Early on in Terry Eagleton's The Ideology of the Aesthetic, he shows how the move from Kantian aesthetics to Friedrich Schiller's theory of "taste" shows the way the rising bourgeoisie treated the aesthetic experience as a force greater than the moral law. Participation in the aesthetic experience becomes the source of solidarity among the bourgeois, where "taste rules", in Schiller's words.
Far too often we surrender to the shallow notion of the aesthetic experience as something far too "subjective" or "personal" to communicate to others. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, Kant insisted that, while individuated, nonetheless we must come to apply our experience of the aesthetic "like a rule" in the way we subsume our lives under the moral law. If the mundane claim of extreme subjectivity were true, not only Kant's view, but any real communication of the beautiful, even the experience of the beautiful itself, would be impossible.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, the late Swiss theologian who was rewarded for certain services at the end of his life by being raised as a Prince of the Roman Church, attempted to use a certain understanding of "beauty" as a hermeneutical key to unpacking the Christian experience of wonder and awe. Through seven volumes entitled The Glory of the Lord, Balthasar examines the history of what had formerly been understood under the heading of "numinous".
At the heart of these two very different ways of understanding the human experience of beauty lies the fundamental reality that, opposed to simple-minded notions of "subjectivity", the aesthetic experience is one that is communal, transporting individuals out of the realm of the personal, and offering a glimpse of something greater. This is the mystery of transcendence - passing beyond the mundane, the imperfect, to those moments when, it seems, we encounter something that in and of and for itself points beyond itself, and yet subsists completely in a way that so much else does not.
My own experience has been musical (well, and also religio-mystical, but that isn't the subject at the moment). They are rare, but with the help of reflections such as these, I understand that they are not just my own experiences. Indeed, if they were just my experiences, not only would I not be able to communicate them; there would be no point for common reference. That is to say, if, as the superficial understanding has it, beauty is something which cannot be understood, only experienced, we are left with the sad fact that, really, it can't even be experienced. If something cannot be shared, if an experience, either of awe or of the sublime or of the beautiful, somehow escapes our ability to communicate to others what it is, it is also quite impossible to communicate that it is. At the heart of the experience of the beautiful we realize it is a shared, communal experience.
The very first time I experienced this in a way that I knew I was in the presence of something powerful, that I was filled with awe before a sound I was hearing, I was fifteen years old. Jeff Beck had just released the song "Star Cycle" which got moderate rotation on my local radio station. In the first chorus after the statement of the melody, Beck turns his guitar up to ten and unloads a fiery solo over Jan Hammer's pulsing synthesizer. There are just a few measures of that solo, where Beck takes the listener up through a quick build-up of tension to a release that made me sit up, jaw gaping. It's been thirty years, and my reaction to that moment is still the same.
Similarly, there is a moment in Spock's Beard's "June", the last move from verse to chorus, where all the elements - instruments and voices, harmony and melody - come together in a swelling tide that suddenly overwhelms the listener. Again, it is that moment of release after the slow build-up of tension that makes the sum of the various parts far greater than simple addition.
The first of Ed Wynne's guitar solos on Ozric Tentacles' "Jurassic Shift". Like the previous two, this is a release - the sheer volume of Wynne's guitar, combined with phase-shifting effects give the guitar a wash across the rest of the music, like waves crashing on a beach - that made me, the first time I heard it, go, "Ahh".
On Friday, I purchased Porcupine Tree's live DVD, Anaesthetize, a film of a show in Tilburg in The Netherlands from 2008. On the second song in the first set, "My Ashes", the chorus vocals are performed by touring guitarist and back-up singer John Wesley (and how could I, a United Methodist, not like that name?), because he has a beautiful, soaring Jon Andersonesque high tenor. I heard it for the first time on Sunday, and still cannot believe that single moment is so beautiful, so perfect.
What is important to note about these is the simple reality that these are not my subjective experiences. My reaction - hearing a moment of transcendent beauty in the midst of these songs - may be unique, or not. Yet, it is a shared experience. There are the musicians who composed and arranged the pieces. The engineers and mixers who took the elements and, along with the performers, ensured they were constructed properly. There is the audience, disparate or gathered, who hear these moments and react to them.
This solidarity in transcendence is the aestethic experience. It is also, as von Balthasar rightly understood, the heart of the religious experience. At its best, these moments are rare, fleeting, hardly encompassing entire compositions or multiple performances; rather, they are momentary - in music a measure or two - yet precisely because they are transcendent, their fleeting existence is belied by that sense that they seem to last forever. The relationship between the aesthetic experience and the religious experience, between the beautiful as being more than simple human creative act and life as more than the mundane run of days, lies in our shared joy together. We turn to one another and say, "Wow!" Whether it is God or just a bunch of musicians, we find ourselves gathered together, basing in the beauty of the moment that lasts forever.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Why Does Michael Gerson Have A Job?
This is horrid. The guy takes credit for a single line in a single speech by the worst President since James Buchanan and he lands a cushy spot on the Post's op-ed page. So he can write slimy crap like this.
Michael Gerson cannot come right out on the op-ed page of a national newspaper and say, "Barack Obama is an uppity nigger." So, instead, he picks apart a single sentence, without context - and without considering the merits, and offers up this kind of craptastic argument.
I think there are some folks who are not just incensed that there's a black man in the White House who isn't a butler or cook; angry that there's a Democrat in the White House because, as Republicans, they consider the Democratic Party unfit to serve in the Office of President; I think Gerson, like many in Washington, is enraged that Pres. Obama is far smarter than he is. In fact, for all Pres. Clinton's quite obvious intelligence (I have rarely seen someone who could just turn on a dime and speak in detail on abstruse policy matters the way Clinton still can), it is obvious that Obama is actually far more learned, a thinker of depth, whereas Clinton spread his understanding around.
Rather than admit to it, Gerson does what white folk have done throughout our history. Anytime an African-American displays any virtues in greater depth than they, white folk tend to find ways to put them in "their place". This insulting piece of drivel, this racist garbage, belongs on American Thinker or some racist website, not the Post.
"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now," he recently told a group of Democratic donors in Massachusetts, "and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared."Let's unpack those remarks.
Let's unpack these remarks.
Obama clearly believes that his brand of politics represents "facts and science and argument." His opponents, in disturbing contrast, are using the more fearful, primitive portion of their brains. Obama views himself as the neocortical leader -- the defender, not just of the stimulus package and health-care reform but also of cognitive reasoning. His critics rely on their lizard brains -- the location of reptilian ritual and aggression. Some, presumably Democrats, rise above their evolutionary hard-wiring in times of social stress; others, sadly, do not.
Though there is plenty of competition, these are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.
Michael Gerson cannot come right out on the op-ed page of a national newspaper and say, "Barack Obama is an uppity nigger." So, instead, he picks apart a single sentence, without context - and without considering the merits, and offers up this kind of craptastic argument.
I think there are some folks who are not just incensed that there's a black man in the White House who isn't a butler or cook; angry that there's a Democrat in the White House because, as Republicans, they consider the Democratic Party unfit to serve in the Office of President; I think Gerson, like many in Washington, is enraged that Pres. Obama is far smarter than he is. In fact, for all Pres. Clinton's quite obvious intelligence (I have rarely seen someone who could just turn on a dime and speak in detail on abstruse policy matters the way Clinton still can), it is obvious that Obama is actually far more learned, a thinker of depth, whereas Clinton spread his understanding around.
Rather than admit to it, Gerson does what white folk have done throughout our history. Anytime an African-American displays any virtues in greater depth than they, white folk tend to find ways to put them in "their place". This insulting piece of drivel, this racist garbage, belongs on American Thinker or some racist website, not the Post.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Ernst Bloch, N. T. Wright, And The Threat Of Hope
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -In three volumes entitled The Principle of Hope, and a single volume of the religious dimension of the utopian hope, Man On His Own, Marxist Ernst Bloch treats not just with respect, but a kind of reverence, the Judaeo-Christian eschatological hope for the coming Kingdom of God. It is true enough that Bloch takes God out of the equation. All the same, because the root of the promised kingdom Christian's profess was personified in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the promise not of a sweet bye-and-bye (like most contemporary theologians, Bloch understands this later accretion and baptism of pagan notions of the afterlife as serving all sorts of socio-political interests threatened by the far more radical idea of the Kingdom of God) but a very real, tangible realm of justice, equality, where the contradictions of self-abnegation and pride are overcome in mutuality, Bloch quite correctly sees this as nothing more or less than the promised, post-revolutionary situation, once the last structures of domination have been sloughed off.
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Emily Dickinson
A thinker as different from Bloch as can be imagined has offered a similar view concerning the Christian hope. Former in-house Scripture scholar and current Anglican Bishop Nicholas Thomas (N. T.) Wright has dedicated a tremendous amount of intellectual energy and faith-filled time offering up entirely new - yet he would insist they are old but lost - ways of reading the Bible and what it says about who Jesus was, what he said and did, why he died, and what his resurrection means. At the heart of Wright's exigetical concern, like that of the Gospel writers, is the passion story, with the resurrection as key. The following passage, quoted by Joel Watts, is the root of Wright's theology:
Resurrection by contrast has always gone with a strong view of God’s justice and God as the good creator. Those twin beliefs give rise not to a meek acquiescence to injustice in the world but a robust determination to oppose it.Wright, like Bloch, surrenders the uniqueness of the Christian hope, only in different ways. Bloch insists that the coming Kingdom needs no God; Wright's stated concern for justice falls short of including sexual minorities. Since being raised to the crimson, he has spent a considerable amount of time in the House of Lords speaking out against any attempt to extend legal and social equality to sexual minorities in the UK. So much for that passion for justice.
All the same, while both Bloch and Wright - one intellectually, one politically - betray the uniqueness of the Christian hope, at the heart of both men's insistence on the radical nature of the Christian message lies this fundamental reality - unless checked institutionally, or compromised from within by social and cultural factors, the real message of the Christian faith is as radical a threat to the existing order as can be imagined. Living one's life with both eyes focused not on some filmy heaven (or, conversely, in fear of the sado-masochistic fantasies of hell) but on the resurrection of Jesus as the inauguration of the New Age that will be fulfilled in God's time casts doubt upon all our ways of life. Our politics, our art, our morals - everything stands before the empty cross, silent even as that same cross demands an answer.
This is who the Church should be: the people gathered as the Body of Christ working to fulfill the petition from The Lord's Prayer - thy kingdom come on earth. Is it any wonder that when the Church really is the Church, the Body of Christ, it is understood as a threat, either to be destroyed or undermined by the addition of alien ideas? There is nothing more tenacious than hope. There is also nothing more dangerous.
Democratic Disaffection, Voter Turnout, And The Enthusiasm Gap
We are just a few weeks away from the Congressional mid-term elections. It seems pretty clear that Republican gains will be substantial, although the prospect of taking over either house grows dimmer. All the same, it is obvious that two things are happening that are effecting the way people plan to vote - many of those who voted for Obama, and previously for Democratic candidates in the previous two national elections will either be voting for Republican candidates, or not voting; many supporters of Obama are less than enthusiastic, to say the least, about his performance in office.
As to the first, related, phenomena, anger at the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party makes sense. When they took over both Houses of Congress in 2006, they not only seemed poised to act on long-standing Democratic legislative initiatives that had been side-lined by the Republican majority, but also to pursue a far-more aggressive agenda toward outside interests that had become increasingly influential over legislative activity. Alas, almost immediately, both the House and Senate signaled their intent to pursue business as usual by putting Steny Hoyer in charge of the House and Harry Reid in charge of the Senate. Political moderates - Harry Reid is pro-life - neither has actively pursued much more than making sure Democrats maintain control of both Houses. While this Congress has been successful at passing some important, even historic legislation, that legislation has been purchased at far too high a price. Health care reform, in particular, was made far more complicated by the refusal, from the outset, to offer a serious public option. Initial regulatory reforms of the financial sector also seem inadequate to the task, and were largely constructed with input from the industry itself.
Other items on the liberal to-do list - in particular the long sought-after reform of labor law known as "card check", allowing for easier organization of previously non-union industries - have simply disappeared from the Congressional radar. Cap-and-trade, after passing the House, died a very painful, public death in the Senate after Republican obstruction became impossible to overcome. With the possibility that they shall hold even more seats in the next Congress, the likelihood of serious legislation regarding energy consumption as it impacts global warming looks even less likely.
For these reasons, as well as the far-too-cozy relationship the President has maintained with the centers of the financial industry (the creators of this mess now tasked with cleaning it up, but without having to pay any serious public price for it), the Democratic Party is losing voters. Either they are switching sides - far better to get corporate whores who acknowledge their pimps than those that pretend a virtue they do not have - or refusing to vote at all. Both are rational responses. At the core of public frustration and anger at Congress is the understanding that neither party has the public interest at heart. At least, with Republicans, voters know they aren't getting a pig in a poke.
The President and First Lady have hit the campaign trail over the past week, and are trying to stir up the same kind of enthusiasm that existed during his Presidential run two years ago. The problem, of course, is that while the President and his wife remain personally popular among Democrats, his record shouts far louder than his calls for continued hope and the possibility of change. While hard-core right-wing voters are certainly motivated by a visceral hatred for the President, Democratic voters are less inclined to consider voting against the possibility of a Republican Congress, since the prospects of actual legislative harm is minimized by the probability that the President will veto anything actively contrary to the public good. So, whether it's a minimized Democratic majority hamstrung by Republican obstruction, or a castrated Republican majority limited by the President's veto pen, the end results are likely to be the same for the next Congress. This is a reality Democratic voters recognize. The result is simple - their votes aren't going to matter that much this time around.
