As I write this, Pres. Hosni Mubarak has left the leadership of the National Democratic Party in Egypt, I'm listening to a discussion from a couple days ago on Al Jazeera with Tariq Ramadan and Slavoj Zizek on the possibility of popular democracy in Egypt, and in the back of my mind is this interview I heard a couple days ago on Here and Now on the wider post-colonial revolution in the Arab world. Here in the US, there is so much fear-mongering regarding events in Egypt - Media Matters for America, to cite just one example, has a rundown of snake oil salesman Glen Beck offering the oddest collection of conspiracies responsible for the unrest in the Middle East - that the birthing of democracy in Egypt is raising all sorts of questions regarding its health here in the US. In particular, the key to our freedom, the freedom to speak one's mind without fear, has become the most hated freedom we have. The reaction to those who find distasteful Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity on the one hand and Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald on the other hand - their ideological opponents want them silenced as a danger to the Republic - is, perhaps, the most insidious, anti-democratic, anti-American idea imaginable.
It is clear enough, at least to those who have been following the story in Egypt on Al Jazeera, that conspiracy theories are not only an American phenomenon. The Egyptian people are eager to express fears of all kinds of conspiracies. It isn't the content of these expressions that worries me, any more than the content of FOXNews, or Rush Limbaugh's radio show, or even the occasionally sloppy, lazy mainstream journalism one finds too often here in the US. What worries me is the refusal to accept that, yes, there are people who think differently than we do. There are people who are fundamentalist Christians, and Muslims, and Mormon and Marxist, and libertarians who have political beliefs and want to have their voice heard. In Egypt, moving forward, we have the prospect of secular political views, of leftist views, of moderately sectarian Muslim views, and others - all of whom will want a voice in the governance of a new, emergent democratic Egypt. The key to a healthy polity isn't silencing those voices we don't like.
The key to a healthy polity is, first and foremost, accepting that there are all sorts of people, including people who have ideas very different from one's own. One does not have to accept the legitimacy of those ideas. The other part of this equation is the willingness to treat the ideas of others - yes, even the kooky ideas of Glenn Beck - with enough seriousness, at the very least, to laugh at them. More serious views should be treated with the seriousness they deserve.
All this occurred to me with regard to the fear-mongering in this country regarding The Muslim Brotherhood, which is little more than a moderately conservative Islamic party with deep roots in the history of Egypt. It is, in fact, little different from the current ruling party in Turkey, which we were told was going to go the way of Iran, but is as committed to Turkey's history of secular governance as any other party. It is little different from various conservative Christian groups in the US who seek to voice their views in the public sphere of the US. I may not agree with their view; I might not even like them. All the same, I am grateful for them, and would rather they were heard than shouted down by those who quite simply cannot tolerate views different from their own. Encouraging the development of this kind of social and civic infrastructure in Egypt means breathing life back in to it here in the United States.
UPDATE: This article is really, really good. It covers some of the same territory, not least the cluelessness of so many outsiders (including myself!) to the complex dynamics under way in Egypt.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
The Music Must Change
For all his intelligence and insight, David Hajdu falls in to an all too familiar trap. In a section of Heroes and Villains in which he discusses the perils and possibilities of aging pop and jazz stars - Elvis Costello, Sting, Abbey Lincoln - he takes a moment to take an a cliched swipe at the alleged pretensions of late-60's, early-70's British progressive rock, getting his facts wrong in the process of arguing from a perspective of alleged authenticity. Neither Genesis nor King Crimson released any albums made with orchestras. Genesis only made one concept piece, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Yes, Rick Wakeman did wear a pointy hat and flowing, spangled cape, perform with a full orchestra for his solo album Journey to the Center of the Earth, and bands like Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, and Van Der Graf Generator sought in earlier musical styles and forms ways to enliven their music, keep it interesting to themselves as musicians and their audiences.
Emerging in the very late 1960's, in the wake of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Moody Blues Days of Future Past, progressive rock coalesced as a general term form a small group of (mostly English) bands who combined a certain technical ability, musical knowledge, and adventurous spirit, wondering if it was possible to make of the popular music of the day - rock and roll, which, as Yes bassist Chris Squire said, really means Elvis Presley; and rock, which emerged with Bob Dylan turning on amplifiers and adding The Band as his backup, followed by imitators from The Byrds and The Rascals to the San Francisco sound - something more than just blues changes and screeching guitars. This is not to say there is anything wrong with blues-based rock, or the blues in general. On the contrary, one blues-based band, Led Zepellin, also incorporated elements associated with "prog" as it was known, in many of their songs, cheek by jowl with the blues (Zepellin also incorporated elements from non-Western, particularly Moroccan music, heard on "Kashmir"; Robert Fripp of King Crimson would investigate and incorporate Indonesian gamelan during the period he was away from active recording and performing in the late 1970's, incorporating it in to later King Crimson music).
The existence of prog, and its on-going presence as prog merged with heavy metal, and related styles like jazz fusion - from The Mahavishnu Orchestra to the various Canterbury bands like Soft Machine and Matching Mole - is usually dismissed as self-indulgence, or, what's worse, surrendering the primal rebelliousness of rock, rooted in an adolescent celebration of bare-bones minimalist aesthetic and technique in a quest to make the music less angry, less primal, and (let's face it) less black. These criticisms all fail for me for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is the question begged by those who, as Hajdu does in his ignorant dismissal of the pretentiousness of some of the worst of prog, is, why not do this musical exploration?
Who says rock has to sound like Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones? Who says that the 12-bar blues is the only authentic rock form? If a musician with an ear for classical guitar - Steve Hackett from Genesis, say - or jazz - Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford, Alan Holdsworth - want to take certain elements from those musical styles and incorporate them in a rock setting, why not? The results could be bad; anyone listening to the attempts at group improvisation King Crimson tried during their 1972-1974 incarnation could conclude pretty easily that the attempt fails far more than it succeeds. On the other hand, group improv that results in song structure - again, the bulk of King Crimson's early 1970's recorded output was little more than refined jams with a lyrical pastiche - could be both beautiful and ear-shattering (Fripp considered this edition of Crimson to be little more than a heavy metal band, and songs like "Lark's Tongue in Aspic, Part II", "Red", and "Fracture" are, indeed, heavy metal).
Hajdu, in particular, insists as do many other critics that rock and roll, as it emerged in the 1950's as a part of adolescent rebellion, is most clearly rock and roll when it sticks to its roots in adolescence and adolescents. There is a certain amount of truth to that. The success, in England, of punk as an indigenous musical and social rebellion against the overbearing conformity of Britain's class system and the overweening presence of bands as diverse as Pink Floyd, Led Zepellin, and the Rolling Stones who had become far too big, far too unwieldy, and far too expensive to see live testifies to the power of music-based revolt. Yet, for all the punk succeeded, to a certain extent at least in Britain, and was much adored by rock critics in America (one reads Lester Bangs' articles on the early Clash as one reads someone's love notes from high school, with a smile on one's face and a shake of the head at wearing one's heart on one's sleeve like that), it really didn't change anything. Indeed, reaching back behind not only prog and the blues revival in Britain, but even the Beatles by imitating 12-bar, three-chord blues changes, played at high volume and very fast, one could argue it was not so much a revolution against an overly-bourgeois music, but a reaction, a kind of Heideggerian overcoming of modernity that sought not so much the future but Jung's and Heidegger's primordial past. It's primitivism - one can still hear it in bands today, like The White Stripes who sound barely competent on their instruments, and early records from Green Day who do little more than strum or beat their instruments as loud and fast as they can, screaming out their insecurities because that was the only way to be heard over the amplified din - is part of its allure. Yet, it is a primitivism that is rooted in a false yearning for a golden age that never was.
As Hajdu also points out, those early rock and rollers didn't want to rebel. Chuck Berry was a country-western musician who also liked the standards. Elvis Presley wanted to be a crooner like Perry Como. They fell in to the music more out of lack of opportunity than anything else, due to racism and class bias. The music that emerged, for all its edginess and novelty, bore signs of thoughtfulness rather than thoughtless emoting. While teenagers may have embraced it not least because of its novelty, for those initial performers, it was just a stage along a journey in a career they all hoped would be long and varied. Berry's career was long, but not all that varied. Presley's career was shorter, a bit more varied, but he was constantly harassed by critics, and his manager Col. Tom Parker attacked as a svengali, for giving Elvis exactly the career he wanted - a lounge singer cum movie star.
Yet, even granting these realities, we are to reject what emerged in the wake of the musical experimentation of the late-1960's because it refused to stand still and accept iron-clad rules set down, for the most part, by non-musicians. Now, it is certainly true, as even Rick Wakeman acknowledges, that the music didn't always work and the musicians were occasionally, in his word, "pompous". One need only listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's live album to understand that reality. Then again, every musical style has its duds and flops, its failures, those who take two steps past the point where experimentation becomes true self-indulgence. Hell, even the Beatles flopped - The Magical Mystery Tour ring a bell?
At the end of the day, no musical style really needs a defense against critics. If musicians are honest in their appreciation and use of it; if audiences respond positively to it; if it offers to both musicians and audience something more, some aesthetic experience that is complete - it works. No one, not least the musicians who performed it, would ever argue that Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother was a rock and roll album.
That doesn't make it bad, or evil, or unmusical.
It just makes it what it is.
Emerging in the very late 1960's, in the wake of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Moody Blues Days of Future Past, progressive rock coalesced as a general term form a small group of (mostly English) bands who combined a certain technical ability, musical knowledge, and adventurous spirit, wondering if it was possible to make of the popular music of the day - rock and roll, which, as Yes bassist Chris Squire said, really means Elvis Presley; and rock, which emerged with Bob Dylan turning on amplifiers and adding The Band as his backup, followed by imitators from The Byrds and The Rascals to the San Francisco sound - something more than just blues changes and screeching guitars. This is not to say there is anything wrong with blues-based rock, or the blues in general. On the contrary, one blues-based band, Led Zepellin, also incorporated elements associated with "prog" as it was known, in many of their songs, cheek by jowl with the blues (Zepellin also incorporated elements from non-Western, particularly Moroccan music, heard on "Kashmir"; Robert Fripp of King Crimson would investigate and incorporate Indonesian gamelan during the period he was away from active recording and performing in the late 1970's, incorporating it in to later King Crimson music).
The existence of prog, and its on-going presence as prog merged with heavy metal, and related styles like jazz fusion - from The Mahavishnu Orchestra to the various Canterbury bands like Soft Machine and Matching Mole - is usually dismissed as self-indulgence, or, what's worse, surrendering the primal rebelliousness of rock, rooted in an adolescent celebration of bare-bones minimalist aesthetic and technique in a quest to make the music less angry, less primal, and (let's face it) less black. These criticisms all fail for me for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is the question begged by those who, as Hajdu does in his ignorant dismissal of the pretentiousness of some of the worst of prog, is, why not do this musical exploration?
Who says rock has to sound like Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones? Who says that the 12-bar blues is the only authentic rock form? If a musician with an ear for classical guitar - Steve Hackett from Genesis, say - or jazz - Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford, Alan Holdsworth - want to take certain elements from those musical styles and incorporate them in a rock setting, why not? The results could be bad; anyone listening to the attempts at group improvisation King Crimson tried during their 1972-1974 incarnation could conclude pretty easily that the attempt fails far more than it succeeds. On the other hand, group improv that results in song structure - again, the bulk of King Crimson's early 1970's recorded output was little more than refined jams with a lyrical pastiche - could be both beautiful and ear-shattering (Fripp considered this edition of Crimson to be little more than a heavy metal band, and songs like "Lark's Tongue in Aspic, Part II", "Red", and "Fracture" are, indeed, heavy metal).
