I won't write too much about this. My last post was way too long and self- indulgent. I promised I was going to keep entries here short, because no one should be expected to plow through a post of more than 500 (less than 490 you have to forgive me) words and that last one should have been split into probably three separate ones.
I've noticed some interesting things: First, most commentators here in the Sates are ignorant propagandists who very clearly know next to nothing about what they are talking about. Very rarely do you get anyone willing to speak the truth, apart from all the nonsense about our being interested in Arab freedom, democracy and human rights.
We are - and rationally so - only interested in one thing: defending and advancing our own national interests, as defined by our own power elite. The idealistic yammering is a cloak for that power, that's it. "Our" interests are oil, our economic and political security and international political and economic stability.
That's it, that's all. It's all about maintaining the flow of wealth, and protecting the broad interests of the decision makers in DC and Europe.
All the handwringing about why we are intervening in Libya, while ignoring the revolts in Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen drives me nuts.
In Bahrain we and our key allies the Saudis and other Gulf emirates are invested in the status quo. If the protesters were to gain power and overthrow the monarchy there, the 5th Fleet's basing rights would be in question and danger of revocation. Democracy in that island satrap of ours would throw power to the Shiite majority, just as it has in Iraq.
This would further tilt the balance of power in the Gulf toward Persian Shiite Iran.
The Sunni Arab "monarchies" there are deathly afraid of Persians and Shiites. They know that when we leave - and we will, it's only a question of time and how much oil is left - then they will be on their own.
All talk of attacking Iran needs to be taken in that context. It's not primarily about Israel. Iran is only an existential threat to Israel in that it undermines Zionism as an ideology (who wants to move to a place under constant bombardment by Hezb' Allah, and under the eventual slight theoretical threat of a possible nuclear war? Not middle class American Jews, that's for damn sure..) not in the military sense.
As for Yemen, supporting the revolting tribes there against the government is tantamount to supporting "al-Qaeda" in that our only real allies in that hell hole are the rulers. This is true again and again throughout the Middle East and rest of the world - the people who need and want us need and want us for our guns. We prop up their regimes against their own people, they sell us oil cheap (not that Yemen has much oil) and let us do things like base spec ops and attack drones in their countries to hunt terrorists.
As for Syria the government there are Baathist thugs like Saddam, but that ruling clique is made up of Alawite and Druze minorities (whom the French made the military officer class during the colonial era to create a reliable indigenous power base against the Sunni majority - divide and conquer - when they left, those clans, most particularly the Alawites were in control) - any support of Sunni majority rebellion would destabilize the devil we know (who isn't even that devilish, really, a few convenient mass murders of Islamicists and other extremists that we secretly enjoyed like when they killed 20,000 Muslim Brotherhood leveling Hama in 1982 aside) and give us - and our Israeli friends - a new, and potentially much more unpleasant Sunni regime that could seek a renewed alliance with Egypt. Bad scenario for us, not going to encourage that. Note also that Syria has no oil. No oil, you're not that important.
Anyway, the reason we are taking out Qaddafi is that the Europeans and Chinese need his high quality crude. He's a jerk who has alienated and pissed off everyone - even the bankers in Zurich and Geneva hate him, and when you are rich and still have pissed off those mercenaries, you know you really have no friends. So in his case the "rebels" (disempowered tribes) are a positive improvement, hence the bombings.
Italy also has a vested interest in North Africa not descending into utter chaos, since they would prefer to keep the African boat immigration to the current trickle. That's why they volunteered their bases with such alacrity, right off the bat.
One closing observation: I've noticed that Al-Jezeera - which is a consistently more interesting news source than any major American corporate channel - is revealing its biases now. They aren't pro- western corporate, they're Sunni Arab sectarian and in defense of the Gulf Emirates and Saudis.
They refuse to favorably cover (or cover at all, really) the revolts in the Arab Gulf, which I think is highly amusing. It's game on in making everyone else feel uncomfortable (which I love them for) but when it comes to annoying the sheiks paying their bills, they keep their mouths shut.
We all have our sacrosanct loyalties and self interest to defend in the end. That's what makes the world go round.
Enjoy the ride. It's getting interesting.
---
Sunday, March 27, 2011
America, A Love Story - Part 1: The Silence of Gomorrah [revised]
I returned this weekend from a week and a half sojourn in Florida. While there I was working on moving my stuff - of which I still have far too much, despite already having given half of it away to goodwill - up to my new home here in Vermont. I also naturally spent quite a bit of time with family and friends, and so had no time for writing.
The trip was interesting though, in many ways. I thought many deep, scintillating thoughts. So many, and so scintillating, that I immediately began to feel for you, my public. So much beauty and truth, but no means to record it. Two thirds my way down the East Coast I was resolved: I here, hither, thither, withersoever and forthwith, shall always carry upon my person a dictaphone by which to trap all my diaphanous interior poetic magic, to then write it all down and out, and so bestow my genius more fully upon humanity.
I'm honing my creative process, is what I mean. I realized that as I write more that I need to become more mindful of process, and brainstorming and organizing thought is the most important step.
Anyway, the trip, as I say, was a good one.
I realized in the trip's shifting context that I've re-gained my clarity and sense of humor that I'd lost after baking away last summer in that tropical golfing paradise known as Florida.. Weather down there now is really nice - too nice, really.. Every day in March there is like a totally sunny Maine summer day, something that in Maine actually nearly never occurs, because every day Downeast is normally a stark climatic succession, with weather dramatically changing every 5 minutes. So I was briefly re-seduced, and wondered if I could arrange my life so that I could live winters there, summers elsewhere.. But then the last two days got insufferably hot around midday, and I snapped out of that reverie. No, I am meant for where there is snow and dry winter air. After a week it was very clear that I needed to come home..
Here.
I take three days to drive the route, taking my time and visiting with people on the way, so I had a long spell of listening to NPR and CBC talk on my satellite radio (which came 6 months free with the car, but because the talk - in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, no less - is too good to let lapse, I'm now subscribing and even listening to it in the house while working) and plenty of time to think.
On the way, I realized with sudden forceful lucidity that I really do not like the United States. I realized, consciously articulated this last trip what has been inchoately felt and repressed since high school: I am nearly always discontented here.
It must be the fluoride in the water or something.
I mean, I still from force of childhood habit love my country, my home. I am a patriot in that fundamental (and to me only authentic) sense.
But this collective relationship is just not working for me, practically. It's like I am married to my high school sweetheart, whom I've known and loved since childhood, and have this deep intimate history with, but now I realize has never been faithful to me, is a sociopathic and compulsive liar, and whose behavior and attitude these last ten years has suddenly become repulsive to me..
Just bombing them all in friendly fashion for the sake of Truth, Justice and the American Way..
America & Me: it's become one of those "dysfunctional" relationships where the other party is constantly ravaging you emotionally, never caring how it effects you.
I'm beginning to feel a bit like I did when I was in high school, minus insecurity and self esteem issues.. Paying attention to the media - either "entertainment" or "news" - almost instantly makes me feel trapped and powerless, jaded, either constantly annoyed, or bored or emotionally spent. Even the few things I enjoy and do watch when there's a television around (I refuse to own one) like Stephen Colbert or John Stewart end up curdling me..
I think it's being in close psychological contact with large undifferentiated numbers my fellow Americans.. Being forced to inhabit their common psychic space (Snooki! Bankers need bonuses! Hey, you catch ball good, we earn you billion dollars! Bomb sandniggers!) in mass aggregate is for me something like being caught and repeatedly trod underpaw by a lemming herd of gigantic diabolically retarded muppets.
Bruising, scary, and in a demented way, funny.
That's the one saving grace in it all, that people like Glenn Beck are so absurd that they make me laugh. For about five minutes, then I start clawing my ears and eyes out.
A party of Villagers is almost as bad.. No talk of substance, mostly prattle about sports or something equally mindless.. If politics do come up, it's almost always the same regurgitation of libertarian boilerplate followed by an excoriation of Obama, maybe Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi thrown in for sophistication's sake.
The only year that I've had since high school that was in any way as unpleasant as last year in Florida was when I unwisely decided to take a French teaching job at another American high school.
The first trauma was when I was a child and could not choose. The second was due to my own naivete and lack of sense that put me in harm's way. The third was the consequence of my not making good choices, and being trapped by circumstance.
Never again. Thrice abused has been well and more than enough.
I want out of here. This culture is fatal for my sanity. I've been getting out, again and again, in one way or another, ever since high school, never fully articulating my motives to myself. It's now become clear to me that I need to make a final departure, and stop screwing around.
There's two ways to do it: I can either become a monastic, probably a hermit, or a perpetual exile. I'm going, one way or the other, soon.
When I figure it out, you my public will be among the first to know.
So, as I say, when I hit the Carolina border I realized that the South is especially noxious and toxic.. It's like the rest of the country on a redneck meth and acid bender.
I gotta qualify that: I do still somehow like rural Northern Virginia and Maryland. The land that is still touched by the traces of colonial culture, like my own dear Vermont, Boston and Massachusetts are.. Those places along with the non-suburban Mid-Atlantic - and oddly enough, given my country upbringing, D.C., Baltimore, New York City, Providence - are the only ones in these United Sates where I feel well these days. Their history and ghosts speak to me, the landscape soothes me, and the North Eastern weather (cool mist and drizzle, warm muggy summer idles - rarely too hot, never too cold - distinct seasons, with turning leaves and occasional snow) calms me, and all makes me feel at home.
I also have this love of certain aspects of and things from the South - some of the music, the moonshine (real moonshine is divine dew, something out of this world), some of the food and literature..
To Kill a Mockingbird, for example. That tale - a "kid's book" - is one of the greatest stories in the English language. Atticus Finch is an archetype of the best in humanity - dignified, wise, kind, humble, generous. When I think of the South with love, my imagined transcendent South, I think of him.. And Boo Radley, Mr. Dolphus Raymond (who pretends to be a drunk, just so he can escape the hypocrisy and hatred of the community - he lives with blacks, and the only way they forgive him for that is by dismissing him as a drunk..) and Calpurnia, the servant who in her charity and humility is masterful.
