Whose Side Are You On?

Whose Side Are You On?

Over on the National Catholic Reporter website, ncronline.org, there is an excellent article by Bishop Steven E. Blair, Bishop of Stockton, CA., Human Costs and Moral Challenges of a Broken Economy.  If you go there, it is within the Distinctly Catholic blog, third item down.

Bishop Blair’s concluding remarks, whether one is Catholic or not, should encourage anyone to go to NCR and read the entire article.

“On this Labor Day in 2011, in the midst of continuing economic turmoil, we are called to renew our commitment to the God-given task of defending  human life and dignity, celebrating work and defending workers with both hope and conviction.  This is a time for prayer, reflection, and action.  In the words of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI:

The current crisis obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones.  The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future (Caritas in Veritate, no. 21.).

Compare these words with the crass and senseless maunderings of Rick Perry (crass) and Michelle Bachmann (senseless).  They are both professed Christians, but in their statements there is no consideration of caring for the poor and/or vulnerable; there is no consideration of anyone other than the wealthy, both individuals and corporations.  This is such a corruption of the early Protestant settlers who believed that one’s spiritual circumstances could be discerned by one’s material circumstances, but who also understood that sometimes circumstances intervened.  For this bunch, circumstances be damned. 

They have no consideration of the fact that sometimes people are dealt a bad hand by life, and try as they might they need help to just survive.  For them, it is all the fault of the person in need.  If they had worked harder, prayed harder, whatever, then they wouldn’t be in the situation they are in.  They have forgotten the old saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”.  It is their own fault they need help, so don’t enable them to need more.

During this election season we need to remember that these folks believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that they are acting in accord with God’s wishes.  Both Bachmann and Perry have stated that they prayed, and God told them to run.  One of them has to be wrong!  Regardless of the religion, the most dangerous people in the world are those who believe that they know exactly what God wants.  This gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want to do.  If they wake up in a foul mood from eating too much pizza the night before, look out!  It is sort of like the Red Queen, “Off with their heads”.

We have a similar situation now in this country to the one Abraham Lincoln faced with people coming in to him to tell him that he should remind the people of the North that God was on their side.  Lincoln’s response to that was that he would not because he would rather be on God’s side.  Pretty good response, and one I wish our presidential candidates would emulate.

It Ain't Necessarily So!

There is so much to write about today that it is difficult to focus on any one of them.  Let’s see here.  We have the lousy economy, brought about by political intransigence on the part of the radical right wing of the Republicans.  We have the more or less radical left ranking on Obama because he is not doing exactly what they want him to do, completely ignoring all of the really positive programs he has gotten into place. 

We have 8 or 9 trolls from the Republicans as candidates for the Presidency, with the worst troll, Rick Perry, from Texas acting like a deranged cowboy and talking like a cocky, naughty fifth-grader, all the time setting himself up as a Christian.  And of course there is Michelle Bachmann spewing her hate-filled speech, and setting herself up as a Christian.  Ron Paul is right up there with the rest of the trolls, as is Mitt Romney, although he keeps his religion more or less quiet.  The only really good candidate, Tim Pawlenty, dropped out.

Here in my county several years ago there was an election in one of the communities wherein two or three candidates were so far out in left field that a third of the electorate didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t think anyone would actually vote for the space-cadets.  Well, the people who put up the space-cadets to run worked really hard, and the space-cadets won.  The community ended up in bankruptcy, had some of their latent powers taken away by the state, and are just now beginning to come out of the mess the space-cadets caused.

We need to take a lesson from that.  So the Republicans have put up some trolls to run.  We have to make sure that they do not get elected.  We musn’t be so smug that we think no one in their right mind would vote for them.  Well – that ain’t necessarily so!! 

Bi-partisanship? I don't think so!

I had a really interesting conversation recently with a very good friend for whom I have much affection, and who thus shall remain nameless.  It took me quite a while to understand what it was about the conversation that confused me, but thanks to the inevitable 2:00 AM thinking pattern that I have, it finally surfaced.

We were discussing national politics – like what else these days?  We come from the same liberal corner, so that was not the problem.  What she said was that when she listens or reads what politicians say, both sides insist that they are correct and the other isn’t telling the truth.  She was confused as to what to believe, and that the media is no help because they all, except Faux News, do try to present both sides in a balanced way.  Which is the subject for a future blog.

What I found odd when I finally figured it out was, where is her memory?  She is a highly intelligent woman.  When I hear some politician sound off about how terrible the other side is, and how his/her side is trying to really work in a bi-partisan manner, my memory tells me that this isn’t really true.  For example, when Eric Cantor or John Boehner gets up and says that he wants bi-partisanship, it really upsets me because their idea of working in a bi-partisan manner is for the Democrats to do exactly what the Republicans want.  To those two, and many others, that would be working in a bi-partisan manner.  I find that actions speak a lot louder than words.

