Jesus Hates Muslims

Flip Benham, Director of a group called Operation Save America, leads members in a prayer Friday August 6, 2010 on Clinton Avenue outside the Bridgeport Islamic Society following a protest against Islam.

According to a bunch of Jesus-loving, Bible-reading Christians in Bridgeport, Connecticut, their professed savior of the world, who as far as I can tell from what we know about him in the gospels didn't hate anyone, hates Muslims. And to be sure that Islam gets the message, they gathered outside an Islamic center there and screamed this and other Christian truths such as "Islam is a lie!" into the faces of a group of Muslims gathered to pray. To pray! Oh, and they also screamed "Murders!" at a gaggle of young Muslim children leaving the center.

I continue to contend that this really kookoo stuff, which is happening all over the country, is a symptom of something much more sinister. There's nothing more fanatical and more hateful than religious certitude. My (albeit limited) understanding of religion is that it is by its nature tolerant of others since the journey to God and the search to understand the Truth is universal and incomplete. So the journeys and searches of others are to be respected. People who are positive that their course is the only one will be more than willing--they will be eager--to stamp out the apostates and "enemies of Christ [or Islam or Judaism or whatever--fill in your own godless enemy]" So the longer and more virulent these anti-Muslim protests go on, the more frenzy that is whipped up by the Right on this issue, the greater the likelihood of widespread bloodshed and violence in the name of Jesus. Haven't we been here many times before? And that turned out great, didn't it?

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Not Encouraging At All

For the second time in as many weeks I've run across something about the fact that it doesn't seem to matter what the facts actually are. People aren't swayed by facts. In fact--if you'll pardon the expression--misinformed persons, especially political partisans, when confronted with the real facts often become even more entrenched in their own beliefs, which may be based on information that's erroneous from stem to stern. This, brothers and sisters, is not good news at all, because, as you well know, politics have gotten increasingly strident and bitterly partisan. So what this news means is that we cannot expect our politics to get more civil. Strident and bitterly partisan are normative now. Looks like they will stay that way. Here's a snippet.

These findings open a long-running argument about the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about the interplay between the nature of human intelligence and our democratic ideals. Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.

For somebody like me, who has a great deal of faith in the power of knowledge and the ability of education, culture, and learning to actually shape people, change people, this is deeply discouraging news. And this is before we even talk about the amount of misinformation, lies, and evil falsehoods by the zillions out there in the Net. Obviously some of this becomes "fact" for some people. And now we find out that challenging this junk with the truth of the matter . . .  well, that's likely to make matters worse.

Quote of the Week

" America has transformed itself from a nation of earnest, muscular, upright citizens to a land of overfed barbarous morons ruled by grifters."

by James Kuntsler in "Clusterfuck Nation," August 9, 2010

Hear, hear! I say. And as I always remind you, the morons are armed to the teeth. 

Bombs Away

"Fat Man" atomic bomb explodes over Nagasaki

Last Friday, ignored as usual by the overwhelming majority of Americans, passed the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Today, and likely to be even more ignored, if that's possible, is the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which brought an end to the most horrific war that's ever been fought on planet Earth. Together these two bombings killed over 100,000 people and injured another 94,000.* I haven't been able to locate figures on the gender and age statistics of the victims, but it's likely more than half of these people were women and children. Many more thousands died in the years after 1945 from exposure to the radiation. And the long-term effects--incidence of various cancers in survivors--also continues.

So first of all, does it seem strange to anybody besides me that this year, for the first time ever,** the US and the UK had representatives at the memorial services in Hiroshima? Sixty-five years before this country acknowledges in a public way the misery and suffering it visited on the people of these two cities. That seems quite long enough. When I heard this on the news, it struck me as very odd that this was the first time, and I was glad to hear it, but that, I guess, is a measure of my naiveté. No, friends, not everybody was happy. Indeed, the president is being criticized for being "insensitive" to the feelings of the World War II generation.

From my perspective, all of us should be sensitive to anybody in any nation anywhere who had to endure the carnival of killing and suffering from 1939-45. My own father barely escaped with his life in this war. But to me, it's simply wrong not to acknowledge in some way the fact that human suffering is a universal, and the suffering we inflict upon ourselves by war is something that we all have chosen. That's what those representative of ours were doing in Hiroshima. And it was right for them to do so.

*This is a conservative estimate. Some studies put the deaths at over 200,000. Fact is nobody will ever know.

**Previously the US did not attend the ceremonies so as not the raise the question of whether it should apologize for the a-bombs.

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Birthright? . . . Not So Fast

And then there's this talk about changing the 14th Amendment to remove automatic citizenship from people who are born in this country. What else is going to become expendable because people have decided to hate somebody? I've long feared that the Constitution is slowly being eroded to fit the fears of people. It would have been inconceivable a few years ago that a U.S. senator could possibly countenance such an idea.