They are the ones I love, my true beloved. My imagined friends. But they are only an poetic figment of the past. When I think of the South with fondness, I edit out the inevitable interaction with the rest of the characters in that story.. The actual contemporary South is overrun with the likes Bob Ewell maliciously accusing "the nigger" (the other, black venal eroticized) of a crime he himself had committed. Southerners are still more the poor ignorant lynch mob that came to the county jail to face down Atticus and kill that "nigger," only turned aside in being shown up by the innocence of a little girl .. (How often that still happens, even still.. Where would we be without her?) ..
I'd far rather live in Cairo (the only place of the half dozen places outside the U.S. that I've lived that I have no desire to live in again) than the Deep American South, is what I'm saying.
I'll take me some crazy assed Muslims over all those crazy assed evangelical protestants any day, in a heartbeat. No question or hesitation.
I mean what the heck is stuff like this all about? Yellow tiger striped spandex?
Really? I still can't believe it.
So when I get into the cracker country, then hit that North Carolina border, I become gradually repulsed. It's the bible belt, and all that evangelical bible thumping is immediately felt throbbing, vibrating like scent of violence in the air.
This time it struck me forcibly: from North Carolina all the way to mid- Florida there suddenly are everywhere billboards advertising for strip clubs and porn emporia seemingly just off every third exit. These are interspaced with billboards exhorting passersby to keep their babies if single and pregnant, and others bearing bible verses.
Full-blown roadside culture "war," one marked by imbecilic incoherence. This is a phenomenon I've not seen in Communist New England. The South has apparently risen again in more ways than one.
Sodom in the South. Only I'm not sure the likes of Lot are amongst them.
There's a chain of titty bars advertising with locations in North Carolina and Florida that specializes in drawing in truckers and other travelers - "showers, good food, sex toys and paraphernalia, DVD's and magazines, WE BARE ALL!" on dozens of roadside billboards.. Like South of the Border, only with naked girls. There's even a porn store conveniently located on the Wildwood exit, which is the one I take to the Villages, usually. Very thoughtful of them. If I ever say, were hypothetically (here's a philosophical paradox much like that of Epimenides, a true Cretan..) to run out of free porn on the internet at home, or am seized with an urge to masturbate in my car 15 minutes before I get to my parents' house, I can stop in just after stopping next door and picking up my last Big Mac™ along the route.
The porn industry has my interests at heart and always in mind, see. Everything's for sale, and modesty's cheap. God bless capitalism and Amereeka.
There were other billboards of note, such as this one:
Now, for those of you amongst my dozen or so readers who do not know, John Galt is a character in Atlas Shrugged, a novel by the sociopathic libertarian-bourgeois dime-store Nietzschean Ayn Rand. You see people carrying placards with that question on it at "tea party" rallies all the time.
Here's an interview with Mike Wallace where she tells us what she is about herself:
From her own lips to your soul.
This, her "philosophy" has more or less become the predominant American Creed. I'll give you some of the words she puts in John Galt's mouth in her loathsome book. His most famous soliloquy:
Watching that video just stuns me. It's pure twisted comedy. The guy who created it is apparently a fan of Ayn. But the images he juxtaposes against his histrionic reading,
"I ask for nothing less and nothing more than what I earn. That is justice!" over film of an atomic bomb exploding..
"Why is it moral to produce something of value and then keep it for yourself? When it is moral for others who haven't earned to accept it?" over video of Bush standing in the post 9/11 ruins of the usurers' financial district in New York ..
"Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.." over video from Columbine..
All just leave me mute.
Absolutely insane, so mindlessly ironic that it staggers. I don't think reasonable conversation is possible with someone so stupid, so clearly conscienceless and amoral.
This is the whole text read in that video:
For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?
Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.
We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.
I am a trader [editorial aside - I take this a pun. Yeah, John/Ayn that you are. A traitor to human kindness]. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.
You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's impossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.
And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?
Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.
You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.
Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than its neighbors. Twelve years ago [editorial aside: interesting numeric there, Ayn], I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.
To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.
If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.
The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.
The world according to John Galt, spoken like a a true Cretin.
It's the Will to Power, dumbed down for Glenn Beck's audience. Deep thoughts for the likes of Jared Loughner, Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold.
Like I say, Nietzsche himself was bad enough. Rand is even more spiritually idiotic than poor crazy Fred.
Last fall I was at the Gainesville VA to pick up a prescription, and had to talk to the pharmacist. I went in, sat down, and noticed a little card with "Who is John Galt?" on it, taped to the side of his desk. I was mildly shocked, and perplexed. I asked him what it meant (innocent as a serpent, wise as a dove.. or something like that) curious as to why a government employee would be displaying something so politically charged at his place of work for all to see.. He smiled and brushed the question off, and I did not press him.
This is the absurdity we've come to. Espousing crypto-fascistic individualism while working for one of the best run health-care systems in the world - that is also perplexingly enough from a retarded libertarian point of view, government run - is now accepted as somehow sane, coherent and kosher. That dude's probably got lurid dreams of going to work for big pharma and making a million bucks discovering a new priapic elixir in the deepest Amazon someday. The VA is just to be a jumping off point for his coming world conquest.
I thought he looked like a impotent dweeb, so I hope for his sake that that elixir of his really pays off.
Every time I hear or see someone ask "Who is John Galt?" I want to counter "Quienes somos José y Maria, pendejo?"
See, the conceit behind the entire Galt fantasy is that if the entrepreneurial class - businessmen with capital - were hypothetically all to walk suddenly away from the table at once in a general strike, the entire economy would be instantly paralyzed.
They are supposedly the sole creative force driving our economy, see.
They make money the old fashioned way: They Earn It. By watching a stock ticker through beer goggles on Bloomberg in between rounds at the country club.
Thing is, I think that if all the people picking our fruit and vegetables, washing the shit out of our toilets, taking care of our laundry and watching our children were to walk away in a general strike those pussies would be so undone - "Clean my own toilet? Build my own summer home? Pick my own food? Mow and landscape my own lawn? Slaughter my own animals? With my own hands?" - there'd be an immediate collapse on the minimum and even the living wage issue.
"Please come back and wipe my baby's ass for me! Please! My wife is about to beat me to death with her Jimmy Choos!"
Whereas if the conniving investors who deliberately and recklessly speculated us into the current market collapse were to walk away, they would be doing all the rest of us a favor.
Please, sail your 100 million dollar yacht to Somalia! I hear the beaches are awesome there. Bunch of sheiks and warlords hang there, like Monaco.. just your type of people..
Note, and this is really important, that this "ethical thought" of Ayn Rand's has been publicly embraced by Alan Greenspan. He doesn't even try to hide his amoral power worship. He's openly warned us where he's coming from.
She called her philosophy "objectivism" - accept only what is objectively true. No faith, only rational calculation. Admire and love only what is "objectively" admirable and loveable. Love people who are beautiful and strong, those who "win" and "succeed" have virtue, which is material power. Do not love people for what they do for you - they only act of self interest and weakness.
The lines about in Galt's speech about use of force being illegitimate are either disingenuous and cynical or idiotically stupid. We all use force, whether physical or metaphysical, to influence reality and others. It is unavoidable. The only issue is the end to which we will use the power (no matter how slight - getting out of bed or opening your mouth effect things) we have.
Ayn Rand is, to put it square and blunt, a moral idiot. Her work is both utterly and howlingly stupid, as well as pretty much a crib of Mein Kampf.
Stupid isn't always evil, but evil is always stupid.
One thing for sure: none of it is Christian. The stale irony though is that so many so-called Christians think that Ayn Rand is an ethical genius.
"You've Sacrificed Justice to Mercy.. Let me Explain to You the Consequences of your brother-love morality.. We are on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unearned duties."
"I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."
No better articulation of the mind of anti-christ than that.
It is, not at all incidentally, also pretty much a summary of radical (i.e., libertarian) feminist ethics. Take care of little kids and old people? Be subservient to the needs of others without reward? Hell no, neuter me with hormones, and show me the cash baby! Sex and monay, powah and freedam!
"I will never live for the sake of another man."
Non serviam. I will not serve. To hell with you.
The stupidity or cynical disingenuousness of the anti- government libertarian is that their philosophy if triumphant will demand the reversal of feminism and the restoration of traditional anti-libertarian institutions (with all their attendant hierarchies and repressive social norms) such as the patriarchal family and culturally and politically dominant churches. If the government does not provide social democratic alternatives that supply basic human needs like child care and elder care (such as the public schools or social security and medicare - all of which are sneered at by Ayn Rand, notice) then the family - read women - will have to again take up that charge. And that work will not be remunerated with cash, believe me you.
Anyway, our culture won't go back there unless forced by catastrophe, but we'll still have to put up with libertarian idiocy and nonsense until then, anyhow..
Feed your head, and live for your pleasure and greed.
Welcome to the United Sates of America, 2011.
Anyway, to draw this little screed to a close, I have another little story to tell you all.
Last fall I got a circular in the mail:
A glossy mass mailing circular to every PO Box in Lady Lake, FL advertising a series of free talks - "come as you are," "free bible," "free nightly handouts," "free children's program.." - by a speaker named Scott Moore. He makes three promises: 1. The Bible alone will be your textbook. 2. We will not beg you for money. 3. You will be inspired as you attend nightly.
There are cheesy garish graphics illustrating motifs from the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation that so many evangelical protestants go all jiggaboo over. The statue in four types of metal from Daniel 2, the whore on the dragon.. The beasts of Revelation..
The only identifying information on the thing as to who these people are, other than the name Scott Moore, is the address of the American Legion hall where the event was to be held.
Nice detail, the Legion is renting space to an apocalyptic preacher.
This last week, I remembered this circular, and pulled it out of the little scrapbook where I keep such curios. I googled the name Scott Moore.