Hajdu, in particular, insists as do many other critics that rock and roll, as it emerged in the 1950's as a part of adolescent rebellion, is most clearly rock and roll when it sticks to its roots in adolescence and adolescents. There is a certain amount of truth to that. The success, in England, of punk as an indigenous musical and social rebellion against the overbearing conformity of Britain's class system and the overweening presence of bands as diverse as Pink Floyd, Led Zepellin, and the Rolling Stones who had become far too big, far too unwieldy, and far too expensive to see live testifies to the power of music-based revolt. Yet, for all the punk succeeded, to a certain extent at least in Britain, and was much adored by rock critics in America (one reads Lester Bangs' articles on the early Clash as one reads someone's love notes from high school, with a smile on one's face and a shake of the head at wearing one's heart on one's sleeve like that), it really didn't change anything. Indeed, reaching back behind not only prog and the blues revival in Britain, but even the Beatles by imitating 12-bar, three-chord blues changes, played at high volume and very fast, one could argue it was not so much a revolution against an overly-bourgeois music, but a reaction, a kind of Heideggerian overcoming of modernity that sought not so much the future but Jung's and Heidegger's primordial past. It's primitivism - one can still hear it in bands today, like The White Stripes who sound barely competent on their instruments, and early records from Green Day who do little more than strum or beat their instruments as loud and fast as they can, screaming out their insecurities because that was the only way to be heard over the amplified din - is part of its allure. Yet, it is a primitivism that is rooted in a false yearning for a golden age that never was.
As Hajdu also points out, those early rock and rollers didn't want to rebel. Chuck Berry was a country-western musician who also liked the standards. Elvis Presley wanted to be a crooner like Perry Como. They fell in to the music more out of lack of opportunity than anything else, due to racism and class bias. The music that emerged, for all its edginess and novelty, bore signs of thoughtfulness rather than thoughtless emoting. While teenagers may have embraced it not least because of its novelty, for those initial performers, it was just a stage along a journey in a career they all hoped would be long and varied. Berry's career was long, but not all that varied. Presley's career was shorter, a bit more varied, but he was constantly harassed by critics, and his manager Col. Tom Parker attacked as a svengali, for giving Elvis exactly the career he wanted - a lounge singer cum movie star.
Yet, even granting these realities, we are to reject what emerged in the wake of the musical experimentation of the late-1960's because it refused to stand still and accept iron-clad rules set down, for the most part, by non-musicians. Now, it is certainly true, as even Rick Wakeman acknowledges, that the music didn't always work and the musicians were occasionally, in his word, "pompous". One need only listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's live album to understand that reality. Then again, every musical style has its duds and flops, its failures, those who take two steps past the point where experimentation becomes true self-indulgence. Hell, even the Beatles flopped - The Magical Mystery Tour ring a bell?
At the end of the day, no musical style really needs a defense against critics. If musicians are honest in their appreciation and use of it; if audiences respond positively to it; if it offers to both musicians and audience something more, some aesthetic experience that is complete - it works. No one, not least the musicians who performed it, would ever argue that Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother was a rock and roll album.
That doesn't make it bad, or evil, or unmusical.
It just makes it what it is.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Cultural Criticism (UPDATE, UPDATE II Erratum)
As a welcome escape from the Egyptian situation - I am still following it via Al Jazeera - I have been re-reading my "move" book, the award-winning Heroes and Villains by David Hajdu. A collection of essays all but one of which were previously published in The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic, among other publications, these essays cover the gamut - jazz and hip-hop, the blues and Sting, The Beatles and Susannah McCorkle, Elmer Fudd and graphic novels - of pop- and high-culture phenomena. The one previously unpublished essay, which opens the volume, is a review of the importance of the life and career of Billy Eckstine. Once the most popular singer in America - he outdrew Frank Sinatra and was offered a $1 million contract by MGM for both movies and recordings; his first band as a leader included Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, names one might recognize - Eckstine's career came to a screeching halt when a photographer for Life magazine snapped one photo of a group of young women swooning over Eckstine, one leaning against his expansive chest as he laughed in seeming revelry at the event. The problem, sad to say, was the photo was taken in 1950. Eckstine was African-American. The young women in obvious physical desire, were white.
Hajdu's eclectic mix of the best - Lennon and McCartney each get separate essays; Ray Charles is remembered, as is his contemporary Bobby Darin - the worst - Alan Lomax, Sting, ignorant (mostly white) blues fans who focus on technical virtuosity at the expense of the totality of the musical experience - and the just-plain-odd - an appreciative essay on Elmer Fudd reveals that, in fact, Fudd was not voiced by Mel Blanc, among other glorious tidbits - is a rare gem among volumes of critical writing. Unlike Lester Bangs' gonzo-journalism-cum-narcissism (every essay of Bangs, no matter how brilliant, is far more about Lester Bangs than his purported subject matter), or Gary Giddin's insiders approach to writing about jazz, Hajdu writes for those who may never have heard, say, an Anita O'Day record, or truly appreciated the artistry of hip-hop artist/actor Mos Def, yet allows them access. He does not treat the reader like an idiot. Nor does he toss off phrases and jargonish nonsense that might make the reader feel like an adept of some secret world open only to those who truly understand.
As I read through these essays for the second time in six months, I have been thinking about the lack of serious critical acumen in the Church. One thing I will say for Wesley Theological Seminary, they had an actual Ph. D. in sociology on the faculty, who also happened to be a United Methodist clergyman. I wish even the introductory class in Sociology of Religion had been required of all M. Div. students, instead of those just in the Urban Ministry track. I was fortunate to take it, and continue to benefit from it, as I have moved with Lisa from south to north, from rural to more suburban churches.
All the same, some instruction in larger cultural concerns might also benefit our clergy. Wesley also houses the Center For Arts and Religion, and there is a strong emphasis on the role of the visual and graphic arts in the life of the local church. Classes in hymnody, however, are electives; one late professor, Jim Logan, used to begin his classes on Methodist History and Doctrine by playing a Charles Wesley hymn, integrating it in to his lecture for that day.
These, however, offered such a narrow scope for understanding the place of music and the other arts in the life of the local congregation. There was no introduction to critical writing, no entry for our clergy-in-training to learn to think critically about the culture in which the Church lives, and for which it lives. Seminary graduates escape after three or four years grasping in some general outline everything from liturgical practice to the classic doctrines of the church to an outline of its history; what they do not have when they leave are the tools to look at the larger world and understand it, come to grips with it, perhaps even see within its various cultural guises hints and possibilities of the blowing of the Spirit in song and poetry, in literature and art (there was a class on protest in African-American fiction, but the professor who taught that has long since passed away).
Since my own interests lie in music, I think Hadju's volume, with its breadth of subject matter and depth of understanding, even as he occasionally lapses in to cliche - John Lennon-good/Paul McCartney - bad is his most egregious one - seems as good a place as any to begin to understand the possibilities for the Church if it had even a few folks who would approach cultural criticism from the unique perspective of the Christian faith. For example, what are we to make of the varied music of U2, The Alarm, The Call, P.O.D., and Lifehouse? Would it be possible to integrate, say, the moral lessons of Dostoevsky and Alice Walker in to a way of looking at the larger world? Is it even possible to take the pessimism of Jonathan Franzen and the exuberance of David Foster Wallace as different poles as we move toward acceptance of our diminished national status, as well as the diminished role of faith in our national life?
Sadly, I just don't know if there are enough folks out there who understand how necessary this is to doing good ministry. We cannot serve a congregation if we do not have the tools to help them grasp the world around them. If we don't have those tools, we cannot pass them on.
UPDATE: Courtesy of (who else?) The New Inquiry comes this wonderful example of critical writing. What makes it wonderful? Why, by taking on the cliches of a critic pretending profundity. The DJ who created Girl Talk - as evidenced, at least, by the video TNI produces so helpfully - is certainly clever. Beyond that . . . is the clever use of technology a technique the way, say, learning a musical instrument or singing is a technique? At this point, I would have to say . . . well, read the review at Riff Market.
UPDATE II: Speaking of writing well about culture . . . I have corrected an error. Above, I referred to the band Lifehouse as "Lighthouse", for God only knows what reason. I regret the error, especially as I was pleading for more intelligent writing about culture. Ah, well, physician heal thyself and all that . . .
Hajdu's eclectic mix of the best - Lennon and McCartney each get separate essays; Ray Charles is remembered, as is his contemporary Bobby Darin - the worst - Alan Lomax, Sting, ignorant (mostly white) blues fans who focus on technical virtuosity at the expense of the totality of the musical experience - and the just-plain-odd - an appreciative essay on Elmer Fudd reveals that, in fact, Fudd was not voiced by Mel Blanc, among other glorious tidbits - is a rare gem among volumes of critical writing. Unlike Lester Bangs' gonzo-journalism-cum-narcissism (every essay of Bangs, no matter how brilliant, is far more about Lester Bangs than his purported subject matter), or Gary Giddin's insiders approach to writing about jazz, Hajdu writes for those who may never have heard, say, an Anita O'Day record, or truly appreciated the artistry of hip-hop artist/actor Mos Def, yet allows them access. He does not treat the reader like an idiot. Nor does he toss off phrases and jargonish nonsense that might make the reader feel like an adept of some secret world open only to those who truly understand.
As I read through these essays for the second time in six months, I have been thinking about the lack of serious critical acumen in the Church. One thing I will say for Wesley Theological Seminary, they had an actual Ph. D. in sociology on the faculty, who also happened to be a United Methodist clergyman. I wish even the introductory class in Sociology of Religion had been required of all M. Div. students, instead of those just in the Urban Ministry track. I was fortunate to take it, and continue to benefit from it, as I have moved with Lisa from south to north, from rural to more suburban churches.
All the same, some instruction in larger cultural concerns might also benefit our clergy. Wesley also houses the Center For Arts and Religion, and there is a strong emphasis on the role of the visual and graphic arts in the life of the local church. Classes in hymnody, however, are electives; one late professor, Jim Logan, used to begin his classes on Methodist History and Doctrine by playing a Charles Wesley hymn, integrating it in to his lecture for that day.
These, however, offered such a narrow scope for understanding the place of music and the other arts in the life of the local congregation. There was no introduction to critical writing, no entry for our clergy-in-training to learn to think critically about the culture in which the Church lives, and for which it lives. Seminary graduates escape after three or four years grasping in some general outline everything from liturgical practice to the classic doctrines of the church to an outline of its history; what they do not have when they leave are the tools to look at the larger world and understand it, come to grips with it, perhaps even see within its various cultural guises hints and possibilities of the blowing of the Spirit in song and poetry, in literature and art (there was a class on protest in African-American fiction, but the professor who taught that has long since passed away).
Since my own interests lie in music, I think Hadju's volume, with its breadth of subject matter and depth of understanding, even as he occasionally lapses in to cliche - John Lennon-good/Paul McCartney - bad is his most egregious one - seems as good a place as any to begin to understand the possibilities for the Church if it had even a few folks who would approach cultural criticism from the unique perspective of the Christian faith. For example, what are we to make of the varied music of U2, The Alarm, The Call, P.O.D., and Lifehouse? Would it be possible to integrate, say, the moral lessons of Dostoevsky and Alice Walker in to a way of looking at the larger world? Is it even possible to take the pessimism of Jonathan Franzen and the exuberance of David Foster Wallace as different poles as we move toward acceptance of our diminished national status, as well as the diminished role of faith in our national life?
Sadly, I just don't know if there are enough folks out there who understand how necessary this is to doing good ministry. We cannot serve a congregation if we do not have the tools to help them grasp the world around them. If we don't have those tools, we cannot pass them on.
UPDATE: Courtesy of (who else?) The New Inquiry comes this wonderful example of critical writing. What makes it wonderful? Why, by taking on the cliches of a critic pretending profundity. The DJ who created Girl Talk - as evidenced, at least, by the video TNI produces so helpfully - is certainly clever. Beyond that . . . is the clever use of technology a technique the way, say, learning a musical instrument or singing is a technique? At this point, I would have to say . . . well, read the review at Riff Market.
UPDATE II: Speaking of writing well about culture . . . I have corrected an error. Above, I referred to the band Lifehouse as "Lighthouse", for God only knows what reason. I regret the error, especially as I was pleading for more intelligent writing about culture. Ah, well, physician heal thyself and all that . . .