But now we're treated to the spectacle of Lindsey Graham, the Honorable Senator from South Carolina,  supporting this nonsense. Graham, who has not said anything I agreed with ever since he got to the Senate, just recently garnered a few points with me by leading the little gaggle of Republican senators voting to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. But now he's reverted to form: one of the leading spokesmen for the Republican wingnuts.

Let's just toss out the insane idea of messing around with the 14th Amendment in any way at all and just consider this from a political point of view. What sense does it make for the Republican party to alienate the burgeoning Hispanic population in the US? Don't they know that this demographic will constitute the majority of the US population in the not too distant future? Are they declaring themselves once and for all, the white peoples party? (Of course they are and have been for a long time, but we don't talk about that, do we?)

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Ground Zero Kookiness

OK, this has gone on long enough without my throwing in my two-cents worth in there. This whole furor about the mosque being built within two blocks of ground zero in lower Manhattan. I mean, what is this all about? My visceral reaction is "Is there no end to the meanness and hatred in this country?" The answer, my friends, is no. The first thing that strikes me is that the people doing all this hollering are also the same ones who shriek about their right to arm themselves to the eyeballs in accordance with their 2nd amendment rights. People like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Apparently 1st Amendment rights don't count. The right-wing blogs are broiling with outrage at the desecration of the holy ground and the memory of the 9/11 victims. (Just do a blog search for "ground zero mosque" and you will not believe the vitriol and hatred you will encounter.) We've almost come to expect this kind of slavering from certain elements of the right wing, but it's a bit disconcerting to learn that the majority of New Yorkers also oppose the mosque. Outright laughable is the spectacle of the city's Museum of Tolerance--I kid you not--coming out in opposition to the mosque. The museum is an offshoot of the Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. The Anti-Defamation League (ADF) is also opposed to the mosque. Huh?? We're in La-La Land, friends.

I know you're dying to hear the reasoning behind this. (I will take it for granted that your imagination can supply the "reasoning" employed by the hate-mongers.) Well, spokesman for the Wiesenthal Center, who echoes the sentiments of the ADF, says putting the mosque two blocks from ground zero says that the location is "insensitive" to the families of the 9/11 victims. He goes on to say: religious freedom does not mean being insensitive . . . or an idiot. Religion is supposed to be a beautiful [experience]. Why create pain in the name of religion?"

This is so logically fractured that it's irreparable. How many objections to this nonsense can you raise? Off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen. Just for starters, innumerable idiots enjoy religious freedom.

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Now It Can Be Told

I have thought long and hard about doing this post, but since I'm a full disclosure kind of guy*, I decided that not only will I do it, I have to do it. For little else has been on my mind of late. And up until now, there was some risk in being totally up-front about everything. That situation no longer obtains, as you will see.

Here's my spiritual/religious pedigree: Theist--Christian--Catholic. I've been this for all of my life. I've got 16 years of Catholic education. Except for a period of years when I was younger, I've been a church-going Catholic. And since 25 years ago, I've been a deacon in the Catholic church. That's an ordained position, not an honorary one. Had to study a long time to get there. Had to give up a sizeable chunk of my life during all those years in service to the church and the people in the church. I have considered it a blessing to be allowed to do this. A service, a give-back to God, who has given me everything. But now it's coming to an end. I requested to be retired from active ministry two days ago. I'm trying to get used to the idea that I won't be involved in direct church ministry any more . . . it's not easy.

But honestly, this was pretty much inevitable at some point, for if you know me or read me regularly, you know that I've had and have serious problems with the Catholic church for a long time. For a whole raft of reasons, obvious and not so obvious.

==>Like the horrendous, never-ending, globe-spanning sexual scandal that the Church has refused to address for years and years like the Christian institution it professes to be and instead handles the problem like a soulless multi-national corporation.

==>Like the all-male hierarchy which adamantly refuses to acknowledge the spiritual equality and sanctity of half of the human race.

==>Like the hypocrisy you can discover in every diocese, where taking care of the poor and helpless is the pulpit mantra and pleasures of materialism the pulpit's manna. Believe me when I tell you that for the vast majority of the Catholic clergy, problems such as how to pay the bills don't exist. And some of these guys live like potentates.

==>Like the steady, slow erosion of the Vatican II reforms and spirit which enlivened and inspired the best of us to want to serve God by serving the world's needs. Words like "collegiality" and "empowerment" actually seemed to mean something for a while. Not so much anymore. The dominant population in the Church today are conservative Catholics, people who were and are lukewarm with the Vatican II mentality in the Church at best and hate it at worst.

==>Like the incredible rigidity of doctrine and dogma which, to take but a single example, declares it sinful to prevent the birth of children, regardless of the family's circumstances, number of existing children, or psychological state . . . not to mention minor considerations such as global over-population and catastrophically-dwindling resources. Or that only men can be ordained or preach, when anybody who's been around the Church for very long knows it's the women who hold everything together and do the vast majority of the work.

