Hey! You Got Your Bible In My Government!

On Tuesday May 8 the voters of North Carolina went to the polls to vote on, among other things, amending the state constitution to include the following:

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

The amendment passed, garnering 61% of the vote (although, as the Rude Pundit points out, only 21% of the registered electorate voted in favor of the amendment, due to the relatively low voter turnout of only 34% overall).   And once again we are given evidence as to why the rights of a minority should generally not be subject to the whims of the majority.

I have no desire to discuss the unintended consequences of this amendment for straight couples, nor do I wish to address the obvious drawbacks to corporations seeking to employ talented people from out-of-state who happen to be in a committed homosexual relationship.  Often these peripheral arguments are made to convince people whose bigotry isn’t necessarily grounded in uncompromising absolutism that they should wait to vote for discrimination when it’s more narrowly focused – you know, so that only the gays lose out.  I don’t like to give people those easy outs.  You’re either on the right side or the wrong side of the issue.

So don’t tell me that “people of good faith can disagree” on such fundamental matters as human rights.  (“Faith” is a big part of the problem, but more on that soon.)  I don’t give a damn for “good faith”, because it is a useless cop-out in this context for refusing to confront evil.  What matters is if you are a good person who would not deny equal rights to other good people. 

What we witnessed on May 8th was the triumph of religious intrusion into civic government, the injection – once again – of private piety into public policy, something that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution categorically rejects.  Because while you as an individual may have chosen to bear the yoke of your faith you don’t have the right to place the shackles of irrational bigotry on anyone else.

If you make the claim that God, through the Bible, has declared homosexuality sinful, you make me sad, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to go forth and, uhm, not be homosexual (I guess).  And yes, you can point to passages in the Bible that do, indeed, illustrate God’s antipathy toward homosexual sex:

If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. (Leviticus 20:13)

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. (Leviticus 18:22-24)

(Of course, the hypocrisy of the people who quote these passages, yet continue to do things like eat shellfish and wear clothing made of different fabrics, among other laws listed in Leviticus, has been pointed out many times, and doesn’t bear repeating here.)

But here’s the problem that you should have:  We both live in a (supposedly) secular democratic republic – one that allows you to impose faith-based limits on your own behavior but that prevents you from placing those same faith-based limits on the behavior of those who do not share your belief system.  Furthermore, you would be wrong to vote your faith and turn your sectarian belief into the law of the land – thereby forcing the government to “respect an establishment of religion” (as I and many others would interpret that line).  Unfortunately we’re becoming less and less concerned about shoring up the wall between church and state in these Culture War times.  In my dream of a rational American polity, any appeal to God’s word as a factor in public policy should immediately disqualify the speaker from being considered a serious participant in a debate – and should cause that person to be laughed out of the meeting hall.

An argument based on God’s word is one that is inflexible and not subject to compromise, because, well, it’s God’s word, and God is infallible and perfect and all that.  And here’s where liberal Christians run into a problem, because both they and conservative Christians use different, often contradictory, passages from the same Bible to support their opinions.  It’s a weakness that an atheist doesn’t share.  God often spoke out of both sides of his mouth on any number of topics, and so the liberal Christian and the conservative Christian are equally right and wrong.  The secularist doesn’t have this chink in his rhetorical armor.  To the rationalist, the atheist, and the secularist, in matters of public policy what God has to say about homosexuality or shellfish or clothing is irrelevant.

It is important to keep the First Amendment in mind precisely because religion has been afforded a pass from honest scrutiny in this country for far too long, to the detriment of advancing civil rights.  For while the proponents of Amendment 1 may be more or less hostile to equal rights for homosexuals or to homosexual persons themselves, the vast majority of them – liberal and conservative – are allowed to express their bigotry in the language of religion.  Which is why this:

I hate fags because they’re filthy unnatural people, so they shouldn’t be allowed to marry

is not acceptable, while this:

Homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God so homosexuals don’t deserve the right to marry

is spoken and essentially unchallenged.  Worse still is the fact that the speaker can vote and enforce his will over others who do not share his narrow sectarian views.  The iron fist of bigotry, whether bare or covered in the velvet glove of religious language, strikes equally as hard. 

Please, do not speak to me of “people of good faith”.  Because “good faith” without “good work” is truly, truly dead – and voting against equal rights for gay couples is bad, bad work indeed.