The next two years will result in a legislative holding pattern, no matter the outcome of the elections. Is it any wonder that folks are planning to stay home?
As to the first, related, phenomena, anger at the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party makes sense. When they took over both Houses of Congress in 2006, they not only seemed poised to act on long-standing Democratic legislative initiatives that had been side-lined by the Republican majority, but also to pursue a far-more aggressive agenda toward outside interests that had become increasingly influential over legislative activity. Alas, almost immediately, both the House and Senate signaled their intent to pursue business as usual by putting Steny Hoyer in charge of the House and Harry Reid in charge of the Senate. Political moderates - Harry Reid is pro-life - neither has actively pursued much more than making sure Democrats maintain control of both Houses. While this Congress has been successful at passing some important, even historic legislation, that legislation has been purchased at far too high a price. Health care reform, in particular, was made far more complicated by the refusal, from the outset, to offer a serious public option. Initial regulatory reforms of the financial sector also seem inadequate to the task, and were largely constructed with input from the industry itself.
Other items on the liberal to-do list - in particular the long sought-after reform of labor law known as "card check", allowing for easier organization of previously non-union industries - have simply disappeared from the Congressional radar. Cap-and-trade, after passing the House, died a very painful, public death in the Senate after Republican obstruction became impossible to overcome. With the possibility that they shall hold even more seats in the next Congress, the likelihood of serious legislation regarding energy consumption as it impacts global warming looks even less likely.
For these reasons, as well as the far-too-cozy relationship the President has maintained with the centers of the financial industry (the creators of this mess now tasked with cleaning it up, but without having to pay any serious public price for it), the Democratic Party is losing voters. Either they are switching sides - far better to get corporate whores who acknowledge their pimps than those that pretend a virtue they do not have - or refusing to vote at all. Both are rational responses. At the core of public frustration and anger at Congress is the understanding that neither party has the public interest at heart. At least, with Republicans, voters know they aren't getting a pig in a poke.
The President and First Lady have hit the campaign trail over the past week, and are trying to stir up the same kind of enthusiasm that existed during his Presidential run two years ago. The problem, of course, is that while the President and his wife remain personally popular among Democrats, his record shouts far louder than his calls for continued hope and the possibility of change. While hard-core right-wing voters are certainly motivated by a visceral hatred for the President, Democratic voters are less inclined to consider voting against the possibility of a Republican Congress, since the prospects of actual legislative harm is minimized by the probability that the President will veto anything actively contrary to the public good. So, whether it's a minimized Democratic majority hamstrung by Republican obstruction, or a castrated Republican majority limited by the President's veto pen, the end results are likely to be the same for the next Congress. This is a reality Democratic voters recognize. The result is simple - their votes aren't going to matter that much this time around.
The next two years will result in a legislative holding pattern, no matter the outcome of the elections. Is it any wonder that folks are planning to stay home?
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Words To Live By
The other day I wrote something highly critical of a piece in First of the Year by Benj DeMott. I was offered a reminder by Scott McLemee, via Facebook, that it is impossible to place in any neat package the editorial or ideological viewpoint of either DeMott or the journal in question.
In a review Scott published (which alerted me to the presence of the journal), he includes a long quote from a letter DeMott received from his father.
In any case, I offer up this view to you, dear readers. Be open to all the possibilities the world has to offer. As my father used to tell me, in a single sentence the summarizes the quoted words above, "You don't know every goddamn thing." It took me a while to learn those words and accept them. Now that I think I have, I consider myself open to all sorts of new things out there in the world.
In a review Scott published (which alerted me to the presence of the journal), he includes a long quote from a letter DeMott received from his father.
Study humiliation. You have nothing ahead of you but that. You survive not by trusting old friends. Or by hoping for love from a child. You survive by realizing you have nothing whatever the world wants, and that therefore the one course open to you is to start over. Recognize your knowledge and experience are valueless. Realize the only possible role for you on earth is that of a student and a learner. Never think that your opinions – unless founded on hard work in a field that is totally new to you – are of interest to anyone. Treat nobody, friend, co-worker, child, whomever, as someone who knows less than you about any subject whatever. You are an Inferior for life. Whatever is left of it....This is the best that life can offer. And it’s better than it soundsThese words summarize my own view of my own life, really. They are harsh, but also quite beautiful. The view offered here resonates with my own refusal to consider of any serious merit the things I do. I do the best I can; I fail as often as I succeed; I have no particular gifts or talents the world desires. Yet, this opens up all sorts of possibilities. I consider myself always growing, always learning, rarely being right. The best I hope for is that I will be known by those most dear to me - my wife and my daughters first and foremost; my closest friends - as someone who tried to live with love and joy, and never assumed the world owed me anything at all. Happy with the life I have, I also work to make sure the world is just a tad bit better for my having lived, without ever thinking this will be the case.
In any case, I offer up this view to you, dear readers. Be open to all the possibilities the world has to offer. As my father used to tell me, in a single sentence the summarizes the quoted words above, "You don't know every goddamn thing." It took me a while to learn those words and accept them. Now that I think I have, I consider myself open to all sorts of new things out there in the world.
The Search For The Primary Text: A Lesson For The Church From Music
Ever since musical notation was standardized, musicologists have privileged the written score over any other form of expression. Even with the advent of more sophisticated folk music forms - jazz, post-Dylan rock, pop, folk, and R&B - there still remains a bias not only for western art musics (a far preferable term to "classical", which actually only denotes a single period), but for the written score. Not only has this bias hindered serious discussion of much popular and folks musics in the west, it has also set to one side any consideration of non-western musical forms. Indian classical music defies easy notation using the western diatonic scale, for example, because of its use of quarter-tones and the open spaces in even the most structured spaces for individual expression. The music created by the Indonesian gamelan - a huge influence on, for example, Robert Fripp - is another case in point where western literary prejudices keep off the table a serious consideration of a wonderful art form.
In the 19th century in America, the publication of sheet music for the expanding middle class created not just a market for all sorts of songs, but a demand that ever-new forms become accessible. First with the rags, and later with even the earliest jazz, the demand that popular musical forms become accessible in a literary form was met by music publishers. As early as the mid-1920's, Louis Armstrong's work with King Oliver and his own recording groups known as the Hot 5's and Hot 7's was annotated for others to learn. Before that, US Army band director James Reese Europe and dance band leaders like Fletcher Henderson created written arrangements that incorporated the new syncopated style, with the accent on the down beat, that were the hallmarks of jazz. Jelly Roll Morton, among his many accomplishments, wrote all his music, and arranged it for recording sessions.
Yet, some of the best jazz was never written down. Count Basie's Orchestra worked from what were called "head arrangements"; he would set out a basic harmonic framework on the piano and his band would then create the melodic and rhythmic structure. These pieces, marvelous examples of group creation, were never intended as anything more than instances for the patrons of the seedy clubs in Kansas City where Basie played to dance to. Yet, they became, due to fame and repetition and even, in the end, notation, actual "songs".
The problem, however, is that not just jazz, but blues, and later R&B and rock and contemporary pop and hip-hop, by and large, incorporate all sorts of room for individual expression - improvisation, "free-from" in Britain - that not only cannot be notated, but changes with each performance. It is right here that the whole question of the primacy of musical literacy arises. Not just for these musical forms, either. Once one raises the issue of performance, it is necessary to include art musics as well as more popular and folk-oriented musical styles as well.
Which is primary? Which is the "real", "true" form of a particular musical composition? For many pieces for the western art traditions, it is easy enough to say the musical score, being the basis for performance, should hold pride of place. In 1990, I watched a film of Leonard Bernstein conducting a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a newly reunited Berlin. Early on I was stunned to realize, after a close-up on Bernstein, that was doing so without a score. If the musical notation is most basic, primary text from which one works - and a conductor is surely a conductor is as much a performer as the individual musicians - how do we square this with Bernstein's ability to do so without any text at all? Is it just enough, perhaps, to offer up his extraordinary understanding of the entire piece? Yet, doesn't that beg all sorts of questions?
It has been over a century that music has been available to people in recorded form. The addition of a recorded instance of musical performance (enhanced with the visual component since the addition of sound to moving pictures) muddies the water even further. It becomes almost impossible to untangle considering contemporary recording techniques (music is built from individual performances, from the bottom up - the rhythm section records first, with later additions of other parts, usually in multiple takes; finally, at the mixing process, all these pieces come together and are rearranged even more) and the ability to use samples and other pre-recorded sounds to create a composition.
Finally, there are disparate approaches to the recording process. The Beach Boys and the Beatles, in many ways, pioneered the view of the recording studio as a creative space - an instrument to be played and used, in other words. Roger Glover, bassist for the early British heavy metal band Deep Purple, once said in an interview that the band disliked recording immensely. Seeing it as too restricting, the limitations placed upon artists who desire creative space can be a burden. Considering the differences between a jazz recording, say, and a performance of that same piece, it can become almost impossible to recognize the former in the latter, especially in the hands of musicians like John Coltrance or Sony Rollins.
The limitations of the preference for musical literacy when applied outside the confines of western art musics was demonstrated by jazz critic Gary Giddins. In his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Visions of Jazz, he includes some notated solos from a monograph on Charlie Parker. It should be noted that the monograph's author had to sit and listen to these solos and notated them himself. While musically literate, even gifted in terms of theory, Parker's solos were the product of intense concentration on the harmonic structure playing underneath him. One can, I suppose, take those notations, learn them, and play them note-perfect given enough time. They would not, then, be Parker solos as-played-by. Parker not only had a deep and subtle understanding of musical theory; his intonation, embouchure, tonguing, and phrasing were unique. It is impossible to notate these distinct, Parkeresque realities. Even taking a cue from the recordings along with the notated score leaves me at a loss as to how one could possibly recreate Parker's solos. In fact, since it becomes necessary to combine both musical literacy as well as a gifted ear for subtle distinctions, we have arrived, yet again, at the question that haunts this essay - What if there is no primary musical text?
These questions - abstracted from a musical context - become important for the discussion here on the role and function of the Biblical canon in the life of the Church. While one can point, easily enough, to the growth and final selection of the canon in the early church councils, there is also little doubt that these same writings were considered important precisely because they were seen as having been seminal in the creation of the Christian community. Even the Old Testament writings contained in the Septuagint testify that the experience of God in the community was formative; yet that experience included certain literary forms, including the legend of the law inscribed on stone. Inclusion in the community of the people called out of Egypt was signified by certain acts, in particular circumcision of the men, before it became a matter of accepting the written testimony of the history of the people.
The circle, or spiral, of reflection that insists we can, or should, or even must, point to some instance, some text as primary is belied by the very reality we continue to live. As long as the Christian faith is a going concern, text and community, the word on the page and the on-going life will inform one another, change one another, and change one another.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Some Questions For Benj DeMott
This essay from First of the Month offers a spirited defense of Pres. Obama in the face of left-wing criticism. Not the least of the things I applaud is the casual dismissal of radio host Ed Schulz. Like Rush Limbaugh, Schulz is nothing more than a radio entertainer, to be taken with the same amount of salt - less than a grain, in other words. All the same, starting with a discussion of Shirley Sherrod's magnanimous statement toward her former employer, and building a case for a more broad and patient approach to Pres. Obama's tenure in office misses on several points.
First of all, not all the animus directed at the President from the left is rooted in racial animus (even unrecognized). Indeed, it seems to me much of the criticism of the President, particularly his inept approach toward the current mid-term election cycle, is rooted in specific instances that are easy enough to point out. His famed reticence in the face of the constant barrage of right-wing attacks upon him, his Administration, his policies, and the Congressional wing of his party have only hurt. While I for one still doubt a Republican takeover of either chamber of Congress is likely, even the erosion of current majorities spells the end of any serious Obama-endorsed legislation in the next Congress. Far too many Democrats, never failing to learn the wrong lesson, will have discovered that supporting the President is political poison.
Second, and more to the central thesis of DeMott's article, it seems to me that the so-called "grassroots" insistence on patient support for the President ignores certain facts that are all too clear. Once in office, and after some overtures to certain interests on the left, the President has consistently pursued policies that favor large, monied interests over the far more pertinent interests of the coalition that elected him in the first place. The stimulus package made law early on was deemed by those who know the subject well far too small, by about half, and the subsequent financial breakdown in the states has negated any gains from the stimulus. Because of the success of right-wing messaging on the stimulus, a second chance is just not possible, despite the obvious necessity for such.
Second, placing Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in positions of prominence in his economic team sent the signal that, first and foremost, propping up the large banks would override and all other concerns, not the least of them being holding the banks accountable through serious oversights and regulatory reform. With the recent revelation that the large banks, in an effort to rid their books of questionable assets, may have foreclosed on properties without even a glance at legal procedures, now renders any question of the success of TARP moot.
Recently, most of the large banks have made final payments on their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans floated in the first weeks of the crisis at the very end of Pres. Bush's term. TARP managed to earn a relatively modest profit, and many in the financial community not only heaved a sigh of relief but made this out to be a sign of stability-to-come in the financial services industry. Except, hot on the heels of this good news, was the revelation that the cost of this success was wide-spread, systematic fraud, not the least of which was simply ignoring that most basic right-wing right - recognizing the right to and observance of property rights and laws.
Finally, in a day and time when the right in America has a nearly bottomless supply of financial support for flinging poo at the President, Democrats in Congress, Democrats in general, without any compunction concerning issues of accuracy or even sanity, a plea from "the grassroots" seems not just quaint, but almost sweet. Also, quite irrelevant. The President does, indeed, still enjoy broad support among many liberals and those on the left. I have to wonder, however, if this is a case of "still hoping", rather than dealing with the simple reality that Obama has, in large measure, and despite many specific instances of success and follow-through on any number of campaign promises, been exposed as that most feared political caricature - the hollow man.