That name is worn by a major league baseball player, an English rugby player, one of Elvis's guitarists, a screenwriter who worked on the films Wedding Crashers and the Hangover and..
This guy:
The second "man" ever to become pregnant. He's not really a man, actually. She's a transgendered woman who decided to keep her uterus and get artificially inseminated with her partner's sperm.
I thought this was really amusing, in that sick way that I've taken up as a defense against misanthropy.
I got a little more sophisticated in my search, and found old Scott's site.
It turns out that our Scott Moore is a preacher on the staff of Hope Media Ministries, a Seventh Day Adventist group.. He was "born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama. He was raised in a Christian home, but did not dedicate his life to Christ until the age of 27. Shortly after his conversion, Scott left his job as a truck driver to attend the Mission College of Evangelism. It was here that he developed his passion of getting all members of the church to be on fire and involved in doing evangelistic ministry inside and outside of the church. Scott joined the ARISE team two years ago, and now functions as the Director of ARISE."
The Adventists are of course a Millerite apocalyptic church born of the early to mid 19th Century Second Great American Awakening that also gave rise to the Shakers, the Mormons and then later in echoes the Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses and eventually the modern Pentecostal movement. All of which also deeply influenced rise to the Abolitionist, the Suffragist, the Prohibitionist and Progressive movements. A very fecund and important period in world religious history, to say the least.
Note that none of that was on the flyer. No denomination (trying to be "post denominational" and appeal to the chronically unchurched, I think), no accreditation. I notice that Hope Ministries has some luminaries with guns, though: One "Barry Black.. the first African-American chaplain to hold the office of chaplain to the United States Senate. Black was best known in the United States as historically becoming the first African-American chief of naval chaplains in August 2000.."
Impressive, and curious..
There are quite a few links to all sorts of interesting stuff on that site. I listened to a couple hours of preaching, because I'm a freak and enjoy such things..
Check out this one series of sermons, for example. I especially dug the graphic at the head of the page:
Scary bible monsters, and a nice happy non- threatening cool dude Christ. Sporting a mullet, no less.
Perfect pitch. Love it. Lots of blather about how prophecy is not mysterious. The scriptures interpret themselves, anyone can do it! It's relevant and fun!
No mention of this:
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Or this:
18 Woe to you who long
for the day of the LORD!
Why do you long for the day of the LORD?
That day will be darkness, not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
25 “Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
26 You have lifted up the shrine of your king,
the pedestal of your idols,
the star of your god[b]—
which you made for yourselves.
27 Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,”
says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.
Though.
In three sermons and several hours I heard a few biblical quotes
(very few - ironic how these "Bible believing" Christians carry on for hours while citing only a few verses in all that time - that's why I hate most extended sermons because most preachers babble and simper and try to amuse - and long for the apostolic liturgy - for oh so "ironically" it in all of its forms, the Rite of Paul VI included, are almost entirely direct quotes or paraphrases of scripture),
and those were all from Daniel, Revelation or occasionally the Gospels or Isaiah.
Nothing at all from my favorite books in the Old Testament apart from what protestants call the Apocrypha, those beautiful little poems from the minor prophets..
They're at the end of the text, right before Maccabees in the Vulgate. The first is Jonah, which is a beautiful antetype for Christ ("I give them the sign of Jonas") as well as a charming and funny parody expressing the profundity of divine mercy. Then there is the wonderful righteous anger and profound theology of Amos and Malachi (inspirations for the "I have a Dream" speech of MLK) and all the others..
Ah yes.. Why am I typing all this? What's my deal?
Well, I've been thinking quite a lot about the apocalypse these days.
Of how the end will come in all things revealed, the hearts and deeds of men laid bare.
I've been thinking about all these sacred myths in the Bible that so capture our minds and undergird our history, our discourse and politics.
So many people are fixated with sexual sin, and so with stories such as Abraham's hospitality to the three men in Genesis 18.
Two of them depart for Sodom and the third - identified as the Lord - remains with Abraham, who then pleads with the Lord for the righteous men living in the cities about to be destroyed.
The two men, now called angels, in the next chapter arrive to stay at Lot's house in Sodom, and the debauched population of the place comes to demand that Lot turn them over so they can get to "know" them..
Lot refuses, and offers the mob his two virgin daughters instead.
Then they flee, having been warned that God was about to reign brimstone and fire on the city. Lot's wife turns back to look at the inferno against the angels' instructions, and is turned to the famous pillar of salt.
Then, at the end of the chapter Lot's virgin daughters get him drunk and sleep with him, getting pregnant.
Like so much of the Bible, all truly amazing and very subversive (no matter what your prejudices or point of view) stuff.
This story, and not (as is so often asserted by people attacking the Catholic tradition on sexual issues) the prohibitions against man laying with another man in Leviticus is the deepest Biblical root of all subsequent Jewish and Christian - as well as (need it be said) Islamic thought - against what we today call homosexual acts.
But to me, this story is much broader in its implications than just that.
The Church Fathers saw this story as revealing the Triune nature of God, and call the three visitors the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
One of my favorite icons is the Hospitality of Abraham by Andre Rublev, a depiction of the angelic visitors as images of the Triune God as the Fathers attest:
This iconic truth seems to imply many several things.
One of them is that God is not bound by our consciences or ideas of good and evil. We in a atavistic way are, of course. But he is emphatically not. The bourgeois moral universe is not that of God.
His mercy is not our mercy, our justice is not his justice.
Another is that the inherent sacredness of the human person as a living icon of God is what gives us our profound value.
This means that desecrating ourselves and others for the sole sake of pleasure and gratification of lust and violent impulses is not good, of course.
But it also means that the weak, the poor, the stupid..
And even the evil..
Even fools who embrace sadistic ideologies like that of Ayn Rand..
Must be treated with reverence and respect. We must love our enemies. Love those who are useless and economically stressed.
A true Christian society is ordered toward the good of all human persons.
We must treat others as we would be treated ourselves. This is a duty owed our God.
For he loves all of us, even in our sin. All of us are evil in our wills. All of us are thus, in this limited but profound sense enemies of God who is good beyond all words and human understanding.
He loves us his enemies, so must we then love our enemies.
That's my sermon for the morning.
So, to finally wrap this back on my juicy post title: I've been wondering these days about the sin of Gomorrah.
The Biblical narrative never tells us what they were doing there. The place is silent to myth and history.
That silence intrigues me. The sexual nature of the Sodomite's sin is what most often captures and titillates our imaginations.
So many of us revolt in pleasure against that, and so many of us rise up in judgment against those we see as transgressing - while probably none apart from Christ (and of course one other) among us are truly pure of heart in these matters.
That's obvious, and I'm weary of all the juvenile hullabaloo about the titillating supposed taboo.
I'm more concerned with the silent sins these days. What goes on in the halls of power, the money changers' gilt backrooms, the hearts of every one of us? Those cryptic acts of the powerful, the whispers of the gnostics at their occult altars?
To me, this country is rife with that sort of sin.
The god of the dollar bill is not my God.
Of that I am sure, even in my sin.
I'll leave the last word to the prophet Malachi, to tie (I hope) this all together:
I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
The Word of the LORD. Wisdom attend.
---
The trip was interesting though, in many ways. I thought many deep, scintillating thoughts. So many, and so scintillating, that I immediately began to feel for you, my public. So much beauty and truth, but no means to record it. Two thirds my way down the East Coast I was resolved: I here, hither, thither, withersoever and forthwith, shall always carry upon my person a dictaphone by which to trap all my diaphanous interior poetic magic, to then write it all down and out, and so bestow my genius more fully upon humanity.
I'm honing my creative process, is what I mean. I realized that as I write more that I need to become more mindful of process, and brainstorming and organizing thought is the most important step.
Anyway, the trip, as I say, was a good one.
I realized in the trip's shifting context that I've re-gained my clarity and sense of humor that I'd lost after baking away last summer in that tropical golfing paradise known as Florida.. Weather down there now is really nice - too nice, really.. Every day in March there is like a totally sunny Maine summer day, something that in Maine actually nearly never occurs, because every day Downeast is normally a stark climatic succession, with weather dramatically changing every 5 minutes. So I was briefly re-seduced, and wondered if I could arrange my life so that I could live winters there, summers elsewhere.. But then the last two days got insufferably hot around midday, and I snapped out of that reverie. No, I am meant for where there is snow and dry winter air. After a week it was very clear that I needed to come home..
Here.
I take three days to drive the route, taking my time and visiting with people on the way, so I had a long spell of listening to NPR and CBC talk on my satellite radio (which came 6 months free with the car, but because the talk - in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, no less - is too good to let lapse, I'm now subscribing and even listening to it in the house while working) and plenty of time to think.
On the way, I realized with sudden forceful lucidity that I really do not like the United States. I realized, consciously articulated this last trip what has been inchoately felt and repressed since high school: I am nearly always discontented here.
It must be the fluoride in the water or something.
I mean, I still from force of childhood habit love my country, my home. I am a patriot in that fundamental (and to me only authentic) sense.
But this collective relationship is just not working for me, practically. It's like I am married to my high school sweetheart, whom I've known and loved since childhood, and have this deep intimate history with, but now I realize has never been faithful to me, is a sociopathic and compulsive liar, and whose behavior and attitude these last ten years has suddenly become repulsive to me..
America & Me: it's become one of those "dysfunctional" relationships where the other party is constantly ravaging you emotionally, never caring how it effects you.
I'm beginning to feel a bit like I did when I was in high school, minus insecurity and self esteem issues.. Paying attention to the media - either "entertainment" or "news" - almost instantly makes me feel trapped and powerless, jaded, either constantly annoyed, or bored or emotionally spent. Even the few things I enjoy and do watch when there's a television around (I refuse to own one) like Stephen Colbert or John Stewart end up curdling me..