Gutenberg Is The Bibliophiliac’s Pimp, You Know

I’ve entered the electronic book age, albeit on the cheap:  I don’t have a Kindle or similar device, but Amazon has a free application that functions similar to the Kindle.  I downloaded the application and made my first purchase of an e-book (Paris 1919:  Six Months That Changed the World) soon thereafter.

There are some things I like about the e-book phenomenon.  For one thing, I find that I am reading more; considering how much time I spend staring at my computer screen, it feels good to actually put that time to good use.  And speaking of time, it took literally seconds for me to download a book of around 450 pages, immediately after I purchased it – I didn’t have to pay for shipping, or wait a week for delivery.  Because I can browse for titles on line, I can also read the reviews posted by people who had already purchased the books, giving me a little insight into whether or not a book is worth my time (and money).  Eventually I imagine I’ll have a little travelling electronic library – which is another advantage of this medium:  I have a small house, without a lot of room for bookshelves, and there is no way for me to fit in all the books I’d like to in the available shelf space.

So those are the positives.  But there’s a major negative that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to overlook, and I wager my complaint is a common one among book lovers.

“Book lover” – a wonderful term, because in essence, that’s what a book becomes:  our constant companion, for an undetermined length of time, one with whom we share stolen moments when we are otherwise alone, in a private place, where we can submerge ourselves into the embrace of those alluring printed pages.  To hold and read a book is to experience a very special intellectual intimacy, but there is a smidgen of the physical as well; nothing quite matches the feel and smell of a book.

E-books are practical, and convenient, and they are undoubtedly the wave of the future as regards the mass-marketing of text.  But they’ll never engender the romance and excitement one gets from holding a real, printed book. 

Racism, Classism, Misogyny: An American Tale

The state of North Carolina is picking at a still-open wound that for years has been ignored:  the involuntary sterilization of those deemed racially undesirable and unfit to reproduce.

The practice of forced sterilization was an outgrowth of the politics of race in late 19^th and early 20^th century America, the child of eugenics, the grandchild of social Darwinism.  Twenty-seven states instituted some type of forced sterilization programs, usually targeting criminals or the mentally ill or disabled.  North Carolina was one of only a few states to include race and class in its formulation to determine who would be subject to the government’s scalpel.  Young women on public assistance – the vast majority of them African-American – were threatened with being cut off from the pittance they were allotted by the state unless they accepted being surgically sterilized.

One such victim is Elaine Riddick, who, at the age of fourteen, was raped, became pregnant, and gave birth to a son, Tony, in 1968.  Unbeknownst to Elaine, her illiterate grandmother was somehow convinced to authorize the state to sterilize the teenager (she marked an “X” on the consent form).  Elaine gave birth via a C-section, and at the same time the physicians sterilized her – a fact she didn’t know until five years later, at which point she was newly married and ready to bear children with her husband.  But of course, she couldn’t – because the state had, without her knowledge and certainly against her will, made the decision that she should never again conceive a child.

Why had the state done this?  Because the state believed she was “promiscuous and didn’t get along well with others.”

Riddick later said “I didn’t get along well with others because I was hungry.  I was cold.  I was a victim of rape.”

The charge of promiscuity is what stands out for me, because it reveals so much about the way in which our male-dominated society has historically viewed the crime of rape.  Elaine was brutally attacked and impregnated by a man – and yet she was branded “promiscuous”.  Was this the state’s way of saying “she was asking for it”?  Was 1968 too early for North Carolina’s law enforcement agencies to recognize rape as a crime of violence, rather than of sex?

Elaine Riddick was a victim many times over.  She was  not only victimized by the man who raped and impregnated her.  She was additionally victimized by a culture that saw her rape not as a crime committed by a stronger man against a weaker girl, but as the result of her own “promiscuity”, making her at least partly responsible for her own rape.  She was victimized by a state which saw her as less human thanks to her race and her class.  And she was victimized by a society that still tries to divide people in order to keep them subservient to the desires of the powerful.

North Carolina’s current government is grappling with how much to compensate the victims of its eugenics program.  No matter how much money the state eventually gives in recompense, it will never be enough to erase the stain of genocidal intent.

The Closeted Atheist

A friend of mine recently admitted that he didn’t use the term “atheist” to refer to himself.  Not because it wasn’t accurate – he holds the same non-belief in gods and the supernatural as I do – but because of the negative traits people in general, and religious believers in particular, associate with the term.  He said he didn’t like how people believe atheists are immoral, certainly less moral than god-fearing folk.