The fact is that, despite a history of grassroots, community organizing, Barack Obama's political career has been one long sprint away from this history as he moved further up the ladder of political success. Embracing the notion that being "too liberal", whatever that may mean, is political suicide, Obama has embraced all sorts of measures and political practices that have rendered him weak and, heading in to the midterms, increasingly marginal.
The first year of his Presidency, I was surprised at how well he seemed to do, even as some of the things he did raised red flags. His performance as party leader and supporter of his own Administration's initiatives (health care, specifically) was dismal. The result is the spectacle we see unfolding before us, weeks before midterms that may well not only be a sea-change politically, but offer the spectacle of numerous Nero's fiddling while Rome burns.
First of all, not all the animus directed at the President from the left is rooted in racial animus (even unrecognized). Indeed, it seems to me much of the criticism of the President, particularly his inept approach toward the current mid-term election cycle, is rooted in specific instances that are easy enough to point out. His famed reticence in the face of the constant barrage of right-wing attacks upon him, his Administration, his policies, and the Congressional wing of his party have only hurt. While I for one still doubt a Republican takeover of either chamber of Congress is likely, even the erosion of current majorities spells the end of any serious Obama-endorsed legislation in the next Congress. Far too many Democrats, never failing to learn the wrong lesson, will have discovered that supporting the President is political poison.
Second, and more to the central thesis of DeMott's article, it seems to me that the so-called "grassroots" insistence on patient support for the President ignores certain facts that are all too clear. Once in office, and after some overtures to certain interests on the left, the President has consistently pursued policies that favor large, monied interests over the far more pertinent interests of the coalition that elected him in the first place. The stimulus package made law early on was deemed by those who know the subject well far too small, by about half, and the subsequent financial breakdown in the states has negated any gains from the stimulus. Because of the success of right-wing messaging on the stimulus, a second chance is just not possible, despite the obvious necessity for such.
Second, placing Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in positions of prominence in his economic team sent the signal that, first and foremost, propping up the large banks would override and all other concerns, not the least of them being holding the banks accountable through serious oversights and regulatory reform. With the recent revelation that the large banks, in an effort to rid their books of questionable assets, may have foreclosed on properties without even a glance at legal procedures, now renders any question of the success of TARP moot.
Recently, most of the large banks have made final payments on their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans floated in the first weeks of the crisis at the very end of Pres. Bush's term. TARP managed to earn a relatively modest profit, and many in the financial community not only heaved a sigh of relief but made this out to be a sign of stability-to-come in the financial services industry. Except, hot on the heels of this good news, was the revelation that the cost of this success was wide-spread, systematic fraud, not the least of which was simply ignoring that most basic right-wing right - recognizing the right to and observance of property rights and laws.
Finally, in a day and time when the right in America has a nearly bottomless supply of financial support for flinging poo at the President, Democrats in Congress, Democrats in general, without any compunction concerning issues of accuracy or even sanity, a plea from "the grassroots" seems not just quaint, but almost sweet. Also, quite irrelevant. The President does, indeed, still enjoy broad support among many liberals and those on the left. I have to wonder, however, if this is a case of "still hoping", rather than dealing with the simple reality that Obama has, in large measure, and despite many specific instances of success and follow-through on any number of campaign promises, been exposed as that most feared political caricature - the hollow man.
The fact is that, despite a history of grassroots, community organizing, Barack Obama's political career has been one long sprint away from this history as he moved further up the ladder of political success. Embracing the notion that being "too liberal", whatever that may mean, is political suicide, Obama has embraced all sorts of measures and political practices that have rendered him weak and, heading in to the midterms, increasingly marginal.
The first year of his Presidency, I was surprised at how well he seemed to do, even as some of the things he did raised red flags. His performance as party leader and supporter of his own Administration's initiatives (health care, specifically) was dismal. The result is the spectacle we see unfolding before us, weeks before midterms that may well not only be a sea-change politically, but offer the spectacle of numerous Nero's fiddling while Rome burns.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Authority And The Christian Tradition
My undergraduate academic advisor, Robert Heineman, was a fairly conservative guy. A student of Kirkian conservatism, Heineman was not the kind of normal reactionary one thinks of when the word "conservative" is bandied about. Like Kirk, he took his starting point from Burke's observations on the nature of human society, as an organic reality that impacts our lives in various and sundry ways. His major work, revised twice, is entitled Authority and the Liberal Tradition. Its central thesis is simple enough. Liberalism undermines itself as a social philosophy precisely because two of its central tenets render the necessity of authority untenable. The false notion of the atomized individual, sovereign in reason, being both judge and jury upon any claims upon the individual result in even the most beneficent liberal authority being questioned as a source of social and political authority.
We non-Roman Christians inherited a similar disposition from the Lutheran Reformation, which became ensconced in much Enlightenment thought on religion. It has become almost a caricature in American religious life, with the proliferation of denominations whose claim to authority all too often rests upon differences that are either of minute dogmatic concern, or deeply rooted social anima, mostly racial. Churches in the Wesleyan tradition, for example, are numerous. The largest are the interracial United Methodist Church, and three large historically-black denominations, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. There is also the Wesleyan Church, Free Methodists, and the CME Zion Churches. Finally, there are off-shoots from the holiness revivals of the 19th century, the most prominent of which is the Church of the Nazarene. There were even more Methodist-related denominations, the result of pre-Civil War regional tensions and anti-Epsicopal feeling (The Methodist Protestant Church, which spawned Westminster Theological Seminary, which was moved to Washington, DC in 1965 to become Wesley Theological Seminary, my alma mater) that only ceased to exist at the so-called "Uniting Conference" of 1939, which also created the now-defunct, racially segregated Central Conference system (these were done away with at another "Uniting Conference" in 1968).
That's just one tradition.
These initial thoughts are prompted by this discussion begun by ER. At the heart of this discussion rests, I think, some assumptions concerning authority, how it is constituted, and how we and it interrelate. The multivalent tensions - between the individual and the community; between our contemporary needs and the ancient nature of our foundational texts; the various claims of authority - individual, communal, historical/traditional, and modern - seem to have surfaced in this discussion in various ways.
We early-21st century Christians cannot escape the conundrum, and I for one would never insist we surrender that part of the tradition that calls for questioning "authority" as it rests either in denominational structure or deeper doctrinal claims of Scriptural authority. For both good and ill we must each come to terms with what way and how far we are willing to grant to these ancient writings and their accumulated layers of interpretation any role in shaping our own experience of faith. Such questions must always exist, plaguing our sense of ease and rest in having reached satisfactory conclusions.
Because, you see, the texts themselves insist they are not so much authoritative as pointers toward the only truly sovereign authority - the God whose interactions with creation are given voice and narrative shape within their pages. Precisely for this reason, the texts offer up an opportunity to delve in to them and their claims of authority. Not just on an individual, but communal, level we must always be ready to post that most dangerous, frightening question - Why should I accept this word about the Word?
From this, Calvin's notion of a church always in need of reformation should open up our too often stale and limited devotion to tradition to all sorts of ideas and thoughts. It is this impetus that gives the Christian tradition its liveliness. It is in this way that the tradition becomes authoritative for us in each generation, precisely by raising the question of whether or not it should be an authority.
We non-Roman Christians inherited a similar disposition from the Lutheran Reformation, which became ensconced in much Enlightenment thought on religion. It has become almost a caricature in American religious life, with the proliferation of denominations whose claim to authority all too often rests upon differences that are either of minute dogmatic concern, or deeply rooted social anima, mostly racial. Churches in the Wesleyan tradition, for example, are numerous. The largest are the interracial United Methodist Church, and three large historically-black denominations, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. There is also the Wesleyan Church, Free Methodists, and the CME Zion Churches. Finally, there are off-shoots from the holiness revivals of the 19th century, the most prominent of which is the Church of the Nazarene. There were even more Methodist-related denominations, the result of pre-Civil War regional tensions and anti-Epsicopal feeling (The Methodist Protestant Church, which spawned Westminster Theological Seminary, which was moved to Washington, DC in 1965 to become Wesley Theological Seminary, my alma mater) that only ceased to exist at the so-called "Uniting Conference" of 1939, which also created the now-defunct, racially segregated Central Conference system (these were done away with at another "Uniting Conference" in 1968).
That's just one tradition.
These initial thoughts are prompted by this discussion begun by ER. At the heart of this discussion rests, I think, some assumptions concerning authority, how it is constituted, and how we and it interrelate. The multivalent tensions - between the individual and the community; between our contemporary needs and the ancient nature of our foundational texts; the various claims of authority - individual, communal, historical/traditional, and modern - seem to have surfaced in this discussion in various ways.
We early-21st century Christians cannot escape the conundrum, and I for one would never insist we surrender that part of the tradition that calls for questioning "authority" as it rests either in denominational structure or deeper doctrinal claims of Scriptural authority. For both good and ill we must each come to terms with what way and how far we are willing to grant to these ancient writings and their accumulated layers of interpretation any role in shaping our own experience of faith. Such questions must always exist, plaguing our sense of ease and rest in having reached satisfactory conclusions.
Because, you see, the texts themselves insist they are not so much authoritative as pointers toward the only truly sovereign authority - the God whose interactions with creation are given voice and narrative shape within their pages. Precisely for this reason, the texts offer up an opportunity to delve in to them and their claims of authority. Not just on an individual, but communal, level we must always be ready to post that most dangerous, frightening question - Why should I accept this word about the Word?
From this, Calvin's notion of a church always in need of reformation should open up our too often stale and limited devotion to tradition to all sorts of ideas and thoughts. It is this impetus that gives the Christian tradition its liveliness. It is in this way that the tradition becomes authoritative for us in each generation, precisely by raising the question of whether or not it should be an authority.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Washington Post Figures That Balance Includes Hatred (UPDATE)
For the second year in a row, I had in the back of my mind the possibility of entering The Washington Post's "Next Great Pundit" contest. As soon as I saw the announcement it was on, however, there were some op-eds that made me realize even entering the contest would present a compromise on my part. It was mindless, thoughtless ambition, and the lure of filthy lucre for doing something I love, that made me sit and consider the possibility. Considering the stable of writers they employ - using Mad magazine's old by-line for their editors, "The Usual Gang of Idiots", seems fitting to describe Broder, Parker, Will, Cohen, and the rest - I figured that being known by the company one keeps would leave me with few shreds of dignity left.
More evidence that I dodged a bullet arrived today. Even by entering the contest (I am just confident and egotistical enough to believe that I could have been competitive), the following report from Media Matters for America would have left me feeling dirty:
UPDATE: It's actually much worse than Tony Perkins.
More evidence that I dodged a bullet arrived today. Even by entering the contest (I am just confident and egotistical enough to believe that I could have been competitive), the following report from Media Matters for America would have left me feeling dirty:
Via Pam's House Blend, I learn that the Washington Post's remarkably poor decision to post Tony Perkins's falsehood laden, anti-gay screed on their On Faith blog (on National Coming Out Day nonetheless) was because they felt they needed to "cover both sides" of "bullying and gay suicide." No, really, they're serious. Apparently they hosted a Live Q & A chat with Dan Savage to discuss "bullying and gay suicide" and his "It Gets Better Project," which is a You Tube channel Savage created in order to reach out to gay youths to prevent suicide. So, to balance Savage, the Post turned to Perkins to respond. Apparently to the Post, gay suicide is a two-sided issue.Savage has a pithy response to the Post:
GLAAD and the Washington Post had an exchange over Twitter, in which the Post responded to criticism over publishing Perkins' column, by saying, "[W]e're working to cover both sides. Earlier, we hosted Dan Savage of It Gets Better in a live chat." GLAAD rightly replied, "There are not 'both sides' to this issue. Teen suicide isn't a debate-it's a tragedy."
...if you had told me that my doing a live chat with your readers about the It Gets Better Project was going to be used as an excuse to publish the hateful, bigoted lies of Tony Perkins, I wouldn't have done your fucking live chat.I feel bad for Savage, because he probably saw this as an opportunity to take his message to a platform with a broader audience. In the process, the Post managed to completely undermine him, his message, and its own moral authority.
UPDATE: It's actually much worse than Tony Perkins.
Diaries, Journals, The Internet, And Identity
There are two reviews in the latest New York Review of Books on diaries and journals. One concerns Jimmy Carter's release of his diaries from his White House years. The other is the publication by the Library of America of an edition in two volumes of Ralph Waldo Emerson's massive private journals (the actual journals, according to the reviewer, comprise 40 thick volumes; the two under review, covering a span of 57 years, come out combining the two volumes, to around 2,000 pages). Carter's diaries, despite the headline-grabbing "revelation" that he and the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy clashed over health care reform, is revealing not just of this particular dispute. Carter had pretty solid, yet succinct, opinions on all sorts of people, from German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to the late Sens. Scoop Jackson and Frank Church. Mining the wealth of detail, the reviewer concludes that, in many ways, Carter has become his own worst enemy, not least by publishing these diaries. He also recently shot himself in the foot (which was embedded in his mouth, no mean feat) by declaring that his was the best post-Presidency career of all. That this has often been remarked upon is true enough; that he was un-humble enough to agree with this assessment says much about the character of the man.
Emerson's journals in many ways appear similar to Carter's. Rich in detail, precise and unflagging in his opinions on people and events (the young Emerson dismisses a small group of English Romantics, including Coleridge, even as one is hard pressed to discover differences between Romanticism and much of Emerson's pantheistic, individualist notions of human possibility), reveals both the sorrow at a series of deaths that occurred in a span of a few short years - his young wife's, two brothers, his son - and the ensuing heroic, monumental efforts to overcome that grief and continue to affirm the basic goodness not just of humanity, but the entire Universe. One can speculate on whether this was an act of self-delusion, an example of a powerful will and intellect integrating the events of his life with his vision of an ordered, loving universe, or the maundering thoughts of a borderline sociopath Yet, the sheer volume of his private thoughts makes any simplistic reduction of this complex individual impossible.