I think it's being in close psychological contact with large undifferentiated numbers my fellow Americans.. Being forced to inhabit their common psychic space (Snooki! Bankers need bonuses! Hey, you catch ball good, we earn you billion dollars! Bomb sandniggers!) in mass aggregate is for me something like being caught and repeatedly trod underpaw by a lemming herd of gigantic diabolically retarded muppets.
Bruising, scary, and in a demented way, funny.
That's the one saving grace in it all, that people like Glenn Beck are so absurd that they make me laugh. For about five minutes, then I start clawing my ears and eyes out.
A party of Villagers is almost as bad.. No talk of substance, mostly prattle about sports or something equally mindless.. If politics do come up, it's almost always the same regurgitation of libertarian boilerplate followed by an excoriation of Obama, maybe Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi thrown in for sophistication's sake.
The only year that I've had since high school that was in any way as unpleasant as last year in Florida was when I unwisely decided to take a French teaching job at another American high school.
The first trauma was when I was a child and could not choose. The second was due to my own naivete and lack of sense that put me in harm's way. The third was the consequence of my not making good choices, and being trapped by circumstance.
Never again. Thrice abused has been well and more than enough.
I want out of here. This culture is fatal for my sanity. I've been getting out, again and again, in one way or another, ever since high school, never fully articulating my motives to myself. It's now become clear to me that I need to make a final departure, and stop screwing around.
There's two ways to do it: I can either become a monastic, probably a hermit, or a perpetual exile. I'm going, one way or the other, soon.
When I figure it out, you my public will be among the first to know.
So, as I say, when I hit the Carolina border I realized that the South is especially noxious and toxic.. It's like the rest of the country on a redneck meth and acid bender.
I gotta qualify that: I do still somehow like rural Northern Virginia and Maryland. The land that is still touched by the traces of colonial culture, like my own dear Vermont, Boston and Massachusetts are.. Those places along with the non-suburban Mid-Atlantic - and oddly enough, given my country upbringing, D.C., Baltimore, New York City, Providence - are the only ones in these United Sates where I feel well these days. Their history and ghosts speak to me, the landscape soothes me, and the North Eastern weather (cool mist and drizzle, warm muggy summer idles - rarely too hot, never too cold - distinct seasons, with turning leaves and occasional snow) calms me, and all makes me feel at home.
I also have this love of certain aspects of and things from the South - some of the music, the moonshine (real moonshine is divine dew, something out of this world), some of the food and literature..
To Kill a Mockingbird, for example. That tale - a "kid's book" - is one of the greatest stories in the English language. Atticus Finch is an archetype of the best in humanity - dignified, wise, kind, humble, generous. When I think of the South with love, my imagined transcendent South, I think of him.. And Boo Radley, Mr. Dolphus Raymond (who pretends to be a drunk, just so he can escape the hypocrisy and hatred of the community - he lives with blacks, and the only way they forgive him for that is by dismissing him as a drunk..) and Calpurnia, the servant who in her charity and humility is masterful.
They are the ones I love, my true beloved. My imagined friends. But they are only an poetic figment of the past. When I think of the South with fondness, I edit out the inevitable interaction with the rest of the characters in that story.. The actual contemporary South is overrun with the likes Bob Ewell maliciously accusing "the nigger" (the other, black venal eroticized) of a crime he himself had committed. Southerners are still more the poor ignorant lynch mob that came to the county jail to face down Atticus and kill that "nigger," only turned aside in being shown up by the innocence of a little girl .. (How often that still happens, even still.. Where would we be without her?) ..
I'd far rather live in Cairo (the only place of the half dozen places outside the U.S. that I've lived that I have no desire to live in again) than the Deep American South, is what I'm saying.
I'll take me some crazy assed Muslims over all those crazy assed evangelical protestants any day, in a heartbeat. No question or hesitation.
I mean what the heck is stuff like this all about? Yellow tiger striped spandex?
Really? I still can't believe it.
So when I get into the cracker country, then hit that North Carolina border, I become gradually repulsed. It's the bible belt, and all that evangelical bible thumping is immediately felt throbbing, vibrating like scent of violence in the air.
This time it struck me forcibly: from North Carolina all the way to mid- Florida there suddenly are everywhere billboards advertising for strip clubs and porn emporia seemingly just off every third exit. These are interspaced with billboards exhorting passersby to keep their babies if single and pregnant, and others bearing bible verses.
Full-blown roadside culture "war," one marked by imbecilic incoherence. This is a phenomenon I've not seen in Communist New England. The South has apparently risen again in more ways than one.
Sodom in the South. Only I'm not sure the likes of Lot are amongst them.
There's a chain of titty bars advertising with locations in North Carolina and Florida that specializes in drawing in truckers and other travelers - "showers, good food, sex toys and paraphernalia, DVD's and magazines, WE BARE ALL!" on dozens of roadside billboards.. Like South of the Border, only with naked girls. There's even a porn store conveniently located on the Wildwood exit, which is the one I take to the Villages, usually. Very thoughtful of them. If I ever say, were hypothetically (here's a philosophical paradox much like that of Epimenides, a true Cretan..) to run out of free porn on the internet at home, or am seized with an urge to masturbate in my car 15 minutes before I get to my parents' house, I can stop in just after stopping next door and picking up my last Big Mac™ along the route.
The porn industry has my interests at heart and always in mind, see. Everything's for sale, and modesty's cheap. God bless capitalism and Amereeka.
There were other billboards of note, such as this one:
Now, for those of you amongst my dozen or so readers who do not know, John Galt is a character in Atlas Shrugged, a novel by the sociopathic libertarian-bourgeois dime-store Nietzschean Ayn Rand. You see people carrying placards with that question on it at "tea party" rallies all the time.
Here's an interview with Mike Wallace where she tells us what she is about herself:
From her own lips to your soul.
This, her "philosophy" has more or less become the predominant American Creed. I'll give you some of the words she puts in John Galt's mouth in her loathsome book. His most famous soliloquy:
Watching that video just stuns me. It's pure twisted comedy. The guy who created it is apparently a fan of Ayn. But the images he juxtaposes against his histrionic reading,
"I ask for nothing less and nothing more than what I earn. That is justice!" over film of an atomic bomb exploding..
"Why is it moral to produce something of value and then keep it for yourself? When it is moral for others who haven't earned to accept it?" over video of Bush standing in the post 9/11 ruins of the usurers' financial district in New York ..
"Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.." over video from Columbine..
All just leave me mute.
Absolutely insane, so mindlessly ironic that it staggers. I don't think reasonable conversation is possible with someone so stupid, so clearly conscienceless and amoral.
This is the whole text read in that video:
For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?
Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.
We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.
I am a trader [editorial aside - I take this a pun. Yeah, John/Ayn that you are. A traitor to human kindness]. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.
You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's impossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.
And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?
Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.
You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.
Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than its neighbors. Twelve years ago [editorial aside: interesting numeric there, Ayn], I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.
To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.
If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.
The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.
The world according to John Galt, spoken like a a true Cretin.
It's the Will to Power, dumbed down for Glenn Beck's audience. Deep thoughts for the likes of Jared Loughner, Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold.
Like I say, Nietzsche himself was bad enough. Rand is even more spiritually idiotic than poor crazy Fred.
Last fall I was at the Gainesville VA to pick up a prescription, and had to talk to the pharmacist. I went in, sat down, and noticed a little card with "Who is John Galt?" on it, taped to the side of his desk. I was mildly shocked, and perplexed. I asked him what it meant (innocent as a serpent, wise as a dove.. or something like that) curious as to why a government employee would be displaying something so politically charged at his place of work for all to see.. He smiled and brushed the question off, and I did not press him.
This is the absurdity we've come to. Espousing crypto-fascistic individualism while working for one of the best run health-care systems in the world - that is also perplexingly enough from a retarded libertarian point of view, government run - is now accepted as somehow sane, coherent and kosher. That dude's probably got lurid dreams of going to work for big pharma and making a million bucks discovering a new priapic elixir in the deepest Amazon someday. The VA is just to be a jumping off point for his coming world conquest.
I thought he looked like a impotent dweeb, so I hope for his sake that that elixir of his really pays off.
Every time I hear or see someone ask "Who is John Galt?" I want to counter "Quienes somos José y Maria, pendejo?"
See, the conceit behind the entire Galt fantasy is that if the entrepreneurial class - businessmen with capital - were hypothetically all to walk suddenly away from the table at once in a general strike, the entire economy would be instantly paralyzed.
They are supposedly the sole creative force driving our economy, see.
They make money the old fashioned way: They Earn It. By watching a stock ticker through beer goggles on Bloomberg in between rounds at the country club.
Thing is, I think that if all the people picking our fruit and vegetables, washing the shit out of our toilets, taking care of our laundry and watching our children were to walk away in a general strike those pussies would be so undone - "Clean my own toilet? Build my own summer home? Pick my own food? Mow and landscape my own lawn? Slaughter my own animals? With my own hands?" - there'd be an immediate collapse on the minimum and even the living wage issue.
"Please come back and wipe my baby's ass for me! Please! My wife is about to beat me to death with her Jimmy Choos!"
Whereas if the conniving investors who deliberately and recklessly speculated us into the current market collapse were to walk away, they would be doing all the rest of us a favor.
Please, sail your 100 million dollar yacht to Somalia! I hear the beaches are awesome there. Bunch of sheiks and warlords hang there, like Monaco.. just your type of people..
Note, and this is really important, that this "ethical thought" of Ayn Rand's has been publicly embraced by Alan Greenspan. He doesn't even try to hide his amoral power worship. He's openly warned us where he's coming from.
She called her philosophy "objectivism" - accept only what is objectively true. No faith, only rational calculation. Admire and love only what is "objectively" admirable and loveable. Love people who are beautiful and strong, those who "win" and "succeed" have virtue, which is material power. Do not love people for what they do for you - they only act of self interest and weakness.
The lines about in Galt's speech about use of force being illegitimate are either disingenuous and cynical or idiotically stupid. We all use force, whether physical or metaphysical, to influence reality and others. It is unavoidable. The only issue is the end to which we will use the power (no matter how slight - getting out of bed or opening your mouth effect things) we have.