This is one way in which the religious have defined, to their advantage, the difference between those who subscribe to a faith tradition and those who do not.  The definition is one that has become an accepted meme in our culture, and is a major reason why more non-believers are reluctant to publicly identify themselves as such.  Or if they do, they often choose the less-threatening term agnostic because the word atheist carries so much negative social baggage.

I could not argue against my friend’s decision, because keeping his atheism hidden is still the best choice for those of us who live in a country where an African-American man can finally be elected President, but an atheist hasn’t got a chance in hell.

For myself, I am openly out of the non-believer’s closet.  I am not shy about declaring my atheism.  But I am very much aware of the isolation and mistrust that such a declaration can engender – and I am sad for my friend who has to hide his honest opinions for fear of making himself a pariah.

Evil Causes And The People Who Fight For Them

A response to blogger Christopher Knight regarding the statue of the Confederate soldier, recently toppled by a wayward vehicle, in Reidsville:

Mr. Knight, your post at "The Knight Shift" reveals an all-too-common lack of historical knowledge. Even a casual open-minded study of history would have led you to different conclusions; however, as you found it necessary to defend what, in the 21st century, should be obviously indefensible, I find it equally necessary to provide a counter-point to your paean to the Confederate soldier statue.

You write:

Here's to hoping them to do the right thing, however. The Confederate Soldiers Monument... contrary to what some speakers at today's meeting asserted, is not a monument to a lost cause. It is not a monument to a slavery. It is absolutely NOT a monument to racism!

I suggest you read James Loewen's "Lies Across America", specifically the many entries examining the origin and actual purpose of statues erected by such organizations as the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These statues - including the one in Reidsville - are nothing if not steeped in an attempt to glorify that "lost cause", which itself had everything to do with defending racism and slavery. They were erected at the turn of the 20^th century at the height of the Jim Crow era to remind African Americans that they were still subservient to whites, and that they should keep to their place. Yet for white people these statues were built in towns across the south as a way of controlling the narrative - that is, to distort history and to gloss over the realities of southern racist culture. As Loewen writes:

When proponents of change do their homework, so they can show that a person or event was controversial in the past and has been idealized in the teeth of damning evidence ever since, opponents of landscape revision cannot claim that correcting markers or removing monuments does violence to our history. Instead they usually argue that the proposed revision does violence to "our heritage." "The heritage syndrome," as historian Michael Kammen calls it, is "an impulse to remember what is attractive or flattering and to ignore all the rest."

The conflict between history and "heritage" goes still deeper. Too often, events that reek of dishonor and shame get abracadabraed into a noble heritage...

The point to neo-Confederates is not to put the Confederacy into its proper historical context, but to maintain its symbols as sites for homage in the present.*

You write:

It is a monument to nearly two thousand men of Rockingham County - more than most other counties in the state which sent the most soldiers to serve in the Confederate army - who arose to the task of defending their families and their communities in a conflict that certainly not one of them had wanted to see in their lifetime or the lifetime of their children.

The personal motivations of the soldiers are irrelevant. The simple fact remains that the reason these people took up arms was to defend an illegal and immoral rebellion, based upon opposition to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, out of nothing else than fear that slavery would be abolished. If you think otherwise, you would be proven wrong by the very declarations of secession of Georgia, which stated that a reason for the state's leaving the Union was:

The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders [the Republican Party] and applauded by its followers.

or of Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

or of South Carolina, here regarding the Northern states:

Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

or of Texas:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

These declarations provide proof positive that the basis for the establishment of the Confederacy was nothing other than the protection of slavery and continuation of racism. Yet you, Mr. Knight, write:

It is a monument to men who went to fight in a war that was clearly unfortunate... but only the most ignorant or the most foolish would call it a war with any side that was clearly evil.

Even at the time, most of the western world outside of the American south recognized slavery as a moral evil. Some one hundred and fifty years later, there should be absolutely no question in a modern mind about the inhuman institution the Confederacy was created to defend - nor of the misguided sense of duty of those who took up arms to maintain that inhuman institution in the Confederacy's name.

It is a monument to men who were only doing what they knew best to do in this fallen world, not out of hate but out of love.

Sadly, their love did not extend beyond their own narrow-minded, culturally conservative racism. For this they should, at best, be pitied - not glorified.

Who are we, who are any of us, to presume that we know better or that we would have done otherwise?

