American Exceptionalism and Wikileaks--some thoughts

I haven't had time to blog about the Wikileaks, but think that it has been a whole lot of "what else is new?" Who really thought that diplomats snipe about each other behind the scenes?

The only surprising thing, and it wasn't shocking, was the revelation that many of Iran's neighboring Muslim countries want the US or Israel to attack Iran. Makes me think that we are in danger of repeating the same mistake we made during the Cold War when we assumed that all countries calling themselves Communist were monolithically behind the Soviet Union. We know for sure that isn't the case. Why do we assume that all Muslim countries think alike? Or that all Muslims think alike? Or even that all Muslims who hate us think alike. We made a mistake (often) of making Communists our enemies even when they might have disliked the Soviets or the Chinese more than we did. I hope we don't make the same mistake with terrorism.

And this thing of American Exceptionalism is back in the news. Well, has been since the 2008 election. SOF noticed that Palin makes a point of bragging about how she believes in American Exceptionalism, and taking shots at Obama for supposedly not.

I can't help but wonder if we are talking about the same things here. Language is tricky. I really wonder if Sarah Palin brags about believing in American Exceptionalism simply because she believes that we are super good. This blog suggests that many very conservative homsechoolers see Exceptionalism as another way of saying that America is a Christian nation, or

"defined as the idea that America has a special place in God’s plan for history"

.
Others still see it as a critique of American arrogance, and that is certainly how I have used it in class. Indeed, as Michael Kinsley put it:

American exceptionalism—the belief that the rules of nature and humanity don’t apply to us—

So when we argue about American Exceptionalism, what do we mean? I seriously have doubts now about Palin's intelligence and would not be a bit surprised if she has no idea that there is an entire intellectual world out there that talks about these things. Nor does she care.

But it does seem to me that we might benefit from at least talking about the same definition if we are going to argue for or against.

Thursday rant--Republicans, climate change, DADT, and protect the rich

A rant I sent out to a few friends.

********

Saw this morning that the incoming Republican majority will cancel the panel on climate change. After all, why study something that isn't happening? And why isn't it happening? Because the Bible doesn't talk about climate change, but does say that God won't destroy the world through floods. Again.

But then again, who needs polar bears, right? Not when we can focus on the business at hand--protecting the unbelievably low tax rates of millionaires. Because the Republicans are for the average man. Unless he is in the lower middle class and has either seen his wages stagnate, savings disappear, and debt soar. Or if he has lost his job in this recession (that wasn't really that bad, and we shouldn't have done anything about it anyway). So he is trying to get a job in a crappy economy and trying to avoid bankruptcy or losing his house? No, more important to protect the low taxes of Rupert and his minions. Because taxes are evil. Duh.

In other news, of course, Republicans are standing on principle to sue the Government over the ACA. Because, as they know very well, people should have to earn access to healthcare. If they are too poor or too sick to get healthcare, fuck them. Oh, and we will keep the gays from serving openly. Not because conservatives hate gays. Or maybe.

In kentucky, using state tax support, they are planning to build an amusement park for Creationists. And here in Oklahoma, 70 percent voted against those evil Mooslims, and any of those "foreigners." Not that the Republican party has issues with bigotry. Oh no. And while our Governor-elect trotted out the dog whistle against her opponent that she might be gay. Didn't say that, of course, but hinted at it by calling attention to the fact that she has never married. And our family values Republican is on her second family--which I have no problem with, btw, but just wish that family values meant something other than a weapon to beat the shit out of Democrats. Republicans can cheat, divorce, adulterize, whatever. Hell, they can hire prostitutes and serve in the Senate.

Republicans can cheat on their wives, as long as it is not with another man.

It is enough to make me weep openly. But I think I will go look at pictures of polar bears while they still exist.

The Tea Party's white past

Is the Tea Party racist? I think so, though I suspect for most of them they don't even realize that they are racist. It is buried in their subconscious, and only the fact that their President is now a dark skinned man has brought it out. And even then, it isn't at the surface for so many.

But the racism is there. It is there in a high school acquaintance of mine who shocked me on Facebook by saying that we should absolutely not send money to Haiti, since they weren't grateful for it anyway. And in so many other ways.

But I am working my way through Jill Lepore's The Whites of their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the battle over American History and enjoying it immensely. Lepore moves nicely between the past and the present, and along the way, reminds me of a lot of things I had forgotten and teaches me some things I didn't know. For example, I am reminded in her book that Robert Bork was the guy who agreed to fired Archibald Cox, and that conservatives considered him a great mind worthy of the Supreme Court.