Ayn Rand is, to put it square and blunt, a moral idiot. Her work is both utterly and howlingly stupid, as well as pretty much a crib of Mein Kampf.
Stupid isn't always evil, but evil is always stupid.
One thing for sure: none of it is Christian. The stale irony though is that so many so-called Christians think that Ayn Rand is an ethical genius.
"You've Sacrificed Justice to Mercy.. Let me Explain to You the Consequences of your brother-love morality.. We are on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unearned duties."
"I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."
No better articulation of the mind of anti-christ than that.
It is, not at all incidentally, also pretty much a summary of radical (i.e., libertarian) feminist ethics. Take care of little kids and old people? Be subservient to the needs of others without reward? Hell no, neuter me with hormones, and show me the cash baby! Sex and monay, powah and freedam!
"I will never live for the sake of another man."
Non serviam. I will not serve. To hell with you.
The stupidity or cynical disingenuousness of the anti- government libertarian is that their philosophy if triumphant will demand the reversal of feminism and the restoration of traditional anti-libertarian institutions (with all their attendant hierarchies and repressive social norms) such as the patriarchal family and culturally and politically dominant churches. If the government does not provide social democratic alternatives that supply basic human needs like child care and elder care (such as the public schools or social security and medicare - all of which are sneered at by Ayn Rand, notice) then the family - read women - will have to again take up that charge. And that work will not be remunerated with cash, believe me you.
Anyway, our culture won't go back there unless forced by catastrophe, but we'll still have to put up with libertarian idiocy and nonsense until then, anyhow..
Feed your head, and live for your pleasure and greed.
Welcome to the United Sates of America, 2011.
Anyway, to draw this little screed to a close, I have another little story to tell you all.
Last fall I got a circular in the mail:
A glossy mass mailing circular to every PO Box in Lady Lake, FL advertising a series of free talks - "come as you are," "free bible," "free nightly handouts," "free children's program.." - by a speaker named Scott Moore. He makes three promises: 1. The Bible alone will be your textbook. 2. We will not beg you for money. 3. You will be inspired as you attend nightly.
There are cheesy garish graphics illustrating motifs from the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation that so many evangelical protestants go all jiggaboo over. The statue in four types of metal from Daniel 2, the whore on the dragon.. The beasts of Revelation..
The only identifying information on the thing as to who these people are, other than the name Scott Moore, is the address of the American Legion hall where the event was to be held.
Nice detail, the Legion is renting space to an apocalyptic preacher.
This last week, I remembered this circular, and pulled it out of the little scrapbook where I keep such curios. I googled the name Scott Moore.
That name is worn by a major league baseball player, an English rugby player, one of Elvis's guitarists, a screenwriter who worked on the films Wedding Crashers and the Hangover and..
This guy:
The second "man" ever to become pregnant. He's not really a man, actually. She's a transgendered woman who decided to keep her uterus and get artificially inseminated with her partner's sperm.
I thought this was really amusing, in that sick way that I've taken up as a defense against misanthropy.
I got a little more sophisticated in my search, and found old Scott's site.
It turns out that our Scott Moore is a preacher on the staff of Hope Media Ministries, a Seventh Day Adventist group.. He was "born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama. He was raised in a Christian home, but did not dedicate his life to Christ until the age of 27. Shortly after his conversion, Scott left his job as a truck driver to attend the Mission College of Evangelism. It was here that he developed his passion of getting all members of the church to be on fire and involved in doing evangelistic ministry inside and outside of the church. Scott joined the ARISE team two years ago, and now functions as the Director of ARISE."
The Adventists are of course a Millerite apocalyptic church born of the early to mid 19th Century Second Great American Awakening that also gave rise to the Shakers, the Mormons and then later in echoes the Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses and eventually the modern Pentecostal movement. All of which also deeply influenced rise to the Abolitionist, the Suffragist, the Prohibitionist and Progressive movements. A very fecund and important period in world religious history, to say the least.
Note that none of that was on the flyer. No denomination (trying to be "post denominational" and appeal to the chronically unchurched, I think), no accreditation. I notice that Hope Ministries has some luminaries with guns, though: One "Barry Black.. the first African-American chaplain to hold the office of chaplain to the United States Senate. Black was best known in the United States as historically becoming the first African-American chief of naval chaplains in August 2000.."
Impressive, and curious..
There are quite a few links to all sorts of interesting stuff on that site. I listened to a couple hours of preaching, because I'm a freak and enjoy such things..
Check out this one series of sermons, for example. I especially dug the graphic at the head of the page:
Scary bible monsters, and a nice happy non- threatening cool dude Christ. Sporting a mullet, no less.
Perfect pitch. Love it. Lots of blather about how prophecy is not mysterious. The scriptures interpret themselves, anyone can do it! It's relevant and fun!
No mention of this:
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
Or this:
18 Woe to you who long
for the day of the LORD!
Why do you long for the day of the LORD?
That day will be darkness, not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
25 “Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
26 You have lifted up the shrine of your king,
the pedestal of your idols,
the star of your god[b]—
which you made for yourselves.
27 Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,”
says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.
Though.
In three sermons and several hours I heard a few biblical quotes
(very few - ironic how these "Bible believing" Christians carry on for hours while citing only a few verses in all that time - that's why I hate most extended sermons because most preachers babble and simper and try to amuse - and long for the apostolic liturgy - for oh so "ironically" it in all of its forms, the Rite of Paul VI included, are almost entirely direct quotes or paraphrases of scripture),
and those were all from Daniel, Revelation or occasionally the Gospels or Isaiah.
Nothing at all from my favorite books in the Old Testament apart from what protestants call the Apocrypha, those beautiful little poems from the minor prophets..
They're at the end of the text, right before Maccabees in the Vulgate. The first is Jonah, which is a beautiful antetype for Christ ("I give them the sign of Jonas") as well as a charming and funny parody expressing the profundity of divine mercy. Then there is the wonderful righteous anger and profound theology of Amos and Malachi (inspirations for the "I have a Dream" speech of MLK) and all the others..
Ah yes.. Why am I typing all this? What's my deal?
Well, I've been thinking quite a lot about the apocalypse these days.
Of how the end will come in all things revealed, the hearts and deeds of men laid bare.
I've been thinking about all these sacred myths in the Bible that so capture our minds and undergird our history, our discourse and politics.
So many people are fixated with sexual sin, and so with stories such as Abraham's hospitality to the three men in Genesis 18.
Two of them depart for Sodom and the third - identified as the Lord - remains with Abraham, who then pleads with the Lord for the righteous men living in the cities about to be destroyed.
The two men, now called angels, in the next chapter arrive to stay at Lot's house in Sodom, and the debauched population of the place comes to demand that Lot turn them over so they can get to "know" them..
Lot refuses, and offers the mob his two virgin daughters instead.
Then they flee, having been warned that God was about to reign brimstone and fire on the city. Lot's wife turns back to look at the inferno against the angels' instructions, and is turned to the famous pillar of salt.
Then, at the end of the chapter Lot's virgin daughters get him drunk and sleep with him, getting pregnant.
Like so much of the Bible, all truly amazing and very subversive (no matter what your prejudices or point of view) stuff.
This story, and not (as is so often asserted by people attacking the Catholic tradition on sexual issues) the prohibitions against man laying with another man in Leviticus is the deepest Biblical root of all subsequent Jewish and Christian - as well as (need it be said) Islamic thought - against what we today call homosexual acts.
But to me, this story is much broader in its implications than just that.
The Church Fathers saw this story as revealing the Triune nature of God, and call the three visitors the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
One of my favorite icons is the Hospitality of Abraham by Andre Rublev, a depiction of the angelic visitors as images of the Triune God as the Fathers attest:
This iconic truth seems to imply many several things.
One of them is that God is not bound by our consciences or ideas of good and evil. We in a atavistic way are, of course. But he is emphatically not. The bourgeois moral universe is not that of God.
His mercy is not our mercy, our justice is not his justice.
Another is that the inherent sacredness of the human person as a living icon of God is what gives us our profound value.
This means that desecrating ourselves and others for the sole sake of pleasure and gratification of lust and violent impulses is not good, of course.
But it also means that the weak, the poor, the stupid..
And even the evil..
Even fools who embrace sadistic ideologies like that of Ayn Rand..
Must be treated with reverence and respect. We must love our enemies. Love those who are useless and economically stressed.
A true Christian society is ordered toward the good of all human persons.
We must treat others as we would be treated ourselves. This is a duty owed our God.
For he loves all of us, even in our sin. All of us are evil in our wills. All of us are thus, in this limited but profound sense enemies of God who is good beyond all words and human understanding.
He loves us his enemies, so must we then love our enemies.
That's my sermon for the morning.
So, to finally wrap this back on my juicy post title: I've been wondering these days about the sin of Gomorrah.
The Biblical narrative never tells us what they were doing there. The place is silent to myth and history.
That silence intrigues me. The sexual nature of the Sodomite's sin is what most often captures and titillates our imaginations.
So many of us revolt in pleasure against that, and so many of us rise up in judgment against those we see as transgressing - while probably none apart from Christ (and of course one other) among us are truly pure of heart in these matters.
That's obvious, and I'm weary of all the juvenile hullabaloo about the titillating supposed taboo.
I'm more concerned with the silent sins these days. What goes on in the halls of power, the money changers' gilt backrooms, the hearts of every one of us? Those cryptic acts of the powerful, the whispers of the gnostics at their occult altars?
To me, this country is rife with that sort of sin.
The god of the dollar bill is not my God.
Of that I am sure, even in my sin.
I'll leave the last word to the prophet Malachi, to tie (I hope) this all together:
I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
The Word of the LORD. Wisdom attend.
---
Essential Texts: Matthew 24, Douay Rheims
And Jesus being come out of the temple, went away. And his disciples came to shew him the buildings of the temple. 2 And he answering, said to them: Do you see all these things? Amen I say to you, there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed.