Thursday, February 03, 2011
I Was Snowed And I Missed It
It isn't just Egypt that has me in near-obsession mode. We had a bit of a BLIZZARD and so I've been busy, being the only semi-adult in the house until later tonight. So, I was really busy and I kind of missed my new attempt to do the whole music thingy. It did give me a chance to buy some new music - the second Budos Band release among my new favorites. So, without anything like ado, a doo, or adieu, batteries to power, turbines to speed . . .
Going for the One - Yes (Live)
All Along the Watchtower - Bob Dylan (Live)
Hollow Years - Dream Theater
Festive Suite in A - Telemann
The Talking Drum - King Crimson (Live)
Sysyphus Part I - Pink Floyd
Lost Sailor - Grateful Dead (Live, Go To Nassau)
Blue and Evil - Joe Bonamassa
Adeniji - Budos Band
Maggie M'gill - The Doors
Along with the Budos Band and some other stuff, I got this song. I know it isn't cool, but it should be obvious from the past few weeks I don't really care all that much about being cool . . .
Going for the One - Yes (Live)
All Along the Watchtower - Bob Dylan (Live)
Hollow Years - Dream Theater
Festive Suite in A - Telemann
The Talking Drum - King Crimson (Live)
Sysyphus Part I - Pink Floyd
Lost Sailor - Grateful Dead (Live, Go To Nassau)
Blue and Evil - Joe Bonamassa
Adeniji - Budos Band
Maggie M'gill - The Doors
Along with the Budos Band and some other stuff, I got this song. I know it isn't cool, but it should be obvious from the past few weeks I don't really care all that much about being cool . . .
Life During War Time
I am continually amazed at the way history plays tricks on us. For most of my life, it was the Democratic Party, liberals, leftists who hated America so much they kept wanting to cut the Defense budget so that we could get taken over by the Russians.
Now, we're in the middle of a two-front (at least) war, and it is the emergent Republican majority that wants to cut the Defense Department budget by close to 20%. Let me say that again - the new conservative majority in the House of Representatives, in the midst of wars they promoted, hyped, supported, even demanded, want to cut 20% from the budget of the Department of Defense. At no time in the past four years have Democrats in either house proposed trimming anything close to that.
Now, we can certainly entertain arguments about whether or not our Defense outlays are too large. The fact that we, the US, spend more on military than the rest of the world combined, certainly at least suggests that. All the same, we have tens of thousands of our armed forces personnel in harms way; they need equipment, and the proper equipment. They need better pay. They need, perhaps, more than mere moral support, or vocal support, from so many here in the US.
We can have debates about the size, scope, and priorities of the budget for the Department of Defense, it is incumbent upon us - all of us, most especially members of Congress who hold the purse strings - to maintain our fighting force in the field so they can achieve their strategic goals, safely and securely. They need support, and that really means, where the rubber meets the road - money.
One small benefit, I suppose, is we have the spectacle of a liberal, anti-war type of guy like me insisting that our troops need to be supported and the Defense budget remain unchanged while a bunch of right-wingers in Congress want to undercut our personnel risking their lives in far flung countries.
Now, we're in the middle of a two-front (at least) war, and it is the emergent Republican majority that wants to cut the Defense Department budget by close to 20%. Let me say that again - the new conservative majority in the House of Representatives, in the midst of wars they promoted, hyped, supported, even demanded, want to cut 20% from the budget of the Department of Defense. At no time in the past four years have Democrats in either house proposed trimming anything close to that.
Now, we can certainly entertain arguments about whether or not our Defense outlays are too large. The fact that we, the US, spend more on military than the rest of the world combined, certainly at least suggests that. All the same, we have tens of thousands of our armed forces personnel in harms way; they need equipment, and the proper equipment. They need better pay. They need, perhaps, more than mere moral support, or vocal support, from so many here in the US.
We can have debates about the size, scope, and priorities of the budget for the Department of Defense, it is incumbent upon us - all of us, most especially members of Congress who hold the purse strings - to maintain our fighting force in the field so they can achieve their strategic goals, safely and securely. They need support, and that really means, where the rubber meets the road - money.
One small benefit, I suppose, is we have the spectacle of a liberal, anti-war type of guy like me insisting that our troops need to be supported and the Defense budget remain unchanged while a bunch of right-wingers in Congress want to undercut our personnel risking their lives in far flung countries.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Blizzard!
Last night I heard something I have never heard before. I have heard the wind howl plenty of times. Last night, the wind was roaring. It was vicious, without mercy or thought. As I drifted off to sleep I was more than slightly afraid concerning the very large, very old trees that surround our house in the face of all that wind and snow.
This morning I awoke to 18" of fresh snow, with drifts two and even three feet deep in places. Our little cul-de-sac has yet to be plowed. Without a snowblower, digging out the driveway has proved to be exhausting. My kids already have tomorrow off from school.
To top it off, my wife is in Orlando, Florida for a conference. In fact, she had to extend her stay an extra day because of the storm. It's eighty degrees there. She keeps telling me that. She's walking around in her shirt sleeves. Not a cloud in the sky.
She insist she feels guilty.
Would you?
Actually, I don't mind the whole blizzard thing. After all, how many does a person experience in this life? This is the first time in 15 years for me. The kids enjoyed their little romp in the snow, and with two days off school, well . . . let's just say they're very happy.
We have electricity, heat, food, coffee - all the essentials.
Except a snowblower.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Lessons From Tunisia And Egypt
A friend of mine shared this with me on Facebook, and I couldn't let it just sit there without sharing it here.
The Tunisians and Egyptians, in shaking off long-standing dictators, have inspired the downtrodden and hopeless well beyond their borders. We can learn a lot from their experiences. Here are some of the lessons:The author, Mas'ood Cajee, is a board member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship.
1. Courage trumps tyranny. Courage is contagious. It just needs to be nurtured and kindled.
2. An authoritarian police state is no match for nonviolent people power. An uprising grounded in the prayers of the oppressed is a tremendous thing. Ordinary people can change their own situation.
3. Expect no support from the “international community.” In fact, at best, expect ambivalence and a steady supply of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.
4. Change can occur without strapping explosives to torsos or vehicles, without bombs or bullets.
5. Change isn’t easy or free. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of martyrs, as Thomas Jefferson once said.
6. Once fear of the tyrant and his minions is removed from the hearts of the people, the game is up.
7. Once the tipping point comes, once the paradigm shift occurs, things change rapidly and suddenly. The mighty will fall quickly. The tiger, you will find out, was made of paper after all.
8. You don’t have to wait for a Great Leader. You don’t have to wait for the Messiah. You don’t have to wait for “Salaheddin.” You just need good grassroots organizing and will. Mosques and churches help. New communication tools like smart phones and social media also help.
9. Cruel, callous regimes don’t last forever. Regimes that limit freedoms and crush dreams certainly cannot last.
10. Tyrants are not immune from revolt. Revolts are not immune from tyranny either. The gains of change must be defended against chaos, anarchy, and other bad happenings.
Monday, January 31, 2011
The FCIC Report II - Voices Of Dissent From Pluto
The FCIC final report was not unanimous. The four Republican-appointed members dissented from the majority report. Three of them wrote a 29 page dissent. Among their complaints was the majority was restricting the size of any dissenting reports. That's funny, because the fourth dissenter, Peter Wallison - who uses his own dissenting report's title page for purposes of self promotion as ARTHUR F. BURN FELLOW IN FINANCIAL POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, and helpfully appends his email address to the bottom of the page - wrote 98 page, all on his own!
Right away, Wallison's dissent seems to contradict, in a fundamental way, the conclusion of the majority. Specifically, he places the onus of responsibility for the financial collapse not upon the myriad of factors sited by the majority, but to a single cause - the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.
Wallison:
For this reason alone, the notion that, absent an aggressive federal housing policy - which, Wallison notes, was a bipartisan goal, pursued by Congresses and Presidents of both parties - the financial crisis was avoidable simply disregards far too many facts to be believable.
Right away, Wallison's dissent seems to contradict, in a fundamental way, the conclusion of the majority. Specifically, he places the onus of responsibility for the financial collapse not upon the myriad of factors sited by the majority, but to a single cause - the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.
To avoid the next fi nancial crisis, we must understand what caused the one from which we are now slowly emerging, and take action to avoid the same mistakes in the future. If there is doubt that these lessons are important, consider the ongoing eff orts to amend the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA). Late in the last session of the 111th Congress, a group of Democratic congressmembers introduced HR 6334. Th is bill, which was lauded by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank as his “top priority” in the lame duck session of that Congress, would have extended the CRA to all “U.S. nonbank fi nancial companies,” and thus would apply, to even more of the national economy, the same government social policy mandates responsible for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Fortunately, the bill was not acted upon. Because of the recent election, it is unlikely that supporters of H.R. 6334 will have the power to adopt similar legislation in the next Congress, but in the future other lawmakers with views similar to Barney Frank’s may seek to mandate similar requirements. At that time, the only real bulwark against the government’s use of private entities for social policy purposes will be a full understanding of how these policies were connected to the financial crisis of 2008.The majority, on the other hand, took a different view of the role of CRA in the financial meltdown:
In conducting our inquiry, we took a careful look at HUD's affordable housing goals, as noted above, and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The CRA was enacted in 1977 to combat "redlining" by banks - the practice of denying credit to individuals and businesses in certain neighborhoods without regard to their creditworthiness. The CRA requires banks and savings and loans to lend, invest, and provide services to the community from which they take deposits, consistent with bank safety and soundness.Hm. On the one hand, CRA is at fault. On the other hand, CRA-regulated loans were only half as likely to default; only six percent of the subprime market was covered by CRA anyway, so its overall impact on the much larger mortgage marketplace was negligible. Seems someone has some explaining to do.
The Commission concludes the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis.Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicates that only 6% of high cost loans - a proxy for subprime loans - had any connection to the law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods where they were required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the same neighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law.(emphasis added)
Wallison:
I believe that the sine qua non of the financial crisis was U.S. government housing policy, which led to the creation of 27 million subprime and other risky loans - half of all mortgages in the United States - which were ready to default as soon as the massive 1997-2007 housing bubble began to deflate. If the U.S. government had not chosen this policy path - fostering the growth of a bubble od unprecedented size and an equally unprecedented number of weak and high risk residential mortgages - the great financial crisis of 2008 would never have happened.Yet, the majority addressed the issue of federal housing policy, in a paragraph immediately following their assessment of the role of CRA-regulated loans and the end of the housing boom:
Nonetheless, we make the following observations about government housing policies-they failed in this respect: As a nation, we set aggressive homeownership goals with the desire to extend credit to families previously denied access to the financial markets. Yet the government failed to ensure the philosophy of opportunity was being matched by the practical realities on the ground. Witness again the failure of the Federal Reserve and other regulators to rein in irresponsible lending. Homeownership peaked in the spring of 2004 and then began to decline. From that point on, the talk of opportunity was tragically at odds with the reality of a financial disaster in the making.(emphasis added)So, the majority agrees with Wallison that housing policy was far too aggressive in its pursuit of ever-greater home ownership. Yet, this in and of itself hardly could have led to the other causes the majority noted as contributing causes - everything from lax corporate oversight to outright illegality, predatory lending practices, and the dismal failure of what little financial regulation was left. In this regard, citing federal housing policy, and in particular the Community Reinvestment Act as the prime, or perhaps even sole source, of the financial crisis disregards the rampant risk-taking, disregard for financial solvency and fiduciary responsibility, and outright criminality that is a part of the public record.
For this reason alone, the notion that, absent an aggressive federal housing policy - which, Wallison notes, was a bipartisan goal, pursued by Congresses and Presidents of both parties - the financial crisis was avoidable simply disregards far too many facts to be believable.