But Lepore makes some very good historical linkages that, as a specialist in the post Civil War, I had simply forgotten. Those early Tea Partiers and revolutionaries were battling within themselves over that great American sin: slavery. In fact, there were movements to abolish slavery at the time, and the first Tea Party had to decide whether to fight that battle then, or lose the South in the fight against the British. They chose, of course, to unite against the British. Samuel Johnson, the British writer, noted the incongruity when he sarcastically asked "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

Lepore, however, notes that the modern Tea Party sees none of this nuance and conflict.

But it wasn't the whiteness of the Tea Party that I found most striking. It was the whiteness of their Revolution. The founding Fathers were the whites of their eyes, a fantasy of an America before race, without race. There were very few black people in the Tea Party, but there are no black people at all in the Tea Party's eighteenth century. Nor for that matter, were there any women, aside from Abigail Adams, and no slavery, poverty, ignorance, insanity, sickness or misery. Nor was there any art, literature, sex, pleasure or humor. There were only the Founding Fathers with their white wigs, wearing their three-cornered hats, in their Christian nation, revolting against taxes, and defending their right to bear arms.

To a certain degree, Lepore sees the historical profession at fault for this. Historians are often criticized for writing only for other historians, and avoiding the broad narrative in favor of the issues of race, class and gender, and to a degree, rightly so.

But as Lepore notes, that criticism comes from inside the profession as well, and that fact alone reveals the difference between the Tea Party's non-history and the rational world.

Scholars criticize and argue--and must, and can--because scholars share a common set of ideas about how to argue, and what counts as evidence. But the far right's American history--its antihistory--existed outside of argument and had no interest in evidence. It was as much a fiction as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, reductive, unitary, and, finally, dangerously antipluralist. It erased slavery from American history and compressed a quarter century of political contest into "the founding," as if ideas worked out, over decades of debate and fierce disagreement, were held by everyone, from the start. "Who's your favorite Founder?" Glenn Beck asked Sarah Palin. "Um, you know, well," she said. "All of them."

There was though, something heartbreaking in all this. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution lay nostalgia for an imagined time--the 1950s, maybe, of the 1940s--less riven by strife, less troubled by conflict, less riddled with ambiguity, less divided by race. In that nostalgia was the remembrance of childhood, a yearning for a common past, bulwark against a divided present, comfort against an uncertain future." (96-97)

Lepore says it better than I ever could, but I always find this kind of Disney history sad. The past is so complex and so interesting and this rewriting blanches it into nothingness, and turns complicated people into cardboard figures. And when they then base public policy on that fake past, then we all lose.

Patriotism and loyalty. And then there is Dick Cheney and Karl Rove

Had a weird conversation with a conservative friend the other day. He is a former Marine and posted one of those Facebook pass-ons:

I am an UN-APOLOGETIC AMERICAN!! I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of AMERICA, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands, one nation under GOD, indivisible, with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for all!! I grew up reciting this every morning in school. We no longer do that for ...fear of OFFENDING SOMEONE!! Let's see...how many AMERICANS will re-post this & not care about offending someone!

I questioned him on the side. I didn't want to get into it with his people. Again. I got into trouble the last time when I questioned why their local school district had been teaching a bible study during school hours.

He is a good guy and his ministry spends a lot of time working with people in Mexico. But there is this kneejerk patriotism that just seems everywhere on the right. During our exchange, he noted that he had served and yet there were people everywhere who apologized for America and even wanted to desecrate the flag.

I was thinking about this, perhaps, because I just completed a lecture on the Red Scare (second one). I was reminded that our anti-communism led us to add "under God" in 1954, and that the Pledge was then, and now, considered a loyalty oath by the far right. Any who questioned it must be communist or anti-American. And I was reminded how fucking easy it has been for conservatives to question the loyalties of liberals.

Then I read David Corn's summary of the Plame debacle and was reminded how conservatives are quite willing to cheer disloyalty and even activities that undermine our national security--when it suits them. I don't think any of my far right conservative friends or relatives ever stood up and said that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove were unAmerican. Even after we knew that they exposed the identity of a covert agent for a political vendetta. We don't even know the extent of the damage. But as Plame herself noted, after that, surely our enemies were going through their address books and seeing who they knew who might have had contact with her. How many of those "assets" ended up in torture chambers or dead? It isn't a reach to think some.

All because Dick Cheney wanted a political critic silenced. All because he didn't like a vocal critic of their war policy. Yet the far right still sees Dick Cheney as a patriot and a loyal American. But someone who burns a flag or doesn't repeat the Pledge?

You tell me who has caused more damage to our national security.

Just too good not to post (with f-bomb warning)

Just received this in an email:

Subject: Word play

Did you know that… if you rearrange the letters in "so-called Tea Party Republicans," and add just a few more letters, it spells: "Shut the fuck up you free-loading, progress-blocking, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, violent, hypocritical douche bags, and deal with the fact that you nearly wrecked the country under Bush and get over it that our President is black."