During this debt crisis fiasco, when the information kept surfacing that the Republicans had mostly all signed a pledge to Grover Norquist that they would under no circumstances raise taxes in any way, shape or form, this indicated to me that the Republicans either were lying about bi-partisanship, or they don’t or won’t understand the word ‘bi-partisan’.  Knowing that the Democrats wanted to close tax loop-holes and tax corporations and individuals who have a net income equaling $250,000 or more a year, sticking to that pledge to a Republican lobbyist is not my idea of bi-partisanship.

One needs to remember what has been said and done, by both sides, relate those words and actions to what is being said now to determine for oneself who is lying.  There is a pattern in these speeches of the Republicans, and that is a constant repetition of half-truths or out and out lies.  I keep going back to the infamous, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.  Josef Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister, 1933-1945

Faux Facts

Senator John Kerry was a guest this morning on Morning Joe (8/5).  There was much discussion about the debt ceiling crisis and the 513 point plunge in the Dow yesterday, but he made some very good comments also about the media.

He discussed the custom of the media of presenting both sides of an argument as though both sides have equal validity.  It should be the responsibility of the media to do a little investigating to determine if both sides are arguing from facts, or from faux facts.  My definition of faux facts derives from the famous quip attributed to Senator Patrick Moynihan:  “You are entitled to your own opinions.  You are not entitled to your own facts.”  We have a great many people in both the country and in the Republican Party with this fundamentalist mind-set of wanting their own facts.

An article in Truthout.org, August 3, 2011, Henry A. Giroux, “Breivik’s Fundamentalist War on Politics, and Ours”, is an excellent article regarding the nature of fundamentalism of all varieties, and its effect on our society.  I have some quotes from that article that I believe are pertinent to what is happening in our country at this time. 

The article begins with the fact that within a week of Breivik’s Norwegian carnage, “…the US Republican Party leadership, in an effort to rally its members in the budget battle with the Obama administration, screened a short clip from the 2010 Ben Affleck movie, The Town.”  The clip, though spoken, is violent in the extreme because it contains the following statement, “I need your help.  I can’t tell you what it is.  You can never ask me about it later.  And we’re going to hurt some people.”  No questions asked.  Just “we’re going to hurt some people.”  Like this is no big deal.  Yeah, so what!!  And this clip was used to motivate Republicans to remain firm in their position to dismantle programs that would provide services to vulnerable adults and to children. Yeah, so what!!  No big deal.

From Giroux’s article:  “The tragic slayings in Norway raise anew serious questions about domestic terrorism and its roots in right-wing ideology and fundamentalist movements. Breivik's manifesto "2083" and his murderous actions remind us of the degree to which right-wing extremism is more than a minor threat to American security - a fact we have been all too often willing to forget. The foundation of such violence, and the insistent threat it poses to democracy, is not to be found in its most excessive and brutal acts, but in the absolutist worldview that produces it. As the Swedish religion scholar Mattias Gardell insists, "The terrorist attacks in Oslo were not an outburst of irrational madness, but a calculated act of political violence. The carnage was a manifestation of a certain logic that can and should be explained, if we want to avoid a repetition."[5]

Elements of such a logic are not only on full display in American society, but are also gaining ground. The influence of extremist and fundamentalist ideologies and worldviews - whether embodied in religion, politics, militarism or the market - can be seen currently in the rhetoric at work at the highest levels of government. How else to explain that just one day after the deficit settlement in Washington, Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, in an interview with a Denver radio station, referred to President Obama as a "tar baby."[6] It is hard to mistake the racist nature of the use of the term "tar baby," given its long association as a derogatory term for African-Americans. Soon afterward, Pat Buchanan wrote a column that began with a shockingly overt racist comment in which he writes: "Mocked by The Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain as the little people of the Harry Potter books, the Tea Party 'Hobbits' are indeed returning to Middle Earth - to nail the coonskin to the wall."[7] What is clear about this type of racist discourse is that it creates a climate where hatred and violence become legitimate options. It also indicates that the violence of extremist rhetoric is alive and well in American politics; yet, it is barely noticed, and produces almost no public outrage. Moreover, this type of fundamentalism and extremism is about more than just the rise of the Tea Party. It is a growing and ominous force in everyday life, politics, and in the media.

