the defeatists!

Not so easily dismissed...

"Don't call me a saint; I don't want to be dismissed that easily." Dorothy Day

Ok, the election is over. The irrelevant continue babbling, and the nonidelogue technocrats who enable the ideological bastards are trying to regain some semblance of groundedness. In the annual meeting of the Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, they couldn't come up with a statement on the economy in the US. But, they decided that they'd unanimously endorse Dorothy Day for sainthood.

Oh happy day...of course, St Dotty of Staten Island would drip cigarette ashes on the proclamation, tell 'em to wrap fish in it and go do something that actually could help somebody. Taking over the mantle of Irrelevant, clueless nonsense, the American Catholic Bishops are playing into the hands of what my old friend and consulting Feminist Radical Catholic Theologian, Mary Hunt refers to as the second largest religious denomination in the country --  the ex-Catholics some of whom like me who pay attention. By endorsing the Sainthood of Dorothy Day, they're not wrong.  But, there are a lot of contradictions in that endorsement that we should probably not forget; they obviously have.  Or, and this is troubling on multiple levels they don't care.

If Saint Dorothy Day wandered into the offices of the American Catholic Bishops Cabal and Chowder Sipping-Marching Society, and flipped through the policy letters posted on the bulletin board -- "No birth control paid for by insurance companies!" "Abortion is the unforgivable sin" "Religious freedom is under attack!" "Vote for the Rich, not the Democrats" and "The pederast priests were temped by the dewy butts of the altar boys so they need to be forgiven...",  Then Saint Dorothy Day would snub out a cigarette in one of the bishops' cup of coffee, tell them to sell the jewelry and give the proceeds to the poor and then go hold some drunken wino's hand while he had the DTs...

She wouldn't be seen with the people who are going to cannonize her unless they were going to give the Catholic Workers a bunch of money. This would irritate them, as would her calling them fat Mick and Dago bastards, and telling them to get off their fat asses and follow Jesus...Intentionally undiplomatic, politically incorrect, coherent, focused on the big picture and opposed to crony capitalism and accomomodation with people like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, she's a problem for these guys who are soooooooo smooth and comfortable in the corridors of power.

She was comfortable there as well -- not because she took them seriously, but because she had a knack for cutting to the reality of the issue -- as long as people are cold, hungry, homeless, need health care and clothes and hope and education, we are revealed for the corrupt, ugly and evil species that we are. If you're not doing everything you can to fix it, you're wrong. Greed and pride in greed are sin; allowing people to need the basic necessities of life and a fair share of hope and prosperity is sin. She'd walk up to Ratzinger and say something like "Red Prada pumps? What would Jesus do? Aren't you ashamed? You should be ashamed..." Oh, they'll pretend they love her. They'll pretend to emulate her. They'll praise her...and then go off to ask Trump and Murdoch for money for the upkeep of the facade and the whitening of the sepluchurs. 

Like Nelson on his tower, watching his world collapse....or not

 The world is getting to be an odd place these days. There was a time, chronicled particularly well by Robert Sherrill decades ago in Gothic Politics in the Deep South. In it, he chronicles the sort of nonsense engaged by right wing ideologues where someone's capabilities and fitness were maligned by referring to them as a "notorious thesbian." Sherrill's book is still in copywright and available, and can be hilarious -- except it's entirely too true.  Could easily be re-written with a new cast of characters, replacing Lester Maddox with Rick Scott and Herman Talmidge with Bob McDonnell. The new version of the old" entitled and progress-threatened" are smoother, don't so obviously smoke big cigars and drop" nigger, faggot, dyke, Cath-O-Lick . Macaca and Kike" as easily as their predecessors did 40 years ago. But, don't kid yourself that the old bigotry, parochial xenophobia and plain ignorance are still there. President Obama has ignored this for the most part, which I think has been a tactical mistake. Being above the struggle doesn't help either the struggle or yourself, when your pillar is torn down and you're dragged off to the nearest sour apple tree for lyniching. He's not confused, and knows exactly what he's up against -- he made a good humored but biting response to some of the nonsense when he told a crowd that the McCain campaign had just accused him of fathering two African American children. He should recycle that line...

Crispin Sartwell is a reasonably well regarded Political Philosopher. I say reasonably because he's entirely too prickly to ever be beloved by the philosophical community. Crispy is as much Demosthenes as Aristotle; a true small government guy, he's an anarchist. Seriously. And an associate professor of Philosophy at Dickinson College adjacent to the Army War College at Carlysle Barracks. Crispin has told me he really enjoys arguing and talking with the students and faculty there; he finds their candor and knowledge refreshing. Well, of course these are the service's intellectual high rollers being groomed for senior leadership roles. He probably never got to hang around a lot of complete idiots with stars like Tommy Franks or up and comming idiots like LTC (retired in lieu of Court Martial for violation of the Laws of Land Warfare) Allen West. Anyway, Crispin despite the being a practicing philosopher is a pretty level-headed guy and he wrote a piece today somewhat despairing of our ability to communicate in a radically polarized world.  