A couple things that annoy me this morning

Actually, there are several, but I can't post about some. But last night, I was thinking about our gubernatorial race this last month where Republican Mary Fallin said that she was a superior candidate because she had born children. Left unsaid, of course, was the fact that her opponent, Jeri Askins, had not. Fallin's statement annoyed for several reasons; her assumption that motherhood was related, and that her motherhood stretched over two marriages yet she was able to invoke the family values Republican bullshit, or that it was code for spreading a rumor that Askins is gay.

Thinking about that last one, I realized how angry that made me at conservatives and conservative Christians for their bullshit about homosexuality. I don't know that Askins is gay or not gay--it matters not to me. But if she were, she actually fits the model of what conservative Christians say about homosexuality. After all, and again, we know nothing about her sexuality beyond the fact that she has never married, but if she were gay, she has not openly acted on it, and has, in fact, kept it under wraps.

The fact that the rumor plays is proof that when so many conservative Christians say that they "hate the sin, but love the sinner" is clearly bullshit. The rumor would not work if that were the case. When most conservatives say that they don't want homosexuals to act on it, they are lying. They don't want people who have homosexual feelings to exist. No matter if they act on it or not. They are repulsed by them, period. Perhaps because of their own sexual inadequacy, I don't know. But this is why conservative evangelicals and conservative Christians have very little credibility when they say they aren't opposed to gay people, but they just don't want them to marry, or they just don't want them to adopt. They don't want them to be, and they will never look at a person who has those feelings as normal, regardless of what they do. Bullshit.

*****

Speaking of bullshit, our former president has supposedly "written" a book. I had always thought you needed to read at least one book before writing one, but who am I to say? But W is on his "book tour" and starting the process of trying to rehabilitate his presidency with claims like the good one that he was actually a dissenting voice on the Iraq war.

Whatever.

But one that caught my eye was his revelation that Cheney was very angry with him for not pardoning Scooter Libby:

"Bush recounts that a furious Cheney told him: 'I can't believe you're going to leave a soldier on the battlefield.'"

Just a point here. When Cheney talks about a battlefield and a soldier, he is talking about a war against liberals, not Al Qaeda. Cheney, himself, had no problem throwing Valerie Plame to the wolves even though she worked on fucking WMDs for US. His battlefield has nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with his arrogant sense that American belongs to warmongering asshats like Cheney and Wolfowitz, and that his real enemies are liberals.

Bush reports that he was concerned that the Libby issue would scar his friendship with Cheney, but says that they are good friends now.

Goodie.

Conservatives and compassion

I actually kind of liked Bush's whole "compassionate conservatism," because I liked the idea. I wasn't ever convinced that he really meant it, but I liked the idea.

But I am increasingly convinced that most conservative policies are driven by self-interest. If it doesn't touch me, personally, then I don't want to pay for it. If the Iraq war doesn't effect me, then why should I care? If the Patriot Act doesn't actually change my life (because I have nothing to hide), then who cares? If we are torturing people who aren't like me, why should I care? And if tax increases won't actually help me personally, then why should I pay more?

And you see that in Texas after Tuesday's election with talk of withdrawing from Medicaid altogether. Some of them, at least, are talking about maintaining care, but just funding it at the local level, but I don't trust that at all. The complaint comes from the fact that more people are added to the Medicaid rolls. And conservatives don't think that healthcare is a right. You have to deserve and earn access to life-saving treatment. Just being human isn't enough. All that shit about our "Creator" endowing us with the right to life? Yeah, it doesn't mean for the poor. It means for the wealthy and the well-heeled.

I would love to hear otherwise, I really would. I hear a lot of conservatives saying that of course the poor should be taken care of, but not by the government. And I hear a lot of people saying that the Bible doesn't command the government to take care of poor people. And if we are talking about soup kitchens, and are talking about a non-depression era where the amount of poor is relatively manageable, then maybe. But if we are talking about access to life-saving, and incredibly expensive healthcare, then I have to say bullshit. Conservatives don't have an alternative. Local churches are not going to be able to fund home-care for the disabled, nor are they equipped to pay for a chronic disease. So, if that is true, the alternative is either the government or conservatives telling them to just go without.

If that is Christian, then Christ was incredibly callous and uncaring. And I don't believe that for an instant. But that is how the people most loudly proclaiming their faith act. Those who shout "Jesus" the loudest seem to have very little compassion for anyone other than themselves. How unimpressive that is.

Ugh, democracy hurts

I am reminded tonight of 2004, and the dark morning after Bush's reelection. That next day, I wrote this angry and sad post. I reread it tonight and remember that pain.

Tonight I am not in as much pain because I am not as surprised. I have expected this. I am saddened, however, as I don't understand the anger at expanding healthcare and rescuing the economy. I don't get that.