I used to keep a journal. I started the summer after my freshman year in college, as an attempt to come to terms with a relationship gone horribly wrong. I also took the opportunity to reflect on events in the larger world. I have kept these journals, written in spiral notebooks, but am now thinking again about whether or not they should be kept around. In the case of Carter, it seems that publishing his detailed account of his far-too hands-approach to the Presidency reveals him to be an individual capable of an interpersonal pettiness that emerged in his public life in his far-too-revealing 1979 speech scolding the American people for a failure of spirit, known for a word - "malaise" - that never actually appeared in the speech. It is possible to reveal far too much of oneself, particularly if one is still around to hear critics gasp in wonder at one's faults.
The original "blogs", or web logs, were little more than on-line journals. Some of the best I still read are exactly that. Even my own is little more than that, and considering the limitations of the genre it is surprise that anyone thinks they can be much more than that. It is this more than anything that lends a certain credence to critical dismissal of even the best political blogs as nothing more than the muddled musings of persons ill-equipped to do serious analytical reflection on our current events.
We now come to the crux of the issue at the heart of the whole journaling/blogging enterprise. Even the most impersonal writings open up critics to the question of identity. "Who are you that we should heed your words?" is the most basic question posed to any authority. Even those bog writers who admit their identity in public (more common now than in the past) find themselves facing this critical question, usually countered by demanding an attention to the substance of their work. Yet, no writing gains authority apart from the acceptance of the authority of the person who wrote it. On the one hand, it is possible to consider any piece of writing "on the merits". Doing so, however, makes of any writing something unreal. A person wrote this or that. A person with a point of view, a background, educated or not, informed or not, that lends credibility to that writing, or detracts from it.
Until recently, journaling was an attempt by individuals to forge an identity, to question their identity, so they could then move out in to public without needing to reveal their inner struggle. Now, that sphere of privacy has been eradicated. Identity is no longer forged in the precinct of the private. On the contrary, it is becoming part of our larger culture of public display. Whether it is the antics of "reality TV" - which is no more "real" than scripted television - or the proliferation of blogs dealing with an individual's sex life, drinking consumption, relationships with family, we no longer even consider it necessary to keep parts of our lives from public scrutiny. Getting input from people on how we live our lives is part of our culture now. Even an octogenarian like Carter has succumbed, seeing in the publication a possibility for public vindication (which has gone very badly wrong). Emerson's journals, on the other hand, reveal that the man behind the essays and sermons and pamphlets and occasional writings struggled to live out his own creed, could be both magnanimous and petty, and rounds out an understanding of him as a human being who understood that part of being human, being an individual, is best forged in fires behind closed doors.
Emerson's journals in many ways appear similar to Carter's. Rich in detail, precise and unflagging in his opinions on people and events (the young Emerson dismisses a small group of English Romantics, including Coleridge, even as one is hard pressed to discover differences between Romanticism and much of Emerson's pantheistic, individualist notions of human possibility), reveals both the sorrow at a series of deaths that occurred in a span of a few short years - his young wife's, two brothers, his son - and the ensuing heroic, monumental efforts to overcome that grief and continue to affirm the basic goodness not just of humanity, but the entire Universe. One can speculate on whether this was an act of self-delusion, an example of a powerful will and intellect integrating the events of his life with his vision of an ordered, loving universe, or the maundering thoughts of a borderline sociopath Yet, the sheer volume of his private thoughts makes any simplistic reduction of this complex individual impossible.
I used to keep a journal. I started the summer after my freshman year in college, as an attempt to come to terms with a relationship gone horribly wrong. I also took the opportunity to reflect on events in the larger world. I have kept these journals, written in spiral notebooks, but am now thinking again about whether or not they should be kept around. In the case of Carter, it seems that publishing his detailed account of his far-too hands-approach to the Presidency reveals him to be an individual capable of an interpersonal pettiness that emerged in his public life in his far-too-revealing 1979 speech scolding the American people for a failure of spirit, known for a word - "malaise" - that never actually appeared in the speech. It is possible to reveal far too much of oneself, particularly if one is still around to hear critics gasp in wonder at one's faults.
The original "blogs", or web logs, were little more than on-line journals. Some of the best I still read are exactly that. Even my own is little more than that, and considering the limitations of the genre it is surprise that anyone thinks they can be much more than that. It is this more than anything that lends a certain credence to critical dismissal of even the best political blogs as nothing more than the muddled musings of persons ill-equipped to do serious analytical reflection on our current events.
We now come to the crux of the issue at the heart of the whole journaling/blogging enterprise. Even the most impersonal writings open up critics to the question of identity. "Who are you that we should heed your words?" is the most basic question posed to any authority. Even those bog writers who admit their identity in public (more common now than in the past) find themselves facing this critical question, usually countered by demanding an attention to the substance of their work. Yet, no writing gains authority apart from the acceptance of the authority of the person who wrote it. On the one hand, it is possible to consider any piece of writing "on the merits". Doing so, however, makes of any writing something unreal. A person wrote this or that. A person with a point of view, a background, educated or not, informed or not, that lends credibility to that writing, or detracts from it.
Until recently, journaling was an attempt by individuals to forge an identity, to question their identity, so they could then move out in to public without needing to reveal their inner struggle. Now, that sphere of privacy has been eradicated. Identity is no longer forged in the precinct of the private. On the contrary, it is becoming part of our larger culture of public display. Whether it is the antics of "reality TV" - which is no more "real" than scripted television - or the proliferation of blogs dealing with an individual's sex life, drinking consumption, relationships with family, we no longer even consider it necessary to keep parts of our lives from public scrutiny. Getting input from people on how we live our lives is part of our culture now. Even an octogenarian like Carter has succumbed, seeing in the publication a possibility for public vindication (which has gone very badly wrong). Emerson's journals, on the other hand, reveal that the man behind the essays and sermons and pamphlets and occasional writings struggled to live out his own creed, could be both magnanimous and petty, and rounds out an understanding of him as a human being who understood that part of being human, being an individual, is best forged in fires behind closed doors.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
A Boring And Irrelevant Family Story
A discussion on a Friend's Facebook page got me thinking about how some life-lessons I got from my home are tinged with bittersweet. If you know my parents, or their relatives, please don't repeat this. It's just been on my mind.
My mother has always been unfailingly polite to her children's significant others. Yet, at least for me, she has also been polite enough not to mention a prior lady-friend in the presence of a later one. My own sense of this was this came from her own family opening up their home to wayward children, as well as having a couple wayward children of their own. A large amount of tolerance was necessary in a home that housed Tom Johnston.
My mother told me a story, though, that changed my mind about some thing. Before she and my father started dating in the late 1940's, Dad had been in a long-term relationship with another woman, whose name was Darlene. My understanding is that, one day, she was just gone. No note, no message, no forwarding address. Nothing. Just . . . gone.
The first time my mother met my father's family, all of them - his parents, his brother, his sister - spent the entire time raving about how wonderful Darlene was. How beautiful. To say that my mother's feelings were hurt would be an understatement. When she told me this story, she said that she promised herself that she would never do the same thing to her own children.
This is not an indictment of the callousness of my father's family. It is rather, a story that, to me, illustrates how the things we learn as we come of age, the things we hope to carry with us to make us better people, are far too often rooted in pain and sadness. It would be much better is we just knew how to treat one another, how to live with consideration for others as the root of our interactions. Unfortunately, we have to learn the hard way.
My mother has always been unfailingly polite to her children's significant others. Yet, at least for me, she has also been polite enough not to mention a prior lady-friend in the presence of a later one. My own sense of this was this came from her own family opening up their home to wayward children, as well as having a couple wayward children of their own. A large amount of tolerance was necessary in a home that housed Tom Johnston.
My mother told me a story, though, that changed my mind about some thing. Before she and my father started dating in the late 1940's, Dad had been in a long-term relationship with another woman, whose name was Darlene. My understanding is that, one day, she was just gone. No note, no message, no forwarding address. Nothing. Just . . . gone.
The first time my mother met my father's family, all of them - his parents, his brother, his sister - spent the entire time raving about how wonderful Darlene was. How beautiful. To say that my mother's feelings were hurt would be an understatement. When she told me this story, she said that she promised herself that she would never do the same thing to her own children.
This is not an indictment of the callousness of my father's family. It is rather, a story that, to me, illustrates how the things we learn as we come of age, the things we hope to carry with us to make us better people, are far too often rooted in pain and sadness. It would be much better is we just knew how to treat one another, how to live with consideration for others as the root of our interactions. Unfortunately, we have to learn the hard way.
Ernst Bloch On The Possibility Of The Church
Because of his style of writing and the vagaries of translation, Ernst Bloch is not eminently or pithily quotable. All the same, the following from "The Nationalized God and the Right to Community" in Man On His Own is in need of quoting.
The gates to hell will not overwhelm the Church; it has opened its own gates to hell too often. But it is one thing for the power Church to pass, the Church of superstitions, and would be quite another thing if a power-free force of conscience should be on guards, should undertake to stand guard and to teach whitehr and why. In the future ship of state (said Bebel), the teacher, not the officer, will be Number One; and the same could be case in a Church embarked on a voyage without superstititions. It could be thoroughly religious, but not in the sense of a re-ligion or reconnection with the cominion and its mythologies, but as the forward reconnection of a whole dream with our deficient make-shifts.This juxtaposition between what the Church could be (the first quoted paragraph) and what the Church, too often, is (the second) offers a view of the possibility of the Church living out of its yet-to-be-realized future, that lies as the kernel buried in the sterile soil of the present. At the very least, it should be noted that Bloch's insight and prophetic criticism should be given a fair hearing.
Now to get back to our given Church: it lives almost entirely for modesty and moneyed piety. It zealously inveights agaisnt the harm done to Joseph and the sheep, but it has made its arrangements with the upper classes and serves as their spiritual defender. It bristles at see-through blouses, but not at slums in which half-naked children starve, and not, above all, at the conditions that keep three quarters of mankind in misery. It condemns desperate girls who abort a foetus, but it consecrates war, which aborts millions. It has nationalized its God, nationalized him into ecclesiatic organization, and has inherited the Roman empire under the mask of the Crucified. It preserves misery and injustice, having first tolerated and the approved the class power that causes them; it prevents any seriousness about deliverance by postponing it to St. Never-Ever's Day or shifting it to the beyond.
Monday, October 11, 2010
A Lesson From Lost
So I'm watching the entire series, straight through. In the third episode of Season 2, when Jack and Locke and Kate encounter Desmond in the Hatch for the first time, Jack's reaction is almost violently reactive. He refuses to accept anything that is told him, not the least the order to put down his gun or Locke dies.
Jack's obstinate refusal to accept the oddities of the island - his insistence on keeping everything on the level of the mundane, despite multiple evidences that there is something far more happening - is in many ways the predicament so many of us moderns face. We are put in situations that defy easy explanation. We face events that seem to defy any rational understanding, or understanding based on our previous experience. Jack's violence, his insistence that reality conform to his own blinkered, limited understanding of reality is too often the reaction we see in people who cannot, will not seek to understand what is really happening. They refuse to accept what should be quite clear and plain because it falls outside their accepted canons of understanding.
Jack, in other words, is a Tea Partier. He is also, in these episodes (and in many others) quite an asshole. Were I on the island, I would quite quickly tire of him.
Jack's obstinate refusal to accept the oddities of the island - his insistence on keeping everything on the level of the mundane, despite multiple evidences that there is something far more happening - is in many ways the predicament so many of us moderns face. We are put in situations that defy easy explanation. We face events that seem to defy any rational understanding, or understanding based on our previous experience. Jack's violence, his insistence that reality conform to his own blinkered, limited understanding of reality is too often the reaction we see in people who cannot, will not seek to understand what is really happening. They refuse to accept what should be quite clear and plain because it falls outside their accepted canons of understanding.
Jack, in other words, is a Tea Partier. He is also, in these episodes (and in many others) quite an asshole. Were I on the island, I would quite quickly tire of him.
Another Day, Another Gay Suicide
This time, it's Norman, OK.
A 19-year old gay man committed suicide following a heated Norman city council meeting that focused on homosexuality, the teen's family said.Please note, the lack of acceptance wasn't from his family. It was the general lack of acceptance in the larger world.
--snip--
"I also think it's not dark thinking or bigoted thinking to have an opposition to this...But it's clear thinking," said one Norman resident during the meeting.
"Recruiting children into these lifestyles will be very easy with this kind of open format," said another resident during the city council meeting.
--snip--
Zach's father said his son was a very private person who came out during high school. He said the Norman North graduate was bullied and harassed at school for being gay. Van Harrington said he feels a lack of acceptance from society and what he calls a "toxic meeting" last month is what finally pushed Zach over the edge.
In Other News - The Sun Rises In The East
A report that a Republican said something both stupid and hateful about gays is about as newsworthy as reports of the eastern horizon brightening in the early morning hours. The only reason to report it is to shine a light on such ugliness.
Beyond that, the only thing shocking about it is what took Carl Paladino so long.
Beyond that, the only thing shocking about it is what took Carl Paladino so long.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
It's Giuliani Time All Over Again
The only difference between the NYPD and the Latin Goonies is the former had badges:
The nine members of the Latin King Goonies gang heard a rumor one of their teenage recruits was gay and then found the teen, stripped him, beat him and sodomized him with a plunger handle until he confessed to having had sex with a man, police said. The gang members then found a second teen they suspected was gay and tortured him and the man, police say.