"so insulated is each group from the other that the members of the opposite group sink to something like an inhuman or monstrous status. and within each group, the sources of information and opinion are shared, while almost no one, i believe, really goes and looks for something from the other side, which is strange to me. but i guess if it's already obvious that they're monsters or dolts, why would you? the funny thing is that if you subtract the politics and just work out in east berlin, pa or have lunch with a colleague, most all these people seem like ok people, so each one's idea that the other is evil or merely manipulated doesn't seem plausible. "

Crispin writes exceptionally well, especially when he's not writing philosophy. He tries, but as we all know, ever since Kierkegaard died of pneumonia and Wittgenstein got out of the asylum the idea of a philosopher writing something that makes you smile, laugh or yell, "Right On!" is a violation of the professional code and violates all the union rules about mandatory obfuscation and irrelevance. Anyay, he argues against taking your politics off the rack whether from Hannity or Krugman; he wonders about the actual degree of difference and the rhetorical exaggeration on both sides. I slightly part company with him here; the Krugmans, Blows, Finemans, Stiglitzes and others are quantitatively different than the Limbaughs and the Hannitys. MSNBC proudly trundles out Michael Steele and Steve Schmitt to discuss what's happening and I haven't heard Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell tell them to shut up or that they're pinheads. So, the equation of MSNBC and FOX is something of a reach. But, he is right -- there is a separation of the extremes on both sides from reality. You're wrong to equate someone like Barney Frank with Allan West, but someone who is willing to listen to Barney the Dorchester Bear will probably want to strangle West while the West Fan would steam for a few minutes and then run screaming from the room yelling "Barney Fag! Barney Fag!" in loving tribute to Dick Armey and ilk. Crispin has a solution that might have some merit...but only at the far, far extremes. And at those extremes, it won't work....because they're not going to be able to suspend their animus and preconceptions...

anyway: you can do better than that! if you are a dem i assign you to watch fox news's election coverage, if a rep, msnbc. that'd be a start anyway. think of yourself as an anthropologist; you want to try to figure out how these people think. or start with this question: how did these folks, who are indeed folks, i.e. things more or less like myself, come to this orientation? 

"Why do they call this heartless place Our Lady of Charity..."

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

John Milton, “On His Blindness”

It’s been an odd summer at Defeatist Central. In the last few years, we’d have gone crazy with lots of stuff about how horrible the politicians, economy and so on have become. However, not unlike a lot of other bloggers, we’ve become strangely quiet. Is it because, as in the case of Mr. Fun, we are frustrated because once you go Pek you can’t go back and no Pony has arrived? Perhaps because of the arrival of Defeatist Babies while we mourn the departure of beloved Defeatist Pets? Is it perhaps because of more mundane concerns? Or, maybe greater concerns? Who knows what ennui and disinterest lurk in the hearts of men? Well, besides Yeats, of course….but I quote him often enough.

For me, it’s been an odd time. Mrs. AXE came home one day and announced that she wanted to retire from Federal Service because she was old and because she was working for complete assholes. Well, that was fine with me; I did some math and said, OK we’ll be fine. She then went through some totally unnecessary hassles over insurance coverage for some tests, submitted her paperwork, got the tests in early March and retired on the 31^st. That afternoon, we got the diagnosis – colon cancer with fairly large polyps that probably had breeched the walls of the colon. On April 20, they did the surgery. The surgeon said it went very well; on the following Tuesday, I got a call at 10PM saying they were taking her to emergency surgery because of complications; when I got there, she greeted me by crying “Goodbye…” Now, by nature I am not a nurturing type; my response was fairly unemotional and probably helped in this case – “Really? I don’t think so unless you know something I don’t.” The surgery went well – there had been an obstruction and the surgeon took out three feet of small intestine that was gangrenous. To allow everything to heal, he performed a temporary Ileostomy, that is, a procedure to route the small intestine to a sack outside the body. When she was healed, they would reattach the plumbing. In the meantime, she’d start with an oncologist and see if Chemo was the next step.

Except it didn’t work that way. The original hospital could not find a way to install an ostomy bag that would work; while she stayed there for three weeks, she spent a large part of that covered from the top of her abdomen to her groin covered in her own feces and stomach acid. The hospital staff was fatalistic and resigned; I was rapidly getting angrier – nuture, no. Defend, protect and raise hell, yeah…I can do that. Their solution was to send her home despite the leakage problem and figure that the home health care provider would be able to figure it out. I raised hell, the surgeon came by to see what the problem was and he reacted about as badly as I did. The next day, she was transferred to a new place, a “long term acute care” hospital. Exit surgeon, stage left, pursued by a bear.

Now, the surgeon was confused as to why the staff at the hospital was having so many problems. There are a variety of Ostomy suppliers producing supplies that work for some or most results of the surgery. However, each surgery is different, and each person is different. In the wife’s case, well, her Stoma (the intestine jutting through the skin) was a convex stoma, meaning it did not extend above the the skin. Silly me – I thought that for something this fraught with potential issues, Medical Science would have perfected a way to cap and channel the material flowing instead of basically trying to extend a sewer cutoff. Well, it’s not even close. It’s probably possible to fabricate a fairly good ostomy bag with some spackling compound and a good freezer bag.

Why do that? Why not get the right stuff – not surprisingly, the hospitals are under pressure to sign exclusive agreements for a lot of medical supplies and apparatus as well as drugs as a cost control measure. By dealing directly with the supplier, they can get the best price which makes the insurance company happy; however, it may not be what the patient needs. Tough shit…in this case, literally.

 What the hell is a long term acute care hospital? Regular acute care hospitals have an average stay of about 3 days for patients. If the patient stays there too long, regardless of medical necessity for care, the hospital will face complaints from the Insurance Companies. Are we starting to notice a theme here?

Now, the long term acute care hospital was about 75 miles away from the house. I got down there every other day, and for the most part they took excellent care of her. However, they are a for-profit hospital, and skimped on some things. It seemed that there was a constant battle between the wound care and physical therapy folks versus the ward staff. It was not uncommon for me to arrive and discover that she had been left sitting in a bed pan for a half hour or so, or that no one had come to give her the bed pan…I got quite good at helping install the bags, and actually helped resolve some of the issues with the types of bags they had. However, this hospital had the type of relationship with the insurers – in my wife’s case, Medicare and Tricare for life – that they could get what they needed, regardless of manufacturer.