Hell, there is so much I don't get. Here in Oklahoma, we passed a law banning the use of Sharia law in our courts. Yeah, that is right. And no, it wasn't a problem before now. And it hasn't been a problem anywhere. No, this is just simply bigotry and racism written into our code. Thank your local Republican for that. Something clicked in the last few years and they have decided that open hatred of Muslims is a good and Christian thing to do. Plus, because it is simple to sell to ignorant and uninformed people, it makes for good politics. "Look, there might be a Muslim hiding behind that tree!"

Unfortunately, it isn't just Muslims, but also Mexicans. Also here in Oklahoma, our new Governor proudly proclaimed her support for the law in Arizona, and in one race, opponents of a Democrat placed Mexican flags next to his yard signs. "Vote for this guy and the Mexicans will bring in Muslims to kill you."

Meanwhile, of course, we refuse to fund anything meaningful and good. That same new Governor promises lower taxes. As God is my witness, I have no clue how taxes in Oklahoma could get lower. I know that support for education could get lower. I know that attention to the disabled and poor could get lower--though that seems hard to fathom.

In all seriousness, I really need a thoughtful Republican to explain to me how the modern GOP can't be described by the following slogan: "I have mine, you can fuck off!"

Even, might I add, if that "mine" came with the assistance of tax-payer money. Perhaps a rewrite could be "I have mine, but have no interest in helping any of you."

As always, I must say that my biggest disappointment remains with the religious right. I grew up among them and thought at least there was a shred of moral consistency. But they voted for David Vitter tonight (in huge numbers). Hiring prostitutes wasn't an impediment to reelection. Passing healthcare, however, was. I look at the conservative church and I see hatred for the poor, for the uninsured, and for the environment. I see fear and loathing for Muslims, and that might not even sum it up. I see people who are so convinced that God is on their side, that they see liberals as their enemies. Not people with whom they can disagree, but actual enemies. A member of our distant family stopped talking to me because I am a supporter of Obama.

As I said in 2004, I will survive this. I will focus more on music and my friends. I resent, however, how this political environment makes me feel as if concern for others is a liability, and that selfishness is a virtue. How does that happen among people who wave that Bible around like a prop? How do selfishness and mean-spiritedness and ignorance and racism and hatred become virtues in that world? How do concern and compassion become weakness?

There are two things I really battle this evening. One is to simply disconnect from politics completely and just say "fuck it," and let the environment and the poor and education go downhill. That is what the people want, they should have it. We shall see if that happens. I hope that this loss will shock the progressive community out of their passivity and get them to fight for what they value.

But the second one is harder. As with 2004, I find myself wanting to be less associated with Christianity. I find so much of it on the right to be so very unchristian and so unlike Christ. I really want nothing to do with it. I want nothing to do with the squabbles over parsed scripture, and the debates about the gays and the fear and the false righteousness and the fact that the religious conservative population has become more conservative than Christian. I still want to believe. But I struggle to believe in a God who's followers are so hateful.

But tomorrow, I will get up and go teach, and hug my wife and my dogs and see some friends. I will listen to music and hopefully find some time to pick up an instrument. And this weekend, my friends will gather to bemoan this election and hoist a drink or two.

The Tea Party and history

Picked up Jill Lepore's The Whites of their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the battle over American History yesterday.  Lepore is a great historian, but unfortunately, the very people who need to read this will never know it exists.  This book, after all, lacks a Glenn Beck blurb on the back.  But this book is right in my wheel-house--because Lepore understands that historical narratives like this occur in a cultural context.

I will post more on the book as I work my way through, but found this great line from her introduction on the perils of fundamentalism.

Historical fundamentalism is marked by the belief that a particular and quite narrowly defined past--"the founding"--is ageless and sacred and to be worshipped; that certain historical texts--"the founding documents"--are to be read in the same spirit which religious fundamentalists read, for instance, the Ten Commandments; that the Founding Fathers were divinely inspired; that the academic study of history (whose standards of evidence and methods of analysis are based on skepticism) is a conspiracy and, furthermore, blasphemy; and that political arguments grounded in appeals to the founding documents, as sacred texts, and to the Founding Fathers, as prophets, are therefore incontrovertible.  

That very accurately describes what we see around us, I think, and explains how conservatives can assert that this is "their country," rather than "ours."   None of that makes me feel better, mind you, but it is good to see a historian stepping into the public sphere to discuss how history is written and understood.  And, if I understand her argument, she also is critical of the profession for not helping craft the narrative around the Bicentennial when the nation needed one.