The gang members found the 30-year-old man by inviting him to a house, telling him they were having a party, police said. When he arrived, they burned, beat and tortured him for hours and sodomized him with a miniature baseball bat, police said.
King Solomon Burke RIP
Solomon Burke was a large man in every sense of the word. He partook of all that life had to offer, eating, drinking, marrying, and procreating to joyous excess. His music career, too, crossed the spectrum from standard R&B through country music (he loved it) to gospel (among his many ventures was time spent as a preacher).
When he was inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, much later than he should have been, he was surrounded by part of his large family and entourage in another of those moments of ecstatic excess.
His singing, like his life, was done without restraint, with joy (even as he did heart rending ballads and songs of political and social protest). Even seated, he radiated an energy that was contagious. As in this clip from an appearance on the British program Top of the Pops.
The world is a little smaller today because he is no longer with us. At least he left behind a catalog as large as his own life from which we can continue to learn how to live life to its fullest, always with joy.
When he was inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, much later than he should have been, he was surrounded by part of his large family and entourage in another of those moments of ecstatic excess.
His singing, like his life, was done without restraint, with joy (even as he did heart rending ballads and songs of political and social protest). Even seated, he radiated an energy that was contagious. As in this clip from an appearance on the British program Top of the Pops.
The world is a little smaller today because he is no longer with us. At least he left behind a catalog as large as his own life from which we can continue to learn how to live life to its fullest, always with joy.
An Election Year Psalm
Today's lectionary readings include Psalm 146, verses three and four of which read as follows in the NRSV:
Do not put your trust in princes,We would do well to remember that on all sides of the political aisle.
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Overwrought
In December, 1980, I was playing at my high school concert band's winter concert when word reached me that John Lennon had been shot and killed by a deranged fan. Bleeding his life away outside his building, I have to wonder if Lennon understood what had happened. At 15, I was only dimly aware that Lennon was anything other than a member of the Beatles, had a prickly personality, and had recently released an album of new work that was, to my young ears, kind of middle-of-the-road pop that wasn't all that exciting.
Ninety miles away, at my future University alma mater, a mournful fan took a marker and scrawled through the tunnel-like passages in the arts building, "Why was John Lennon shot?" A frustrated critic answered his question at one point, in a much larger hand - "Who the fuck cares?"
Today is Lennon's birthday. Had he lived, he would have been 70 years old. In some respects, dying relatively young at 40, and murdered to boot, have shielded Lennon from a more critical eye. His surviving band mates, in particular Paul McCartney, managed to turn Lennon's death in to a windfall (although George Harrison did pen a marvelous tribute song in the mid-1980's). I do not think it unfair to say that Lennon's cult of personality, created and sustained by his massive ego combined with frail self-image, makes it difficult to make clear some things about who Lennon was and what he did.
He was a singer in a rock band. He was far more intelligent and witty than the average British working-class youngster, and was surprised by his own intelligence and wit. Having some talent at writing and arranging songs, combing not just rock and roll and R&B, but also show tunes and even British dance-hall music ("When I'm 64" is the best example of this) to create a succession of sounds over time that would be hard to pin down as "The Beatles' sound". With the exception of Ringo's drum sound, brought out by producer George Martin, there is really little unifying the Beatles catalog, musically. Consider "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Revolution No. 9" - if someone did not know they were done by the same band, would you believe someone who told you they were?
Lennon's post-Beatles career, such as it was, was an archetype of narcissistic self-indulgence - from drug addiction to the nonsensical wallowing in self-pity encouraged by his participation in Primal Scream Therapy, to the promotion of Yoko's middlebrow "art" to a far-too-publicized "retirement" that managed to accommodate not only his drug use, but time spent with a mistress, and more self-indulgence.
The emergence of Double Fantasy was hailed at the time as a marvelous return to form, yet we hear in the lyrics the same tired refrain - the most interesting thing John Lennon can think about is . . . John Lennon. The music is spare, as was his wont after the Beatles, but the melodies and harmonies were hardly anything more than rearrangements of earlier tunes. Lennon even advertised his on-going sturm und drang over his relationship with his former bandmates, first before the release of the album with a full-page-ad in the New York Times that was a meandering bit of verbiage that included a reference to "three angels" that may, or may not, have been George, Paul, and Ringo. He indulged in guessing games over whether he would tour or not. He claimed to suffer from stage fright, talking endlessly about how sick he was flying from Europe to Toronto for the Live Peace concert. Yet, if playing live made him physically ill, why talk about it? Why make people guess? Because the most fascinating thing about John Lennon was, for him . . . everything about him.
No one deserves to die young. No one deserves to die, leaving behind a wife and young child. Lennon's death left his two families - his first wife Cynthia and son Julian along with Yoko and Sean - without his presence. The far-too-public ghost fans have created is not sustained by the meager remnants left behind. While I certainly acknowledge the influence the Beatles had upon popular music of all kinds, the creation of the legend of John Lennon is one I refuse to sustain, because its most ardent believer was . . . John Lennon.
Ninety miles away, at my future University alma mater, a mournful fan took a marker and scrawled through the tunnel-like passages in the arts building, "Why was John Lennon shot?" A frustrated critic answered his question at one point, in a much larger hand - "Who the fuck cares?"
Today is Lennon's birthday. Had he lived, he would have been 70 years old. In some respects, dying relatively young at 40, and murdered to boot, have shielded Lennon from a more critical eye. His surviving band mates, in particular Paul McCartney, managed to turn Lennon's death in to a windfall (although George Harrison did pen a marvelous tribute song in the mid-1980's). I do not think it unfair to say that Lennon's cult of personality, created and sustained by his massive ego combined with frail self-image, makes it difficult to make clear some things about who Lennon was and what he did.
He was a singer in a rock band. He was far more intelligent and witty than the average British working-class youngster, and was surprised by his own intelligence and wit. Having some talent at writing and arranging songs, combing not just rock and roll and R&B, but also show tunes and even British dance-hall music ("When I'm 64" is the best example of this) to create a succession of sounds over time that would be hard to pin down as "The Beatles' sound". With the exception of Ringo's drum sound, brought out by producer George Martin, there is really little unifying the Beatles catalog, musically. Consider "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Revolution No. 9" - if someone did not know they were done by the same band, would you believe someone who told you they were?
Lennon's post-Beatles career, such as it was, was an archetype of narcissistic self-indulgence - from drug addiction to the nonsensical wallowing in self-pity encouraged by his participation in Primal Scream Therapy, to the promotion of Yoko's middlebrow "art" to a far-too-publicized "retirement" that managed to accommodate not only his drug use, but time spent with a mistress, and more self-indulgence.
The emergence of Double Fantasy was hailed at the time as a marvelous return to form, yet we hear in the lyrics the same tired refrain - the most interesting thing John Lennon can think about is . . . John Lennon. The music is spare, as was his wont after the Beatles, but the melodies and harmonies were hardly anything more than rearrangements of earlier tunes. Lennon even advertised his on-going sturm und drang over his relationship with his former bandmates, first before the release of the album with a full-page-ad in the New York Times that was a meandering bit of verbiage that included a reference to "three angels" that may, or may not, have been George, Paul, and Ringo. He indulged in guessing games over whether he would tour or not. He claimed to suffer from stage fright, talking endlessly about how sick he was flying from Europe to Toronto for the Live Peace concert. Yet, if playing live made him physically ill, why talk about it? Why make people guess? Because the most fascinating thing about John Lennon was, for him . . . everything about him.
No one deserves to die young. No one deserves to die, leaving behind a wife and young child. Lennon's death left his two families - his first wife Cynthia and son Julian along with Yoko and Sean - without his presence. The far-too-public ghost fans have created is not sustained by the meager remnants left behind. While I certainly acknowledge the influence the Beatles had upon popular music of all kinds, the creation of the legend of John Lennon is one I refuse to sustain, because its most ardent believer was . . . John Lennon.
Too Little Too Late
Dana Millbank continues exposing Glenn Beck for the ignorant fraud that he is. All the same, I am less than moved by the series. Even acknowledging, as Bob Somerby does, that this kind of thing should be rewarded with a certain level of praise as the proper role of functioning journalism, I am left frustrated because of one simple fact - anyone paying attention has known for quite some time that Beck is a crank, a kook, purveyor of conspiracy theories that don't even have the single virtue of some facts behind them, and an ignoramus miseducating two million people nightly.
After the Bolshevik Revolution was secure, Lenin and Trotsky turned their attention to the west. Lenin decided that it was necessary to coddle the socialist parties in western Europe, calling them "useful idiots". Hardly revolutionary, these participants in the democratic process (as it existed in Europe in the 20's) became lightning rods for capitalist rage. Lenin figured that, as long as the ruling class focused their ire on these parties, the real revolutionaries, the real threats to the capitalist order - the communists - could make their way to power unencumbered by official attention. Obviously, that isn't what happened, but the idea of using front groups to disguise the workings of very real threats to the social and political order became embedded in the practice of politics.
Funny enough, the group that aped this particular practice was the rabidly anti-communist group The John Birch Society. Encouraged to do whatever it took to fight the impending communist takeover, orchestrated from above by no less a communist sympathizer than Dwight Eisenhower, the Birchers included creating front groups with innocuous-sounding names and bland mission statements to encourage greater participation in the defense of "freedom".
Oligarchs are far better at this sort of thing than independent actors with neither power nor influence. While not orchestrated consciously, the emergence of various figures to distract and entertain people is a recurrent reality.
We are currently in the throes of our greatest social, political, and economic crisis in nearly a century. It has been made suddenly very much worse by the revelation that banks, continuing their fraudulent, illegal behavior when they should have rested, quietly chastened, may have expropriated thousands, maybe millions, of homes illegally. Now sold at bargain-basement prices, the ownership of these homes can now become a matter of legal wrangling that may never be untangled.
For all that, what dominates so much of our public discussion? Christine O'Donnell's casual relationship with the truth. Whether an aide to California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown thought calling Republican candidate Meg Whitman a "whore" was a good campaign tactic. Finally, after last week's long piece and today's shorter one, we have Glenn Beck. Lachrymose, dramatic, Beck draws the attention of millions of people with his overwrought "discoveries" such as the American purchase of Alaska in the 1950's (it was purchased from the Russians in 1867) and the connivance of Barack Obama and George Soros to enrich the latter while empowering the former.
Hazarding a guess, I think this attention Beck is finally receiving, while a good thing, also indicates a certain wariness on the part of both his employers at News Corp. and the larger political class, regardless of party, at the attention and following he has. While not a member of the Tea Party, he certainly has his followers. His August rally at the Lincoln Memorial showed that, while not nearly as large as claimed by his dedicated fans, he does have disciples who are working to bring to office people who think and believe as he does. Rather than useful, the legions of Tea Partiers, encouraged by the notion that there really is someone who gives easy answers to the questions they face in the midst of strife, a name and a face to the enemy, now pose a threat to the real seats of power. The Establishment is waking up to the possibility that their creation will, New Prometheus-like, break its chains. Like Mary Shelley's fictional creature, who educated himself by stealing books by Goethe and others from a peasant (nice touch, that), Beck and his followers are armed with the auto-didact's wonder at worlds revealed through sources never dreamed. Except, alas, the sources upon which Beck and his followers rely are woefully bad.
It would have been far better had Beck's work been exposed two years ago or more. Not just Beck, however. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Levin - the whole panoply of right-wing publicists who peddle fake notions and potions have certainly been exposed by Media Matters for America, among other websites. They preach to the choir, and there has been a real need to speak out to a far larger audience about the political snake oil on offer. It has been needed not for years, but decades.
While commendable, Millbank's piece is just too little, too late.
After the Bolshevik Revolution was secure, Lenin and Trotsky turned their attention to the west. Lenin decided that it was necessary to coddle the socialist parties in western Europe, calling them "useful idiots". Hardly revolutionary, these participants in the democratic process (as it existed in Europe in the 20's) became lightning rods for capitalist rage. Lenin figured that, as long as the ruling class focused their ire on these parties, the real revolutionaries, the real threats to the capitalist order - the communists - could make their way to power unencumbered by official attention. Obviously, that isn't what happened, but the idea of using front groups to disguise the workings of very real threats to the social and political order became embedded in the practice of politics.
Funny enough, the group that aped this particular practice was the rabidly anti-communist group The John Birch Society. Encouraged to do whatever it took to fight the impending communist takeover, orchestrated from above by no less a communist sympathizer than Dwight Eisenhower, the Birchers included creating front groups with innocuous-sounding names and bland mission statements to encourage greater participation in the defense of "freedom".
Oligarchs are far better at this sort of thing than independent actors with neither power nor influence. While not orchestrated consciously, the emergence of various figures to distract and entertain people is a recurrent reality.
We are currently in the throes of our greatest social, political, and economic crisis in nearly a century. It has been made suddenly very much worse by the revelation that banks, continuing their fraudulent, illegal behavior when they should have rested, quietly chastened, may have expropriated thousands, maybe millions, of homes illegally. Now sold at bargain-basement prices, the ownership of these homes can now become a matter of legal wrangling that may never be untangled.
For all that, what dominates so much of our public discussion? Christine O'Donnell's casual relationship with the truth. Whether an aide to California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown thought calling Republican candidate Meg Whitman a "whore" was a good campaign tactic. Finally, after last week's long piece and today's shorter one, we have Glenn Beck. Lachrymose, dramatic, Beck draws the attention of millions of people with his overwrought "discoveries" such as the American purchase of Alaska in the 1950's (it was purchased from the Russians in 1867) and the connivance of Barack Obama and George Soros to enrich the latter while empowering the former.