Ultimately, they felt she no longer needed the level of care afforded by the acute care side of the health care system. I was told that they wanted to transfer her to a “skilled nursing facility” and had me check a few out in a “Renters Guide” sort of magazine. Too were closer but one did not have an RN on staff 24 hours a day and was primarily an old folks home. Because my wife needed IV fluids and feeding at this point, they couldn’ take her. However, there was a large facility near the original hospital. So, she was transferred there.

Now, the wound care team had given me a kit to take home of the sorts of bags, powders, adhesives and sprays that they had found worked with my wife. Remember, the use of ostomies is common, but they are all kind of custom. The staff at the new place ignored me and when what they were doing didn’t work, freaked out. One nurse was exceptional in her efforts and I’d do just about anything I could for her; the rest were absolute idiots. However, this was a doomed place – I refer to it as a “storage and disposal facility” or “ a human rendering factory.” I was there every day…I was rare. It was not a healthy environment for someone who was not dying.

Ultimately, all the good work that the second facility had done was undone by these people. The problem of course is that what they would refer to as a rash was really burns….because the food was coming from the small intestine to the stoma – the hunk of intestine pulled through the skin to drain into a bag—she was re-injuring the skin damaged by the same fluids at the first hospital. Now, they had an excuse, albeit a terrible one. These people, not so much. What they were doing had been proved not to work. But, they kept doing it anyway until finally, after a lot of her pain and her embarrassment, they accepted that they were unable to deal with this simple procedure. They decided to send her to see the original surgeon and see what he thought about it being time to reverse the procedure. Great…however, they ultimately decided that they just needed to send her to that hospital’s emergency room because they were totally incompetent to handle the situation. And so they tried, the day prior to when she was supposed to be taken to see the surgeon. You see, hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed by poor people who have no insurance and for whom a visit to their family doctor. That hospital was overwhelmed in the emergency room. So, they sent her to another private, non-profit hospital. They told me about it a couple of hours after she’d departed, which I thought was just special.

Anyway, I joined her about 4PM (1600 in real military time.) The chief surgeon came by, talked with us briefly, said that he wasn’t going to operate on her in the condition she was in  -- burned, dehydrated, weak but would admit her so that she could recover enough for the surgery to correct the original resection either by reconnecting the plumbing or revising the outlet, so to speak. She was taken to the surgical ward, and the wound care and ward team immediately took care of her. Since she was given an IV shot of morphine because of the intense pain, I left by 6 when she went to sleep. When I returned the next day about noon, she was awake, and the bags that they were using did not leak. At all – she never had a leak there. She recovered enough that the operation was performed on Friday. She took about a week in the hospital post op, and then was released to home care.

Since she’s returned to her home, her stuff, her cats she’s made great improvements. I’m amazed at how well she’s doing. I had a Facebook Entry the next evening that she had finally been released from incarceration…err, hospitalization, and was already being a pain in the ass. She now is able to get around quite well with the walker, and I forced her to make her own tuna sandwich for dinner. She is eating reasonably now and even made her own tuna sandwich the other day. All’s well that end’s well, right, AXE? No, fuck you.

 You see, I’m not totally happy about this. When she was diagnosed, the cancer was quite large and probably had penetrated the wall of the colon. Colon cancer discovered during colonoscopy and taken out in biopsy, basically minor problem. Colon cancer discovered during colonoscopy and removed followed after recovery by chemo, not a minor problem but not terribly threatening. However, colon cancer that has penetrated the outer wall of the colon and spread or where chemo is delayed or refused by the patient, major problem. The original timeline was colon resection, return home in a week or less, follow-up in two weeks, referral to Oncologist, begin course of treatment. Now, we have had an extra 14 weeks plugged into the equation. But, she is now in a helluva lot less pain, she has some quality of life and dignity and has made her own decisions. Good for her.

Next, for those who’ve been following my writing for a few years, you may recall that at one time I was struggling existentially between a significant other and my spouse. I ultimately chose the easiest route because they were both crazy. Well, the gal I was so interested in and loved a few years ago and still do love, had a horrible bout of colon cancer in 2003. She was actually told that “we’re going to operate but you need to get your affairs in order…” Did I mention that she was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and a Navy Nurse? Her sister was also a nurse, only a return boater to Ireland; her parents were both immigrants in the 40s; her sister and her husband had decided that New York City was no place to raise kids and had returned to Eire, I believe outside of Cork but I could be wrong. My friend was a triathlete and a serious marathoner; her sister won awards as an athlete in her county as late as 2004. In early 2006, she died from colon cancer. My friend was able to be there when her sister passed; she had some fairly funny stories about the way the staff of the hospital handled the dying process. But, she also felt a great deal of guilt – you see, when the significant other got the word about her cancer, the only family member she informed was her sister, Kathleen, who caught a redeye from Shannon to the US and on to San Diego to be there for her kid sister when she went into the surgery. She knows that Kathleen couldn’t catch colon cancer from her; but, there is still an incredible feeling of guilt. I am stunned by the irony…

Another thing I’m keeping in mind is the problem of the economics of healthcare. Now, I spent 23 years in the Army, and am grateful every day for that experience. I am incredibly grateful for Tricare and in the case of my wife, Tricare for Life. I know that the total bill for this great time up until now will be well into six figures; in fact, it already is. My total financial liability at this point has been $58 that I probably could have gotten out of paying. Now, we earned this; we paid for the Medicare in her payroll Medicare taxes and the part B in cash prior to starting to take her Social Security benefit and now in deduction from her benefit. But, talk about value; and yet, we know that the current healthcare situation is abysmal in this country and we know that we’re faced with the possibility of it becoming worse. The GAO has released estimates that because of the Supreme Court’s decision that the states do not have to extend Medicare as required originally by the Affordable Health Care Act, at least 3 Million People who would have been covered under the Act will not be covered. Which means that if they become as sick as my wife, they will go bankrupt and they will die. And Republcian voters will cheer as they cheered Ron Paul…

Well, we all are going to die, but there should be some degree of human dignity in the situation. But, we don’t seem, as a nation, to get it. The people most at risk are working class Americans without adequate health care insurance. And, there is absolutely no reason for this. I find the fact that France, Canada, the UK and my beloved Ireland have far better health care systems by any objective standard than we do to be a national disgrace. I am ashamed when I try to explain it to people from other countries that are supposedly not as great as we are. No Patriotic American should be able to stand this shame. So, those who oppose continued reform are what…un-American?