I know this a totally one-sided presentation of the matter. And it's not really fair. There are millions of good Catholic people and the charitable works of the Church span the globe and bring solace and sustenance to the poor, bereft, and needy all over the world. So lest you think I'm just being bitter and overly critical, know that I don't bear any ill will towards all those "good Catholics" out there and their devotion to the Church.

But it is in the nature of the position I occupied in the institutional Church that I was embedded in the rigidly hierarchical apparatus that totally controls everything. The way this plays out in a parish is that one priest is pastor, and he is if not quite a god--that is reserved for bishops--then he's at least a Titan. Mind you, the parishioners, who financially support this guy and whole structure he comes from, have no say in who gets appointed pastor in their church. They are not consulted. Every so often, a new guy comes in and the old guy moves on. So what happens if the new guy that arrives is an emotionally-crippled authoritarian jerk? What kind of working relationship will he have with a deacon who's been ordained twice as long and who knows and understands nothing but collaborative ministry? How long do think it would take for the jerk and the deacon to clash? And how long do you think said deacon is going to hang around if he is stripped of his right to preach or to participate in liturgy? Well, dear friends, not long.

So I'm gone, and I won't be going back; but the jerk is not, nor are all those people it's been my blessing to serve. But God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.

*Which is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, my feelings about things are hardly ever a mystery nor is what's on my mind. It's called honesty or transparency. On the other hand, my feelings about things are hardly ever a mystery nor is what's on my mind. It's called idiocy in certain situations and with certain people.

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Creepy

Howard Zinn died last January at a ripe old age, and in his latest column for "Truthdig," Chris Hedges writes about the extensive FBI file that had been amassed on Zinn from 1949-74. For those of you who haven't read about him here before, Zinn was an activist historian, a key member of the New Left school of American historians, whom, as I recall, were pooh-poohed by the more staid members of the profession when I was in grad school.

But the point here is that Zinn was for many years considered an enemy of the state, a danger to the rest of the citizenry. At one point he was being followed by five--count 'em FIVE--agents. What an absurdity. Zinn was non-violent, a pacifist. What made him a danger was what he thought, and the fact that he had the courage to speak out and tell the truth, which is sometimes ugly and always threatening to a society's ruling class. Consider: he was a danger because he refused to become an FBI informant (bizarre, but true), because he was an anti-Vietnam War protester, because he was a civil rights activist, because he loathed McCarthyism.

What's really disturbing to me is finding out about something called "Reserve Index, Section A." This is a classification for people in whom the FBI has interest who will be arrested immediately and held in the event of a national emergency. Does that not give you the creeps? If a harmless soul like Howard Zinn can be on this list in the 1960s, how many people do you think are on it in our paranoid, Tea Party times?

Of course, I'm not surprised to learn of all this. But it's just creepy being reminded that Big Brother is always watching, and you better be thinking what he wants you to think.

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Populist Pandering and Other Anomalies

Well, I'm back from my travels and won't be on the road again till the fall. I like to travel, but I like getting home almost as well . . . in fact, just as well. Even when you're treated almost like visiting royalty, as we usually are when we visit relatives, God bless them all, home is still home, even if it is Oklahoma where the current temperature is 102 degrees.

I read today in the latest Newsweek--a magazine that just got sold (again), and that will surely not be surviving much longer. The Internet has done or will do all of the weekly news magazines in. Anyway, Fareed Zakaria, the talented editorialist, writes that Congress needs to let the Bush tax cuts lapse, for a quite simple reason: the country cannot afford them. But in the Alice's Wonderland that is American politics, even the Democrats, who still are theoretically running things, are running scared from doing this. They want to keep them only for the very richest. They opposed these taxes in 2001 & 2003. So if the tax cuts were a bad idea then when deficits were small, why are they a good idea now? I tell you, it's insane. Here are a passel of salient facts about the Bush tax cut, and why it ought to be allowed to die.

• It would cut the deficit by $300 billion. (And the Republicans, remember have been howling about the horrible deficits unceasingly.)
• Over ten years the tax cuts have deprived the U.S. Treasury of--are you ready for this?--$2.3 trillion. "According to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly half the cost of all legislation enacted between 2001 and 2007 can be attributed to the tax cuts."
• Everybody of course screams about taxes and what a burden we Americans have to shoulder. That says Zakaria, is a "nice piece of populist pandering." Wanna know something about our tax burden?
• Federal taxes as percentage of economy are at lowest level since days of Harry Truman
• Family of four in precisely the middle of income spectrum will pay only 4.6 percent of its income in federal taxes.
• Half the country pays no income taxes at all.
• Top 3 percent of Americans contribute almost 50 percent of income taxes.

The fact of the matter, given the massive expenditures for the two wars and the prescription drug benefit in Medicare, the tax cuts were a ridiculously stupid thing to do. They did not stimulate the economy nor did they reduce federal spending. Now, with everybody shrieking about the deficits, the people's servants in Washington are about to require that we all bend over and grab our ankles again.

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America's Gift to the World