Hazarding a guess, I think this attention Beck is finally receiving, while a good thing, also indicates a certain wariness on the part of both his employers at News Corp. and the larger political class, regardless of party, at the attention and following he has. While not a member of the Tea Party, he certainly has his followers. His August rally at the Lincoln Memorial showed that, while not nearly as large as claimed by his dedicated fans, he does have disciples who are working to bring to office people who think and believe as he does. Rather than useful, the legions of Tea Partiers, encouraged by the notion that there really is someone who gives easy answers to the questions they face in the midst of strife, a name and a face to the enemy, now pose a threat to the real seats of power. The Establishment is waking up to the possibility that their creation will, New Prometheus-like, break its chains. Like Mary Shelley's fictional creature, who educated himself by stealing books by Goethe and others from a peasant (nice touch, that), Beck and his followers are armed with the auto-didact's wonder at worlds revealed through sources never dreamed. Except, alas, the sources upon which Beck and his followers rely are woefully bad.
It would have been far better had Beck's work been exposed two years ago or more. Not just Beck, however. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Levin - the whole panoply of right-wing publicists who peddle fake notions and potions have certainly been exposed by Media Matters for America, among other websites. They preach to the choir, and there has been a real need to speak out to a far larger audience about the political snake oil on offer. It has been needed not for years, but decades.
While commendable, Millbank's piece is just too little, too late.
Friday, October 08, 2010
On The Limits Of Economic Determinism
I started reading Man On His Own, a collection of essays by the German Marxist Ernst Bloch. This was the first of his writings translated to English. It is unique in my experience of writings by a Marxist because it has a foreword and introduction by theologians. Harvey Cox, whose moment in the sun was already fading when the book was published, wrote the Foreword. The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, whose own work is, as was derisively noted by Karl Barth, a baptizing of Bloch's The Principle of Hope (I wonder to this day if Moltmann ever read anything other than the 53rd chapter of the three volumes), wrote the Introduction.
Born in 1885 in Ludwigshafen, a dirty, grimy industrial city, Bloch's young imagination was fired by, among other things, the horribly pulpy westerns of the German writer Karl May (Bloch's Austrian contemporary, Adolf Hitler, was also fond of May's books, which only proves, I think, that May's influence on the future of European history was far less than some might imagine) and the poetry of Goethe.
Young enough to celebrate the victories of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and to see promise in the failed revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria, Bloch carved out a niche by returning at least some of the romanticism to what had become, under Lenin and Stalin, the dry pedanticism of "scientific socialism". First with The Spirit of Utopia and later (written in exile during the Nazi era; Bloch sat in the New York Public Library writing furiously while his second wife worked menial jobs to pay the bills) The Principle of Hope, Bloch brought out the social-psychological roots of revolutionary consciousness, and saw in the utopian visions of everything from dreams to architecture the framework for a metaphysics in which the future became the only really Real thing, drawing the present toward its ineluctable, fully human realizations (a Platonizing that turns Plato's anti-humanism on its head).
The essays in the collection I am reading were written after Bloch was exiled from East Germany. He had returned to the Soviet-controlled area of Germany soon after the end of the Second World War, hoping to become part of the intellectual vanguard of the revolution in his homeland. Sad to say, his writings did not toe the far-too-narrow party line of Erich Honecker's small-minded Stalinism, and eventually - after being silenced, having his works smuggled to the West to be published, and serving some time under house arrest - he ended up in West Germany, where he took up a position that became meta-critical. Still insisting he was in line with Marxist tradition, he railed against the smallness of both East and West, against the shallow and violent triumphalism of Stalinist orthodoxy that brooked no dissent, and the equally shallow and no less violent triumphalism of western anti-communism.
Man On His Own is a very late work, not least because its overriding concern seems to be expanding revolutionary consciousness to include the not-yet of death and what happens after. The opening paragraphs of the first essay, "Karl Marx, Death, and the Apocalypse" deals a summary judgment upon the Leninist tradition, deriding it as a kind of Epicurean superficiality. Seeing in the satisfaction of that most basic need - filling the belly - the sum total of human happiness, this part of the Marxist tradition had little concern with culture in its many varieties. Religion most of all. Bloch, on the other hand, sees in the myths of apocalyptic the most powerful revolutionary critique of bourgeois society and of the "vulgar" Marxism that sees in the satisfaction of our immediate needs for continued biological survival the satisfaction of all our human wants and desires.
This is not to deny the necessity, for Bloch, of a very real political revolution. It is only to point out that, for Bloch, this political revolution, in which the entire structure of human relations is reenvisioned and restructured is the beginning of a more full, more human society.
Our current economic and political overlords - and there really isn't much difference between the two groups anymore - are no less insistent than Marx and his followers were that the sum total of human happiness, of human achievement, is reached when, through the workings of the market, the possibility of real human freedom through the accumulation of resources to stave off hunger has been achieved. The proponents of the the myth of the equation of our democratic Republic and unfettered capitalism, even now in its very real dotage, are no less enthusiastic economic determinists than their ideological foes (I think it is necessary to remember that the original neoconservatives, particularly Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were either full-fledged members of the communist party or fellow-travlers; see Garry Dorrien's The Neo-Conservative Mind). The reduction of our civil life to economic consumerism, the false choices of our politics between two groups fully in hock to corporate interests, and the nihilism of a political class that sees power as an end to itself, rather than a calling to service is the end of any illusions any thoughtful observer should have on the ability of capitalism to serve the full needs of human beings.
Bloch's musings on the possibilities inherent in stories of life-after-death and the apocalyptic musings of Christian and Jewish millenarianism offer a far deeper vision of the possibilities of human life than any kind of "scientific" view of human happiness that asks that we only surrender that which is most important to us in order that we may eat.
Born in 1885 in Ludwigshafen, a dirty, grimy industrial city, Bloch's young imagination was fired by, among other things, the horribly pulpy westerns of the German writer Karl May (Bloch's Austrian contemporary, Adolf Hitler, was also fond of May's books, which only proves, I think, that May's influence on the future of European history was far less than some might imagine) and the poetry of Goethe.
Young enough to celebrate the victories of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and to see promise in the failed revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria, Bloch carved out a niche by returning at least some of the romanticism to what had become, under Lenin and Stalin, the dry pedanticism of "scientific socialism". First with The Spirit of Utopia and later (written in exile during the Nazi era; Bloch sat in the New York Public Library writing furiously while his second wife worked menial jobs to pay the bills) The Principle of Hope, Bloch brought out the social-psychological roots of revolutionary consciousness, and saw in the utopian visions of everything from dreams to architecture the framework for a metaphysics in which the future became the only really Real thing, drawing the present toward its ineluctable, fully human realizations (a Platonizing that turns Plato's anti-humanism on its head).
The essays in the collection I am reading were written after Bloch was exiled from East Germany. He had returned to the Soviet-controlled area of Germany soon after the end of the Second World War, hoping to become part of the intellectual vanguard of the revolution in his homeland. Sad to say, his writings did not toe the far-too-narrow party line of Erich Honecker's small-minded Stalinism, and eventually - after being silenced, having his works smuggled to the West to be published, and serving some time under house arrest - he ended up in West Germany, where he took up a position that became meta-critical. Still insisting he was in line with Marxist tradition, he railed against the smallness of both East and West, against the shallow and violent triumphalism of Stalinist orthodoxy that brooked no dissent, and the equally shallow and no less violent triumphalism of western anti-communism.
Man On His Own is a very late work, not least because its overriding concern seems to be expanding revolutionary consciousness to include the not-yet of death and what happens after. The opening paragraphs of the first essay, "Karl Marx, Death, and the Apocalypse" deals a summary judgment upon the Leninist tradition, deriding it as a kind of Epicurean superficiality. Seeing in the satisfaction of that most basic need - filling the belly - the sum total of human happiness, this part of the Marxist tradition had little concern with culture in its many varieties. Religion most of all. Bloch, on the other hand, sees in the myths of apocalyptic the most powerful revolutionary critique of bourgeois society and of the "vulgar" Marxism that sees in the satisfaction of our immediate needs for continued biological survival the satisfaction of all our human wants and desires.
This is not to deny the necessity, for Bloch, of a very real political revolution. It is only to point out that, for Bloch, this political revolution, in which the entire structure of human relations is reenvisioned and restructured is the beginning of a more full, more human society.
Our current economic and political overlords - and there really isn't much difference between the two groups anymore - are no less insistent than Marx and his followers were that the sum total of human happiness, of human achievement, is reached when, through the workings of the market, the possibility of real human freedom through the accumulation of resources to stave off hunger has been achieved. The proponents of the the myth of the equation of our democratic Republic and unfettered capitalism, even now in its very real dotage, are no less enthusiastic economic determinists than their ideological foes (I think it is necessary to remember that the original neoconservatives, particularly Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were either full-fledged members of the communist party or fellow-travlers; see Garry Dorrien's The Neo-Conservative Mind). The reduction of our civil life to economic consumerism, the false choices of our politics between two groups fully in hock to corporate interests, and the nihilism of a political class that sees power as an end to itself, rather than a calling to service is the end of any illusions any thoughtful observer should have on the ability of capitalism to serve the full needs of human beings.
Bloch's musings on the possibilities inherent in stories of life-after-death and the apocalyptic musings of Christian and Jewish millenarianism offer a far deeper vision of the possibilities of human life than any kind of "scientific" view of human happiness that asks that we only surrender that which is most important to us in order that we may eat.
Peace Prize
I think it is more than awesome that the folks in Stockholm gave the most prestigious award for the promotion of peace to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo. First, like the award given the Burmese democratic activist Aung San Suu Kyi, it shines a light under the rocks of a tyrannical regime. The result - the Chinese are quite simply furious - is a wonder to behold. Every time we are told by some boob and yahoo that the promotion of a more open economic system can only result in a free, more open, eventually democratic China should shut up and consider the events surrounding this announcement. Liu is in prison because he wrote and circulated a document promoting peaceful, democratic change in the People's Republic. He is serving eleven years for doing what we on the internet do all the time - circulating a petition. For all those on the right who insist the Obama Administration is leading us on a path to communist oppression, we should remember what real totalitarianism looks like.
I remember well those fateful days in the early summer of 1989 when the young people of China were poised on the precipice of change. It was a year for political miracles, and it seemed history was on their side. There was a moment, just one brief shining moment, when it seemed the balance would tip in their favor. Pictures of soldiers joining the protesters in Tiananmen Square seemed to point to the steady erosion of support for the regime. It was not meant to be, and thousands died, thousands more ended up in prison or exile, and George H. W. Bush, within months, was kissing the ass of the bloody murderers in Beijing. Not a President since who hasn't written off the same young people who erected a monument to freedom that looked like the Statue of Liberty, betraying our most cherished values in the pursuit of filthy lucre.
Despite official Chinese rhetoric, Liu is a patriot. He loves his homeland, perhaps more than the average young Chinese. He loves his land so much he is willing to risk his freedom and his life to effect change in a place, historically, resistant to change other than the violent destruction of life, civil and human. Just as Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel has done, Liu Xiaobo reminds us that there are millions around the globe who yearn for the freedom and opportunity offered, not by capitalism, but by the very structure of civil liberty and political openness embedded in our Constitution. The same freedoms far too many Americans are all too willing to set aside in the name of convenience, and the false hope that by doing so we might gain a measure of security.
Congratulations, Liu Xiaobo. I know that you will not receive word of the award where you are. I know you will not be able to travel to Stockholm to accept the Prize, and speak on the promise of a democratic China, over a billion people loose from the shackles of a government that gives them bread in exchange for their souls. My hope is that one day, you or another who follows in your footsteps will fulfill the real promise of China, and remind everyone that dissent is the highest love one can have for one's country.
I remember well those fateful days in the early summer of 1989 when the young people of China were poised on the precipice of change. It was a year for political miracles, and it seemed history was on their side. There was a moment, just one brief shining moment, when it seemed the balance would tip in their favor. Pictures of soldiers joining the protesters in Tiananmen Square seemed to point to the steady erosion of support for the regime. It was not meant to be, and thousands died, thousands more ended up in prison or exile, and George H. W. Bush, within months, was kissing the ass of the bloody murderers in Beijing. Not a President since who hasn't written off the same young people who erected a monument to freedom that looked like the Statue of Liberty, betraying our most cherished values in the pursuit of filthy lucre.
Despite official Chinese rhetoric, Liu is a patriot. He loves his homeland, perhaps more than the average young Chinese. He loves his land so much he is willing to risk his freedom and his life to effect change in a place, historically, resistant to change other than the violent destruction of life, civil and human. Just as Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel has done, Liu Xiaobo reminds us that there are millions around the globe who yearn for the freedom and opportunity offered, not by capitalism, but by the very structure of civil liberty and political openness embedded in our Constitution. The same freedoms far too many Americans are all too willing to set aside in the name of convenience, and the false hope that by doing so we might gain a measure of security.
Congratulations, Liu Xiaobo. I know that you will not receive word of the award where you are. I know you will not be able to travel to Stockholm to accept the Prize, and speak on the promise of a democratic China, over a billion people loose from the shackles of a government that gives them bread in exchange for their souls. My hope is that one day, you or another who follows in your footsteps will fulfill the real promise of China, and remind everyone that dissent is the highest love one can have for one's country.
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Conversations Elsewhere
Joel Watts moderates a blog newly-retitled "Unsettled Christianity". In a discussion on a thread there concerning the AFA's opposition to a proposal before the Michigan legislature on bullying and sexual minority youth, Joel - who is a wonderful person extending a more than enough benefit of the doubt in order to open up space for discussion, offers up a link to the following:
In response to this, I responded as follows:
Just thought I'd point all this out.