Remember Death Panels? There are death panels under the current system – they’re the insurance companies who determine what they will cover and what they will not based solely on market decisions. They are the insurance companies that raise rates so that people are no longer able to buy insurance or must cut back and buy only for the breadwinner as opposed for their whole family. These may be decisions made by the Marketplace (rigged, corrupt and based on debased values, where it’s reasonable for Ann Romney’s horse to be worth more than the annual tuition for 20 college students at a mediocre college.) However, from a human perspective, these results condemn those decisions. No, these are the decisions forced by fate on Frank McCourt’s mother Angela, whether to care for her family or take food from their mouths so that she has enough to survive. Hey, it’s a market decision. Compromise is a satanic thing here, because you’re dealing not with a possible win/win but with definite lose/lose. This was not acceptable in Ireland in the 30s and 40s and shames that Catholic nation as much as the Magdalenes Sisters, the history of betrayal to the British empire, and the current economic crisis even today. IT CANNOT BE ACCEPTABLE TO ANY AMERICAN NOW. NO FUCKING WAY! USA!USA!USA!

And, yet it is. If Mitch McConnell gets an unfortunate pimple on his ass, he can go to Bethesda and the entire United States Navy is mobilized to handle his departure from the norm. Hey, a pimple on the ass of the worst American Senator since Joe McCarthy is a really bad thing. But, most people in this country, insured or not, unable to pursue that kind of treatment. If Mitt Romney wakes up with the sniffles and an odd growth on his dick, he can afford to endow his own wing of a hospital to handle sniffling dick growths. Why should a man who builds elevators in his house for his cars concern himself with the health care of some poor kid in Harlem? It’s God’s will…

It’s not that these men are inherently evil. (Well, I think they are, but let’s assume they’re not.) They lack imagination and empathy for those who they see as not quite up to their standards of wealth, power and connection. Somehow, they’re not quite up to God’s standard. The market does the will of God so if you’re not able to hedge your bets and profit from the misfortune of others, you deserve to be poor, wretched and sick.

You know, it’s one thing for Milton to accept his blindness as the will of God and see that as it is God’s will, it’s a good thing. It’s a totally different thing to see someone else’s horror, pain and suffering as the will of God. That’s not stoic acceptance of the Almighty’s will – Stoicism is about your relationship with the world, not that of others! And, if the idea is that by not paying taxes at a reasonable rate in an industrial democracy you can accrue unconscionable wealth, you are doing what God wants, you are deranged, or you worship neither Jesus, nor Yahweh, nor Buddha, nor Allah nor Vishnu but eternally damned CTHULHU or Satan.  Willard Romney and and Turtle McConnell and the Paulline Faillacy and John Boehner are tools of Evil and the Republican Party is the Party of the Rich, the Party of the Evil, the Party of the Ignorant and ultimately, the PARTY OF SATAN.

 Ok, that’s a little rich, even for me. But then, I profess that the arbitrary decisions of the universe about life, death and the baseball game speak to the underlying problem of God – there is no God, or God is an evil sonofabitch with a nasty sense of humor, or God is really a teenage girl with lots of behavioral and emotional problems that, since we’re not her parents, we should try to stay away from lest she do something awful to us. I feel guilty when I see a beggar and I don’t stop; in my idea of America, there are no beggars, no homeless, no hungry – this experience with my wife underlies for me the importance of the America as champion of a world dreamed of by Franklin Roosevelt and expressed so eloquently in his Four Freedoms.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called 'new order' of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, January 6 1941

 

 

 

 

 

Walking the walk as opposed to being full of shit...

When it comes to the Vatican’s crackdown on women religious, I believe it’s time to declare that for the purpose of this struggle:we are all nuns…if you can spell Catholic, you are probably asking: how dare they go after 57,000 dedicated women whose median age is well over 70 and who work tirelessly for a more just world? How dare the very men who preside over a Church in utter disgrace due to sexual misconduct and cover-ups by bishops try to distract from their own problems by creating new ones for women religious?--     Mary E. Hunt, Theologian, Catholic Activist and Academic