Millions of Americans - including in the southern states - knew what was right, and did the right thing. The people who fought in defense of slavery were wrong. This does not mean they were not brave, or honest - but brave and honest men can fight for evil reasons. Unless you think that every one of the millions of Germans who fought in Adolf Hitler's army were completely devoid of any redeeming human qualities, and that every single one of the millions of Americans who fought against his army were conversely devoid of any faults or moral failures.

Because as far as this writer is concerned, the men who went out from their farms in Rockingham County, were fighting as much for the freedom that we have today... including the freedom to never have to make the choices that they were forced to make... as they were fighting for their own families and friends and communities.

The irony fairly drips from this statement, for the soldiers of the Confederacy were not fighting for freedom, but for slavery. What they fought against was the progressive march of bringing freedom to all, rather than preserve it for a privileged few.

If none of that is worth remembering, honoring and even celebrating, then... I honestly don't know what would be.

You cannot divorce the individual soldier from the evil of his cause. Evil causes should be denigrated - not celebrated.

_________________________________________________
*James W. Loewen, Lies Across America, pp. 41-42.

Murder Most Justifiable

I recently read a debate on another blog regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden and the subsequent celebration on many American streets that followed.  Both events – the killing itself, and the joyous demonstrations afterward – were topics of a spirited discussion.

I’ll address the last, first.  My immediate reaction to seeing the crowds of people holding signs, dancing in the streets, and shouting patriotic chants was negative.  I have a visceral dislike of unthinking patriotic fervor, and that’s initially the category into which I placed these celebrations.  I still think that’s what a certain percentage of the demonstrators were:  jingoistic know-littles who scream “USA!  USA!” into the faces of anyone who bows in the direction of Mecca to pray and think Fox is actually a source of news.

But those weren’t the only people celebrating the death of bin Laden.  There is a significant segment of the population that felt a  justifiable hatred for bin Laden, and didn’t react from a knee-jerk surge of militaristic nationalism.  Certainly anyone who lost friends and family in the attacks cannot be faulted for their sense of (long overdue) justice; but there is a wider circle of people – starting with citizens of New York City, and expanding to encompass the United States, and ultimately the globe – who also cannot be faulted for celebrating the demise of the world’s most identifiable face of terrorism.  There were very good reasons to despise bin Laden, and there are very good reasons to rejoice in his death:  his followers murdered thousands, kept many millions in a state of fear, and caused governments to curb individual freedoms in the name of national security.  It doesn’t make us callous or murderous to say humanity is far better off without a bin Laden to serve either as a master-mind of, or motivating force behind, further terrorist acts by al Qaeda.

Which brings me to the act of killing of bin Laden.  There are those who have a philosophical issue with simply having armed agents of the government attack and kill, rather than capture for criminal prosecution, even as horrid a creature as bin Laden.  In my case, the objection isn’t as much intellectual as it is, as I’ve stated above, visceral:  I have a deeply ingrained aversion to killing anything (I am generally a catch-and-release guy, even with insects).  I am steadfastly opposed to the death penalty as long as there are viable alternatives to keep people safe.

In the case of Osama bin Laden, I’m not certain that a viable alternative to killing him was available.  Nor am I certain that capturing him would not have exposed the world to greater risk of terrorist attacks, as I can envision multiple attempts at taking hostages by al Qaeda and its sympathizers, forcing governments to choose between releasing bin Laden or seeing innocent citizens systematically executed.  Or perhaps there might have been a more elaborate plan, with a bigger target involving high explosives or chemical weapons.  Or just a wave of individual suicide bombers across the world.  Or maybe nothing at all.  But the capture and imprisonment of bin Laden, and his continuance as a living symbol of resistance to Western culture and modernism, did probably pose a risk.  For this reason alone – that bin Laden’s existence could likely lead to more murder and mayhem – it is preferable that one guilty man should be executed rather than to allow any number of innocents to be killed.

But then there’s this:  bin Laden simply deserved to die for his crimes.  Yes, I am still personally opposed to killing, particularly state-sponsored killing.  Yet bin Laden’s crimes were so heinous, and his ideology so dehumanizing and extreme, that there was no way to “rehabilitate” him. While I personally would have been unable to pull the trigger – again, because it is simply contrary to my nature to do so – I do not at all regret the fact that someone else was able to put a bullet through his brain.  Nor do I deny the legitimacy of the cathartic relief felt by millions at his death. 