A rigid, warlike mentality has created an atmosphere in which dialogue is viewed as a weakness and compromise understood as personal failing. As Richard Hofstadter argued over 50 years ago, fundamentalist thinking is predicated on an anti-intellectualism and the refusal to engage other points of view.[8] The other is not confronted as someone worthy of respect, but as an enemy, someone who constitutes a threat, who must be utterly vanquished. Michel Foucault goes further and insists that fundamentalists do not confront the other as:

a partner in the search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat.... There is something even more serious here: in this comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional surrenders, putting forward as much of one's killer instinct as possible.[9]

Missing from the fundamentalist toolbox is the necessity for self-reflection, thinking critically about the inevitable limitations of one's arguments, or being morally accountable to the social costs of harboring racist ideologies and pushing policies that serve to deepen racist exclusions, mobilize fear, and legitimate a growing government apparatus of punishment and imprisonment.[10] What connects the moral bankruptcy of right-wing Republicans who embrace violent imagery in order to mobilize their followers with the mindset of extremists like Breivik is that they share a deep romanticization of violence that is valorized by old and new fundamentalisms, whose endpoint is a death-dealing blow to the welfare state, young people, immigrants, Muslims, and others deemed dangerous and, so, "disposable."

And later on Page Four, “I am not suggesting that Breivik's actions can be linked directly to right-wing extremism in the Congress and broader society, but it is not altogether unjust to suggest that what they share are a number of core concerns, including a view of immigrants as a threat to American nationalism, an embrace of anti-Muslim rhetoric, a strong espousal of militarism, market fundamentalism, hyper-nationalism and support for a host of retrograde social policies that embrace weakening unions, the rolling back of women's rights, and a deep distrust of equality as a foundation of democracy itself.[11] Chris Hedges outlines the elements of such a fundamentalism when he writes:

Fundamentalists have no interest in history, culture or social or linguistic differences.... They are provincials.... They peddle a route to assured collective deliverance. And they sanction violence and the physical extermination of other human beings to get there. All fundamentalists worship the same gods - themselves. They worship the future prospect of their own empowerment. They view this empowerment as a necessity for the advancement and protection of civilization or the Christian state. They sanctify the nation. They hold up the ability the industrial state has handed to them as a group and as individuals to shape the world according to their vision as evidence of their own superiority.... The self-absorbed world view of these fundamentalists brings smiles of indulgence from the corporatists who profit, at our expense, from the obliteration of moral and intellectual inquiry.[12]

“At work here is a moral and political absolutism that more and more dehumanizes young people, immigrants, feminists, Muslims, and others relegated to the outside of the narrow parameters of a public sphere preserved for white, Christian and male citizens. Breivik acted upon his hatred of Muslims, leftists and immigrants by murdering young people whose activities at a Labor Party Camp suggested they might usher in a future at odds with his deeply racist and authoritarian views. As Scott Shane, writing in The New York Times, put it, and it bears repeating, Breivik, "was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam."[13]

Giroux’s article is rather long, and if you wish to look up his footnotes, I suggest you find the article on Truthout.org.

That being said, fundamentalism, whether religious, political, economic, or whatever, never achieves anything in the way of creative solutions, because, since the fundamentalist has all of the answers already, based on faux facts, there is no need to search for other solutions.

A Carefully Crafted Psychodrama

The carefully scripted psychodrama by the cohort of the Koch Machine (including Grover Norquist) in Congress on the so-called debt ceiling vote has now taken place.  One comment I heard was that it is now water under the bridge, but unfortunately the bridge is in such bad shape that it is in danger of collapsing.

Most people I have talked to about this have agreed that it was a terrible decision, but with such intransigent Tea Partiers throwing a tantrum and refusing any rational discussions, there was little else that could have been done, other than sign the damn thing.

What a decision President Obama had to make.  Give in to the bullies, or avert, at least for the time being, an economic world-wide famine.  In my opinion, those TV talking heads or columnists who are claiming he ‘blinked’ have missed the point entirely.  I wasn’t there in Washington and could only watch them on TV, but it seemed to me that the majority of these pundits have never been through an economic depression, and haven’t a clue when they so carelessly dismiss the effect on lower and middle-income people.  I have a friend who was a teen-ager during the Great Depression.  Her comment last week was that she remembers vividly having nothing to eat every night at dinner but green beans from their small garden flavored with bacon bits and the grease.  This went on for weeks, and they were really glad to have that much.  I have fewer vivid memories, but I do know that I simply cannot buy anything that isn’t on sale, or that isn’t greatly needed (as opposed to wanted) because of memories I have of that time.

No, there wasn’t, in my opinion, much the President could do but sign the deal.  And that is the opinion of a great many people I have talked with.  The pundits may think he ‘blinked’, but some of the rest of us think he made a wise decision.