I don’t really have a dog in this hunt anymore;  as an anti-theist who has reached the conclusion that the only way there could be a god would be if God was a very arbitrary and angry teenage girl named Tiffany who was primarily interested in Justin Bieber and whether or not her jeans make her ass look fat, I’m not a logical choice to defend the various orders of Nuns from the Holy See. Except, of course, that I remain a cultural Irish Catholic and a recovering victim of 16 years of Catholic confinement, most of which was largely under the attentions of the good Sisters of St Joseph and then of the good Sisters of St Francis. And, I have to admit, that the Sisters provided more encouragement to me than anyone else did. In many ways, the various orders of Catholic nuns were instrumental in most of what’s good in terms of Catholic teaching and social justice. The priests generally got all the “press” but while Father Damien gets the historical kudos for the colony at Molokai, the good sisters of the third order of St Francis – the ones who taught me from 4^th through 8^th grade – provided the nurses and the necessary assistance to make the leper colony actually work. At present, and one of the primary distractions I have been dealing with this past month, my wife is recovering from a colon resection at St Mary’s Medical Center which is managed jointly by an order of Christian Brothers and the Sisters of St Joseph of Orange, a spinoff of the Order of St Joseph that taught me how to read and cipher and make marks on paper. Now, Nuns seemed arbitrary and overwhelmingly dictatorial to a lot of Catholics over the decades. But, beginning with Vatican II, the number of nuns has steadily decreased. Those who have maintained their communities are primarily involved in social and medical work and advocacy as well as in education and foundations. I find them very admirable; in fact, I think we can say with a certain degree of certainty that Sister Mary Twinkle Toes has long since vanished from the scene, and has been replaced by what was really always there – smart women who were dedicated to a cause and a belief in caring for others and trying to live the gospel as they understood it. So the current nonsense by the Catholic hierarchy to try and “discipline” these women or drag them into compliance is a really difficult piece to justify. Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times does a good job of laying out the story as does Ms. Hunt. The Conference of Women Religious, basically the American Nun equivalent of the NCAA, isn’t doing what the bishops want them to do. The Sisters aren’t complaining about abortions, god, guns and gays and contraception. They’re arguing about the need for more attention to health care, poverty, education, hunger, the environment. Who the hell do these women think they are? Uppity bitches…They need to get back in their convents and bake some more wafers, say some more rosaries and iron some more Albs. Andrew Sullivan has an interesting piece on this; I find it interesting that Drew has moved from a Republican apologist to someone to the left of, well, me on a lot of things. It actually gives me hope – people like Andrew Sullivan and George Will are really too smart to go along with that right wing crap as presented these days.  Of course, I say that conscious that Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene had no public complaints and that Teilhard de Chardin remained loyal to church and order despite intellectual persecution and religious toment.  Sullivan wrote in an article in the April 2 edition of The Daily Beast  that The Catholic Church’s hierarchy lost much of its authority over the American flock with the unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. But in the last decade, whatever shred of moral authority that remained has evaporated. The hierarchy was exposed as enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children. I don’t know what greater indictment of a church’s authority there can be—except the refusal, even now, of the entire leadership to face their responsibility and resign. Instead, they obsess about others’ sex lives, about who is entitled to civil marriage, and about who pays for birth control in health insurance. Inequality, poverty, even the torture institutionalized by the government after 9/11: these issues attract far less of their public attention. I am no fan of abortion, but at the same time, since I could never bear a child myself don’t really think that I should have a say in the decision of a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and if that termination occurs, then it should probably be under the most humane and medically safe conditions possible.  The subject to my mind is open to debate, but contraception provides an alternative more palatable than unfunded orphanages and foundling homes or back alley abortions or the type I’m hesitant about. The good enough is enemy to the good, but the perfect is enemy to the good as well. I also have come to a position which for an ubermale old soldier and Holy Cross Grad is perhaps odd – but, I really don’t care about homosexuality.  Hell, I’ve had close friends who were gay and lesbian and they never threatened me in any way, except possibly in college with a forcing bid in bridge.  Their sex lives don’t interest me --Not my business, not my concern. Now Pedophilia is my business as a citizen of the civilized world who believes that we have a duty to protect those unable to protect themselves; the abuse of power is my business, as a guy sworn to uphold the constitution and to uphold the gospels. I’m a not a priest, or a minister, or a theologian or a Catholic anymore. But, I was confirmed, and I did swear an oath to do that. Since I feel very comfortable with the parts of the New Testament that are not batshit crazy, like Jefferson, I think it’s something I can and should support as the basis for the way we treat each other. There are a lot of things in the New and Old Testament that are batshit crazy. They deserve to be treated with the same respect we treat Gilgamesh. Interesting, but not really instructive. But, the things that in the New Testament are real are certainly more direct and as articulated in the traditions of Catholic Social Justice and the Social Gospel as preached by folks as diverse as Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day, more applicable to our lives as human beings responding to St Augustine’s imperative question of “How then shall we live together? “ than any other approach, tradition or set of concepts floating around. The princes of the Church pay lip service to this and then focus on issues tangential and to do with their own power. It lies in the Sisters, the priests who defend them and the poor, the orders of nuns, priests and brothers dedicated to serving the poor, the destitute, the abandoned, the condemned to live that code. Jesus knew about homosexuality; it was not only a subject of condemnation in Leviticus but was a pretty common practice in the ancient world. He didn’t have anything to say about; he didn’t have a lot to say about sexuality; he did say a lot about love, and care, and concern for others. While I’ve seen articles that indicate the author believes that the Sermon on the Mount is like some Delphic statement or Sybilline book filled with ambiguous and confusing stuff, it’s really  not. Nor is there a lot of room for argument over what the many parables about the virtues of the poor and the need to help them. Yes, Judas complains that the oil used by the repentant hooker to tend to Jesus’ feet should have been sold to raise money to feed the poor, but Jesus’ response “The poor are always with us” seems pretty obvious to me. Leave her alone, she’s trying to do what she thinks is right and it harms no one, while doing her soul good. Judas, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Rich, the Bankers, the Moneychangers, the Tax Collectors who cheat the poor get a lot of the back of Jesus’ hand…or, as Maureen Dowd put it in her column on Sunday, a sharp rap across the knuckles.  The Bishops and the Church Hierarchy joined the plutocracy of wealth and power when Constantine took over the rule of Rome and decided that everybody would be a Christian…or else. The Bishops have always sought that kind of ecclesiastical power; the Richelieus, the Borgias and the rest of the figures in Catholic history along with the Pat Robertsons, Ian Paisleys and Benny the Rat provide cover…Jesus has damn all to do with organized Christianity. I’ve written of this before, of course, but I remember talking with a parish priest in College Station 20 plus years ago who spent his vacations in India, working with Mother Teresa. He told of being there when a journalist asked her, “How can you expect to win?” and she replied with a smile, “It’s not about winning.” I expect that the good Sisters will continue to do what they are doing, ignoring the hierarchy when they can and doing what they think is right. And, in focusing on doing good instead of telling the world, that they are good and holy  and everyone should listen to them, they show what should have been Catholicism in practice. And sadly, is not and never has been. We probably should reflect that on Easter morning, the Apostles, those first Bishops led by Simon Peter, the first Pope, were hiding or trying to get out of Jerusalem as quickly as possible. Mary Magdalene and probably Mary and Martha were on their way to the tomb to anoint and care for the body, trusting that God would convince the soldiers, Roman soldiers, to move the stone aside so that they could tend to their duty…not because they had to, but because it was the right thing to do. Odd, but in a way, both bishops and nuns are fulfilling their roles in Christian tradition. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve known Mary Hunt for over 45 years, and have followed her career with interest and occasional snark. We met as sophomores in the diocesan high school where we haunted the halls and occasional classrooms, identified by some of the good sisters as the “brilliant and obnoxious one” (Mary) and the“brilliant but erratic one,” (me.) I concede her brilliance and I guess I accept my erraticism. We agreed about a lot of things, disagreed about a lot and took very divergent paths. I have a lot of respect for her, and she’s an interesting person and author. And, probably still consistently obnoxious to people in authority. Go for it, dear.)