One final note:  this intellectual recognition of the necessity of violence to achieve a wanted end doesn’t end with bin Laden (and this is the point I’m actually trying to convey in this post).  For instance:  there have been times throughout history when the oppressed have risen in violent revolution against their oppressors.  On these occasions, blood has been spilled, and those who have committed great evil against the people have been slain.  And I think such actions are completely justified.  Victims have a right to put an end to their victimization, and they also have the right to put an end to their victimizers, and the right to the celebrate their liberation.  This is true of killing stateless terrorists; it is equally true of killing terrorists who control states.

“When in the course of human events…”

Hope, Part II: It Starts Out Bad, But Gets Better

What is the solution to the crisis of democracy in the United States?  Is there no chance for us to reverse our slide into corporate fascism?

By nature, I am a pessimist.  That is to say, whether the glass is half full or half empty doesn’t matter because what’s in the glass is usually poisonous.  So my gut instinct is to respond with a loud “Hell no!” and return to placidly sipping a gin and tonic.

But my task was to find reason to hope.  Which may require more gin and tonic.

I’m pretty certain that the days of the United States as the preeminent world power are numbered.  The U.S. economy simply cannot sustain itself at its current level of pure consumption with very little production – that is, we are nation built upon gluttony, which is fine if you’re also a world-class athlete with a hyper metabolism.  But as an economic power the U.S. is flabby – we produce next to nothing ourselves – yet we continue to suck in an inordinate amount of the world’s resources, particularly energy, to feed our addiction to easy living.  Obesity isn’t just an affliction of the individual American; our economy is likewise overweight, our infrastructure – the nation’s arteries – are “hardening”, our industrial muscle is sagging, our collective brainpower is showing signs of dementia.  As an empire, the United States has entered middle age.  Certainly our libido is still robust – that is, our military is still capable of defeating any other on the planet.  And we certainly do like to drop our bombs pretty regularly, as George Carlin pointed out in the 90s.

from “Jammin’ in New York”

So, yes, the United States is growing old (despite the Obama comb-over and the occasional dose of military-adventure Viagra).  Worse, the U.S. is growing paranoid, and as a result our individual freedoms are being eroded at home while we murder those we think might harm us, eventually, overseas.  The U.S. Congress is like an old schizophrenic, arguing with himself over trivialities while nodding approvingly as corporate thieves carry the stereo out the window.

Oops!  It appears I’ve gone off-track.  This post was supposed to offer hope.

There is reason to be optimistic.  For instance, I believe that Barack Obama was elected for the best reasons – despite the fact that he hasn’t lived up to the expectations of many who voted for him.  Obama’s candidacy tapped into the latent progressive steam that flows beneath the center-right crust of the American body politic.  (It’s partly his, and partly our, fault for him not fully tapping that wellspring of liberalism, but oh well.) I firmly believe that America is, at its core, an experiment in individual liberty tempered by a sense of social justice; that there are enough people of good will who, if forced to wake up, can beat back the worst aspects of conservatism that now hold far too much power in our country.  The election of Obama was a vote for moving forward, not backward – and that is reason to be optimistic.

I see reason for optimism in the continued spread of information technology, so that motivated individuals can do the work that many mainstream media outlets can no longer, or now refuse to, perform:  that of being the watchdogs of democracy.  There is nothing more hateful to a government than the free flow of information – as any authoritarian knows, control of the media is as important as control of the army.  The attempts by both Republican and Democratic Presidents to keep more and more secrets is generating a backlash that may eventually lead to a more open and, in Obama’s (unfulfilled) words, “transparent” government.

The fact that we are a nation of immigrants can only lead to better things.  The more diverse we are, the more open to difference we allow ourselves to be, the more likely it is that we will find a way toward that middle ground that is uniquely American.  Being American is to be forged of an alloy; as steel is stronger than iron, so too have we been stronger for our ability to incorporate peoples from all other parts of the world into a nation where it is possible (albeit after overcoming hurdles of varying types) for the individual to excel, regardless of his or her background.*

Finally, the recent unpleasantness in Wisconsin, pitting the unions against the undemocratic power-grab by Governor Adams and his Republican enablers in the state house, may presage the liberal equivalent of the Tea Party (except that it will actually be a populist grassroots movement, and not a pro-business populist front created by the Koch brothers).  A popular uprising by the lower, working, and middle classes against the continuing outrages of the wealthy is possibly the only way to bring meaningful change to the country.  And that may be the best hope of all.