On the one hand, many gay persons feel like Christians are attempting to bully them by passing laws against gay marriage or civil unions. On the other hand, Christians feel like many gay persons are attempting to bully them by passing laws to silence them so that they can no longer express their beliefs. The way forward is not to embrace the bully-victim cycle as the paradigm of choice but rather to realize that different views exist and that such views can be expressed without malevolent intent.If you clicked the link, the very first sentence, in my estimation, spells trouble:
In the case of the teenagers who have recently killed themselves, bullying has been argued to be a factor. While no bully can ever be fully blamed for someone choosing to end their own life, there is certainly truth to the claim that they may have contributed to the stress that led to someone's choice to commit suicide. Again, however, it might benefit us all to ask whether or not the bully-victim cycle was at work in the background of such events. When we do this, it may move us away from merely defaming others and pointing fingers to getting closer to the heart of the matter. Once we to begin ending the cycle is to attempt to find its recent starting point(s).
From the start, I want folks to know that I write this post as a person who has had close family members and friends who have been and/or are gay. I know the pains and struggles that many of them have faced and still deal with, and I am more than familiar with the sense of rejection that they have experienced, especially from religious folks. I also write this post as a Christian and even more, as a Christian who lives in the midst of the tensions between two groups who often seem to be at loggerheads with one another: the gay community and the evangelical church.Rather than see through the muddle created by any false equivalence, the author jumps in and celebrates that muddle. Rather than hear the cries of the suffering, we are called to understand a cycle in which poor Christian kids feel bullied by non-existent attempts to silence them and their "beliefs".
In response to this, I responded as follows:
While I appreciate the earnest desire behind this post, I disagree with it. At the heart of the (right-wing) anti-gay rhetoric of some who call themselves Christian is the explicit denial of their fundamental humanity. "You aren't 'gay', you are a sinner. You can and must choose to live your life differently than you do, or you are going to hell."On this same thread, we have Deb, who wrote the following:
For me, this has to change. It denies the reality that a person does not "choose" to be gay. A person "is" gay. Denying that reality, as Deb does repeatedly, does not make it a fact. It makes it an ignorant statement of bigotry, a point that is quite clearly beyond her.
Furthermore, if there was a rash of Christian teens offing themselves because queer teens were bullying them, I would be up in arms. If there were Christians who refused to self-identify because of fear that their parental/spousal rights and privileges would be stripped from them, or that they would lose their jobs, I would be incensed. If there was a whole network of Queer websites telling Christians that religion, as a matter of choice, can be changed, and should be in order for the country to be better, I would be fighting against that.
This is an example, in other words, of false equivalence, masked as evenhandedness.
1st. Explain why a married man with a family after years decides to leave his family for another man if it is Not a choice?To which I responded:
2nd . He had a roommate watching? in a college dorm? and yes he is to blame somewhat,should have went to a motel...
3rd.I had to toughen up. lots do ....
4th, God did not create Men to sleep with men, and women to sleep with women,He created man and then created woman for his helpmate,not another man,He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for just that...do you believe the Bible?
4th, Jesus rebuked the woman at the well, He told her to go and sin NO more... love is to be able to rebuke your brother, If you did not you would not care what he does,you would not want him to die in his sin... Love does not mean to just let everything slide like it is not wrong... to strive to be holy.. What would you think Yeshua would say to people today? I know he would love them and does, but do you think that he would go along with all the worlds sin? If my son was gay,or daughter, I would still love them but would not let them be together in my home, would I be wrong?
You write: "Explain why a married man with a family after years decides to leave his family for another man if it is Not a choice?"She has since responded, in a way:
Because people like you deny the reality that being gay is about who they are. Because people like you insist they are evil, wrong, a threat to our faith and society.
Sorry if this is harsh and judgmental, but my patience is at an end. It is precisely people who insist that are "anti-gay" yet draw a line at violence that make me wonder - why draw the line? You are denying the humanity of sexual minorities. Why not do violence to them, since they are less than fully human, in your eyes?
i have no desire to listen to drivel glossed in a misreading of the Bible. I have even less than zero desire to have someone call themselves "anti-gay" and ask to be treated with respect. Had you written "anti-black", say, or "anti-Jew", I would treat you in much the same way.
anti-gay? is so much different than being anti-black or anti-jew,,, sorry, you are born either black, not much you can do about that, or jewish, . lots of things you are born into that you can change.. it is a choice,,, sin is a choice, being holy is a choice, and not anyone , is a threat to my faith.... now society, that is a whole different ballgame,,, what our children are taught and what they learn makes them what they are when grown...and also, what do you think adultery is, it is not just a married couple cheating on each other, any fornication is Adultery... I think that would include men with men and women with women...I refuse to respond to this last, for the same reason I don't argue with creationists, global-warming deniers, and Holocaust deniers. She is wrong, she will not be convinced she is wrong, and treating her position as if it had any merit whatsoever only reinforces the notion that her position is something other than bigotry cloaked in nonsense.
Just thought I'd point all this out.
The Party Of Food Stamps
Newt reminds me of those actors from the 1930's who, as late the late-1960's, continued to grab the spotlight in an attempt either to relive their glory days, or to make younger actors aware they are young and neither as important nor powerful as they believe. Yet, in so doing, they become objects of humor, even derision. They manage to make a mockery of themselves, belittle their previous accomplishments. We all remember Spencer Tracy as the father in Who's Coming To Dinner, but what about his turn in his last picture, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World? Clarke Gable went out with a whimper, fading along with Marilyn Monroe (whose suicide may have been hastened by Gable's obstinate refusal to sleep with her), in The Misfits.
So we have Gingrich, yesterday, stealing headlines with his "party of foodstamps" nonsense. Does Gingrich not understand that it isn't 1980? Does he not get that, in the middle of a recession, there are millions more on public assistance than there might otherwise be? Does he not understand that the easiest, quickest retort is that the Republicans are "the party of the millionaires", particularly in a time of economic devastation?
The surest, simplest way to make short work of this is to own it. Apparently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi managed to do that very thing today, pointing out the beneficial multiplier effect from food stamps. CNN reporter John King did the entire universe a service when, in commenting on the alleged relevance of both the phrase and the larger story it has produced, he let the world know that he was the product of a home that needed, and used, food stamps.
Finally, Gingrich, touted for far too long as "an intellectual", made himself look not just ignorant, but silly, by insisting that the multiplier to which Pelosi pointed was nothing more than "liberal math". While I know that this will not silence him, at this point, it might be a good thing for the country that he receives unwarranted attention. My guess is Republican heads were shaking across the land as the story first broke yesterday. In all likelihood, there was probably a furious exchange of cell phone calls and Blackberry IMs attempting to put the genie back in the bottle. This close to an election that just a month ago seemed certain to be a Republican cake-walk, but now increasingly seems a toss-up (in an off-year cycle near the bottom of a bad business cycle), it is a stunt like this that can do nothing but good for the Democrats.
So, sure, the Democratic Party is the Party of Food Stamps. Far better to be known as a party that is willing to help those in need than the party that is willing to bail out our largest financial institutions while turning a deaf ear to the needs of millions of citizens losing their jobs, their savings, their homes, and their sense of equanimity. I'll take the epithet, and wear it with pride and distinction.
So, Newt, thanks. Now, go back to schtupping your third wife (acquired while still married to number 2, and spending most of your public hours railing against the horrors of Bill Clinton receiving oral sex from a woman not his wife; the future No. 3 didn't, I'm guessing?) and leaving the election to those who are running.
So we have Gingrich, yesterday, stealing headlines with his "party of foodstamps" nonsense. Does Gingrich not understand that it isn't 1980? Does he not get that, in the middle of a recession, there are millions more on public assistance than there might otherwise be? Does he not understand that the easiest, quickest retort is that the Republicans are "the party of the millionaires", particularly in a time of economic devastation?
The surest, simplest way to make short work of this is to own it. Apparently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi managed to do that very thing today, pointing out the beneficial multiplier effect from food stamps. CNN reporter John King did the entire universe a service when, in commenting on the alleged relevance of both the phrase and the larger story it has produced, he let the world know that he was the product of a home that needed, and used, food stamps.
Finally, Gingrich, touted for far too long as "an intellectual", made himself look not just ignorant, but silly, by insisting that the multiplier to which Pelosi pointed was nothing more than "liberal math". While I know that this will not silence him, at this point, it might be a good thing for the country that he receives unwarranted attention. My guess is Republican heads were shaking across the land as the story first broke yesterday. In all likelihood, there was probably a furious exchange of cell phone calls and Blackberry IMs attempting to put the genie back in the bottle. This close to an election that just a month ago seemed certain to be a Republican cake-walk, but now increasingly seems a toss-up (in an off-year cycle near the bottom of a bad business cycle), it is a stunt like this that can do nothing but good for the Democrats.
So, sure, the Democratic Party is the Party of Food Stamps. Far better to be known as a party that is willing to help those in need than the party that is willing to bail out our largest financial institutions while turning a deaf ear to the needs of millions of citizens losing their jobs, their savings, their homes, and their sense of equanimity. I'll take the epithet, and wear it with pride and distinction.
So, Newt, thanks. Now, go back to schtupping your third wife (acquired while still married to number 2, and spending most of your public hours railing against the horrors of Bill Clinton receiving oral sex from a woman not his wife; the future No. 3 didn't, I'm guessing?) and leaving the election to those who are running.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
We've Fallen A Long Way, Baby
There's been much rending of clothing over the publication that Glenn Beck puts out all sorts of crap. By "crap" I mean stuff that is either demonstrably false, or connections between events that exist only in his fevered imagination.
Once upon a time, there was another man who ruled via crap. He put the fear of God in to a former Army General and future President when he slimed the Chief of Staff during the Second World War and Secretary of State during the early post-war years. He lied about his service record. His name was Joseph McCarthy.
During hearings in 1954 concerning whether or not some dentists in the Army had been members of organizations that may or may not have ties to the Communist Party, McCarthy went too far. In the course of the proceedings, McCarthy broke a tacit agreement between the special counsel for his committee and the attorney representing those who were before the committee. A member of the law firm representing those before the committee had been, as a youth, a member of a left-wing organization for a couple years. This was well known, and it was agreed upon beforehand, between Roy Cohn and Joseph Welch that this young man would not assist Welch and that no one on the committee would mention either the young man's application to assist Welch, or anything about his past.
Joe, however, was having none of it. He not only brought it up; he went on and on and on about it. After having run out of steam, Welch asked a point of privilege, and destroyed McCarthy's career with one simple sentence: "Have you no decency, sir, at long last?"
It's been a long time since such a clear message of moral right was enough to rid us of a scourge. No, Beck has no decency, if he ever did. Yet, what is Beck than the offspring of Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter and Schlesinger and the rest of the right-wing gabbers who earn buckets of money without a single virtue worthy of the name to their public careers? Like McCarthy, Beck is both reckless and cruel, but he gets paid a whole lot of money to be reckless and cruel and two million people watch him every single day because he is reckless and cruel.
Being right is no defense against success like Beck's. Being a better human being is no defense. There is, quite literally, nothing that can be done. Only Beck can destroy himself (in much the way McCarthy did, in some respects). At the point that he actually angers the folks who pay to keep him on the air, he's finished. Up until that point, we are stuck with him.
It would be nice if there were a Joseph Welch out there who could put an end to Beck. Or Hannity. Or News Corp. as a whole. There isn't.
From a better, vanished age . . .
Once upon a time, there was another man who ruled via crap. He put the fear of God in to a former Army General and future President when he slimed the Chief of Staff during the Second World War and Secretary of State during the early post-war years. He lied about his service record. His name was Joseph McCarthy.
During hearings in 1954 concerning whether or not some dentists in the Army had been members of organizations that may or may not have ties to the Communist Party, McCarthy went too far. In the course of the proceedings, McCarthy broke a tacit agreement between the special counsel for his committee and the attorney representing those who were before the committee. A member of the law firm representing those before the committee had been, as a youth, a member of a left-wing organization for a couple years. This was well known, and it was agreed upon beforehand, between Roy Cohn and Joseph Welch that this young man would not assist Welch and that no one on the committee would mention either the young man's application to assist Welch, or anything about his past.
Joe, however, was having none of it. He not only brought it up; he went on and on and on about it. After having run out of steam, Welch asked a point of privilege, and destroyed McCarthy's career with one simple sentence: "Have you no decency, sir, at long last?"
It's been a long time since such a clear message of moral right was enough to rid us of a scourge. No, Beck has no decency, if he ever did. Yet, what is Beck than the offspring of Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter and Schlesinger and the rest of the right-wing gabbers who earn buckets of money without a single virtue worthy of the name to their public careers? Like McCarthy, Beck is both reckless and cruel, but he gets paid a whole lot of money to be reckless and cruel and two million people watch him every single day because he is reckless and cruel.
Being right is no defense against success like Beck's. Being a better human being is no defense. There is, quite literally, nothing that can be done. Only Beck can destroy himself (in much the way McCarthy did, in some respects). At the point that he actually angers the folks who pay to keep him on the air, he's finished. Up until that point, we are stuck with him.
It would be nice if there were a Joseph Welch out there who could put an end to Beck. Or Hannity. Or News Corp. as a whole. There isn't.
From a better, vanished age . . .
Sharing A Link That Might Help Someone
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Author and good guy John Shore has a piece entitled "7 Reasons Women Say In Abusive Relationships", and he has asked that we make it more widely available via links on FB, our own sites, etc.
I am more than happy to do so. A few years back, I started researching the possibility of starting a rescue shelter for women trying to leave abusive relationships. In the course of checking out the need for such a facility, I discovered that in rural Boone County, IL, there was exactly one such facility and organization. There were thousands of reported cases of domestic violence, and exactly one place these women could turn to in order to help themselves.