The inevitable end of the beginning of the end...

This is the Romney Bot 10000 or what Mitt Looks Like with the Makeup Removed...Is it too early to point out that Romney's big win of barely meeting expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire have netted him a total of 6 possible delegates. ( The Iowa delegates can actually do any goddamn thing they want to do...they're not bound to the candidate at all. So it's about 6, +/- human nature? Or have two small to medium somewhat oddball places solved the problem of democracy? Who the hell knows? But the media seems to see Romney as a jaugernaut just chewing up the terrain in a Harvard Business School Blitzkrieg. Yeah...Well, things can happen, if we let them...

 

There is a marvelous article online at the Economist that makes a really simple suggestion -- stop worrying about the dogfight in the Republican party and pay attention to and force Romney to say in simple declarative sentences what it is that he intends to do as president. Since I personally think he is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do in general, I suspect that it could be a far more enlightening exercise than wondering about how Newt Gingrich can paint himself as the populist opposing a malefactor of great wealth. Won't happen, but it is an interesting idea...

 But then, so is this. They're making a porn parody of Star Wars... I'm wondering how this will impact the world of nerds, nutcases and plain old fashioned strange people who obsess about it. Some of these folks are exceptionally smart; some are exceptionally strange; some of them, as Leonard says of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, " one lab accident away from being a super-villain." Most are harmless, since the whole Star Wars/trek/thor/comic book thing is a way of handling their subliminated and frustrated sexuality and drive for power in a world that really doesn't fit them. (Note how easy it is to unintentionally pull the chain, so to speak, when writing about porn.) Given the whole Mormon, holy underwear thing that Romney has going against him, it's possible he might be able to inspire some of these folks...but, probably not, since he doesn't really seem to see himself as and that whole Master of the Universe -Venture Capitalist thing leads to something rather different indeed....

THE ROMNEY BOT HAS A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SELF IMAGE AND DREAM IN HIS ELECTRIC SLEEP!

 Since Porno films today tend to go straight -- wouldn't a Star Wars porn film need a lot of homosexual overtones, undertones and so on?--to video anyway, we'll probably be spared a raft of stories about nerves flogging the old dolphin in theatres...or, maybe not. 

THIS IS ROMNEY BOT BETA VERSION! 

On a vaguely related note, Hostess Bakery is filing for
Chapter 11, again. What is Mitt Romney going to do to save the Twinkie? (Actually, this kind of ties into the Star Wars porn thing, if you think about it...and, has anyone noticed how much Mitt actually resembles Max Headroom?) Let the market take it's course? But, what will Karl Rove and Grover Norquist wash down with their bottles of virgin blood and Dr Pepper as they plot the destruction of the social welfare net and the ability of the poor to afford toilet paper while the Koch Bros industies destroy the environment making it impossible to obtain leaves, corn cobs and so on for use in lieu of...) 

It's really not fair for me to pick on Romney for being an artifical, androidal rich bastard replicant who has devoted a life to strange cults and oddities like Capitalism and Joseph Smith. Granted, their religious ideology at it's basis is sufficient to make Scientology seem at least companionable and the 72 Virgins thing seem a reasonable alternative. Hell, Catholicism and Buddhism and Unitarianism and any religion has a lot of oddities. I was reading -- finally, I've been inspired by the hype and the Swedish versions of the movies -- to read The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and was kind of amazed to find out the importance of the Apocrophya to motivation behind various characters. Not as amazed at Calle and Lisabeth, but then, they were kind of sucked into this madness by that point. For the none theologically minded, the Apocrophya are the books that the Jews left out of what became the Old Testament but that survived and continue to influence thinking on these issues. Not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels...except maybe weirder. Now, religion does odd things. It can do wonderful things, but when you get into all that messy miracle, divine, intervention, afterlife shit, things get strange. Unfortunately, it's difficult to not take that stuff seriously when you're dealing with people who take two years of their lives out to prostelytze and annoy. (Being accosted by American Mormons on McConnell Street in Dublin was an excellent excuse many years ago for some Bushmill's in the coffee...for the next decade!) They believe this stuff... Rick Santorum scares me and his madness is something I grew up with...Pat Buchanan scares me, and his madness is something I actually can relate to quite well...

 

But, we should really follow the whole Romney thing not as a personal thing -- although it is worthwhile from a satirical point of view to do so and I'm all for satire -- but from a hard policy point of view. Governor, what exactly do you propose to do about -- jobs? And then follow-up -- there is a rule of thumb in interrogation, quality and so on. There is a significantly limited number of questions about anything that someone who may want to dissemble or is stuck in some ideological world view that they can answer without inadvertently discovering the truth of their beliefs or revealing their lie.

