Jan Brewer

There are so many things to write about this week that I have been sitting here for 20 minutes trying to decide which one.  Let’s see.  There is the absolute fiasco which is the Republican Primary to determine who will be the challenger to President Obama.  We have the four stooges – Mitt, Newt, Paul and Santorum.  And that woman from Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer. 

For those of you not acquainted with Brewer, she is the one who got the bill passed in the Arizona (AZ) Legislature authorizing law enforcement to stop anyone they thought guilty of a minor infraction who might be an illegal immigrant from Mexico.  This, of course, in a state where there is a large population of American citizens of Mexican descent as well as Native Americans.  Now there is only one way to tell if someone “might” be an illegal immigrant from Mexico and that is by the color of their skin.  This, of course, is racial profiling and is illegal, but that didn’t stop AZ.  At the same time, she got the prison system in AZ privatized, and the corporations who now run the prisons are big donors to her campaigns.  Further, these corporations contract out the prisoners to corporations as very low paid workers to various other corporations.  This used to be known as slave labor, but in AZ and other states apparently it is now OK.  So there is a supply of prisoners to the private prisons who cannot strike, demand better working conditions, get medical care or other benefits.  What a bonanza for the corporations.

So, what brought her into the news this week is the episode at the AZ airport when President Obama went to Phoenix, AZ to give a speech.  She met him on the open tarmac, in front of his Secret Service detail, and I assume her security people as well, and all of the media with their cameras.  They had a verbal exchange of some sort, and she ended up with her finger in his face.  After this extreme rudeness, she had the temerity to state that she felt threatened by him.  Felt threatened?  Out in the open, with all sorts of security people there, and the media and their cameras?  What is wrong with that woman?  That was a racially charged statement.  She felt “threatened” by a black man.

I’ll tell you what is wrong!  She is a radical right wing Republican.  I’m not sure what her religion is, but it really doesn’t make any difference.  If she had any, it is defiled by racism because it has been superceded by her right-wing radicalism, which is obvious from the exchange with the President and her shaking her finger in his face, and her scorn for Americans of Mexican descent, and her wanting a steady stream of virtual slave labor for her corporate buddies.

Sometime take a look at her mouth when she is talking and take a good  look at her eyes.  In my opinion, there is pure maliciousness embodied there.  Not a pretty sight!  As a person I know, for whom I have great respect, and who lives in Tucson said of her.  “She is a total embarrassment for the state of Arizona.”

South Carolina Primary

A couple of blogs ago I was hoping for the end of the Iowa Caucuses.  Now I am desperate for the end of the South Carolina primary.  What a side show yesterday with Rick Perry ‘suspending’ his campaigning  (if a candidate ends it, no more fund raising, so they suspend instead); Rick Santorum actually winning, sort of, in Iowa, but no one really knows because ‘they’ lost ballots from 8 locations (whoever ‘they’ are); Mitt Romney stating that the 99% are trying to divide America, which is wrong because America is one nation under God, ignoring the many quotes in almost any sacred scripture about caring for widows and orphans, and others who cannot care for themselves, such as elderly parents, who are all part of the 99%;  Stephen Colbert sort of but no quite entering the balloting by making a deal with Herman Cain to use Cain’s name because Colbert is too late to get his name on the ballot, and South Carolina doesn’t allow write-ins, so a vote for Cain is really a vote for Colbert; and the final hysterical point last night at the Republican debate was Newt, after telling wife #1 he wanted a divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery, marrying the woman with whom he was having an affair while wife #1 was in the hospital, and we presume before that, then asking wife #2 for an open marriage because he was having an affair with a staffer, but instead she divorced him (smart woman), marrying wife #3 with whom he was having the affair which caused the open marriage conversation with wife #2, and then blaming all of this on the media for daring to ask him questions about it.  I am desperately hoping that Stephen Cain Colbert wins in South Carolina. 

Believe it or not, I intended writing this blog on some history of capitalism, referred to as our ‘free market system’.  Our economic system titled ‘capitalism’ actually was formalized when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, published on 3/9/1776.  Business had flourished before that for some 10,000 or more years in various forms from bartering to the exchange of money for goods.  But to hear the radical right, both religious and secular, the free market emerged simultaneously with Christianity, and they are somehow synonymous.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  This linking of capitalism with Christianity actually emerged during the 1930’s in an effort to thwart FDR and his efforts to bring the United States out of the Great Depression.  This linking is beautifully described in an article from the New York Times, 1/18/12, by Kevin M. Kruse, “For God So Loved The 1%”.  The following quote is from the article:

“During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices.  Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state.  Notably, the American Liberty League, financed by corporations like DuPont and General Motors, made an aggressive case for capitalism.  Most, however dismissed its efforts as self-interested propaganda.  (A Democratic Party official joked that the organization should have been called “the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second, you can see right through it.”)

Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions.  After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.

The Rev. James W. Fifield, pastor of the elite First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, led the way in championing a new union of faith and free enterprise.  “The blessings of capitalism come from God,” he wrote.  “A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.”