Speaking of that, btw, though I didn't watch the rally, I took great pleasure in reading about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally for Sanity" yesterday.  Especially welcome were the wonderful signs.  A few of my favorites:

• "I spell check my political rage."
• "I'm generally okay with this administration!1! I just have points of disagreement I'd be happy to talk calmly about."
• "Please STOP Trying to Take Back 'Your' Country. It's MINE Too! How 'Bout We SHARE?"
• "Hitler was a total Nazi."
• "GOD HATES FIGS."

Extending grace to a Tea Party thug

Is there anything more representative of the Christian faith? I will say that I have a lot of trouble with this very idea--of extending grace and compassion to people with whom I disagree vehemently. I try. In person, I am usually pretty good at it. Email and blog allows a certain distance and impersonalization, perhaps.

Anyway. One of the reasons I have found myself so very frustrated with Republicans and the idiots from the Tea Party is the open endorsement or licensing of anger and boorish behavior. People who brandish their Bibles are screaming epithets or spreading lies. And it was only a skip and step to people being actually violent. Of course, that right wing violence has surfaced in several attacks on police over the last two years, the assassination of Dr. Tiller in Kansas, and the crazed right winger who opened fire at the Holocaust museum.

Now it is occurring on the campaign trails. Everyone has heard about the Rand Paul supporter who stomped the head of a liberal woman. That's right. She was down on the ground and he stomped on her head. He then blamed her for it (along with the police) and then demanded that she apologize to him. This is an abusive man, and a criminal. Somehow, the Tea Party has told people like him that they are right to be angry and should be angry. Then they wonder when he stomps on a head.

Luckily, she is ok, but not quite willing to apologize. But she does respond with a level of grace and compassion that I could not muster.

"You and I, as fellow citizens, and we, as a country, have a choice. Either we choose to continue the cycle of inflicting violence upon each other, screaming at each other, insulting each other and putting one another down or we and find a way to sit down and start listening to each other. We'll see how far we get. We are all viciously and vociferously feeding a fire that will only burn us down together. We must reach inside ourselves and make space for each other. We must forgive each other. We must believe in our capacity for transformation. The moment we choose compassion and reconciliation is the moment that we will begin to move toward freedom. There is no other way.

I believe that you should be held accountable for your actions but I also recognize the incredibly negative impact that the consequences must be having on your life, and I wish you all the best as you yourself heal from this. Violence hurts everyone."

Some of my friends are not terribly convinced this approach will work. I just find myself so impressed with this young woman and wanting to believe that we can rise above this kind of bickering and violence. I know her response was the Christian response (though I have no clue about her religious preference, btw), but I am not sure I believe that will work.

Jesus the socialist

The best status update circulating around Facebook:

"Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You're thinking of Jesus."

Tea Party/Republichristian rant.

I have been thinking about the Tea Party/Republican lie machine, and there is so much wrong there. Someone posted the list of 8 or so things that most Americans simply are misinformed about. TARP was approved by Bush, not Obama--and it is mostly being repaid. The Stimulus worked--just not as well as we would have liked because it wasn't big enough. Healthcare has the real possibility of cutting into the deficit--until the Republicans fuck it up, that is. And Obama has been more fiscally responsible than Bush was.

But facts don't matter. And the Tea Party doesn't even care about facts. And the Republican party only cares about having more votes. Facts are largely irrelevant to them as well.

Coming home this afternoon I heard a story about how Republicans (thanks to that evil little slug, Frank Lutz) have turned completely against any kind of climate change legislation. They refer to it as "myth," even though the scientific community--you know, the people who actually study climate and know the difference between it and "weather"--know it to be absolutely true. Every year, over the last few, have been warmer than the one before. That was true last year even though so many people experienced a hard winter.

But I have come to realize that conservatives--and this sadly includes those who profess loudly that God created the earth in 6 literal days--simply reject scientific evidence they don't like. Not because they have a working knowledge of the issues, mind you. But because they don't like the conclusion. Period. I am honestly trying to think of anything I do like that. I hate the idea of climate change. It fills me with a sense of foreboding. But I don't just deny it simply because I don't like the conclusion.

And how about those Christian conservatives? I hear from some that they too care about the environment, but they vote repeatedly for people who gut environmental regulations and protections. Every fucking time, actually. So I really don't want to hear about how creation is "proof of God" and all that bullshit. If it is so spiritual, why do you do nothing to protect it?

I honestly don't understand this brand of Christianity. I seriously don't. Evolution is a myth (because they are afraid of evolving from a less complex creature) but protecting the environment is liberal hippie bullshit. Evidently, their version of God doesn't really give a shit if creatures he supposedly created out of whole cloth go extinct. Especially, and absolutely, if saving that species were to inconvenience anyone.

