Seeing the Light or Post-Baptist Brain Fart

We report, you decide:

Last Sunday I had the experience of attending a Baptist worship service. I felt like the proverbial fly on the wall, but leaving that aside, it was an interesting picture of a faith and a culture that I don't entirely understand and probably don't want to. There was a lot of warmth and affection in the room--quite different from the Catholic masses I attended as a girl--and you could see why people are drawn to this kind of fellowship. Then the minister gave his sermon and it crystallized something that I had been feeling. The sermon was all about praising god, professing god, talking to people about god. And that was it. Nothing about mercy, or justice, or being kind to your neighbor or doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, etc. etc. It seemed all you had to do to be a good Christian--a good Baptist anyway--was to talk about Jesus. Whereas more "mainstream" denominations emphasize good works as a way to honor faith, this particular group, at least on this particular Sunday, were focused primarily on their personal relationship with god. In a strange way it reminded me of the way in which Catholicism sometimes seems--and seemed to me as a kid--to place greater importance on performing the rituals of faith than on living one's life in a godly manner. You could be the greatest schmuck that ever was, but if you confessed your sins and said your ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers before you kicked the bucket, you were good to go. And yeah, I admit that's a cynical oversimplification, but that won't prevent me from making my point. And that is this: it seemed to me in observing this Baptist service that there was less emphasis on what you did, and more on what you believed and said you believed. Which goes a way to explain, to me at least, why so many self-identified Christians--if I were really being cynical I would make that "Christians", but never mind--support George W. Bush. What he does, the whole litany of lies and failure, simply doesn't matter. We are, after all, all fallible creatures before God, are we not? He has a personal relationship with god. And THAT is all that matters.

Don't quote me on this. It could all be total bullshit. But take it for what it's worth, and hey--go in peace.

Onward, in the Dark

Whatever real or imagined peace we had at Christmas seems gone as quickly as it came, as old as the memory of the disaster before last. Watching pictures of bodies pulled from wreckage in Sri Lanka interspersed with shiny new car commercials makes me want to retch, and not because I'm squeamish. This has become a season of grief, as well as of last-minute end-of-the-year clearance sales.

Perhaps the earth, its axis of rotation bent under the weight of so much pain and foolishness, will wobble off into space, never to be seen again. But I doubt we'll get off that easily.

Oh cheer! Not much to cheer about in Iraq, but this morning's piece in the Washington Post adds yet another depressing layer to the failure of our presence there. Iraqi women now say they are afraid to leaves their homes without wearing headscarves to make themselves invisible.

"The scarf has nothing to do with faith," [a young woman says]. "I fear there will be a time when we cannot walk in the street without head-to-toe abaya [the full black traditional dress] and a face cover. This will be the end of Iraq as a civilized country."

Liberation, anyone?

Merry Christmas Y'all

Hope for Harry

I'll be limiting myself to weekly entries for another week or two; I'm spending the holidays in the mountains of western North Carolina, learning about parts of horses I didn't know existed and how to navigate political discussions around family members who actually get their news from Fox News, and believe there's a liberal conspiracy to abolish Christmas.

I wonder what they would make of this? The Washington Post reports that nativity scenes around the country are being burgled. Says Jim Finnegan of Chicago's Nativity Scene Committee, speaking of the christ figure in Daley Plaza:

"We have him secured to the manger with a small but very secure cable...it's padlocked tight. The hay covers that part well enough, so it doesn't ruin the ambiance at all."

On a different subject entirely, I've been encouraged by some of what I've been hearing from and about Harry Reid, the resolutely low-key soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader. Chris Suellentrop in Slate gives us the skinny on Reid's history as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, including an episide where Reid threatened to strangle LaToya Jackson's husband (and they say Democrats have no moral values!). He also rather endearingly describes Reid as being only somewhat less charismatic than Mary Lou Retton.