This new united faith was really most comforting.  One need worry no more about those who lived in our areas and were impoverished.  If they really wanted to, they would get a job and work.  Since they had no job, it was obviously their fault.  It was obvious they had a flaw in their make-up that made them lazy.  Thus, poor people of whatever color were portrayed in film and fiction as shiftless and lazy, or shiftless and violent.  Certainly not anyone over which we need spend time worrying about.  Our efforts will be spent making sure we gain salvation and in sending missionaries overseas to convert the savages to Christianity.

This attitude really rang a bell in my consciousness when Newt Gingrich commented about the Occupy Movement that these people needed “to get a job, after they took a bath”.  In truth, I was personally offended in that I had attended an Occupy rally in a town near me, and had taken a shower first.  Painting thousands of people as though they were all one indicates to me a great lack of intelligence.  But then, this bunch of candidates for the Republican nomination have not struck me as having much grey matter between their ears.  Please read the first paragraph again.

Jesus plus nothing

This Republican primary season is truly remarkable.  The rhetoric is surfacing all sorts of coded messages, some of which are blatant, and others are much more subtle.  It is the latter where one must be rather careful not to read into what is being said something which is not there.  The one that I actually thought rather clever, and not very destructive, was calling Mitt Romney “a lighter version of the President”.  This could be taken two ways.  Romney is actually closer to the center than his campaign is portraying him, or his skin color is “lighter”. 

Recently the radical religious right has started saying that President Obama wants to remake the United States into a form of European socialism.  There is a lot of underlying meaning in that phrase that may not be obvious to anyone but a political junkie like me.  First, however, I must explain that much of my thinking about the radical religious right has been shaped by two books by Jeff Sharlet:  The Family and its sequel: C Street.  Thus, I must refer any reader to about the first half of Sharlet’s book, The Family for an in depth historical description of what I can only sort of allude to in a short blog such as this one.  My own family experience from the 1930’s, however, corroborated what Sharlet had to say.

When our country was first founded, the Puritans had what was, to my mind, the rather peculiar notion that one could tell who God was smiling on because of the man’s material wealth.  Thus, the acquisition of wealth became the goal in order to be one of God’s obvious chosen.  If a man was not wealthy, it was due to some fault within the man (women were not included in this discussion) that prevented God from rewarding him.  Also part of the Puritan theology was that salvation came through faith in Jesus as found in Scripture, and not also through “good works”, as was promulgated by the Church of the anti-Christ in Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, and subsequently the Lutheran and Anglican Church.  Martin Luther coined the phrase: sola scriptura.  That is, one could only be saved by faith alone, which could only be found in the Christian scriptures.  The Puritans firmly believed that America was to be the New Jerusalem – the City on a Hill that was to be the Christian beacon for the rest of the world.  The old ways in Europe were corrupt and false, and were led by the Pope – the anti-Christ. 

In Sharlet’s book, the new Puritan attitude, was first taught by Abram Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant, and subsequently taken up by Doug Coe.  Coe is the current spiritual leader of The Family and of C Street.  In this theory, the owners of the companies are to be given absolute loyalty by the workers, even if the owners, or CEO’s, do not reciprocate.  This loyalty is to be given because the owners can be seen to be blessed by God because they are the owners.  Because employee unions expect the workers to be loyal to the unions, and because the unions work for the welfare of the workers which may be antithetical to the aims of the owners, unions are anathema and are to be fought to the nth degree.  Further, the fat treasuries of the unions are a danger to the owners because these funds can be donated to elect politicians who will restrict the unfettered freedom the owners really want.  So we have the proliferation of Right to Work laws, which prevent unions from organizing and collecting dues, which is blatant union busting.

Probably one of the most astounding chapters in The Family was the one titled, “Jesus plus nothing”.  Very simply put, all one needs is a personal relationship with Jesus.  It doesn’t hurt to read the New Testament, but not particularly required.  What basically just having “Jesus plus nothing” does is eliminate all of the great religious and spiritual thinking of the past 2000 years.  Ignore St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, all of the great Catholic teachings on social justice, and after WWII, all of the great writings of theologians such as Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Dietrich Bonhoffer, et al.  Not that one needs to read or understand all of these theologians but thoughtful people need to have a least an understanding that there are many ways to live Christianity, and to relate what Jesus actually taught to how we live our lives.  And how we live our lives is vitally important for the common good of all the earth.  According to a philosophy of “Jesus plus nothing”, one simply prays to Jesus and He will let you know what you should do.  I have often wondered how often Jesus absolutely supports what the person petitioning Him for!  Further, by ignoring the Hebrew Scripture entirely, this right wing radical Christian fundamentalism loses all of the great wisdom and spiritual writings without which Christianity is nothing lacks any considerable substance, and becomes form over substance.

So how does this relate to what is being said in this election cycle?  If a candidate truly believes that God will reward the ardent believer with material possessions, and that the person without the possessions has none through some grievous fault of his or her own, then of course social safety nets are in direct opposition to what God really wants.  And anyone who promotes social safety nets, and wishes to tax the wealthy to provide the funding to do so, is an anti-Christ European socialist, taking away the goods that God has rewarded people with to give to someone God has not smiled on. 