Christianity, in this context, is about show. Those churches are glorified clubs, where people play ball and socialize. And yes, they donate some to the poor--even, of course, as they vote against the poor and vote for people who demonize the poor as lazy and immoral. And here on this blog, they flex their chests and say, "who are we liberals to make them give to the poor. God doesn't want them to be forced to give to the poor. They will do it on their own, thank you very much."

More bullshit. Well, it might not be if food kitchens were all it took to address poverty. But it isn't. And private charities have never been able to carry the load of all the need. And these people know it.

More show. Creationism as irony, I guess, when what it really means is that nature is to be exploited and used up. And once again, an itinerant preacher who avoided personal wealth and trappings of power is the poster child for the well-heeled and gated community set. Or the Preachers in the 1000 dollar suits who sit with Presidents and CEOs. A faith built on sacrifice and self-denial that is now all about self and all about feeding that self. Who are we to challenge how much money they make? Who are we to suggest that their consumption (and my own, to be sure) threatens species (including our own). Who are we to suggest that even illegal immigrants should be fed and taken care of?

In their Bible, God hates feminists and liberals and Muslims and gays. So many will not admit it, but is exactly how they vote. They long for a time when minorities knew their place and women had to stay married whether they liked it or their husband abused them. They won't admit it, but that is exactly how they vote. They cheer the torture of brown people in dark prisons, yet ironically watch Mel Gibson's Passion film with tears in their eyes. (Note: the Romans were as justified torturing Christ as we are torturing Muslims. Surely the Romans had a right to be afraid of insurgents in their midst?) They won't admit this, but, yeah, that is exactly how they vote. And they talk of God's creation and the beauty of his mountains and valleys and sunsets and sunrises, but really would prefer to live in luxury rather than talk about what that nature really means to our survival. And they really, really, really, don't mind if a few innocent people are executed in the name of justice. After all, those people have to be criminals. Why else would they be there? If capital punishment and torture were applied to white conservative Christians, they might just care. That is exactly how they vote.

Round 2

Took Streak in this morning for another round of chemo. I just did a review of the last time, and it was over Labor Day weekend that he finally pulled out from the last round. We are so grateful for this last 2 months. They have been magical and at times, he has seemed like his old self.

But it was time to do another round. This time, given Streak's age, we decided to do a half dose of the IV and some of the other drugs. And we are really going to watch his fluid intake and his stomach, because that seemed to be the problem last time.

I was doing fine this morning until I arrived at the clinic. While they gave him the IV, I went across the street to get some coffee and burst into tears in the parking lot. I keep thinking this will get easier--that the bonus time will some how make it not so hard.

Anyway. He is here today, and doing well. We will take that.

Baseball season and life

And yes, I am fully aware that my Yankees lost to the Texas Rangers last night. Eh, it happens. I can not and will not cheer for the Rangers, but they certainly deserved to win.

Last night, we watched Bull Durham, which is one of our favorite movies. Tightly written and without wasted scenes, it is one of the better sports movies out there. And I think I related to it because of the element of failure. I am Crash Davis in a different context--that of tenure track jobs. In fact, the film depresses me every time--at least just a little, because I feel his pain when a young person walks out of grad school into a tenure track job.

I wish this had the rest of the scene, but it is a great one.



After this, Crash introduces his friend Sandy who hit .376 one season in the minors. Crash himself has nearly set the record for home runs as a minor leaguer, but was only able to spend 20 some days in the majors, or "show."

Even better, and more apt, is the sense that Nuke actually deserves to go to the show. He has all the talents to succeed at the major league level, but the film suggests that despite his weaker physical skills, Crash would also make a great contribution if given the chance. His baseball intellect is far superior to those with greater talent.

I don't want to take this too far. I know full well that many of the people who landed tenure track jobs deserved them, and they will be much better "scholars" than I ever would. I don't have the drive to spend all of my time working on publications. But I also know a lot of people who, if I dare say so myself, are certainly no smarter than me, and some not even as smart, but were in the right place at the right time. Life has its unfairness, and that is not new.

When I step back from the ledge, I know that I rather enjoy my career in the minor leagues. I am a better teacher than many of my tenured colleagues, and my lifestyle gives me flexibility that few my age enjoy. Stability would be nice, but for now, it has worked for us.

I am also reminded, btw, of how little importance these things have when I watch friends around me struggle with loss or illness or tragedy. Job title is pretty meaningless in that context.

Anyway.

The GOP--or the party of new ideas

Just read that one of Cantor's "Young Guns" (no, not the one who likes to dress up like a Nazi) wants to completely abolish public schools.  I am willing to admit that is a "new" idea, and I am sure we will be fine under a Republican majority.  After all, that is not unreasonable at all.  

Of course, it is perfectly in keeping with the Tea Party, as it their central principle appears to be "I have mine, so you are on your own." If you can afford to send your kids to private school, and have no sense of how education helps reduce crime and poverty--then what do you care about the unwashed?