Then there is the WaPo article in which Reid, speaking of the Democratic response to any attempt to change the Senate filibuster rule, says:

"I know procedures around here. And I know that there will still be Senate business conducted. But I will, for lack of a better word, screw things up."

Maybe it's not going to be such a bad year after all.

Remembering Mike

Been doing the Christmas thing. Took a while to get into it because I wasn't sure that I would feel very festive or that I wanted to, after the death of my brother two days after Christmas last year. But you do get caught up in the spirit (at least I do), and that's a good thing. It does give you the opportunity to renew and remember the bonds you have with the people you love, and that's always a good thing. But there's more to it than that. I'm not particularly Christian in my beliefs, and it's my opinion that most, if not all, Christian holidays are just appropriations of older pagan traditions. There may or may not have been an actual Jesus, and he may or may not have been born, conveniently, around the time of the winter solstice. But Christmas is rooted in the old European solstice celebration, which is an affirmation of light and life in the midst of darkness. Of turning toward the sun again. Of faith that nothing ever really dies. And so this is a good time to remember Mike. To light the flame that we hold up to grief, to look at it and to acknowledge that death is part of life and that life goes on, turning like the seasons, toward the sun.

Love ya, Mike.

How Not to Spend Your Golden Years

Not to wish anything on Dr. John Caulfield, but does Medicare even cover PTSD?

Goddamnit, these people have done their duty. They've given what we asked. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld and his neocon, Straussian, self-aggrandizing buddies have given us nothing but arrogance, incompetence and lies. Let's hope their karma runs over their dogma before too much more damage is done.

Building a Bridge To the Fourteenth Century

A study by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) finds that so-called "abstinence" programs are full of disinformation and outright untruths. Hey, no surprise there. But I'll bet you didn't know that dowries are "an honor to the bride" and that

"Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

Your tax dollars at work.

Newsday columnist Marie Cocco sums it up better than I could:

The basic bargain is that women are to provide unquestioning (if not adoring) domestic support in exchange for financial security.... In the name of teaching girls the benefit of waiting to have sex, we're telling them their self-worth relies on a dependent relationship with a man. It's just the kind of Dark Age thinking that can lead a girl directly to self-destructive sex.

All the statistics I've seen indicate that abstinence programs don't work. But abstinence isn't the point. The point is control. Women are to be sexually available (at any age) and docile (at every age).

Steep Learning Curve

So W. has flatly ruled out raising the payroll tax in order to "fix" Social Security, then in the next breath says he won't "prejudge any solution". (Except raising the payroll tax.) As in Iraq, the administration starts out with the desired outcome (in this case, dismantling Social Security) and works backwards from there to construct the justifications for that outcome. What the hell kind of logic is that? No wonder these guys don't believe in science.

White House "budget" director Joshua Bolton, when asked where the money would come from to finance the transition to private accounts (estimated at $1-2 trillion), said "I don't want to prejudge how they [costs] might be accounted for."

Is "prejudge" the Rovian word of the day? Trouble is, these people aren't interested in exercising any judgement at all. Let's hope that other members of the president's party are better at math than he is at semantics.

The fear campaign is on to try to stampede the public into believing that, once again, they must sacrifice their self-interest in order to solve a problem that, while not invented out of whole cloth, is not the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" either.

Supporting the Troops

I hear that Donald Rumsfeld got an earful today while visiting the troops in Kuwait. Army Sfc. Thomas Wilson wanted to know why he and his buddies are still having to scrounge for spare bits of metal to fortify their vehicles. Rummy's answer: you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

Brrrt!! Wrong answer! You go to war when you're ready, since you've spent two years secretly "planning" the damn thing.

He also said that armor might not keep you from getting blown up anyway. Gee thanks.

I hope that Sfc. Wilson isn't going to lose his job for asking an honest question. OTOH, maybe he could go to work for CNN.