So there are reasons to hope.  True, these are mere glints of goodness in an otherwise murky fog of American apathy and forgetfulness.  But it may be that there are just enough people concerned with the future of the country to actually force those changes that ensure that the country does, indeed, have a future.

_____________________________________________

* Yes, I’m probably referring more to the unrealized ideal, than the reality.

Hope, Part I: Not At The Moment. But How About A Cookie?

Twice during the last week I have been placed in the uncomfortable (and contradictory, according to my nature) position of having to defend the goodness of my fellow human being.  I can’t admit to having much success with the first instance, and must concede complete defeat in the case of the second.  It’s this last discussion I wish to address in this post.

After enumerating the many ills of American society, my friend asked (at two separate points) if I could offer him “just one thing, one thing, to hope for.”  I couldn’t honestly think of anything at that moment, and my response was that he was “searching for a lump of gold in a coal mine.”  (Or should I have said he was looking to get blood from a stone?  Use whatever geologically- or mineralogically-based metaphor you find appropriate.)

My friend was very disappointed – by President Obama, by his fellow Americans, by the failure of the Left.  Indeed, he said more than once that “there is no Left” in America – there are only Right-leaning Centrists, represented by the Democratic Party, and the Right, represented by the Conservative Christofascist Corporate Straight White People’s Republican Party.  His was a complaint I am beginning to hear more often from friends and co-workers, who feel that there is no one who speaks for them – and more importantly, no one who speaks for the poor or the middle- and working-class.

He was dismayed by the performance of Barack Obama.  I don’t share his sense of betrayal; in truth, I didn’t expect Obama to be anything close to the agent of radical change this country needs to reverse its slide into the abyss of corporate fascism.  (There’s no way I can think of that a truly strong proponent of real change can currently be elected by our somnambulant populace).  In my friend’s opinion the mediocre healthcare reform measure that was finally passed after long months of torturous political sausage-making was a failure of Obama’s campaign promise to provide healthcare to all – whereas I knew that the existing political establishment, of which Obama is certainly a member, had no intention of ever setting up anything close to what is really needed:  a government-run and taxpayer-funded national health insurance program.  But Obama is an incrementalist (people such as myself dearly wish that he was one-tenth the fire-breathing socialist revolutionary the right-wing dittoheads portray him as), meaning that he would rather negotiate a compromise that suits no one in favor of actually picking a side that might alienate the Republican half of the country.  He is fond of reminding us that he is President of all Americans, be they liberal or conservative.  What he refuses to recognize is that many conservatives and Republicans do not consider Obama their President, and have never had any desire other than to see his administration delegitimized and he himself driven out of the White House in some D. W. Griffith-inspired scene of white redemption.

My friend believes that the American people are lost in a fog of media-induced idiocy, anesthetized by pop culture, mesmerized by high-tech gadgets, and rendered immobile by the obesity that c0mes from eating sugar and fat by the bucketful seven meals per day, like a Hobbit with an unfortunate glandular condition.  On this point I agree with him, although we likely disagree as to which side – the corporate producers or the individual consumers – bear the lion’s share of responsibility for this sorry state of affairs.  Whatever the reasons for the our inability to see beyond the narrow limits of our own self-gratification, the fact remains that we have allowed our leaders to hijack what should be our republic – for their own benefit, for the benefit of big business, for the benefit of the wealthy few, who dine in the manner of 18th-century French nobility while the vast majority are given fewer and fewer crumbs.

The warriors of social progress – the Left in all its myriad guises – have largely disappeared.  Avowed socialists (of whom Bernie Sanders is a lone, if persistent, spokesperson), environmentalists, civil rights activists, union members, even Kennedy-esque “limousine liberals” are few in number and mostly powerless.  Our political discourse is forced through corporate-controlled media filters, where accuracy is discarded in favor of conflict, and advocacy for the powerless has been replaced by kowtowing to the powerful.  Surely the interests of the elite have always been served – for instance, broadcast news has always had a business segment (including the day’s stock market fluctuations) but have never had a regular segment on labor – but never before has the media become so subservient to the ministers of government and the solons of Wall Street.  Rather than being the watchdogs of our democracy, modern news organizations are the lapdogs of the aristocracy.