We will never do enough to help completely, sad to say. At the very least, however, getting information to women trapped in this way can be a first step. Like alcoholism, domestic violence is one of those things that touches the lives of so many more people than we are willing to admit. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the phenomenon is, like alcoholism, getting people out from this kind of self-destructive hell is impossible from the outside. The first step always has to come from the individual who has reached rock bottom (usually in a hospital bed with bandages or a cast). If someone gets help because I passed on these marvelous straight-forward words, then I figure I've done more than my share.
So . . . LINK! Remember, the life you save may not just be your own, but yours, your kids, your grandkids, and all sorts of other people.
I am more than happy to do so. A few years back, I started researching the possibility of starting a rescue shelter for women trying to leave abusive relationships. In the course of checking out the need for such a facility, I discovered that in rural Boone County, IL, there was exactly one such facility and organization. There were thousands of reported cases of domestic violence, and exactly one place these women could turn to in order to help themselves.
We will never do enough to help completely, sad to say. At the very least, however, getting information to women trapped in this way can be a first step. Like alcoholism, domestic violence is one of those things that touches the lives of so many more people than we are willing to admit. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the phenomenon is, like alcoholism, getting people out from this kind of self-destructive hell is impossible from the outside. The first step always has to come from the individual who has reached rock bottom (usually in a hospital bed with bandages or a cast). If someone gets help because I passed on these marvelous straight-forward words, then I figure I've done more than my share.
So . . . LINK! Remember, the life you save may not just be your own, but yours, your kids, your grandkids, and all sorts of other people.
What's Left In The Church
At its most basic level, my vision of being the Church is simple enough - living out that love incarnate in Jesus crucified and risen. A love that knows nothing but compassion for all who suffer. For those excluded by a society who surround the word "value" with dollar signs. For those whose lives are ruled by fear of the yawning abyss beneath, above, and around them; an abyss of their own creation, but that has broken the shackles and now rules them.
My stumbling block, the rocks upon which my comfortable ship of faith always seems to break, is the existence of those who hate, exclude, divide, and deny in the name of Christ. More than contempt and frustration, they arouse a passionate rage within me. I find myself unable to move beyond it to the love and forgiveness to which we are all called. I find myself unwilling to grant to them the same dispensation that is granted me - unearned, prodigal grace in the midst of their sin.
What is most frustrating isn't the distortion, deliberate or otherwise, of the message of faith and hope and love that is the Gospel. It is the smallness of their vision. Their God, their Jesus, their Holy Spirit are small creatures, not seeing beyond the boundaries of their own fear and hatred to a world filled with all sorts of real people in need. Their God just cannot be reconciled with the testimony concerning who God is contained in the Bible. That God, the creator of all that is, is also the God who called Israel out of the land of bondage to be a light to the nations; this God called no people and made them The People.
This same God invested all of Divinity in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. In that life, God showed us who God is - a God who laughed and loved and raged at imbecility and reached out to those who had only seen hands raised in violence. In that death, God embraced the abyss and took it in and buried it. Then, on an early morning God left all that behind, never to have any power over us or the world ever again.
Maybe we have just become used to fear, used to being subject to the whims and fancies of arbitrary power, either natural of human, to really believe that in surrender we find the final, only truth. Maybe the lure of power, the seduction of all the trappings and gewgaws that accompany it blind us to the nothingness that surrounds them. Maybe the belief that, by declaring themselves the arbiter of who is within and who is outside the bounds of God's grace, they are only repeating the stale formula of days gone by gives them some kind of tenuous connection with the long history of the faith.
For whatever reason, these prosecutors, juries, and judges insist that deviation from their small set of principles results in exclusion. Not just from the kingdom of grace, but from society as a whole.
For me, what's left in the Church, after all this chaff is blown away, is simply this - grace lived out as openness to all.
Even those who would close the door behind them, lock it, toss the key down a sewer grate, board up the windows, and insist that anyone caught breaking in is a criminal to be dealt with dispatch.
My stumbling block, the rocks upon which my comfortable ship of faith always seems to break, is the existence of those who hate, exclude, divide, and deny in the name of Christ. More than contempt and frustration, they arouse a passionate rage within me. I find myself unable to move beyond it to the love and forgiveness to which we are all called. I find myself unwilling to grant to them the same dispensation that is granted me - unearned, prodigal grace in the midst of their sin.
What is most frustrating isn't the distortion, deliberate or otherwise, of the message of faith and hope and love that is the Gospel. It is the smallness of their vision. Their God, their Jesus, their Holy Spirit are small creatures, not seeing beyond the boundaries of their own fear and hatred to a world filled with all sorts of real people in need. Their God just cannot be reconciled with the testimony concerning who God is contained in the Bible. That God, the creator of all that is, is also the God who called Israel out of the land of bondage to be a light to the nations; this God called no people and made them The People.
This same God invested all of Divinity in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. In that life, God showed us who God is - a God who laughed and loved and raged at imbecility and reached out to those who had only seen hands raised in violence. In that death, God embraced the abyss and took it in and buried it. Then, on an early morning God left all that behind, never to have any power over us or the world ever again.
Maybe we have just become used to fear, used to being subject to the whims and fancies of arbitrary power, either natural of human, to really believe that in surrender we find the final, only truth. Maybe the lure of power, the seduction of all the trappings and gewgaws that accompany it blind us to the nothingness that surrounds them. Maybe the belief that, by declaring themselves the arbiter of who is within and who is outside the bounds of God's grace, they are only repeating the stale formula of days gone by gives them some kind of tenuous connection with the long history of the faith.
For whatever reason, these prosecutors, juries, and judges insist that deviation from their small set of principles results in exclusion. Not just from the kingdom of grace, but from society as a whole.
For me, what's left in the Church, after all this chaff is blown away, is simply this - grace lived out as openness to all.
Even those who would close the door behind them, lock it, toss the key down a sewer grate, board up the windows, and insist that anyone caught breaking in is a criminal to be dealt with dispatch.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Brilliance Also Means Shiny
With the departure of Lawrence Summers from Pres. Obama's team of economic advisers, we are privy to information that, had it been more widely publicized prior to his ascension to Obama's inner circle, might have prevented much damage.
I have to wonder what Ferguson's standards for "brilliance" are. Not only does his public-life c. v. demonstrate a stunning lack of judgment and historical acumen (not to mention any sense of ethical insight or judgment), his tenure at Harvard not only included the aforementioned brouhaha over women in science. He also picked a fight with Cornel West over West's non-academic work, including his appearance on a couple rap albums.
As a commenter at Crooked Timber writes concerning Summers' alleged "brilliance":
As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.All this follows after Summers is described by Charles Ferguson, author of this piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, as "unquestionably brilliant".
--snip--
When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world's leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people's money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a "full-blown financial crisis" and a "catastrophic meltdown."
When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a "Luddite," dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector.
--snip--
Soon after that, Summers lost his job as president of Harvard after suggesting that women might be innately inferior to men at scientific work. In another part of the same speech, he had used laissez-faire economic theory to argue that discrimination was unlikely to be a major cause of women's underrepresentation in either science or business. After all, he argued, if discrimination existed, then others, seeking a competitive advantage, would have access to a superior work force, causing those who discriminate to fail in the marketplace. It appeared that Summers had denied even the possibility of decades, indeed centuries, of racial, gender, and other discrimination in America and other societies. After the resulting outcry forced him to resign, Summers remained at Harvard as a faculty member, and he accelerated his financial-sector activities, receiving $135,000 for one speech at Goldman Sachs.
I have to wonder what Ferguson's standards for "brilliance" are. Not only does his public-life c. v. demonstrate a stunning lack of judgment and historical acumen (not to mention any sense of ethical insight or judgment), his tenure at Harvard not only included the aforementioned brouhaha over women in science. He also picked a fight with Cornel West over West's non-academic work, including his appearance on a couple rap albums.
As a commenter at Crooked Timber writes concerning Summers' alleged "brilliance":
And yet he seems to screw up everything he touches.Robert McNamara was heralded as brilliant. He nearly destroyed the US military in the Vietnam fiasco. He went from there to the Presidency of the World Bank, advocating lending policies to Third World countries that impoverished them and nearly destroyed the Bank. My guess is that Summers, too, will suffer no consequences. Rather, people like Ferguson will continue to note the disaster that follows in his train even as they gaze in wonder at his brilliance.
Can't Decide Which Is Worse
Sen. Jim DeMint (Neanderthal-SC) says that gay folk and unmarried women having sex shouldn't be allowed to teach.
He also says that not allowing such discrimination is discrimination against Christians who hold that such people should be discriminated against.
It's amazing, really, that any quotes could be retrieved, considering how far up his ass his head is.
He also says that not allowing such discrimination is discrimination against Christians who hold that such people should be discriminated against.
It's amazing, really, that any quotes could be retrieved, considering how far up his ass his head is.
Abel's Blood Cries Out (UPDATE, UPDATE II)
The suicide of Tyler Clementi has shone a light upon the reality that, for all our vaunted progress in acceptance and tolerance, far too many young people face not bullying, but discriminatory violence because they exist as they are.
And the Christian Churches have just not done enough, said enough, moved far enough, to be a force for change.
Our Discipline states, unequivocally, that "homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." Until that phrase is struck, anything the United Methodist Church tries to do to help sexual minorities, including most especially sexual minority youth, is empty, hollow, hypocritical. Until we strike from our life the idea that some human beings, simply by living life as they were created, are outside the grace of God, how can we offer a hand up to those beaten down, heal the wounds inflicted by a society that only acts out the disregard embedded in that simple phrase?
Our excuses are as hollow as Cain's. If we cannot hear the cry from the graves of those who found in death the only possible respite from discrimination and violence, we are failing to live as the Church. Our self-aggrandizing claims of "inclusiveness", of "openness", ring hollow to those who hear that who they are does not go along with being a follower of the crucified one.
While individual churches can and should open themselves to all persons, and teach not just tolerance, but the acceptance that is inherent in the grace of Christ, we must also work to eradicate forever from our collective statements of belief that some human beings are less worthy of love and acceptance than others.
Unless we do so, we are implicated in the deaths of those who could not even turn to the Church of Jesus Christ, in whatever form it may have taken in their too-brief lives, for a place of refuge, a comfort, and a source of strength.
UPDATE: A real live Texas preacher takes on the haters.
UPDATE II: I feel like Glenn Greenwald here . . . Anyway, thanks to Alan, here is yet another voice. The chorus is growing, I think.
And the Christian Churches have just not done enough, said enough, moved far enough, to be a force for change.
Our Discipline states, unequivocally, that "homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." Until that phrase is struck, anything the United Methodist Church tries to do to help sexual minorities, including most especially sexual minority youth, is empty, hollow, hypocritical. Until we strike from our life the idea that some human beings, simply by living life as they were created, are outside the grace of God, how can we offer a hand up to those beaten down, heal the wounds inflicted by a society that only acts out the disregard embedded in that simple phrase?
Our excuses are as hollow as Cain's. If we cannot hear the cry from the graves of those who found in death the only possible respite from discrimination and violence, we are failing to live as the Church. Our self-aggrandizing claims of "inclusiveness", of "openness", ring hollow to those who hear that who they are does not go along with being a follower of the crucified one.
While individual churches can and should open themselves to all persons, and teach not just tolerance, but the acceptance that is inherent in the grace of Christ, we must also work to eradicate forever from our collective statements of belief that some human beings are less worthy of love and acceptance than others.
Unless we do so, we are implicated in the deaths of those who could not even turn to the Church of Jesus Christ, in whatever form it may have taken in their too-brief lives, for a place of refuge, a comfort, and a source of strength.
UPDATE: A real live Texas preacher takes on the haters.
UPDATE II: I feel like Glenn Greenwald here . . . Anyway, thanks to Alan, here is yet another voice. The chorus is growing, I think.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Today's Most Horrible Person - Bill Donohue
Bill Donohue is the head of something called The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He gets a lot of face time on television defending pretty much anything that spews from Vatican City, and its current Supreme Pontiff. In the midst of the on-going revelations that priests around the world - so far legal cases have arisen in the US, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and Belgium - saw boys in their congregation as fair game, and that there would be no repercussions from pursuing these boys, Donohoue actually crosses a line from which, in my opinion, there is no turning back.
The priests were gay, not pedophiles; the victims were post-pubescent, therefore not boys, and most of the allegations involve inappropriate touching, not rape. Therefore, the whole scandal is nothing more than a lie dreamed up by those who hate the Roman Catholic Church.
The priests were gay, not pedophiles; the victims were post-pubescent, therefore not boys, and most of the allegations involve inappropriate touching, not rape. Therefore, the whole scandal is nothing more than a lie dreamed up by those who hate the Roman Catholic Church.
t's time to ask some tough questions. Why did this young man not object earlier? Why did he allow the "abuse" to continue until he was 18? The use of the quotes is deliberate: the charge against the former priest is not rape, but rubbing. While still objectionable, there is a glacial difference between being rubbed and raped.Rather than "critique" this particular bit of slime, let me just say that, had Donohue any courage whatsoever, any willingness to rescue his beloved Church from the criminal and moral sewer in which it currently festers, he would shut up.
Here's what we know. We know that this case, like most of them, was the work of a homosexual, not a pedophile. And like most of the cases of priestly sexual misconduct, there was no rape involved. Inappropriate touching is morally wrong, and the offenders should be punished, but the time has come to object to all those pundits who like to say that the scandal is all about child rape. Most of the cases did not involve children—they were post-pubescent males—and most weren't raped.
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