The FCIC Report I - A Theory Of The Common Good
I learned yesterday that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) final report was available on-line, including quite literally tens of thousands of pages of evidence and hundreds of hours of video testimony, both before the Commission as well as such testimony before Congressional committees as appeared relevant to the Commission's mandate, to "examine the causes of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States," as laid out in the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. If it weren't for widespread unrest in the Middle East, including a successful revolution in Tunisia and an incipient one in Egypt, the report would certainly be the subject of closer scrutiny.
I decided to check it out, if for no other reasons that I could at least say I had read it, if matters related to the general topic of the financial collapse arose. With a handy link provided here, it would be easy enough to click it, or insist others do so.
What surprised me - and I was, quite pleasantly surprised - was embedded within the "Conclusions" (like the rest of the report, this is .pdf format) lies a marvelous, yet incomplete, theory of the common good that, juxtaposed as closely as it is, to the still-reigning insistence that markets are and should be autonomous spheres of activity, was refreshing. The majority report rests its conclusions - that the crisis itself was avoidable; that systemic oversight and regulatory failures created an unstable support for the financial markets; that there was a breakdown in corporate governance and risk management; that excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency increased the possibility for a coming crisis; despite repeated warnings and even clear statutory and regulatory imperatives, the government was not prepared for the crisis, and its lack of preparation led to even greater market instability; that there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics, both in private and public institutions; the rise of mortgage-backed investments as a tool for high-yield returns fueled ever riskier mortgage practices; the deregulation of so-called over the counter derivatives (OTC) led to their exponential growth, a specific area that contributed to overall weakness and instability; compromised by a number of factors, the credit-rating agencies failed in their independent and essential capacity as watchdogs of various financial instruments - upon a view of financial markets as a necessary, integral part of the larger economy and society of which they are a part. Their healthy, safe, and legal operations are necessary for the health of the larger polis of which they are a part. In that regard, while the majority report does hold certain public office-holders and corporate executives responsible, they also make clear that responsibility for what happened lies, too, with us as a whole. By allowing ourselves to succumb to the view that markets freed of the constraints of regulation and oversight will not only yield greater returns but will be self-regulating, we all share the blame for what was, as the first conclusion of the Commission says, a preventable, foreseeable disaster.
That short paragraph alone makes struggling through much of the report worthwhile. Here, within this official, Congressionally mandated report, is a view linking the common good, the demands of democratic governance, and the responsibilities incumbent upon all of us to ensure, as it says in the Preamble to the Constitution, domestic tranquility and enhance the general welfare.
I call it incomplete, however, because it does not go quite far enough in its criticism of the rise of the financial sector as a part of our larger economy. While investment may be necessary in some limited way to encourage business expansion, particularly as an alternative to increased private debt; with the major financial asset most Americans hold, their homes, needing to be purchased on credit, some sort of private credit should, indeed, exist; spreading, thus theoretically reducing, overall risk is a wise approach for insuring against the occasional shocks that are a part of the round of the business cycle; while all this may be true, to an extent, the exponential growth of the financial sector, and the increasing reliance upon it for a sense of the general health of the larger economy, as well as the inflated rewards offered to individuals and corporations within the financial sector for ever-greater short-term returns regardless of long-term risk raise questions about the place of financial markets within the larger economy. At one time, such were considered parasitic, earning a far greater share of wealth that was actually created through real work. The ever-increasing (computer-generated) wealth of investment firms, large banking houses, and even mortgage brokers is hardly the sign of a healthy, robust economy. It seems to me that even greater regulation and oversight, not least of which might include restricting the size and scope of the financial sector relative to the broader economy, is necessary to ensure a truly healthy society.
That being said, I have to admit I liked much of what was in the summary of conclusions.
I decided to check it out, if for no other reasons that I could at least say I had read it, if matters related to the general topic of the financial collapse arose. With a handy link provided here, it would be easy enough to click it, or insist others do so.
What surprised me - and I was, quite pleasantly surprised - was embedded within the "Conclusions" (like the rest of the report, this is .pdf format) lies a marvelous, yet incomplete, theory of the common good that, juxtaposed as closely as it is, to the still-reigning insistence that markets are and should be autonomous spheres of activity, was refreshing. The majority report rests its conclusions - that the crisis itself was avoidable; that systemic oversight and regulatory failures created an unstable support for the financial markets; that there was a breakdown in corporate governance and risk management; that excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency increased the possibility for a coming crisis; despite repeated warnings and even clear statutory and regulatory imperatives, the government was not prepared for the crisis, and its lack of preparation led to even greater market instability; that there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics, both in private and public institutions; the rise of mortgage-backed investments as a tool for high-yield returns fueled ever riskier mortgage practices; the deregulation of so-called over the counter derivatives (OTC) led to their exponential growth, a specific area that contributed to overall weakness and instability; compromised by a number of factors, the credit-rating agencies failed in their independent and essential capacity as watchdogs of various financial instruments - upon a view of financial markets as a necessary, integral part of the larger economy and society of which they are a part. Their healthy, safe, and legal operations are necessary for the health of the larger polis of which they are a part. In that regard, while the majority report does hold certain public office-holders and corporate executives responsible, they also make clear that responsibility for what happened lies, too, with us as a whole. By allowing ourselves to succumb to the view that markets freed of the constraints of regulation and oversight will not only yield greater returns but will be self-regulating, we all share the blame for what was, as the first conclusion of the Commission says, a preventable, foreseeable disaster.
That short paragraph alone makes struggling through much of the report worthwhile. Here, within this official, Congressionally mandated report, is a view linking the common good, the demands of democratic governance, and the responsibilities incumbent upon all of us to ensure, as it says in the Preamble to the Constitution, domestic tranquility and enhance the general welfare.
I call it incomplete, however, because it does not go quite far enough in its criticism of the rise of the financial sector as a part of our larger economy. While investment may be necessary in some limited way to encourage business expansion, particularly as an alternative to increased private debt; with the major financial asset most Americans hold, their homes, needing to be purchased on credit, some sort of private credit should, indeed, exist; spreading, thus theoretically reducing, overall risk is a wise approach for insuring against the occasional shocks that are a part of the round of the business cycle; while all this may be true, to an extent, the exponential growth of the financial sector, and the increasing reliance upon it for a sense of the general health of the larger economy, as well as the inflated rewards offered to individuals and corporations within the financial sector for ever-greater short-term returns regardless of long-term risk raise questions about the place of financial markets within the larger economy. At one time, such were considered parasitic, earning a far greater share of wealth that was actually created through real work. The ever-increasing (computer-generated) wealth of investment firms, large banking houses, and even mortgage brokers is hardly the sign of a healthy, robust economy. It seems to me that even greater regulation and oversight, not least of which might include restricting the size and scope of the financial sector relative to the broader economy, is necessary to ensure a truly healthy society.
That being said, I have to admit I liked much of what was in the summary of conclusions.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The View From Israel
I became curious as to how Israel was reacting to the on-going incipient revolution in Egypt, so I turned to the English-language, online edition of Haaretz to discover that, by and large, the Israelis are as cautious and - let's admit it - behind the curve on events as the United States.
One article, in particular, stuck out for me. Written by Zvi Bar'el, the article's title suggests a simple-minded wonder that the no-longer huddled masses of Middle Eastern dictators are using new media and technology in support of their pursuit of revolution. The article itself, however, offers a far more broadminded, thoughtful analysis of events in the wake of the Tunisian uprising.
In any event, it seems to me these commentators, at least, understand that matters in Egypt, and perhaps across the (Arab, authoritarian) Middle East are out of the hands of the United States and Israel. Mr. Levy also seems to understand that, regardless of the regime that might replace Mubarak's, there will be little regard for Israel, considering its long-time, violent occupation of Palestinian territories, and that this might be the time to pursue a just settlement.
In all, impressive, thoughtful commentary.
One article, in particular, stuck out for me. Written by Zvi Bar'el, the article's title suggests a simple-minded wonder that the no-longer huddled masses of Middle Eastern dictators are using new media and technology in support of their pursuit of revolution. The article itself, however, offers a far more broadminded, thoughtful analysis of events in the wake of the Tunisian uprising.
Up to now, the world has been divided into two camps: "complicated" countries where the government represents the public and every decision is subject to public oversight, and "easy" countries where business is conducted at the top and the public is just window dressing. The dividing line between the two has always been starkly clear. Everything north of the Mediterranean belonged to the first group and everything to the south and east to the second.Another piece, by Gideon Levy, offers a stunning indictment of authoritarianism across the Middle East, including not just the usual suspects, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as well.
The north had political parties and trade unions, a left wing and a right wing, important intellectuals, celebrities who shaped public opinion, and of course, there was public opinion itself. In the south the division was simple. It was the distinction between moderates and extremists, meaning pro-Westerners and anti-Westerners.
If you're a Saudi king who buys billions of dollars of American weapons, you're pro-Western and therefore entitled to continue to rule a country without a parliament, one where thieves' hands are amputated and women aren't allowed to drive. If you're an Egyptian president who supports the peace process, you're pro-Western and have permission to continue to impose emergency rule in your country, jail journalists and opposition members, and fix elections.
--snip--
And all of a sudden, into the whirlwind, into the era of certainty and the lexicon in which the region's countries are neatly packaged, the Arab "street" erupts, a sophisticated street. It uses "our" methods: Facebook and Twitter - the tools of democracy we have invented - to present us with a situation of disorder. How do you defend yourself against this? This Arab street has already used these tools to depose Tunisian President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, and its ideas have gone viral. What if it manages to establish democracy in Egypt? In Yemen? Look what happened to the Shah of Iran, albeit using now-outmoded cassettes.
--snip--
We don't have to wait for other regimes to fall to understand that the revolution is happening before our very eyes. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will not fall due to demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square, and Yemen's ruler will also continue to rule by force. But it's a revolution of awareness and of the fundamental notions of what the Middle East is. Most importantly, we need a revolution in the way the West views the region.
Not only is the Fatah regime in Ramallah and the Hamas regime in Gaza destined to fall, but perhaps also, one day, the Israeli occupation, which certainly meets all the criteria of criminal tyranny and an evil regime. It too relies only on guns. It too is hated by all levels of the ruled people, even if they stands helpless, unorganized and unequipped, facing a big army. The first conclusion: Better to end it well, with agreements based on justice and not on power, a moment before the masses have their say and succeed in banishing the darkness.Parenthetically, I have to wonder how The New Republic's editor, the egregiously racist Marty Peretz, feels about these columns?
A second, no less important conclusion: Alliances with unpopular regimes can be torn up overnight. As long as the masses in Egypt and in the entire Arab world continue seeing the images of tyranny and violence from the occupied territories, Israel will not be able to be accepted, even it is acceptable to a few regimes.
In any event, it seems to me these commentators, at least, understand that matters in Egypt, and perhaps across the (Arab, authoritarian) Middle East are out of the hands of the United States and Israel. Mr. Levy also seems to understand that, regardless of the regime that might replace Mubarak's, there will be little regard for Israel, considering its long-time, violent occupation of Palestinian territories, and that this might be the time to pursue a just settlement.
In all, impressive, thoughtful commentary.
In The Feet Of Father Abraham
With my attention focused on the ongoing unrest in Egypt - with Al Jazeera's coverage being superb - it was with a smile that I turned to today's lectionary reading and saw a passage from Hebrews 11.
There has been quite a bit of talk about what the people might want as an alternative. There have been the dire warnings concerning Islamic extremists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, a small, violent terrorist group with little base of support. There have been whispers of "Iran". One journalist, as I noted yesterday, insisted this was a crisis "to be managed".
What do I see? I see a people, at the end of their collective rope. They are tired, poor, no longer afraid even of being afraid. What happens if or when Mubarak leaves? There has been little discussion of that. Perhaps, like such groups, there are a variety of thoughts, including a more rigid Islamic state. All the same, the point for the moment at least is not "What comes next?" Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands across the nation, are pouring in to streets and alleys, demanding nothing more than an end to what is. What will be? Well, they do not seem as concerned about that as those who are at a remove from their experience. Whatever may be, it seems, is far preferable to what is.