3 And when he was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: Tell us when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the consummation of the world?
4 And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man seduce you. 5 For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ. And they will seduce many. 6 And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass: but the end is not yet. 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places. 8 Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. 11 And many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many. 12 And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. 13 But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations: and then shall the consummation come.
15 When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand. 16 Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains: 17 And he that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take any thing out of his house: 18 And he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat. 19 And woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days. 20 But pray that your flight be not in the winter or on the sabbath. 21 For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be.
22 And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened. 23 Then if any man shall say to you, Lo here is Christ, or there: do not believe him. 24 For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. 25 Behold I have told it to you, beforehand.
26 If therefore they shall say to you, Behold he is in the desert: go ye not out. Behold he is in the closets: believe it not. 27 For as lightning cometh out of the east and appeareth even into the west: so shall also the cowling of the Son of man be. 28 Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together.
29 And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be moved.
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. And then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. 31 And he shall send his angels with a trumpet and a great voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them.
32 And from the fig tree learn a parable: When the branch thereof is now tender and the leaves come forth, you know that summer is nigh. 33 So you also, when you shall see all these things, know ye that it is nigh, even at the doors. 34 Amen I say to you that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done. 35 Heaven and earth shall pass: but my words shall not pass.
36 But of that day and hour no one knoweth: no, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone. 37 And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For, as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark: 39 And they knew not till the flood came and took them all away: so also shall the coming of the Son of man be. 40 Then two shall be in the field. One shall be taken and one shall be left. 41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill. One shall be taken and one shall be left.
42 Watch ye therefore, because you know not what hour your Lord will come. 43 But this know ye, that, if the goodman of the house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch and would not suffer his house to be broken open. 44 Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know not the Son of man will come.
45 Who, thinkest thou, is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath appointed over his family, to give them meat in season? 46 Blessed is that servant, whom when his lord shall come he shall find so doing. 47 Amen I say to you: he shall place him over all his goods. 48 But if that evil servant shall say in his heart: My lord is long a coming: 49 And shall begin to strike his fellow servants and shall eat and drink with drunkards: 50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day that he hopeth not and at an hour that he knoweth not: 51 And shall separate him and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
---
3 And when he was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: Tell us when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the consummation of the world?
4 And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man seduce you. 5 For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ. And they will seduce many. 6 And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass: but the end is not yet. 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places. 8 Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. 11 And many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many. 12 And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. 13 But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations: and then shall the consummation come.
15 When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand. 16 Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains: 17 And he that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take any thing out of his house: 18 And he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat. 19 And woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days. 20 But pray that your flight be not in the winter or on the sabbath. 21 For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be.
22 And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened. 23 Then if any man shall say to you, Lo here is Christ, or there: do not believe him. 24 For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. 25 Behold I have told it to you, beforehand.
26 If therefore they shall say to you, Behold he is in the desert: go ye not out. Behold he is in the closets: believe it not. 27 For as lightning cometh out of the east and appeareth even into the west: so shall also the cowling of the Son of man be. 28 Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together.
29 And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be moved.
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. And then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. 31 And he shall send his angels with a trumpet and a great voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them.
32 And from the fig tree learn a parable: When the branch thereof is now tender and the leaves come forth, you know that summer is nigh. 33 So you also, when you shall see all these things, know ye that it is nigh, even at the doors. 34 Amen I say to you that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done. 35 Heaven and earth shall pass: but my words shall not pass.
36 But of that day and hour no one knoweth: no, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone. 37 And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For, as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark: 39 And they knew not till the flood came and took them all away: so also shall the coming of the Son of man be. 40 Then two shall be in the field. One shall be taken and one shall be left. 41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill. One shall be taken and one shall be left.
42 Watch ye therefore, because you know not what hour your Lord will come. 43 But this know ye, that, if the goodman of the house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch and would not suffer his house to be broken open. 44 Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know not the Son of man will come.
45 Who, thinkest thou, is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath appointed over his family, to give them meat in season? 46 Blessed is that servant, whom when his lord shall come he shall find so doing. 47 Amen I say to you: he shall place him over all his goods. 48 But if that evil servant shall say in his heart: My lord is long a coming: 49 And shall begin to strike his fellow servants and shall eat and drink with drunkards: 50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day that he hopeth not and at an hour that he knoweth not: 51 And shall separate him and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
---
Monday, March 7, 2011
My Backyard Blizzard
Two feet of snow and counting, second big storm this week. The drift against my car is up to the windows. We've been snowed in all day, which is a minor annoyance since I had planned on going skiing this afternoon.. Tomorrow morning will be sweet, though.. I can probably ski until noon and then leave for Florida and get a good eight or nine hours driving in before bed.
My neighbors are out there shoveling now, and I can't help them because there's no extra shovel..
Bummer. I'll just have another cup of coffee, instead..
---
Bono: Not Just Another Rock Star
This link came from Caleum et Terra.
I am immeasurably impressed by Bono in this interview. I always knew he was alright, have been a fan since Actung Baby, but I never guessed he was actually this wise:
Assayas: I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?
Bono: Yes, I think that’s normal. It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.
Assayas: I haven’t heard you talk about that.
Bono: I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.
Assayas: Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.
Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.
Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.
Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled . It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.
Assayas: That’s a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it’s close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that farfetched?
Bono: No, it’s not farfetched to me…
That's just the end. Click through to read the rest. It's short, and he's great.
---
I am immeasurably impressed by Bono in this interview. I always knew he was alright, have been a fan since Actung Baby, but I never guessed he was actually this wise:
Assayas: I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?
Bono: Yes, I think that’s normal. It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.
Assayas: I haven’t heard you talk about that.
Bono: I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.
Assayas: Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.
Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.
Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.
Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled . It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.
Assayas: That’s a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it’s close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that farfetched?
Bono: No, it’s not farfetched to me…
That's just the end. Click through to read the rest. It's short, and he's great.
---
Friday, March 4, 2011
Say, Who's the Enemy? [edited]
Not that Bradley Manning isn't a jackass and a twerp who deserves to be dishonorably discharged if proven guilty, and not that virtually all the information he is alleged to have released isn't of little interest and value, from what I've read it's mostly ho-hum we already guessed that that's what they were saying..
It's that the National Security aparatus has become a state within the state, and their penchant for overweening secrecy has no remaining legitimate purpose to continue now that the Cold War is over. None.
Compare Manning's story with that of Daniel Ellsberg, whose revelations of the Pentagon Papers did matter, and went a long way toward ending another cruel useless war in Asia, one that cost the lives of thousands of Americans (58,267 KIA, 1,711 MIA, over 300,000 WIA) and killed hundreds of thousands of locals.
Ellsberg's case went to trial, but was undone by the furor of Watergate and the government's inability to muster proper evidence.
Kissinger, that mass-murderer and assassin, had the gall to call him "the Most Dangerous Man in America:"
Note that the material Ellsberg released is still classified, despite having now been public knowledge for over forty years.
Ellsberg never served a day in prison, and neither should Manning.
All this violence, death and lying, all this secrecy, all this vicious stupidity for nothing. Absolutely nothing. Vietnam was ultimately meaningless, just as is our continued occupation of random valleys in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama, what's the purpose? Why are our troops still in harms way?
The executive branch and its putative subordinate the Pentagon are out of control, all of this militarism and secrecy needs to end. Now.
This from Antiwar.com:
Having held Private First Class Bradley Manning prisoner for nine months, under conditions tantamount to torture and beyond doubt intended to break his will, the US Army recombobulated its allegations against him on Wednesday, adding 22 counts to an already lengthy charge sheet.
As a practical matter, these changes probably don’t make a lot of difference to Manning. He’s faced a likely life sentence for nearly a year now. Since the Army’s prosecutors claim they won’t seek the death penalty provided for in one of the new counts, the consequences for him, if convicted, remain pretty much the same.
That new count – "aiding the enemy" per Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — is really directed not at Manning, but at an assortment of other persons and parties: Wikileaks, Julian Assange, every foreign government and individual on earth … and you. And the act of filing that charge is, oddly enough, tantamount to insurrection against the United States itself.
Let’s unpack this "enemy" thing.
The power to declare war — and thereby to legally categorize a group of persons (historically on, but not necessarily constrained to, the basis of their allegiance to a particular state) as "the enemy" — is exclusively reserved, per the US Constitution, to Congress. Congress hasn’t exercised that power since 1941, and the wars it declared then have long since ended. The United States is not, legally speaking, at war. Thus the US has, legally speaking, no "enemy" to aid.
By charging Manning with "aiding the enemy," the US Army is, in effect, attempting a coup d’etat. It is usurping Congress’s authority and claiming that authority for itself. Since the President of the United States is also Commander in Chief of the US armed forces, the Army is presumably merely the President’s instrument in this matter.
[...]
Who is the "enemy?" Certainly not the (now long-deposed) regime of Saddam’s Iraq, nor the Taliban who ran (and mostly still run) Afghanistan. We can exclude these two as the designated "enemies" for two reasons.
First, not only did Congress (to the extent that the executive branch bothers even formally acknowledging that institution’s authority these days) not declare war on either of them, it specifically declared that it was not declaring war on them. If you don’t believe me, look at the "authorizations for use of force" yourself and read the "war powers reservations" sections. Recall that bills were introduced to declare war on both, and rejected.
Secondly, no one has said, with a straight face at least, that Manning intended his alleged releases of information for the eyes and ears of the Taliban, or of al-Qaeda, or of whatever ragged remnant of the Ba’ath Party persists in Iraq.
On the contrary: The intended recipients seem to have been an Iceland-hosted web site, an Australian transparency activist, and the world (including the American) media and public. They (You! Me!) are the "enemy" to whom Manning allegedly disclosed the state’s embarrassing secrets.
QED, the US government considers you — whoever you are, wherever you may live, and to whatever extent you aren’t its active agent — its enemy and intends to treat you as such. Your freedom, perhaps even your very survival, depends on you recognizing this fact and acting accordingly.