But the GOP keeps turning them out.  If it isn't Christine O'Donnell puzzled by the contents of first amendment, it is former NFL lineman John Runyon who when asked to name a recent court case which he disagreed, he pulled out Dred Scott.  As I joked elsewhere, at least he is opposed to Dred, but good grief.  And isn't there anything more annoying than someone who has made millions in an artificially controlled environment made possible by the affluence of Americans--to spend their post sporting life trying to cut their taxes?  Perhaps Mr. Runyon should try plying his trade in one of those really low tax countries and see how much money a professional lineman would make there.  Or perhaps we are just seeing the end result of too many head injuries.  

And the list keeps coming.  Sharon Angle thinks that the Latino students look like Asians. She is a self-proclaimed values legislator, btw. That includes, evidently opposing states having to honor restraining orders from other states. But the "asian" comment is just weird.  That seemed important to her, and I am sure she will make a fine Senator.  I love that the GOP is running a guy in Florida who was nearly charged in Iraq for torturing a prisoner on the spot.  Nice.  And Club for Growth favorite, Pat Toomey is a great thinker.  This, from wikipedia caught my eye:

During Toomey's tenure in Congress, he supported legislation that would speed up approval of forest thinning projects in 2003, supported opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and development, opposed implementing the Kyoto Protocol, and opposed legislation that would mandate increased vehicle fuel efficiency standards and provide incentives for alternative fuels.

These are all people who can win, mind you.  The party of new ideas.  

And let's not forget the actual policies.  The CDC just reported that the states with abstinence only sex ed have, and this is just shocking, the highest teen pregnancy rates.  I am sure there is no correlation, but it is interesting.  The liberal socialist gay loving states have much lower pregnancy rates.  And lower divorce rates.  

Meanwhile, I can't go anywhere without hearing that Obama has taken the country on a dramatic left turn. Man, I would love to see that. I seem to have missed all the leftist stuff. And when I hear that, I also hear that the Tea Partiers aren't concerned with Obama's race, but are just "mad as hell" about spending and the debt. Yeah, right. The right wing militias are back in vogue and incredibly popular again among the white middle class chicken-hawk contingent. For some odd reason, they were mostly no where to be found when Bush pushed through the Patriot Act. Just imagine the response to the PA under Clinton or Obama? But it isn't about race at all. No, the rise in death threats against the President is just because of the economy. The Tea Party had no problem with massive tax cuts during unfunded wars, but their driving philosophy is fiscal responsibility. Right. That is why so many of them are "birthers."

So, well done there conservatives. Well done. You must be proud.

Ben Roethlisberger rediscovers his Jesus talk

Notice, that I didn't say "rediscovered Jesus." Maybe he has. I don't know. Let's just say that I have a healthy cynicism for famous people who like to tell me how much they love Jesus.

Full disclosure. I have always disliked Roethlisberger. I certainly was not surprised that he did well in the NFL, but I have always found him to be one of the examples of the fake Christianity that drives me crazy. I still remember him talking about how God had allowed him to start ahead of the other guy in college. Reminds me of David Carr thanking Jesus for a completion.


Of course, given how bad Carr has been as a pro, perhaps he should thank God for a completion. Except that is still stupid. Inanely stupid. And I am amazed at how Christians have allowed their faith--the one that they claim is central to their very existence--be so trivialized in the public square.

And Big Ben is back, and complete with all the God talk. Listening to his interview on ESPN the other day was sickening. It reeked of PR coaching, and front and center on that list has to be that you have to claim returning to God. I recognize that this might actually be true, but think that the "talk" about it is the trivialization part. And what annoys me is that it is only really available to right wingers. You can be accused of rape, after all, but returning to Jesus and begging forgiveness? Clean slate.

I am all for second and even third chances. And I am all for redemption. But I am tired of the right wing bastardization of the faith where only conservatives are forgiven. And in this case, we may have an abuser. I have to tell you, abusers don't stop abusing just because they discover God language. It doesn't happen.

And the amazing thing for me, is that conservative Christians seem to never follow up to hold accountability those pronouncing their God language. Accountability is part of the language too, but politicians and right wingers can claim that Jesus is their best friend, and no one shows up to check. I remember a guy who said that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher, and he went on to authorize torture. I expected (because I am naive) that Christian evangelicals would hold him accountable. Of course, they did not. They had stopped with the coded Jesus language and never bothered to inquire about how he actually lived.

If Ben is innocent, then I am sorry for his trials. I doubt he is, just because I am cynical about people who are used to being stars. I think they think they deserve what ever they want. But I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he might have actually seen the light. But spare me the God talk. Spare me the little aphorisms. Go out and treat others with respect, and then don't tell me about it.