Abraham was called by God to leave his native land. He ventured forth from what was, to a new place promised by God, a place that would be his new home. He was promised an heir, indeed, heirs that would number greater than the stars in the sky. An old man, his wife barren and past child-bearing years, he took this promise, and gathered up his household and left the city of Ur, that magnificent capital of the Sumerian Empire, and traveled to a new place. He had no idea, really, what to expect. All he had was the promise of this God.
From that momentous decision - a decision, we learn from the writer of Hebrews, made in faith, without any understanding what the final outcome would really be - we have the three great faiths named in his honor. From his son Ishmael, born from a liaison with his servant woman, we have the people of Arabia; the Muslims see themselves as heirs of Ishmael, as surely as Jews and Christians count Isaac, his son with his wife Sara, as their ancestor. We are all linked by Father Abraham, whose life was one rooted in a trust in the promise of a God he did not know, in acts that had not yet occurred, and seemed impossible.
The people of Egypt, right now, even now, are demanding a new future. The present is a place of death, with no promise. They want the dead to understand that they are, indeed, dead, while they, the people, are very much alive. My fervent hope and prayer is their demand for the heavy hand of the present to be lifted is granted; that their living faith not be answered by bullets; that we not be world-wide witnesses to mass slaughter. My fervent hope and prayer is this step the Egyptian people are taking, a step in accord with Father Abraham's journey, is done with that same promise, that same hope, that same faith. May the God of Abraham be with the people of Egypt.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised.* 12Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.’Right now, even now, the people of Egypt are gathering by the thousands in Cairo, in Alexandria, in Suez, in Luxor, and cities and towns across the country, defying a curfew the government cannot seem to enforce. They are demanding an end to two generations of dictatorship, half of which has been under the heel of Pres. Hosni Mubarak. They want an end to failure and widespread, abject poverty. They want an end to authoritarian rule, the arbitrary rule of self-imposed "leaders".
13 All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, 14for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. 16But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
There has been quite a bit of talk about what the people might want as an alternative. There have been the dire warnings concerning Islamic extremists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, a small, violent terrorist group with little base of support. There have been whispers of "Iran". One journalist, as I noted yesterday, insisted this was a crisis "to be managed".
What do I see? I see a people, at the end of their collective rope. They are tired, poor, no longer afraid even of being afraid. What happens if or when Mubarak leaves? There has been little discussion of that. Perhaps, like such groups, there are a variety of thoughts, including a more rigid Islamic state. All the same, the point for the moment at least is not "What comes next?" Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands across the nation, are pouring in to streets and alleys, demanding nothing more than an end to what is. What will be? Well, they do not seem as concerned about that as those who are at a remove from their experience. Whatever may be, it seems, is far preferable to what is.
Abraham was called by God to leave his native land. He ventured forth from what was, to a new place promised by God, a place that would be his new home. He was promised an heir, indeed, heirs that would number greater than the stars in the sky. An old man, his wife barren and past child-bearing years, he took this promise, and gathered up his household and left the city of Ur, that magnificent capital of the Sumerian Empire, and traveled to a new place. He had no idea, really, what to expect. All he had was the promise of this God.
From that momentous decision - a decision, we learn from the writer of Hebrews, made in faith, without any understanding what the final outcome would really be - we have the three great faiths named in his honor. From his son Ishmael, born from a liaison with his servant woman, we have the people of Arabia; the Muslims see themselves as heirs of Ishmael, as surely as Jews and Christians count Isaac, his son with his wife Sara, as their ancestor. We are all linked by Father Abraham, whose life was one rooted in a trust in the promise of a God he did not know, in acts that had not yet occurred, and seemed impossible.
The people of Egypt, right now, even now, are demanding a new future. The present is a place of death, with no promise. They want the dead to understand that they are, indeed, dead, while they, the people, are very much alive. My fervent hope and prayer is their demand for the heavy hand of the present to be lifted is granted; that their living faith not be answered by bullets; that we not be world-wide witnesses to mass slaughter. My fervent hope and prayer is this step the Egyptian people are taking, a step in accord with Father Abraham's journey, is done with that same promise, that same hope, that same faith. May the God of Abraham be with the people of Egypt.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Not Ours
I found this post from TPM's David Kurtz to be disturbing, in particular the last bit, highlighted:
I have been following events via a live video feed from Al Jazeera's English-language broadcast online. While a mixture, as all such events tend to be, of the episodic burst of excitement and terror followed by hours-long lulls of not much at all, it is evident this is an outburst of popular resentment, and the express desire of tens of thousands of Egyptians to rid themselves not only of Hosni Mubarak, but a dictatorship in its dotage, no longer even pretending to help out the mass of the Egyptian people, 50% of whom barely exist on $2 a day, and whose social infrastructure has crumbled. While the system provides near universal education through University level, there are no jobs of any kind for those who emerge, degree in hand.
The problems Egypt faces are multiple, but it seems pretty clear there is a desire for some sort of democratic reforms to get the ball rolling for larger social and economic reforms. Any volatile situation presents dangers, to be sure. There is zero, zilch, nada indication of any kind that there is any participation by Islamic extremists, as claimed by idiotic former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton. Indeed, the leaders of the Islamic Brotherhood were carted off to prison early-on in the protests; the allegations that the country has been infiltrated by any extremists, religious or otherwise, is just not borne out by the facts on the ground. Indeed, the one person many of those in the streets seem to be turning to is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed Elbaradei, former chief UN Weapons Inspector for Iraq, who has voiced his enthusiastic support for "the youth" of Egypt, and made repeated calls for Mubarak to step down.
I do not know what the future holds in and for Egypt. Right now, there seems to be a shift from large-scale, peaceful protest to an increase in looting, at least in Cairo. This is due, in part, to the disappearance of any police presence in the capital. Yesterday, when the military was called out, they interposed themselves between the police and protesters, protecting the latter from an increase in violent force from the former. While protecting key areas of the city - from the foreign embassies and various government buildings to the Museum of Antiquities which was - briefly - entered, with some displays smashed but nothing appearing to have been stolen - much of the city is experiencing an absence of any presence of law enforcement, which can only lead to trouble.
There are also reports that water has been shut off to one of Alexandria's eleven districts.
So, the situation is still fluid - despite a lack of water in part of one city - and it is anybody's guess whether Mubarak stays or goes, the military continues to protect the people or turns on them, or perhaps the police return to their duty stations and protect the people and shops of Cairo from the depredations of looters. My most fervent wish is for the situation to resolve itself for the benefit of the great mass of the Egyptian people, desperate for a change. My next most fervent wish is that Americans, official and otherwise, allow this to evolve - or, perhaps, sadly, devolve - as a wholly Egyptian affair. This is not a "crisis" to be "managed", but a possible revolution to observe and, if successful, support as much as we can.
The President's brief comments from the State Dining Room of the White House suggest that he doesn't necessarily see the imminent end to Mubarak's reign -- or consider it anything close to a slam dunk that whatever might emerge post-Mubarak will be more democratic. If this were a clear choice between an authoritarian regime and a western-style democracy, it'd be a no-brainer. But it's not. It's a problem to be managed, with the sober understanding that the real world offers potential outcomes that are worse than MubarakThe history of American "management" in crises like this is . . . well . . . it sucks, really. Furthermore, any public perception that the US is "managing" this can only hurt in the long run. After all, we have enough troubles in the Middle East; interfering in what is, quite clearly, an uprising fed by exhaustion among the Egyptian people with the lack of leadership and the success of the Tunisian revolt.
I have been following events via a live video feed from Al Jazeera's English-language broadcast online. While a mixture, as all such events tend to be, of the episodic burst of excitement and terror followed by hours-long lulls of not much at all, it is evident this is an outburst of popular resentment, and the express desire of tens of thousands of Egyptians to rid themselves not only of Hosni Mubarak, but a dictatorship in its dotage, no longer even pretending to help out the mass of the Egyptian people, 50% of whom barely exist on $2 a day, and whose social infrastructure has crumbled. While the system provides near universal education through University level, there are no jobs of any kind for those who emerge, degree in hand.
The problems Egypt faces are multiple, but it seems pretty clear there is a desire for some sort of democratic reforms to get the ball rolling for larger social and economic reforms. Any volatile situation presents dangers, to be sure. There is zero, zilch, nada indication of any kind that there is any participation by Islamic extremists, as claimed by idiotic former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton. Indeed, the leaders of the Islamic Brotherhood were carted off to prison early-on in the protests; the allegations that the country has been infiltrated by any extremists, religious or otherwise, is just not borne out by the facts on the ground. Indeed, the one person many of those in the streets seem to be turning to is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed Elbaradei, former chief UN Weapons Inspector for Iraq, who has voiced his enthusiastic support for "the youth" of Egypt, and made repeated calls for Mubarak to step down.
I do not know what the future holds in and for Egypt. Right now, there seems to be a shift from large-scale, peaceful protest to an increase in looting, at least in Cairo. This is due, in part, to the disappearance of any police presence in the capital. Yesterday, when the military was called out, they interposed themselves between the police and protesters, protecting the latter from an increase in violent force from the former. While protecting key areas of the city - from the foreign embassies and various government buildings to the Museum of Antiquities which was - briefly - entered, with some displays smashed but nothing appearing to have been stolen - much of the city is experiencing an absence of any presence of law enforcement, which can only lead to trouble.
There are also reports that water has been shut off to one of Alexandria's eleven districts.
So, the situation is still fluid - despite a lack of water in part of one city - and it is anybody's guess whether Mubarak stays or goes, the military continues to protect the people or turns on them, or perhaps the police return to their duty stations and protect the people and shops of Cairo from the depredations of looters. My most fervent wish is for the situation to resolve itself for the benefit of the great mass of the Egyptian people, desperate for a change. My next most fervent wish is that Americans, official and otherwise, allow this to evolve - or, perhaps, sadly, devolve - as a wholly Egyptian affair. This is not a "crisis" to be "managed", but a possible revolution to observe and, if successful, support as much as we can.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Egypt
The fall of the Tunisian dictatorship, covered thoroughly by Al Jazeera, has fueled the current anti-Mubarak protests in Egypt. Even as I type this, I am following Reuter's live-blogging of events, as well as Twitter.
My hope is that the United States government will step back, allow events to unfold, while perhaps quietly suggesting to Hosni Mubarak that a safe retirement in, say, New Mexico, might be in his best interest.
As I wrote on Twitter, were I the President of Syria, the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and the Sultan of Oman, I might be getting just a tad nervous. Apparently there have already been street protests in Amman against King Abdullah. While I realize his mother is American, our support should always be to the people who yearn for a more vital, active role in their own governance. Even if we don't always like the results, it seems our interests lie in greater democratic freedoms.
I just pulled up a live blog from Al Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Their Egyptian offices have been shut down by police.
God's blessings to the people of Egypt, yearning to breathe free.
My hope is that the United States government will step back, allow events to unfold, while perhaps quietly suggesting to Hosni Mubarak that a safe retirement in, say, New Mexico, might be in his best interest.
As I wrote on Twitter, were I the President of Syria, the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and the Sultan of Oman, I might be getting just a tad nervous. Apparently there have already been street protests in Amman against King Abdullah. While I realize his mother is American, our support should always be to the people who yearn for a more vital, active role in their own governance. Even if we don't always like the results, it seems our interests lie in greater democratic freedoms.
I just pulled up a live blog from Al Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Their Egyptian offices have been shut down by police.
God's blessings to the people of Egypt, yearning to breathe free.
"They have crucified the sun!" - The Paganism Of Henri Lefebvre
After the liberation of France, Henri Lefebvre returned to his little village, Navareenx, in the Pyrenees. He strolled up to, then entered, the village church. After returning to Paris, he narrated his impressions which became the essay, "Notes Written One Sunday in the French Countryside", which was included in a 1947 volume, Critique of Everyday Life. This short piece receives a close reading by Boer, and in it Boer claims that using Lefebvre's own interpretations, particularly of the dialectics of space, both as a representation and as represented, he can see hints even in Lefebvre's otherwise vitriolic, barely-concealed disgust with the Roman Catholicism of his youth, small hints of an alternative reading of the local parish as a place not just of the reification of the repression of the (rural) proletariat through the rituals and practices of the Church, but also a place full of potential protest, a "cave" he says, an underground where possible subversion can be planned.