Judge Not, That Ye Be Not Judged

Value=per thousand

Now, this problem our red-state brethren are having could perhaps be explained as a function of economics. Poverty seems to correlate with a high incidence of teenage pregnancies, as well as of abortions (and a host of other social and familial ills); in turn, teenage mothers have difficulty acquiring the education and skills to lift themselves out of poverty.

But it could also be viewed as an indicator that whatever is being done in these states--abstinence only programs, faith-based counseling (i.e. shaming), avoidance of the subject in the hope that it will go away-- isn't working all that well.

Some (not I) might say that teenage mothers are OK as long as they're married teenage mothers. But if I had to guess I'd say that many, if not most, of these young women are either unmarried or were married post-pregnancy. So you can see why people in so-called red states believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket (when maybe it's only their part of the world that's going to hell in a handbasket).

Of course, you could also look at this and say that maybe they ought to clean up their own act before they presume to preach moral values to the rest of us.

Judge not, that ye be not judged. (Matthew 7)

What he said.

The More Things Change...

''In Latin America, there are no terrorists -- only hunger and unemployment and delinquents who turn to crime'',[ he was quoted as saying]. ''What are we going to do, hit you with a banana?''

So says retired general Rene Vargas, the former head of Ecuador's military. Apparently Donald Rumsfeld, not content with conducting his own perpetual war, is now urging Latin American defense ministers to get their militaries involved in domestic police work in the name of fighting "terrorism". No matter that these same countries have spent the better part of three decades getting out from under the shadow of military "dirty wars" conducted against their own citizens. Does the phrase "death squad" mean anything to you?

"...during the drafting of the final communiqué, Rumsfeld's delegation resisted a Canadian move, backed by Brazil and Chile, to balance its anti-terrorism provisions with explicit references to international human rights and humanitarian law..."

Our neighbors to the south seem to be somewhat sceptical of this new paradigm, but look for the administration to push for this sort of "cooperation" in future dealings with them.

Around the Bend

If you have not already done so, dear reader(s?) [can there be more than one of you?], check out Baghdad Burning, a "girl blog from Iraq". The author writes about events in her country with a sharp personal focus and a bone-weariness that does not soften her sense of outrage.

If you find yourself starting to think of "the Iraqi people" as a semantic construct, or if you think that the meaning of this war is all about us--read Baghdad Burning.

Also, not exactly new but never out of date: Juan Cole's "If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?"

Pure hell, I imagine.

No Surrender

From Truthout, on the prospect of holding off the forces of darkness:

Perhaps it will all come to nothing. Certainly, with Congress and the White House under the sway of people whose moral compass points ever downwards, with the highest court ripe for the molding by these people, with a national news media that avoids hard truth the way a cat avoids water, it is difficult to imagine the break of dawn coming anytime soon. We are down to the ethic of total opposition, and as lonely as that estate may be, it is what we have, and we owe it to those who have suffered beyond our comprehension to continue as we began.

I refuse to concede defeat in any way, shape or form. Yet I must consider the possibility that all efforts will come to naught. In doing so, I am reminded of a scene in 'The Lion in Winter.' Geoffrey, John and Richard await their executioners, and Richard demands that they face their doom with strength. Geoffrey scoffs, "You fool. As if it matters how a man falls."

Richard's reply: "When the fall is all that's left, it matters."

While I don't think the fall is all that's left, I understand pretty clearly the grim prospect before us. Will the GOP collapse under the weight of its own inner contradictions? Will the conservative hard core overreach and wake people up to the true nature of their intentions? Don't count on it. If we're waiting for someone else to screw up, we're screwed already. "The ethic of total opposition" is what we're left with. By no means all: we need to fight and keep fighting for electoral reform; we need to create an ongoing visible media presence to keep our issues on the front burner. But total oppostion is what it's gonna take to stop this doomsday machine. And we must stop it.

No compromise in defense of mother earth--and of our families, our communities and our real, honest-to-goodness moral values.

What would Jesus do?

My Sentiments Exactly