The sad thing is that although many people do not subscribe to the religious belief that God rewards with material goods, that mind-set is still very prevalent among many conservatives and liberals alike.  One hears it all the time:  blame the victim.  If someone doesn’t have a job because they worked for a company Bain Capital destroyed and lost their home because they couldn’t make the payments and is protesting with the 99%, then Newt Gringrich thinks they should just get a job, after they take a bath! 

I’m looking forward to the upcoming debates about what kind of a country we want, and what form of capitalism results from these debates and concerns expressed above.  The conclusions from this debate will also determine what kind of people we will transition into.

Iowa Caucases

Thank the powers that be that the Iowa caucuses are over!!  It had gotten to the point with the media TV coverage of rampant speculation about which candidate was going to do what that it was sort of painful to turn on the TV.  So we didn’t!

It is true that Michelle Bachmann has dropped out of the race, but then in a sense that is sort of sad.  Her thought processes are so amazingly convoluted they are, or as a candidate were, hilarious.  Almost as hilarious as Rick Perry’s gaffes during the all too numerous Republican debates.  Really!  If one wants to reorganize the federal government by eliminating certain departments, for heaven’s sake, remember which ones you want to get rid of.  My speculation is that it won’t be long before Rick Perry is history. 

And that leaves us with five candidates: Buddy Roemer, who never makes it to the debate stage because he gets less than the 4-5% required by someone; Jon Huntsman, who is arguably the only adult in the room; Ron Paul, who is neither a righty or a lefty, which confuses some people into thinking he is sane; Mitt Romney, who strapped his Irish Wolfhound, Seamus, to the roof of the car when the family went on vacation; and Rick Santorum, who has a real problem with sex, which is easy to determine because he never shuts up about it.  Of these five, only the last three have any hope, at this point in time, of ever being the candidate.  That could change.

The underlying problem with these three is that they not only lack an ability to carry a thought to its logical extreme, which then makes it untenable, but they lack a certain sense of compassion.  Ron Paul’s statement during one of the Republican debates that if a person didn’t have health insurance, then went into a coma, he should just die.  If the individual didn’t have enough of a sense of personal responsibility to buy the insurance, then why should society have to shoulder the burden of his care.  There was no discussion as to why the individual didn’t have insurance.  Did the individual have a pre-existing condition that prevented his acquiring insurance?  Too poor to buy insurance?  Doesn’t matter.  He should just die.  Congressman Alan Grayson brought up the notion that the Republican solution to health care was that the person should just die quickly. Ron Paul has proven him right.

Then we have Mitt Romney.  His strapping the kennel, with dog, to the roof of his car, has a sort of sick humor to it, but it is also indicative of his underlying philosophy of business.  The business practices of the company he not only ran, but owned, Bain Capital, of buying up businesses, “making them more efficient” by firing employees, cutting salaries and benefits, cutting R & D, putting them into bankruptcy, then selling the assets, and other “efficiencies” made Bain Capital a lot of money, like millions, but it left thousands of workers and their communities in dire straits.  His objective was to make a massive profit, and he succeeded.  Sort of like strapping the dog to the roof.  His objective was to take the dog on vacation, and he succeeded.  Never mind whether the means he used to accomplish that was in the best interest of the dog! 

Rick Santorum is the ultimate in hypocrisy, however.  He talks a lot about his Catholicism, but it bears virtually no relationship to what the Church has taught over the last 100+ years relative to social justice.  He has latched onto anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality apparently as the only “Christian” values, but ignores the fact that Jesus apparently never mentioned them at all.  In all of my years I have never met anyone who was pro-abortion.  Some people simply want women who feel they must have an abortion to have a safe, legal one.  Many who are anti-abortion want to make sure that services are available to these women so that they can see a way out of not having an abortion.  But that thought apparently has never occurred to Santorum.  But it is also his constant ranting about gays in the military and his opposition to gay marriage, his opposition to birth control, and his really creepy descriptions as to why he is opposed to these makes me sure that he has a problem with sex.  He may have seven children, or however many it is, but all that indicates to me is that he has had sex 7 times.  Not necessarily an indication of not having a problem.  There used to be an old cliché, “Them what can, do.  Them what can’t, talk about it.” 

My own political philosophy, both in and out of office, was one of fiscal responsibility and social justice.  It was my contention that government should run as economically and as efficiently as possible.  Tax dollars should not be spent without great scrutiny.  We needed to be frugal because we needed those dollars for the services that people need to survive, and to be safe.  Like law enforcement, emergency services, schools, libraries, good roads and bridges, medical care, adequate pensions or Social Security, to name but a few.  We live in a complex society.  We need complex solutions. 

I sometimes feel like I have fallen down a rabbit hole.

Tomorrow

Usually I post things on Friday, but lost my source material somewhere in my computer.  I will continue to search, and will have something up tomorrow.