For all this may be a possible reading, I think Boer works too hard for this conclusion. After wending one's way through Lefebvre's essay, with small excursions looking at Maurice Blondel and Joachim of Fiore, this conclusion seems to ignore some important aspects of Lefebvre's thought and life. Boer notes that Lefebvre was the founder or rural sociology in France; he further notes that, like Bloch, Lefebvre was a kind of utopian-Marxist, although of a different cast of mind. While Bloch's utopia was always not-yet, for Lefebvre (as, indeed, I think one can say of some of the writings of Marx himself) the consummation of the communist revolution, as the state withers and life and human beings are no longer alienated one from another, the result is akin more to the agrarian communism of ancient Greece, a pastoral effervescence, rather than some not-yet existent future.
The title of this post comes from a passage in the essay where Lefebvre reacts to a Celtic cross, with its circle superimposed upon the otherwise bland cruciform wall-hanging. In that instant of - what? not revelation, certainly, but perhaps anger-filled insight - clarity, we have the key to Lefebvre's protest against the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in the life of rural France. He juxtaposes the virile, sensual, life-affirming rituals of pagan religious rituals - those moments after harvest and before planting when communities would toss caution to the wind, celebrate a massive communal feast, and end in an (imagined, I think, in Lefebvre's preference for sensuality) orgy of Epicurean gluttony and Dionysian sexuality. The Church, by which he means the Roman Catholic Church, has baptized these and other rituals, robbed them of their sensuality and life-affirming celebratory core, and rendered them not just placid, but even negative. What was once a huge communal feast has become the Eucharist with its bland little wafer and barest hint of a taste of (consecrated) wine. Sexuality? The Church gives us a neutered, even emasculated Christ and the Virgin Mother. Rather than affirming life, even as these celebrations created conditions that kept rural populations perpetually on the edge of near-catastrophe, the Church has simultaneously offered a certain amount of safety to rural communities even as it strips life of those rituals and signs that would give meaning and joy to it.
With the sun crucified by the Church, we have the negation of all that Lefebvre wishes to see returned to a rural life robbed of any joy by a set of doctrines and practices that repress, even destroy, what little of real life might remain.
While it might be possible to see, buried in his description of his local church there in he Pyreneean foothills hints of possible subversion, of space reserved for clandestine gatherings in the heart of a space consecrated to the on-going repression of the rural proletariat, I believe this over-reading misses a key component of Lefebvre's approach to Marxism. It is not just liberation; it is a reconstitution, the possibility for life, particularly rural life, to be in greater accord with the rhythms and tempo of the seasons. Part of the practice of such communities is the ritualized acknowledgment of these rhythms, important touchstones for communal life. It is this ritualized harmony, this celebration of life, that Lefebvre wants to see restored. It is a deep streak of paganism that runs through at least Boer's presentation of his musings not just on the Roman Catholic Church, but his far larger project of understanding rural life.
There is little room, it seems, even for a subversive Catholicism, to take root in the heart of a community that, once it has tossed off the shackles of capitalist exploitation, would return in some manner to a more natural - and more ritualized practice - way of living.
For all this may be a possible reading, I think Boer works too hard for this conclusion. After wending one's way through Lefebvre's essay, with small excursions looking at Maurice Blondel and Joachim of Fiore, this conclusion seems to ignore some important aspects of Lefebvre's thought and life. Boer notes that Lefebvre was the founder or rural sociology in France; he further notes that, like Bloch, Lefebvre was a kind of utopian-Marxist, although of a different cast of mind. While Bloch's utopia was always not-yet, for Lefebvre (as, indeed, I think one can say of some of the writings of Marx himself) the consummation of the communist revolution, as the state withers and life and human beings are no longer alienated one from another, the result is akin more to the agrarian communism of ancient Greece, a pastoral effervescence, rather than some not-yet existent future.
The title of this post comes from a passage in the essay where Lefebvre reacts to a Celtic cross, with its circle superimposed upon the otherwise bland cruciform wall-hanging. In that instant of - what? not revelation, certainly, but perhaps anger-filled insight - clarity, we have the key to Lefebvre's protest against the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in the life of rural France. He juxtaposes the virile, sensual, life-affirming rituals of pagan religious rituals - those moments after harvest and before planting when communities would toss caution to the wind, celebrate a massive communal feast, and end in an (imagined, I think, in Lefebvre's preference for sensuality) orgy of Epicurean gluttony and Dionysian sexuality. The Church, by which he means the Roman Catholic Church, has baptized these and other rituals, robbed them of their sensuality and life-affirming celebratory core, and rendered them not just placid, but even negative. What was once a huge communal feast has become the Eucharist with its bland little wafer and barest hint of a taste of (consecrated) wine. Sexuality? The Church gives us a neutered, even emasculated Christ and the Virgin Mother. Rather than affirming life, even as these celebrations created conditions that kept rural populations perpetually on the edge of near-catastrophe, the Church has simultaneously offered a certain amount of safety to rural communities even as it strips life of those rituals and signs that would give meaning and joy to it.
With the sun crucified by the Church, we have the negation of all that Lefebvre wishes to see returned to a rural life robbed of any joy by a set of doctrines and practices that repress, even destroy, what little of real life might remain.
While it might be possible to see, buried in his description of his local church there in he Pyreneean foothills hints of possible subversion, of space reserved for clandestine gatherings in the heart of a space consecrated to the on-going repression of the rural proletariat, I believe this over-reading misses a key component of Lefebvre's approach to Marxism. It is not just liberation; it is a reconstitution, the possibility for life, particularly rural life, to be in greater accord with the rhythms and tempo of the seasons. Part of the practice of such communities is the ritualized acknowledgment of these rhythms, important touchstones for communal life. It is this ritualized harmony, this celebration of life, that Lefebvre wants to see restored. It is a deep streak of paganism that runs through at least Boer's presentation of his musings not just on the Roman Catholic Church, but his far larger project of understanding rural life.
There is little room, it seems, even for a subversive Catholicism, to take root in the heart of a community that, once it has tossed off the shackles of capitalist exploitation, would return in some manner to a more natural - and more ritualized practice - way of living.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A Gap Filler
I'm between thoughts at the moment. Reading Boer on Henri Lefebvre has left me in a bit of quandary. I really want to say . . . something . . . but there are a whole host of reasons why I keep hesitating.
The State of the Union gave me very little new to think about. Forced to sit in my car on the way to work and listen to a bunch of stupid people talk about the speech made me wonder if NPR could be prosecuted for mass murder; all that stupid, reaching out through the radio, sucking the life out of thousands of listeners, left gasping out their final breaths wishing the last thing they heard had not been Mara Liasson droning on about how much "people" care about the deficit. Had NPR decided to put Cokie Roberts in the same studio with Liasson, we might well have had the first intellectual black hole form, a stupid singularity drawing in even more American listeners, trapped and never allowed to exit.
John Boehner, pressed to say something contrary, claimed the President said nothing about "American exceptionalism". The entire speech was a paean to American exceptionalism, which means either Boehner wasn't listening or decided to say something meaningless to make conservative Republicans happy. Forced to choose, I think it is probably the latter.
Sarah Palin says the USSR won the space race. Because Democrats were in control of the country at the time, and wanted us to lose, just like they wanted us to lose in Vietnam. I made that last part up, but it makes a kind of insane sense.
Rather than winning the future, I'd much rather win the past. The future will take care of itself.
On a more serious note, I think it would be nice if discussions of the Tucson shootings would name those killed, rather than refer to them in passing. Since we still have little to no idea what prompted Jared Loughner to do what he did, for all we know the dead federal judge, or 9-year-old girl, or some other of the dead may have been his intended target. Their lives are in need of more than just a passing mention as we follow the recovery of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
I will admit that I doubt it will happen, but a Tunisian-style uprising in Saudi Arabia would be more earth-shaking, and more welcome by many (including me) than anything since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in that region of the world. Why the US would prop up a dictatorial hereditary monarchy in the face of a popular uprising may force the US to stand aside. If it should happen. The ripples from the Tunisian revolution have yet to settle.
I have great friends and family, and without a doubt the most beautiful wife and most marvelous children. I am truly a blessed man.
On that rather smarmy personal note, I think I'll sign off for now.
The State of the Union gave me very little new to think about. Forced to sit in my car on the way to work and listen to a bunch of stupid people talk about the speech made me wonder if NPR could be prosecuted for mass murder; all that stupid, reaching out through the radio, sucking the life out of thousands of listeners, left gasping out their final breaths wishing the last thing they heard had not been Mara Liasson droning on about how much "people" care about the deficit. Had NPR decided to put Cokie Roberts in the same studio with Liasson, we might well have had the first intellectual black hole form, a stupid singularity drawing in even more American listeners, trapped and never allowed to exit.
John Boehner, pressed to say something contrary, claimed the President said nothing about "American exceptionalism". The entire speech was a paean to American exceptionalism, which means either Boehner wasn't listening or decided to say something meaningless to make conservative Republicans happy. Forced to choose, I think it is probably the latter.
Sarah Palin says the USSR won the space race. Because Democrats were in control of the country at the time, and wanted us to lose, just like they wanted us to lose in Vietnam. I made that last part up, but it makes a kind of insane sense.
Rather than winning the future, I'd much rather win the past. The future will take care of itself.
On a more serious note, I think it would be nice if discussions of the Tucson shootings would name those killed, rather than refer to them in passing. Since we still have little to no idea what prompted Jared Loughner to do what he did, for all we know the dead federal judge, or 9-year-old girl, or some other of the dead may have been his intended target. Their lives are in need of more than just a passing mention as we follow the recovery of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
I will admit that I doubt it will happen, but a Tunisian-style uprising in Saudi Arabia would be more earth-shaking, and more welcome by many (including me) than anything since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in that region of the world. Why the US would prop up a dictatorial hereditary monarchy in the face of a popular uprising may force the US to stand aside. If it should happen. The ripples from the Tunisian revolution have yet to settle.
I have great friends and family, and without a doubt the most beautiful wife and most marvelous children. I am truly a blessed man.
On that rather smarmy personal note, I think I'll sign off for now.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Putting The Hump In Hump Day - Mid-Week Music Randomness
First, a great thanks to Frank Gondo and his band, as well as Headspins, for a great Friday night treat of live music in an actual Chicago bar. Gondo's blues-rock, Headspins' pop-punk were a nice break in the humdrum of life; I particularly liked Headspins first and last numbers, "New Safe Vampires" and "Sex Camel", respectively. Many thanks to Frank, an unmet FB friend, for the good talk over a Newcastle Ale (me) and some kind of mixed drink (him) before the fun started. I must admit, though, almost getting nailed by a piece of his drummer's broken stick meant the bar was too small.
That little bit of formality out of the way, rev up those iPod/laptop/Mac gerbil-wheels, ladies and gents, and put your first ten random songs in comments, because it is through randomness that truth emerges. Seriously.
Not.
Ahem.
Dark Origins - Porcupine Tree
Afraid of Sunlight - Marillion
Wind at My Back - Spock's Beard
Duke's Travels - Genesis
Second Life Syndrome - Riverside
It's For You - Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays
Cheyenne Anthem(Live) - Kansas
Space Boogie - Jeff Beck
No Stranger - Saga
Blue Light - David Gilmour
What's something about music without, you know, music?
Steve Rothery is more than just one of the great, underrated guitarists in the world. His solos almost always have an emotional impact, which proves he's not just technically awesome, but musical. Were I to die on my way home from a Marillion show, I am quite sure it would be a happy death.
That little bit of formality out of the way, rev up those iPod/laptop/Mac gerbil-wheels, ladies and gents, and put your first ten random songs in comments, because it is through randomness that truth emerges. Seriously.