---
Side note: Not that the entire Watergate and Ellsberg story doesn't deserve critical scrutiny in it's own right. I think that Nixon did have powerful enemies within the elite that wanted to destroy him, and that there were things going on behind the scenes within the power elite from the Kennedy assassination to the rise of Reagan that were very fishy. Ellsberg may have gotten off the hook because he was meant to.. That's a conjecture, but I think an utterly obvious one. He certainly had very powerful allies the likes of which Pfc. Manning does not.
===
It's that the National Security aparatus has become a state within the state, and their penchant for overweening secrecy has no remaining legitimate purpose to continue now that the Cold War is over. None.
Compare Manning's story with that of Daniel Ellsberg, whose revelations of the Pentagon Papers did matter, and went a long way toward ending another cruel useless war in Asia, one that cost the lives of thousands of Americans (58,267 KIA, 1,711 MIA, over 300,000 WIA) and killed hundreds of thousands of locals.
Ellsberg's case went to trial, but was undone by the furor of Watergate and the government's inability to muster proper evidence.
Kissinger, that mass-murderer and assassin, had the gall to call him "the Most Dangerous Man in America:"
Note that the material Ellsberg released is still classified, despite having now been public knowledge for over forty years.
Ellsberg never served a day in prison, and neither should Manning.
All this violence, death and lying, all this secrecy, all this vicious stupidity for nothing. Absolutely nothing. Vietnam was ultimately meaningless, just as is our continued occupation of random valleys in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama, what's the purpose? Why are our troops still in harms way?
The executive branch and its putative subordinate the Pentagon are out of control, all of this militarism and secrecy needs to end. Now.
This from Antiwar.com:
Having held Private First Class Bradley Manning prisoner for nine months, under conditions tantamount to torture and beyond doubt intended to break his will, the US Army recombobulated its allegations against him on Wednesday, adding 22 counts to an already lengthy charge sheet.
As a practical matter, these changes probably don’t make a lot of difference to Manning. He’s faced a likely life sentence for nearly a year now. Since the Army’s prosecutors claim they won’t seek the death penalty provided for in one of the new counts, the consequences for him, if convicted, remain pretty much the same.
That new count – "aiding the enemy" per Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — is really directed not at Manning, but at an assortment of other persons and parties: Wikileaks, Julian Assange, every foreign government and individual on earth … and you. And the act of filing that charge is, oddly enough, tantamount to insurrection against the United States itself.
Let’s unpack this "enemy" thing.
The power to declare war — and thereby to legally categorize a group of persons (historically on, but not necessarily constrained to, the basis of their allegiance to a particular state) as "the enemy" — is exclusively reserved, per the US Constitution, to Congress. Congress hasn’t exercised that power since 1941, and the wars it declared then have long since ended. The United States is not, legally speaking, at war. Thus the US has, legally speaking, no "enemy" to aid.
By charging Manning with "aiding the enemy," the US Army is, in effect, attempting a coup d’etat. It is usurping Congress’s authority and claiming that authority for itself. Since the President of the United States is also Commander in Chief of the US armed forces, the Army is presumably merely the President’s instrument in this matter.
[...]
Who is the "enemy?" Certainly not the (now long-deposed) regime of Saddam’s Iraq, nor the Taliban who ran (and mostly still run) Afghanistan. We can exclude these two as the designated "enemies" for two reasons.
First, not only did Congress (to the extent that the executive branch bothers even formally acknowledging that institution’s authority these days) not declare war on either of them, it specifically declared that it was not declaring war on them. If you don’t believe me, look at the "authorizations for use of force" yourself and read the "war powers reservations" sections. Recall that bills were introduced to declare war on both, and rejected.
Secondly, no one has said, with a straight face at least, that Manning intended his alleged releases of information for the eyes and ears of the Taliban, or of al-Qaeda, or of whatever ragged remnant of the Ba’ath Party persists in Iraq.
On the contrary: The intended recipients seem to have been an Iceland-hosted web site, an Australian transparency activist, and the world (including the American) media and public. They (You! Me!) are the "enemy" to whom Manning allegedly disclosed the state’s embarrassing secrets.
QED, the US government considers you — whoever you are, wherever you may live, and to whatever extent you aren’t its active agent — its enemy and intends to treat you as such. Your freedom, perhaps even your very survival, depends on you recognizing this fact and acting accordingly.
---
Side note: Not that the entire Watergate and Ellsberg story doesn't deserve critical scrutiny in it's own right. I think that Nixon did have powerful enemies within the elite that wanted to destroy him, and that there were things going on behind the scenes within the power elite from the Kennedy assassination to the rise of Reagan that were very fishy. Ellsberg may have gotten off the hook because he was meant to.. That's a conjecture, but I think an utterly obvious one. He certainly had very powerful allies the likes of which Pfc. Manning does not.
===
Ronald Reagan's Erstwhile Campaign Anthem, Denatured:
Lyrics:
Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just covering up.
I got in a little hometown jam,
And so they put a rifle in my hands.
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man.
Come back home to the refinery,
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me.."
I went down to see the V.A. man,
He said "Son don't you understand."
I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong.
They're still there, he's all gone.
He had a woman in Saigon,
I got a picture of him in her arms.
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary,
Out by the gas fires of the refinery,
I'm ten years burning down the road.
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go..
---
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Open Letter to Msgr. Charles Pope on Islam (Updated)
There's a blog that the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington maintains, that I really like. There's a priest, Msgr. Charles Pope, who writes what I think is really excellent stuff on Catholic spiritual life there.
Today, however, Msgr. Pope posted a piece on secularism and European population implosion and decline that uses Islam as a bogeyman and recycles most of the tired tropes that reduce the entire religion down to a caricature in which the views and actions of the extremist fringe are imputed to "all Muslims."
Worse, he links to a "news report" by Pat's Robertson's claque CBN that is pure racist and quasi fascist propaganda.
This is the clip, notice how many times the word "white" is used:
The ironic thing is that the likes of Pat Robertson act like they are horrified by the polarization of people along religious and ethnic lines (which of course is a real problem) but in actuality they need that polarization to fulfill their violent fantasies, in which the eroticized venal other - in this case the Muslims, who are to be the catalyst for the apocalypse and rapture in their cosmology - is used to radicalize people politically.
Note also that the French people interviewed are all people who confirm CBN's feedback loop. CBN has absolutely no compunction in interviewing outright racists and crypto facsists like that fellow from the Bloc Identitaire - click here to visit their website, where they rail against the gypsies and beat other old fascist hobbyhorses with vigor.
Disgusting, pure and simple.
Here is my open letter to Father Pope, that I posted without proofreading on the post at the Archdiocese's site. It's still awaiting moderation at the site, we'll see if he let's it through, and if he reacts to it.
I am posting it here because this sort of thing is too important to let pass in silence. Muslims are not a monolithic block. They are not all out to get us. We must seek peace and understanding, and admit complexity as well as recognize that most Muslims - though admittedly quite often difficult to deal with - are still human beings like any other group, and need to be treated with respect, and listened to, at the very least.
The letter, with minor corrections:
Charles Curtis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 1, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Father,
I admire your blog very much – when it comes to teaching Catholicism, you are incredible.
But when it comes to Islam, with all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about. The crap you’ve posted here is sheer right wing propaganda.
I’ve lived in Switzerland, Egypt and Turkey, have studied Islam and Arab studies in graduate school, and can tell you the reality of Islam and Muslim people is vastly different than the lurid imaginings of Pat Robertson and cretins like him.
The video clip you’ve posted from CBN has an interview of a member of Bloc Identitaire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_identitaire
They are crypto fascists and racists. I suggest that you ought not be associating the arch-diocese with such politically charged material. It is, to say the very least, inappropriate.
Further, all Muslims do not “believe that Shariah is God’s law.” My sister in law, for example, is a Turk and a Muslim – as well as an American citizen, now – and she and her entire Turkish family all believe in secular political values. They are vociferous supporters of Ataturk’s republic, as incidentally are even most of the Turks that support the AK, PM Erdogan’s party which is characterized as “Islamicist” by idiots here who have no idea what they are talking about – see for example, how the Turkish constitution explicitly rejects use of Islamic law in governing the country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Religion
While it is true that the Turkish Republic often engages in actions detrimental to Christians, as in the suppression of the Greek Ecumenical Patriarch, that has far more to do with nationalism than religion, religion having become an artefact of tribal identity in that case.
I could go on, Egypt and most other Muslim societies are just as complex and have little resemblance to the stupid rancid imaginings of the Western Right. What they are doing is making a caricature of a world religious tradition of vast complexity and richness. It would be like saying Catholicism is synonymous with the Christian Identity movement, and that all Christians (as opposed to just a minuscule percentage – millions out of the 2 Billion Christians in the world) share the beliefs of the likes of Pat Robertson.
Again, this post is both wrong, and benighted. It should not be associated with the archdiocese.
---
Update: Msgr. Pope replied, I respond.
This, again, is the link to the archdiocesan page.
Msgr. Charles Pope says:
March 1, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Methinks thou dost protest too much. I wonder if you even read this post since I make important distinctions that you seem to have missed and also lay the blame at the feet of Christians.
I Reply:
Charles Curtis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 1, 2011 at 8:42 pm
No, Father. I’m simply pointing out that you have linked to a “news report” which contains a sympathetic interview of a member of a right-wing French political party that is openly opposed to miscegenation, and which rails against gypsies and foreigners on its websites.
They are also, incidentally, openly opposed to American imperialism, an ironic detail that probably escaped Pat Robertson’s “journalists.”
Now, you are free to adhere to that sort of thing if you like, in which case I will lose all respect for you. But I say as a Catholic that I do not want my Church officially associated with such racist bigotry.