"Yo, Mitt-face, what are you going to do about the Middle East?

"I'm going to put troops back into Iraq, take down the Mullahs in Iran, and support Zion...err...Israel. Yeah, Israel, that's the place.

"So, you're going to re-invade Iraq? 

"They'll welcome us with open arms to protect them from al Quieda and the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and the Kurds and the Iranians!

"Sure about that? They told us to leave, you know because we wouldn't agree to their idea of a status of forces agreement. Do you want American soldiers subject to Iraqi criminal justice?

"Nobody wants that."

"Well, that was what the Iraqis wanted to have us stay." 

"I'd use more diplomacy..." 

"Yeah, ok, now Iran...How are you going to take down the Mullahs? Are you going to invade? Bomb? Use Nuclear missiles? Pray a lot? Keep using sanctions?"

"That's more than one question."

"Not so much questions as a precis of your options to take down the Mullahs? Maybe diplomacy? And, what gives us the right to impose regieme change again?"

"The people of Iran want to be free!"

"Just like in Iraq?"

The problem with the Romney-bot beta version was that it was toooooo smart. Kerry had actually thought about these things. Romney hasn't...and it shows. As Molly Ivins said, and we really miss her and need more people like her and pretty goddamn soon! "Nothin' but good times ahead."  

 

 

 

Run Run Rudolph...or not

 

I generally hate Christmas music. Happy, happy, joy, joy -- elves, lollypops and sugarplums. . I am looking for a Bluegrass or Rock version of the Messiah. A goth or punk version would be fun.

 

Not that there aren't some great Christmas songs. A lot of them are in Latin or German, and reflect emotions other than "oh boy, oh boy, this is gonna be great!" They reflect a sense of yearning, hope and melancoly. If you're a believer, you realize the agony necessary for the promise of the Messiah to be fulfilled...and, if you're a realist, your recognize that the agony will go on far longer than the  Passion. If you tend toward the agno-anti-atheistic side of things, you can scoff, or appreciate the need for balence and forgiveness and hope in a future that remains dark and beyond a present tied to a past full of pain, disappointment and loneliness. We are spared despair by those moments of anticipation, fulfillment and hope, and I believe that the best Christmas songs capture all of that. Even though few were written in minor keys, they can be played that way...from Away in a Manger and Silent Night -- which I once got to hear in a 9th Century Catholic Church played on zither and guitar and sung by the children of Berchtesgarden, a somewhat haunting moment --to White Christmas and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. 

 Christmas is the Holiday that is most human. Perhaps since so much of it results from Christianity ripping off the various Solstace feasts and festivals; perhaps because it speaks not to the past in our western mythology but rather to the past living through and to a future, real or not; perhaps because it is child-centered regardless of the worst Church bureaucracy and commercialization have been able to do to it since the Milesian Bridge -- it is just that way. In China today, Christmas is celebrated as a lead-in to the Spring Festival, which starts in early January. The nicest Christmasy-Christmas I've spent in recent years was in Shanghai, where there was enough Christmas stuff around to not make me homesick, but it was weird enough in many ways to make me smile. The Chinese in Shanghai and I suspect other parts of China don't really get the whole realm of sacred versus profane thing. I saw this my first evening wandering around a Shanghai mall, where the anchor store, Carre-Foure, had a large number of displays with Santa, Reindeer, Angels, Cribs and Wisemen. All together -- with a tree and presents. Go figure. 

So what are my thoughts on the best contemporary Christmas stuff? 

 

 The Guardian had a piece with some of their critics favorite Christmas songs and Fairytale of New York came in 2nd on their poll; Planet Rock did one of their listeners and the Fairytale came in first. It's one of my favorite pieces of Celtic stuff, as well as of  Christmas songs. The reason that it didn't win the Guardian poll, by the way, was that one of the judges felt it wasn't really a Christmas song and it got zero points. Well, he's a fucking idiot. Yearning, past happiness, despair in the present and acceptance of a confusing future, forgiveness and redemption. If that isn't the best of what Christmas offers, then screw it. It should be.

 While I was screwing around last night, I found a new Shane McGowan and Popes compilation and they had this one. I thought it was almost as good as the Fairytale. It looses points in my estimation because it feels overproduced and it takes the Toora-Loora-Loora melody without a lot of modification. However, I think people like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan would have little problem with it, seeing the borrowing fo the tune as part of the folk process, and who am I to argue. (In case you're wondering why I cite Dylan, I recommend listening to Dominic Behan's The Soldier's Song and then to With God on Our Side; closer to home, listen to All I Really Wanna Do and then to Muddy Waters' I Just Want to Make Love to You --same song, same phrasing, different instrumentation, voicing and lyrics.) and, as with a lot of McGowan's material, the lyrics drive the train. The Pogues were a better band, and he needs someone like Kristi McCall or Sinead O'Connor of Delores O'Riordan singing harmony to make it perfect. But, it's close. Same emotions, stronger on the hope perhaps and on the acceptance than Fairy Tale. But in the same veing.

 

On a far more contemporary note, there's my young,  sort of little friend Sheri Miller. She hasn't recorded this one yet, and doesn't want me to publish her lyrics for it until she's got a polished version and video. I can understand that -- the version is I've posted is from several years ago, and Sheri is still evolving artistically. He most recent effort included a wider variety of musicians, including people like Steve Cropper. This is more of a straight folk, kinda Shawn Colvin kind of thing, and she's done a variety of stuff in her short career. She recently wrote something about Rock and Roll Landmarks, and I'm not sure where she went with that. Although she got a kick out of Keith Moon's antics in various LA hotels and the idea of Sun Studios and Stax in Memphis among my various recommendations. I wish I had thought to mention the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, by the way -- the hotel is on pilings over Elliot Bay, and supposedly John Lennon tried to fish out his bedroom window the first time the Beatles came through Seattle. Anyway,However, she's working on another album and says that this number, Merry Christmas...Jesus it's been a helluva year will be a great fit. While I'm looking forward to it, I think the rawness and starkness of this version combined with the lushness of her voice should be a performance classic in years to come. After this, musically, I can forgive her anything, even Spoons.