Not.
Ahem.
Dark Origins - Porcupine Tree
Afraid of Sunlight - Marillion
Wind at My Back - Spock's Beard
Duke's Travels - Genesis
Second Life Syndrome - Riverside
It's For You - Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays
Cheyenne Anthem(Live) - Kansas
Space Boogie - Jeff Beck
No Stranger - Saga
Blue Light - David Gilmour
What's something about music without, you know, music?
Steve Rothery is more than just one of the great, underrated guitarists in the world. His solos almost always have an emotional impact, which proves he's not just technically awesome, but musical. Were I to die on my way home from a Marillion show, I am quite sure it would be a happy death.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Vicarious Victimization
Kevin Drum has a nice rundown of tweets concerning a small drama yesterday at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, VA.
The only thing worse than this kind of narcissistic grandstanding is the ongoing self-righteousness of Glenn Greenwald. It isn't bad enough that he acts as if we were already a bureaucratic police state; his persistent view that his interpretation of the Constitution is the only legitimate one, while certainly an effective courtroom tactic, has turned off this former daily reader (parenthetically, were I ever in need of a Constitutional specialist in a court case, Greenwald would be the first person I would choose as an attorney; someone as big an asshole as he is would be a plus for any legal team). Specifically, it isn't so much his pose as the sole True Defender of the Constitution that bothers me as much as his nearly daily harrumph at some "outrage" that is perfectly intelligible, although perhaps not always forgivable, as part of the normal behavior of states. Whether it's the allure of power of the inertia of bureaucracies, all the things he huffs and puffs about make sense as long as one understands that no Administration has ever followed the Constitution perfectly, nor will they. Further, since there are neither penalties nor even serious political repercussions for officials violating either the law of Constitutional mandates, there is no incentive other than virtue - always in short supply among bureaucrats and officials - to do so. One would think that, as an attorney, he might just understand that.
Hamsher, on the other hand, is a different case altogether. The level of invective and sheer nastiness she used increasingly during both the 2008 Democratic primary, as well as the health care reform debate became too much for me. Further, her penchant for sheer fantasizing about the nature of the political opposition - only those who agreed with her were true Reformers; those who disagreed or took a different position were all corrupt, evil human beings - reached a level of self-parody that would have been humorous were it not for the fact that it revealed a streak of narcissism that, with events yesterday, proved that even left-wingers aren't immune from being fantasy-prone.
Pvt. Manning is being held in solitary, 23-hour lockdown. One can set aside questions regarding his hus guilt or innocence and still understand why the military might be wary of allowing him too much contact. He has admitted, publicly, that he has passed classified information to an individual, Julian Assange, who also has been quite public that his intended use of that information has not been in the best interests of the US. Whether or not Pvt. Manning is guilty of a crime, his public statements confirming his actions are to enough to make intelligible the military's decision to limit, as strictly as possible, his contacts outside detention. Furthermore, the complaint that certain visitation privileges have been revoked, well, Pvt. Manning is being held in prison. They can decide who can visit and not visit, and change their minds, for all sorts of reasons.
Some could argue that the MPs should have acted in a different manner; perhaps their superiors should have been less ham-fisted in their approach. Certainly, it has given Ms. Hamsher the opportunity to claim that she, too, like Pvt. Manning, is a victim of police-state tactics. Having one's car impounded is, obviously, right up there with being disappeared by authorities, being tortured, having one's interactions monitored and restricted by official decree. I can see why she is in such an uproar.
On the other hand, it seems to me this is a pretty clear signal to those who have lost any perspective out of sympathy for Pvt. Manning's actions that the military justice system will conduct its business in the manner it deems fit. Jane Hamsher is not a victim of a corrupt, repressive system. She was inconvenienced by parts of a system whose internal workings she has impugned, insulted, declared outside American legal and constitutional bounds. It seems to me they were sending her a bit of a message, one she might well be too dim to understand. When you bait the bear, sometimes, the bear wins.
The only thing worse than this kind of narcissistic grandstanding is the ongoing self-righteousness of Glenn Greenwald. It isn't bad enough that he acts as if we were already a bureaucratic police state; his persistent view that his interpretation of the Constitution is the only legitimate one, while certainly an effective courtroom tactic, has turned off this former daily reader (parenthetically, were I ever in need of a Constitutional specialist in a court case, Greenwald would be the first person I would choose as an attorney; someone as big an asshole as he is would be a plus for any legal team). Specifically, it isn't so much his pose as the sole True Defender of the Constitution that bothers me as much as his nearly daily harrumph at some "outrage" that is perfectly intelligible, although perhaps not always forgivable, as part of the normal behavior of states. Whether it's the allure of power of the inertia of bureaucracies, all the things he huffs and puffs about make sense as long as one understands that no Administration has ever followed the Constitution perfectly, nor will they. Further, since there are neither penalties nor even serious political repercussions for officials violating either the law of Constitutional mandates, there is no incentive other than virtue - always in short supply among bureaucrats and officials - to do so. One would think that, as an attorney, he might just understand that.
Hamsher, on the other hand, is a different case altogether. The level of invective and sheer nastiness she used increasingly during both the 2008 Democratic primary, as well as the health care reform debate became too much for me. Further, her penchant for sheer fantasizing about the nature of the political opposition - only those who agreed with her were true Reformers; those who disagreed or took a different position were all corrupt, evil human beings - reached a level of self-parody that would have been humorous were it not for the fact that it revealed a streak of narcissism that, with events yesterday, proved that even left-wingers aren't immune from being fantasy-prone.
Pvt. Manning is being held in solitary, 23-hour lockdown. One can set aside questions regarding his hus guilt or innocence and still understand why the military might be wary of allowing him too much contact. He has admitted, publicly, that he has passed classified information to an individual, Julian Assange, who also has been quite public that his intended use of that information has not been in the best interests of the US. Whether or not Pvt. Manning is guilty of a crime, his public statements confirming his actions are to enough to make intelligible the military's decision to limit, as strictly as possible, his contacts outside detention. Furthermore, the complaint that certain visitation privileges have been revoked, well, Pvt. Manning is being held in prison. They can decide who can visit and not visit, and change their minds, for all sorts of reasons.
Some could argue that the MPs should have acted in a different manner; perhaps their superiors should have been less ham-fisted in their approach. Certainly, it has given Ms. Hamsher the opportunity to claim that she, too, like Pvt. Manning, is a victim of police-state tactics. Having one's car impounded is, obviously, right up there with being disappeared by authorities, being tortured, having one's interactions monitored and restricted by official decree. I can see why she is in such an uproar.
On the other hand, it seems to me this is a pretty clear signal to those who have lost any perspective out of sympathy for Pvt. Manning's actions that the military justice system will conduct its business in the manner it deems fit. Jane Hamsher is not a victim of a corrupt, repressive system. She was inconvenienced by parts of a system whose internal workings she has impugned, insulted, declared outside American legal and constitutional bounds. It seems to me they were sending her a bit of a message, one she might well be too dim to understand. When you bait the bear, sometimes, the bear wins.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Seek The Welfare Of The City - Stanley Haeurwas And The Problem Of Exile
After all, I have playfully used postmodern playfulness to try to remind Christians that we are in a life-and-death struggle with the world. - Stanley Hauerwas, "The Christian Difference, or Surviving Postmodernism", A Better Hope, p.36.Jeremiah is a gloomy Gus. Reading through this prophetic book, one gets the sense that he rather enjoyed pronouncing judgment upon the evils of a people poised on the precipice of destruction, their kingdom small and weak about to face the onslaught of the Empire of Babylon. Once the catastrophe occurs, Jeremiah spends quite a bit of time comforting the people with, "I told you so".
He also offers a bit of advice to those in exile that was probably as difficult to hear as the dire warnings of imminent doom he spoke. He has a vision of two baskets of figs, and wonders what they mean. The LORD complies, starting in verse 5:
These are the words of the LORD the God of Israel: I count the exiles of Judah whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldaeans as good as these good figs. I shall look to their welfare, and restore them to this land; I shall build them up and not pull them down, plant them and not uproot them. I shall give them the wit to know me, for I am the LORD; they will be my people and I shall be their God, for they will come back to me wholeheartefly.Setting aside a whole host of questions that should properly be asked about such a text before doing the proper task of exegesis, I would, rather, prefer to offer this as a reply to Stanley Haeurwas' oft-stated desire for Christians to see themselves as those living in exile. In particular, as a reply to the all-too-often accommodated, mainline Protestant churches, their doctrinal differences getting ever fuzzier as they strive to become American Christian churches.
But King Zedekiah of Judah, his officers, and the survivors of Jerusalem, both those who remain in this land and those who have settled in Egypt - all these I shall treat as bad figs, says the LORD, so bad that they are not fit to eat. I shall make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reporach, a bysword, an object of taunting and cursing wherever I banish them. I shall send sword, war, famine, and pestilence against them until they have vanished from the land which I gave to them and to their forefathers.
For Hauerwas, this has been unequivocally bad for the churches. They have lost, according to his reading of the history of Christian churches in the United States, the ability to worship, with any real meaning, any authentic prophetic or pastoral content, the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen. In the essays that open A Better Hope, he goes so far as to insist that the mere possibility of being a church that does so - i.e., authentic worship of the living God - would be an ever-living thorn in the side both of secular America and the all-too-willing accommodations of a neutered Protestant bourgeoisie.
Yet, "exile", at least for Jeremiah, is hardly a state of separation. Indeed, those who are in exile, as opposed to those who have been allowed to remain behind (or who have fled to Egypt) are "the good figs", those who still find favor with God. For a people whose identity has been shaped by an attachment to The Land rooted in Divine Grace and favor, this idea that there is blessing in exile from this land must have sounded not just odd, but may even have bordered on unintelligible. All the same, Jeremiah's famous declaration, the title of this post, is of a piece with this parable of the figs. The exiles are to pray and work and live as the people of God, including praying and working for the welfare of the city in which they are held as exiles.
For Jeremiah, then, exile is not a place of struggle against. Nor is it, I should add, a place of accommodation. Rather, the people are to maintain their identity; part of that identity includes being a living community, working and praying and worshiping together, who also seek the welfare of the larger community of which they are a part. Rather than a life-and-death struggle with the world, exile is part of the people's ongoing struggle for the world.
Hauerwas has maintained, for the better part of two decades, that the Christian churches in America, in order to be Christian, need to set to one side any effort at mutual accommodation. We are not to seek the Americanization of Christianity. We are not to seek the Christianization of America. For Hauerwas, only when the churches can worship the God incarnate in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen - and there are abundant references across many writings where Hauerwas is clear this has yet to take place, at least in mainline Protestant Christianity - without reference to America, are the churches not only authentically Christian, but also authentically working for America. For Hauerwas, in other word - to use his rather odd notions of narrative - the story of exile, as the Christian's story in America, is one of a dialectic of separation and prophetic transcendence on the one hand; and immersion and pastoral care leading to transformation on the other. This rather complicated way of envisioning Christian "exile", however, ignores the prophetic insistence, recorded in Jeremiah, that, as exiles, we are those favored by God. Furthermore, as exiles, we are to live our lives as part of the larger community, seeking its welfare in the ordinary, mundane run of life.
Not only is Hauerwas' insistence that real worship of God not yet happening in the Protestant churches, far too comfortable with American life; his understanding of exile is truncated, ignoring the Divine imperative to be - borrowing the imagery from Jeremiah - good figs. This is not treason to the God of Israel, apostasy to the God of Jesus Christ. Rather, in living as both Christians and Americans, including praying and working for the welfare of America qua America, we are living out the lives of exiles. Not in struggle with, even against it. In struggle for it.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Christianity, Marxism, And The Persistence Of Religious Protest
I decided it might be a good idea to pause and ask a really good question: Why am I at all interested in Marxist discussions and appropriation of Christian theology? Whether one considers Marx's ideas of a piece, or periodic with an early, more humanist Marxism juxtaposed to a later, more scientific approach, one thread that runs through his work is, at the very least, a hostility to the Christian religion as it was reified in industrial capitalism in western Europe.
