I was with the crowd to whom Jesus was speaking that day when he says in verse 25, "Why do I speak to you at all?" Jesus was trying to tell these folks that he was the one they had been waiting for. They weren't getting the message they wanted, so they were all standing around saying to one another, and to him, in effect, "Huh?" This provokes Jesus to his last nerve.

That's the trouble, I think. All of us come to the Bible with baggage. Whether we are opening it for the first time, or spending time with it like an old friend, we carry our wants, our needs, our hopes, our fears with us in the desire to have our questions answered, our hopes fulfilled, our fears assuaged. Instead, we get cryptic crap like this: "I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come."(John 8:21) I will be up front - I don't want to hear this right now. I don't want a message of hope; I want a weapon I can use against others. I don't want to hear about the sacrifice I will have to make in order to be called a disciple. I want a word like a hammer to beat on those who mock the name of Christ for transient ends.

There. I said it.

Except, of course, that isn't what I really needed, I guess, because it isn't what I got. I got this passage, in particular the ending. Stripping away my pride, my self-righteousness, my vanity, I hear that I am to continue in His word to be a disciple. Before I can gird myself to oppose those who, in my estimation, drag the good name of the Church through the muck and mire, I have to hear what it takes to be a true disciple.

I need to be free of my rage, my fear, my desire to set the world aright. I need to reset my priorities, to remember that Jesus and the Kingdom he proclaimed and embodied is, in the end, God's. Not mine.

Not what I wanted to hear. Not what I want to hear. What I needed, though.

Reflections

Yesterday's rally featuring Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial has brought out many of the worst traits of progressives. Not just an on-going outrage at every word or phrase that doesn't quite jibe with reality; not just with every individual holding a sign that promotes some nonsense about Pres. Obama; not just the obvious reality that many who do not share the basic beliefs (such as they might be) of the rally leaders and sponsors are going to use that opportunity to advance their own agenda and get their voices heard. It is one thing to point out the obvious that neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin are intelligent enough, informed enough, or committed enough to turn their obvious disdain for the Administration in to anything other than attention for themselves. It is quite another, however, to insult the tens of thousands who attended the rally, for all their varying reasons, and the perhaps millions more who watched, with sympathy, from their homes.

Think Progress was by far the worst offender in the first category. A glance at the posts yesterday, and their headlines, shows them making of the rally far more than should have been done.

Tea Partiers Rally Against Sign Bans — Except At Glenn Beck Rally

Political Rally Or Not? We Report, You Decide

Beck Rephrases His Claim President Is ‘Racist’: Meant To Say Obama Believes ‘America Is An Oppressor’

REPORT: Glenn Beck’s Philosophy Is Opposed To Everything Martin Luther King, Jr. Stood For

This lastpost title, from Friday evening, is even more outrageous for two reasons. First, it assumes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Beck has something as complex as a "philosophy" beyond self-aggrandizement. Second, it drags the name and honor of a revered American, Martin King, down to the level of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

Now, Beck hosting this event on the forty-seventh anniversary of the March on Washington was clearly a provocation. He managed to get Al Sharpton to take the bait; Sharpton hosted an event at the other end of the Mall. The obvious intent, to provoke some kind of solidarity between that event and this one, should have clued in anyone with intelligence and foresight to ignore it. The bait, however, was too inviting.

Beyond prompting posts and headlines that seemed to make of this event far more than it ever could have been absent left-wing outrage, we have the further spectacle of some on the left insulting not just Beck and Palin (fair game, as far as I'm concerned) but those who attended the rally as well. Consider this from Thers, posting at Fire Dog Lake:

I didn’t watch or pay any attention at all to the Developing Story of the Glenn Beck Million MOPE* March, perhaps because I’m not a superannuated paranoid Caucasian crank afflicted with an overdeveloped persecution complex and uncomfortable underpants that constrict excitingly whenever I contemplate “socialism.” Why, I’m not remotely superannuated! (The rim, it is shot, execution-style.)

It’s not, of course, that I wish to downplay the most World-Historical Significantest event in the history of doughy insane cable television lunatic hucksters yelping soppy tedious halfwit whiny bullshit to morons.

Those who attended yesterday's "Restore Honor" rally may have been morons. They may also have been political operatives seeing an opportunity to recruit volunteers. They may have been ordinary folks, like you or me, frightened by events of recent years and hearing a voice that reinforces those fears and offers the kind of validation many of us need - "You are not alone in your fears."

There is nothing moronic in being frightened by events and circumstances of recent years. It seems we are all at the mercy of forces and events beyond our control. It further seems that, no matter how hard anyone tries, the situation in our country and world - economic stagnation and violent death, a drug-fueled civil war in Mexico and a religious-fueled civil war in Iraq, the collapse of the American desire to own one's own home - there is very little any of us can do to change things. Events outpace our ability to do anything other than react. I, for one, forgive those who hear in the words of Beck and others like him, regardless of his or other's stature as anything other than self-promoting attention-seekers, the kind of reassurance we are not seeing from the corridors of power.

The March on Washington, in the midst of social and racial changes that had been over a decade in the making, reaffirmed the sense among all those of good-will that their cause was just, their goals were in line with the best of our national traditions, and that victory would come, if not tomorrow, then at some point. In seeking to alter the social landscape by granting full rights of social participation, political participation, and economic opportunity to disenfranchised African-Americans, both the leaders and marchers on that long-ago August afternoon were united not in fear, but in hope; not in resentment but in mutual upbuilding. When King spoke of justice, he spoke of it for all Americans. He saw a day when Mississippi, that most recalcitrant of southern states, would be a picnic area for little black children and little white children. He saw a day when Stone Mountain, GA - the birthplace of the Klan - would echo not with words of hate, but with the cry of freedom.

Whatever other motivations they might have, Beck and Palin offer no hope to those who hear their words. They offer no way forward. They offer no guide to get us from where we are to where we might be if we all worked together. All they offer is the counsel of fear, of division, reinforcing the latent notion that striking out in rage at the forces that keep us down as a nation is right and correct.

Had we political leaders who were more intelligent, more savvy, more wise; had we a left that wasn't so willing to be outraged by every word or phrase that come from nihilists and con-artists; had we the ability to speak a word of comfort, acknowledge the reality and ubiquity of the fear we all share, and offer a way forward, instead of a backhanded insult of disdain to those who are most afraid; had we all these things, yesterday could have been an opportunity to change the nature of our public discourse.

Instead, it continues as it has, full of bluster and hype, all meaningless. Our real problems go unaddressed. Our economy, teetering less on "double-dip recession" and more on near collapse, is not mentioned by anyone. No one seems clear eyed, confident, or willing to risk what needs to be done in order to move us forward.

If Beck and Palin can energize enough people to bring back Republican majorities in Congress (I still doubt this will happen, but anything is possible), then the country deserves the fate that awaits it. The Democrats, through their timidity, their lack of courage in the face of a political opposition that sees only the opportunity to return to power without any clear guide as to rescuing us from our current moment of national despair, will have brought the destruction upon themselves.

One wonders what might emerge from the wreckage that would ensue.