The rage of the right--and their boorish behavior

Op-Ed Columnist - The Rage Won’t End on Election Day - NYTimes.com

Yeah, I know he is a liberal elitist from New York, but the litany of right wing hatred and boorish behavior is disturbing. It strikes me close to home, as I have seen people in my own circle (those on the right) either defend or tolerate the absolute boorishness. As someone said last year when they mused about the response if the Tea Party was black, the anger here, and the approval of that anger is perhaps the most disturbing thing. Any sign of anger from Obama was seen as a sign of some kind of radicalism on his part, while the Tea Party and Town Hallers shouted and even screamed their supposed anger. That meant screaming epithets at congresspeople, or even at the sick daring to defend healthcare.

And that has given us Carl Paladino and Sharon Angle. And Palin and the rest of the Republican party has either endorse, or looked the other way as they saw a political advantage.

I can say this with confidence. If I acted as they have, my conservative friends would be horrified--as would my liberal friends. This licensing of bad behavior is still disconcerting coming from the party that most readily claims a higher moral calling. I am not sure I have ever made complete sense of that--that the party of moral values could tolerate and even encourage Karl Rove and Ann Coulter. Yeah, yeah, the left has some bad actors. But when Representative Grayson compared his opponent to the Taliban, he was strongly rebuked by Jon Stewart for doing so. But when the right wingers go off the edge, we are told that "we need to understand their anger."

We are seeing the return of the idea that it is fine to be extreme and even hateful, as long as it is a right wing version of defending liberty. They truly believe it is their country and not ours.

Thursday night

And I am wiped. Second day of PT today and things are going well. I am tired and sore, but doing well. Took Streak to the vet today and think that we are looking at another round of chemo in a few weeks. That is what it is. It has been such a nice time with him that even considering a treatment is tough. But we have to look at it.

This week has been tough. I found going back to work much harder than I thought. My arm is doing great, but I was far more tired than I thought.

And the news is tough to deal with. Everywhere I turn, I see polling that shows the right winning big, and that is hard to fathom. I could deal with losing, but the right is putting up idiots like Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angel--people who have no background or understanding to actually lead us with policy. Thanks, Republican part. Your coddling of the far right has produced these idiots--people who are more dangerous than even Palin.

And this, just watching the local news, something I rarely do. Just saw coverage of a shooting in OKC where one party thought that another party cut them off and was threatening them. The party of the first part had a legal right to carry a concealed weapon, and decided to open fire. I understand the arguments for gun rights, but see very unintelligent people being told that they have the right to decide a serious threat and that they have the right to open fire after an 8 hour training course.

I have to say that does not make me feel safer on the roads. I have to say that nothing conservatives have done over the last few years makes me feel safer in anyway. After watching Republicans and listening to them, I feel like joining them and deciding that as long as something doesn't adversely effect me, I shouldn't care. So we torture people or execute the innocent? Say that our tax policies widen the gap between the rich and poor?

We are ok, personally (at least for now). Why should I care?

On perceptions and reality

I went to my surgeon this morning and he approved me losing the sling and driving. I assume that means I can now start cursing again. Because, of course, I stopped all that after the surgery.

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SOF alerted me to this interesting story about how Americans perceive wealth and poverty distribution in this country. Turns out, just as with our perception of how much of our national budget we devote to international aid (perception between 10 and 20 percent, while the real number is less than 1%) we are way off on wealth inequality. While the real number is that somewhere around the top 20 percent controlling 85% of the wealth in this country, people perceive that top 20 percent as controlling only 35% of the wealth, and when further asked what they would like to see, they want that wealth to be even more fairly distributed than that. The good news of this, as it appears, is that this belief crosses party lines. The bad news, is, however, that ignorance drives our political discourse and actual votes more than reality. Hence Sharon Angle--who is demonstrably an idiot.

The piece makes the obvious point that this goes back to that belief in the American dream--upward mobility, or the bootstrap myth. But the reality (if facts matter, btw) is that our social mobility is much less than it has been. Countries like Sweden (damn blonde socialists) actually have more opportunity for the poor to rise to the top. But don't tell the Republicans that. They are trying to cut the taxes of the wealthy as we speak.

Hmm, Christians can't do yoga?

Not surprisingly, Southern Baptist Al Mohler doesn't think Christians should do yoga. wow. Shocking from the denomination that was historically more concerned with stopping dancing than stopping segregation.

I am tired, and tired even more from blogging with my one useful hand, but I have just had it with the Christian right. They support torture, prefer the polluters over concerns about climate change, and cheer on the worst racists in the republican party. And ten bucks says they have no real objection to the demagoguery of people like Beck, and will have nothing to say about a scumbag like him mocking a family who lost everything in a fire because they didn't pay a 75 dollar fee.

But they will take a stand on yoga?

Useless.