We have become complacent, and fat, and stupid.  We didn’t care whether or not the election of 2000 was stolen; we didn’t care when the leader who came out of that election led us into not one, but two wars while at the same time cutting the taxes of the very corporations who stood to gain the most from the conflicts; we don’t care that those same corporations now effectively run our “democratic” government, and will continue to promote legislation that turns back two hundred years of advancement, earned by the sweat of the middle and working classes, so that the corporate elite might see their already-obscene profits reach unto the heavens, a Tower of Babel where the Fortune 500 become a new pantheon of demi-gods.  Yahweh is dead; long live Mammon!

That’s the bad news.  Is there any possible way to offer hope to my friend?  Yes, there is – and I’ll make that my task in Part II.

Comrades! Let Us Sing “La Marseillaise”!

I was posting a response to a friend on Facebook (who brought up Ford Motors in an example of union busting) when I wrote this.  When you read it, imagine someone standing behind a podium, repeatedly slamming his hand down upon it for emphasis.  (Yes, I’m inordinately proud of this, so I’m blowing my own horn.)

Ford, like any other large corporation, would deny its workers the crumbs they've earned while lavishing outlandish compensation to its top-tier executives. The economic aristocracy in the United States, having never felt the edge of a guillotine blade released by the hands of their formerly-oppressed wage-slaves, feel safe in continuing to find ways to squeeze every possible penny out of the working class, denying millions such necessities such as basic, affordable health care in favor of a few being able to stuff their overseas bank accounts with piles of unearned cash. The American middle class - already smaller as a percentage of the population than is found in most Western nations - continues to shrink, partly because they are so easily distracted by the wealthy elites. "Lost your professional job and now working at McDonald's? Too bad. Oh, look over there - a woman trying to get an abortion!" Americans, historically ignorant due to the orchestrated failure of our public education system (an educated populace is not favored by the wealthy elites), are drawn to Shiny Things, and the elites know it. So we continue to run after the bait while the upper crust keep accumulating more and more wealth, more and more power, to the detriment of the majority. Our democracy collapses, our communities are impoverished, but thank god we can still watch American Idol and Two and a Half Men on television and stuff our faces with tacos and Big Macs.

Bread and circuses worked two thousand years ago. Fast food and cable television serve the same purpose today.

Forget about paying me to write speeches.  I’d pay any politician in America to say this in front of the news cameras.  Hell, I can spare $10.

Religion Creates Martyrs… Out Of Liberal Secularists

Meanwhile, over in Pakistan…

The governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by one of his own security guards on January 4th.  Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the guard who used his AK-47 to pump 27 bullets into Taseer after the governor was returning from lunch, surrendered peacefully – probably because he sees himself as a living, shining symbol for pious conservative Muslims, more valuable alive than dead.

Taseer drew the ire of hard line Islamists by opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, particularly in the case of a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, convicted of defaming Muhammad during an argument with her neighbors over a glass of water (really?  A glass of water?).  Because Taseer was, by all appearances, a relatively rational human being (and, as it turns out, uncommonly courageous), he spoke out against those sections of Pakistan’s criminal code that allowed a court to condemn Ms Bibi to death by hanging.

Unfortunately rationality and human decency are among the very first characteristics that are expunged by devotion to conservative religious beliefs.  Thus, it made perfect sense in Qadri’s narrowly-defined version of reality for him to pick up his rifle, aim it at his employer, and give Governor Taseer a terminal case of after-lunch indigestion.

Because God needs the help of fanatics.  With guns.  And no sense of humanity.

Pakistan is a theocratic state:  its Constitution declares the country to be officially Muslim and its legal code is required to conform to the dictates of a group of religious advisors (the Federal Shariat Court).  The struggle for liberalism, however, continues, and which way Pakistan will go – forward into a progressive democratic future, or backward into a fundamentalist Dark Age – is going to have a profound effect on the future of southern Asia, if for no other reason than that Pakistan has The Bomb.  A nuclear Iran may be a problem in five years; Pakistan could be a problem today.

Tomorrow, the U.S. House of Representatives will begin with a reading of the Constitution.  Many within the majority Republican caucus would welcome a more prominent role for religion – particularly conservative Christianity – in our government.  One hopes that they will actually pay attention to the words found within the Constitution – particularly those that separate church from state (and state from church) and declare that no religious test shall be imposed on government officials – and take note of the following words that are absent:  God and Jesus.  For the framers were well aware of the consequences of government-sanctioned piety.

Sadly, so was Governor Taseer, who Tweeted on December 31:  "I was under huge pressure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing."  In America, I am still waiting for the first influential man or woman to stand up and be counted against the dangers of religious government.