I will state upfront that I think the other side of the equation, the Christian churches and their various theologians, have been all-too-eager to accept the indictment of Marx and his followers (they have been less enthusiastic toward Freud, but that is a subject for another day). All too often this agreement has been too vigorous, too shallow. Because they have sought it out, many theologians have found, within the text of the Bible, in the history of the faith, and in certain theological categories tools that can liberate not only this same dehumanized mass, but itself from the fate of going the way of the dodo. While there may be a genuine desire on the part of many to work for the liberation not just of those under the bootheel of late industrial imperialistic capitalism, for the most part I honestly believe it is rooted even more in a desperate attempt to keep the Christian religion alive, even vital, in the face of the protest against its use as a tool to degrade human beings.
Bad faith is never a good reason to do anything, especially a bad faith rooted in a shallow guilt and a desire to remain "relevant" rather than faithful.
The collapse of the Soviet bloc is so far in the past there are people in the US of legal voting age with no living memory of it. We have lived far too long under the lie, "There is no alternative" (TINA, as it has been shortened, was a favorite of Margaret Thatcher). There is a rich, vibrant history of Marxist thought, from the founders to our own day, and this is the precise moment it may well indeed speak to us who have the desire to hear of a better way, a more human way, of being together.
The Christian churches, in all their variation, are now, as they have always been, on all sides of various fences. The powerful and the powerless, the leaders and the herd of dehumanized masses who want only to live fully human lives find solace within the walls of the churches, comfort for their pains - social, psychological, physical - in the soothing words and outstretched arms of both clergy and laity. The challenge before us, really, is one of honesty. Were we Christians honest, we would admit not only that the churches have been complicit, sometimes overt leaders, in the exploitation of human beings for the sake of the powerful; we would admit, further, that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to find support for such action within the text of the Bible and the categories of theology. The effort to lift out and read the Bible, the history of our theology and practice, those parts that favor a different view of what it means to be Church, to be a Christian, while noble and certainly finding support in various parts of the text, undermine themselves at precisely the point they deny any contradiction within the text itself, let alone in the history of the faith.
Like the far-too-shallow appropriation of large elements of liberation theology by North American Christians, the rush to accept the judgment that we have, indeed, been guilty of monstrous crimes against humanity in the name of God - implicating God, too - misses the point. We cannot rid ourselves of the distasteful past. We cannot wash the blood from our hands. We can work with those texts and categories that offer a way out of the abyss, but we should do so honestly, and with more depth than I think, heretofore, has been done.
In reading these Marxists and the ways theology informs their work, even as they deny any reality to the content of the truth claims of theology, I have discovered that, at the very least, much of the on-going protest against "God" and "religion" is not anything "radical". The God-deniers and church-bashers far too often are wed to an ideology that is hand-in-glove with those forces that continue to oppress and subjugate large parts of humanity. The shallow scientism of Dawkins and Harris, the sophistry of Daniel Dennett, and the imperialistic war-mongering of Christopher Hitchens are not at all radical critiques of religion and the evils it visits upon humanity in the name of humanism. Quite the opposite; Hitchens and Harris are enthusiastic war-boosters, with Harris going so far as to endorse the torture and murder of Muslism on grounds that can only be called genocidal. Dawkins beef with Christianity - its ridiculous creationist, young earth nonsense - has pushed one biologist past the point of endurance. The result, however, is an endorsement of an equally dehumanizing scientism that is itself part of the structure of liberalism that buries far too many human beings under its own groaning weight.
Furthermore, St. Paul did instruct us to be all things to all people, to be as wily as foxes. If there are, in fact, resources for imagining and living the Christian faith that can be found in Marxism - resources not only for judging those whose lives are rooted in human exploitation, but comforting and even struggling with those envisioning a better, more human/humane world - then, by all means, they should be given a third, or even fourth, look. That there are Marxists who struggle with theological issues, whose effort to consign religion to history's dustbin are thwarted by the reality that the many faces of religion include one that lives with, sides with, the exploited, dehumanized tools for the enrichment of the few, we owe it to ourselves to learn from them. Even if we cannot agree with all they say, by rooting around in the attic of western thought we may find some garments to drape across the tattered, withered frame of Christian thought and life.
I will state upfront that I think the other side of the equation, the Christian churches and their various theologians, have been all-too-eager to accept the indictment of Marx and his followers (they have been less enthusiastic toward Freud, but that is a subject for another day). All too often this agreement has been too vigorous, too shallow. Because they have sought it out, many theologians have found, within the text of the Bible, in the history of the faith, and in certain theological categories tools that can liberate not only this same dehumanized mass, but itself from the fate of going the way of the dodo. While there may be a genuine desire on the part of many to work for the liberation not just of those under the bootheel of late industrial imperialistic capitalism, for the most part I honestly believe it is rooted even more in a desperate attempt to keep the Christian religion alive, even vital, in the face of the protest against its use as a tool to degrade human beings.
Bad faith is never a good reason to do anything, especially a bad faith rooted in a shallow guilt and a desire to remain "relevant" rather than faithful.
The collapse of the Soviet bloc is so far in the past there are people in the US of legal voting age with no living memory of it. We have lived far too long under the lie, "There is no alternative" (TINA, as it has been shortened, was a favorite of Margaret Thatcher). There is a rich, vibrant history of Marxist thought, from the founders to our own day, and this is the precise moment it may well indeed speak to us who have the desire to hear of a better way, a more human way, of being together.
The Christian churches, in all their variation, are now, as they have always been, on all sides of various fences. The powerful and the powerless, the leaders and the herd of dehumanized masses who want only to live fully human lives find solace within the walls of the churches, comfort for their pains - social, psychological, physical - in the soothing words and outstretched arms of both clergy and laity. The challenge before us, really, is one of honesty. Were we Christians honest, we would admit not only that the churches have been complicit, sometimes overt leaders, in the exploitation of human beings for the sake of the powerful; we would admit, further, that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to find support for such action within the text of the Bible and the categories of theology. The effort to lift out and read the Bible, the history of our theology and practice, those parts that favor a different view of what it means to be Church, to be a Christian, while noble and certainly finding support in various parts of the text, undermine themselves at precisely the point they deny any contradiction within the text itself, let alone in the history of the faith.
Like the far-too-shallow appropriation of large elements of liberation theology by North American Christians, the rush to accept the judgment that we have, indeed, been guilty of monstrous crimes against humanity in the name of God - implicating God, too - misses the point. We cannot rid ourselves of the distasteful past. We cannot wash the blood from our hands. We can work with those texts and categories that offer a way out of the abyss, but we should do so honestly, and with more depth than I think, heretofore, has been done.
In reading these Marxists and the ways theology informs their work, even as they deny any reality to the content of the truth claims of theology, I have discovered that, at the very least, much of the on-going protest against "God" and "religion" is not anything "radical". The God-deniers and church-bashers far too often are wed to an ideology that is hand-in-glove with those forces that continue to oppress and subjugate large parts of humanity. The shallow scientism of Dawkins and Harris, the sophistry of Daniel Dennett, and the imperialistic war-mongering of Christopher Hitchens are not at all radical critiques of religion and the evils it visits upon humanity in the name of humanism. Quite the opposite; Hitchens and Harris are enthusiastic war-boosters, with Harris going so far as to endorse the torture and murder of Muslism on grounds that can only be called genocidal. Dawkins beef with Christianity - its ridiculous creationist, young earth nonsense - has pushed one biologist past the point of endurance. The result, however, is an endorsement of an equally dehumanizing scientism that is itself part of the structure of liberalism that buries far too many human beings under its own groaning weight.
Furthermore, St. Paul did instruct us to be all things to all people, to be as wily as foxes. If there are, in fact, resources for imagining and living the Christian faith that can be found in Marxism - resources not only for judging those whose lives are rooted in human exploitation, but comforting and even struggling with those envisioning a better, more human/humane world - then, by all means, they should be given a third, or even fourth, look. That there are Marxists who struggle with theological issues, whose effort to consign religion to history's dustbin are thwarted by the reality that the many faces of religion include one that lives with, sides with, the exploited, dehumanized tools for the enrichment of the few, we owe it to ourselves to learn from them. Even if we cannot agree with all they say, by rooting around in the attic of western thought we may find some garments to drape across the tattered, withered frame of Christian thought and life.
Friday, January 21, 2011
A Catholic-Tinged Revolution - Louis Althusser
Fear is not a fatherland, nor is courage . . ., more the human condition is not a human fatherland. It is, perhaps, the fatherland of men as they appear to God; because we are Christians, we call this condition original sin. For the man who is not a Christian, and for the Christian who does not usurp God's place, the human fatherland is not the proletariat of the human condition, it is the proletariat tout court, leading the whole of humanity towards its emancipation. This proletariat has a real content.Roland Boer moves from two semi-assimilated German Jews, comfortable with a certain German Protestant approach to Christianity to the first of two French Roman Catholic thinkers. In the case of Louis Althusser, the specificity of this description - French Roman Catholic - is necessary to understand the way Althusser takes a large part of what he, Althusser, found so attractive about Roman Catholicism. In the words Boer borrowed from Althusser for the chapter title, it lends to Althusser's work a certain "ecclesiastical eloquence." More, for Boer, it provides a clue to understanding some confusing aspects of Althusser's thought.
For, as Christians, we believe that there is a human condition; in other words, we believe in the equality of all men before God, and his Judgement, but we do not want the Judgement of God to spirited away before our very eyes; nor do we want to see non-Christians and, occasionally, Christians as well, commit the sacrilege of taking the atomic bomb for the will of God, equality before death for equality before God . . ., and the tortures of the concentration camps for the Last Judgement.(italics in original) - Louis Althusser
In particular is the way Althusser, in a way that is far too common, tended to use the word, "Church", written that way, that elided the many differences not just among various Christian churches, but even with the Catholic communion itself. As an active member of the post-war Catholic Left in France, the move from Roman-Catholicism to Marxism was aided, for Althusser, by a general desire for an alliance among various Left groups. This move was helped along by certain teachers, including Catholic ones.
In fact the Church, via its chaplains and encyclicals, made their own militants aware of the 'social question', of which most of us were totally ignorant. Foo course, once we recognize that there was a 'social question' and the the remedies proposed were ridiculous, it did not take much, in my case the profound political vision of "Pere Hours', for us to explore what lay behind the wooly-minded slogans of the Catholic Church and rapidly convert to Marxism before joining the Communist Party!Boer examines not only four early theological essays. He also examines in some detail "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", which forms a nascent sociology of both religion and morality. Within this essay, however, Althusser seems to replace "ideology" for the God of Thomistic doctrine. Unlike its actualization in specific ideological structures - including what Althusser calls "practical ideologies" like religion - "ideology" itself, or perhaps better Ideology, is transhistorical, eternal, and inescapable. Rather than arguing about Ideology, Althusser seems to suggest that most people are arguing about various instances of ideology incarnate in history; Ideology, unlike its early Marxist formula, is not rooted in the historical form of the class struggle.
In this way, the various Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) are, in a way, mere appearances to the Platonic Ideology that Exists. Boer sees the shadow of Augustine here as well as St. Thomas, which in some ways is ironic. Augustine, like Althusser, was a restless intellect, moving from Manichaean religious beliefs through neo-Platonism to Catholicism relatively rapidly, dragging various bits and pieces with him along the way. Althusser, so Boer wishes to argue, was a self-declared scientific Marxist whose writings are suffused with various elements from the French Roman Catholicism of his youth and young adulthood. Confusing the specific with the universal, seeing in Ideology an easy substitute for the God he rejected, Althusser's work was more a continuation of the leftward journey he began as he moved from the Catholic left to Marxism. I do believe that the marriage might be far easier for a Catholic than some other Christian groups, due in small way to the universalizing tendency within Roman Catholic thought. In that way, Althusser's ritualized, sacralized Marxism does seem to bear a remarkable resemblance to his discarded Church/church.
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