I’ll also repeat that the Islamicist caricature that you’ve propagated here is an unhelpful and distorted view of a religion that in practice is much more variegated and complex than your “expert” source understands. Most Muslims do not dream of imposing “shariah” on the West. I speak Arabic in rudimentary fashion (trained by our military) and can tell you that word means law. Not Islamic law, but just law. “The Shariah” (with the definite article) is analogous to “the Law” in Judaism. Islamic law is a very complex study, just as is study of Torah. There are many different local traditions, and four major Sunni schools of interpretation, as well as differing Shiite traditions, some more “liberal” (to use a reductive and problematic term) than others. There is, in other words, no one “Shariah.” Again, it’s like Judaism in that there are differing stream of thought in the Tulmud, and now many different traditions in Judaism, from varieties of Reform to manifold Orthodox perspectives.
A brief search online – google Sunni madhabs for example – will prove what I am saying.
This is not meant as an attack against you personally, Father, I am telling you – as someone who has studied all this formally – that what you have posted here is not accurate.
Period.
We need to be careful and fair, Father. That’s all I’m saying.
Is that to protest too much?
---
Today, however, Msgr. Pope posted a piece on secularism and European population implosion and decline that uses Islam as a bogeyman and recycles most of the tired tropes that reduce the entire religion down to a caricature in which the views and actions of the extremist fringe are imputed to "all Muslims."
Worse, he links to a "news report" by Pat's Robertson's claque CBN that is pure racist and quasi fascist propaganda.
This is the clip, notice how many times the word "white" is used:
The ironic thing is that the likes of Pat Robertson act like they are horrified by the polarization of people along religious and ethnic lines (which of course is a real problem) but in actuality they need that polarization to fulfill their violent fantasies, in which the eroticized venal other - in this case the Muslims, who are to be the catalyst for the apocalypse and rapture in their cosmology - is used to radicalize people politically.
Note also that the French people interviewed are all people who confirm CBN's feedback loop. CBN has absolutely no compunction in interviewing outright racists and crypto facsists like that fellow from the Bloc Identitaire - click here to visit their website, where they rail against the gypsies and beat other old fascist hobbyhorses with vigor.
Disgusting, pure and simple.
Here is my open letter to Father Pope, that I posted without proofreading on the post at the Archdiocese's site. It's still awaiting moderation at the site, we'll see if he let's it through, and if he reacts to it.
I am posting it here because this sort of thing is too important to let pass in silence. Muslims are not a monolithic block. They are not all out to get us. We must seek peace and understanding, and admit complexity as well as recognize that most Muslims - though admittedly quite often difficult to deal with - are still human beings like any other group, and need to be treated with respect, and listened to, at the very least.
The letter, with minor corrections:
Charles Curtis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 1, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Father,
I admire your blog very much – when it comes to teaching Catholicism, you are incredible.
But when it comes to Islam, with all due respect, you don’t know what you are talking about. The crap you’ve posted here is sheer right wing propaganda.
I’ve lived in Switzerland, Egypt and Turkey, have studied Islam and Arab studies in graduate school, and can tell you the reality of Islam and Muslim people is vastly different than the lurid imaginings of Pat Robertson and cretins like him.
The video clip you’ve posted from CBN has an interview of a member of Bloc Identitaire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_identitaire
They are crypto fascists and racists. I suggest that you ought not be associating the arch-diocese with such politically charged material. It is, to say the very least, inappropriate.
Further, all Muslims do not “believe that Shariah is God’s law.” My sister in law, for example, is a Turk and a Muslim – as well as an American citizen, now – and she and her entire Turkish family all believe in secular political values. They are vociferous supporters of Ataturk’s republic, as incidentally are even most of the Turks that support the AK, PM Erdogan’s party which is characterized as “Islamicist” by idiots here who have no idea what they are talking about – see for example, how the Turkish constitution explicitly rejects use of Islamic law in governing the country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Religion
While it is true that the Turkish Republic often engages in actions detrimental to Christians, as in the suppression of the Greek Ecumenical Patriarch, that has far more to do with nationalism than religion, religion having become an artefact of tribal identity in that case.
I could go on, Egypt and most other Muslim societies are just as complex and have little resemblance to the stupid rancid imaginings of the Western Right. What they are doing is making a caricature of a world religious tradition of vast complexity and richness. It would be like saying Catholicism is synonymous with the Christian Identity movement, and that all Christians (as opposed to just a minuscule percentage – millions out of the 2 Billion Christians in the world) share the beliefs of the likes of Pat Robertson.
Again, this post is both wrong, and benighted. It should not be associated with the archdiocese.
---
Update: Msgr. Pope replied, I respond.
This, again, is the link to the archdiocesan page.
Msgr. Charles Pope says:
March 1, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Methinks thou dost protest too much. I wonder if you even read this post since I make important distinctions that you seem to have missed and also lay the blame at the feet of Christians.
I Reply:
Charles Curtis says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 1, 2011 at 8:42 pm
No, Father. I’m simply pointing out that you have linked to a “news report” which contains a sympathetic interview of a member of a right-wing French political party that is openly opposed to miscegenation, and which rails against gypsies and foreigners on its websites.
They are also, incidentally, openly opposed to American imperialism, an ironic detail that probably escaped Pat Robertson’s “journalists.”
Now, you are free to adhere to that sort of thing if you like, in which case I will lose all respect for you. But I say as a Catholic that I do not want my Church officially associated with such racist bigotry.
I’ll also repeat that the Islamicist caricature that you’ve propagated here is an unhelpful and distorted view of a religion that in practice is much more variegated and complex than your “expert” source understands. Most Muslims do not dream of imposing “shariah” on the West. I speak Arabic in rudimentary fashion (trained by our military) and can tell you that word means law. Not Islamic law, but just law. “The Shariah” (with the definite article) is analogous to “the Law” in Judaism. Islamic law is a very complex study, just as is study of Torah. There are many different local traditions, and four major Sunni schools of interpretation, as well as differing Shiite traditions, some more “liberal” (to use a reductive and problematic term) than others. There is, in other words, no one “Shariah.” Again, it’s like Judaism in that there are differing stream of thought in the Tulmud, and now many different traditions in Judaism, from varieties of Reform to manifold Orthodox perspectives.
A brief search online – google Sunni madhabs for example – will prove what I am saying.
This is not meant as an attack against you personally, Father, I am telling you – as someone who has studied all this formally – that what you have posted here is not accurate.
Period.
We need to be careful and fair, Father. That’s all I’m saying.
Is that to protest too much?
---
Alice's Restaurant Massacree
---
A somewhat tired rendition of the song. Poor Arlo's done it too many times before. When my dad took us to see Arlo Guthrie in concert at University of Maine Orono in maybe 1988, he didn't even perform this song, despite the audience repeatedly calling for it..
Read the lyrics here.
---
A somewhat tired rendition of the song. Poor Arlo's done it too many times before. When my dad took us to see Arlo Guthrie in concert at University of Maine Orono in maybe 1988, he didn't even perform this song, despite the audience repeatedly calling for it..
Read the lyrics here.
---
Monday, February 28, 2011
I'd lose my a** it weren't crammed with my head
So I go skiing this afternoon. I've been skiing quite a lot this winter, and it's been really good for me - sliding down a hill is actually great exercise.
Anyway, It's snowing mixed snow and sleet, and I have no goggles, so I buy a cheap 40$ pair (40$ is cheap for goggles, most are twice or three times that) which worked out really well..
Around three, I decide to check the time so I can milk the last hour before the lifts close for all it's worth, and still end up by my car on the last run.
My pocket is unzipped, and my phone is gone.
Annoying, but not a huge deal.. After I got back from Europe, I decided to only buy cheap cellphones, and to never sign another wireless contract again, and only pay as I go.. It's super frugal, and I still have a phone that does everything I need it to do, which is just make and receive calls, you know..
So my damn 30$ phone with 700 ($70 worth of) minutes on it is apparently stuck in some snowdrift on the mountain somewhere.
Not that this is a huge problem, since there are only a half dozen people I ever talk to on the phone anyway, and I only do that once or twice a week..
But it does mean that until I either find it, or buy a new one, I have no phone.
Just so the 12 or so people who might care, know..
I'll get one before I leave for Florida next week, because I'll need it on the trip.
Last run of the afternoon, I get off the lift, ski about 100 yards and go to put my new goggles on.. And guess what?
Yep, they were gone, too. I'd dropped them on the lift or something. I usually clip my gloves and poles with a carabiner when I'm on the lift, it's a habit I've formed to prevent just such losses.. But since the goggles were new, I'd not habituated myself to doing that with them.
Nice. The girl at the client services lost and found is going to think I'm a retard.
At least I'm a happy retard.
---
Anyway, It's snowing mixed snow and sleet, and I have no goggles, so I buy a cheap 40$ pair (40$ is cheap for goggles, most are twice or three times that) which worked out really well..
Around three, I decide to check the time so I can milk the last hour before the lifts close for all it's worth, and still end up by my car on the last run.
My pocket is unzipped, and my phone is gone.
Annoying, but not a huge deal.. After I got back from Europe, I decided to only buy cheap cellphones, and to never sign another wireless contract again, and only pay as I go.. It's super frugal, and I still have a phone that does everything I need it to do, which is just make and receive calls, you know..
So my damn 30$ phone with 700 ($70 worth of) minutes on it is apparently stuck in some snowdrift on the mountain somewhere.
Not that this is a huge problem, since there are only a half dozen people I ever talk to on the phone anyway, and I only do that once or twice a week..
But it does mean that until I either find it, or buy a new one, I have no phone.
Just so the 12 or so people who might care, know..
I'll get one before I leave for Florida next week, because I'll need it on the trip.
Last run of the afternoon, I get off the lift, ski about 100 yards and go to put my new goggles on.. And guess what?
Yep, they were gone, too. I'd dropped them on the lift or something. I usually clip my gloves and poles with a carabiner when I'm on the lift, it's a habit I've formed to prevent just such losses.. But since the goggles were new, I'd not habituated myself to doing that with them.
Nice. The girl at the client services lost and found is going to think I'm a retard.
At least I'm a happy retard.
---
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