- 

 

Steve Earle has kind of a classic Chrismas protest song here, showing his Woodie Guthrie-Townes Van Zandt roots. I had a senior moment earlier, thinking that it had originally been titled Christmas in Taneytown, a city in Maryland between DC and Baltimore and Gettysburg. For some reason, I thought this might have had something to do with Larry McMurtry's book store that he owned before going back to Texas. Well, the song resounds even today, and adds Phil Ochs to the list of his antecedents. It also reminds me of some Guy Clark stuff and some Robert Earl Keen stuff. But, it is a Christmas song -- calling us to do, be and build something better.

 Speaking of Robert Earl Keen, it would be blasphemous for someone like me to not cite Merry Chrismas from the Family as a marvelous contemporary take on things.And then, there's the Jeff Foxworthy vision which I first heard on a Christmas in Germany, and have chuckled over at least once a year -- especially those years where I own a Mustang GT.

Thinking again of my Celtic roots, I thought of the Chieftains. This is one of their carols, with Nanci Griffith providing the vocal. They have a history of recording with interesting talents, and here is a more normal carol, but with Ricki Lee Jones providing the vocal. However, again, the minor key and the sense of resignation.

 

How can you think about Ricky Lee Jones without a nod to Tom Waits? I suppose it's really not that hard, but this is a fascinating little piece by a major artist who irritates and illuminates. And then irritates again -- I suspect he wouldn't want to have it any other way. Now, in mercy for the season, I'm using Neko Case's cover -- his voice is an acquired taste, where as her voice is insanely good. 

 

Finally, I thought of blues and R&B. As you probably know, Hubert Sumlin died recently and Etta James is dying -- and in the tradition of the music, friends paid for Hubert Sumlin's funeral and Etta James family is squabbling over her estate. Now, I heard this piece earlier this week on Little Stephen's Underground Garage at XM21. James Brown is definitely telling us to get a grip and a perspective -- particularly at this time of economic injustice and oppression. Still resonates, and I hate to say that, but I find that very sad indeed...

 

Here's Etta James take on the holiday --

 

Sumlin isn't really identified with any Christmas music; there is a school of thought that "Sittin On Top of the World" is kind of a Christmas song. That school is wrong. If that's a Chrismas song, I can make the case that St Valentine's Day is a Christmas song. And, Sumlin wasn't in Howlin Wolf's band when he cut "Sittin..." for Sun Records before going off to Chicago and Chess. However, the Drifters cut this piece, and it's definitely worth considering..

 

 

Too much of nothing is too much...

 Some of us have more problems with heroes. Steve Earle comes to mind -- he often tells the story of playing a gig early in his career in Houston, and his hero Townes Van Zandt showed up and sat in front. He then proceeded to heckle Steve for the rest of the evening. "Play Wabash Cannonball. You call yourself a folk singer but you don't know Wabash Cannonball." It wasn't a zen moment; Townes, when drunk and off meds could be a real asshole. While touring in support of his TVZ album, Steve touchingly says that after years of thinking about it, the main reason more people don't know Townes Van Zandt was Townes Van Zandt. 

 Steve also tells the story of leaving a tour during his drug days, driven by the sudden need to hitchhike off at Thanskgiving time and see William S. Burroughs. Not that he knew the guy, but Burroughs was a hero of his too. So, with two guitars -- one wouldn't be enough -- a gun, a stash and a roll of money he took off. He showed up, and Burroughs was the sort of host an insane junky crashed in Lawrence Kansas would be expected to be.. Burroughs was not the sort of guy to feel comfortable with a left-leaning country singer in the early 90s...do ya think?

 

Steve had better luck with people like Guy Clark, Emmy Lou Harris and Johnny Cash. But, those stories are not so funny. I'd be curious to listen to a conversation about writing and meaning between Steve and Bob Dylan. That would be interesting. 

I just saw a thing that Jabba Hut Lindbaugh has an annual Thanksgiving story about how socialism almost killed the early pilgrims. Not exactly. And, as usual, he's a total dipshit about it. It's true that the pilgrims had an agreement at first to have all thing in commons. However, they departed late with one ship instead of the two that were planned, and did not finally get to Plymouth until December. They looted some graves of corn left as offerings for the dead, but they were in coastal New England during what we know to have been a particularly cold cycle in the world's climate and they were short of supplies to begin with. 

Pure socialism is as stupid a system as pure capitalism. However, it wasn't the communitarian living plans that almost killed these folks -- it was bad navigation, poor planning, insufficient supplies and insufficient knowledge of what to expect. The Pequot tribesman who actually helped them lived in a communal arrangement that worked really well until disease, warfare and Protestant Christianity did them all in. 

Regardless of system, scarcity is the problem. If there is not enough and Jesus hasn't provided the receipe for multiplying wine, fish and bread, any system can be stressed to the near breaking point. Interestingly to me, the retreat from a communal to a more traditional structure occurred after a supply of food and goods was secured. Dylan summed this problem up very well --scarcity is the problem. 

 

As I said, it would be interesting to listen to Dylan and Earle and Clark talk about songwriting. We know that Dylan and Cash spent a lot of time together, so I suspect that some of the others have also been at Cinnamon Hill or at Hendersonville for a guitar pull or two. 

Christian leaders do what Christian leaders are supposed to do...

An Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop, all based in Alabama, sued on the basis that the new statute violated their right to free exercise of religion, arguing that it would “make it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans.”

“The law,” said Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, “attacks our core understanding of what it means to be a church.” -- Campbell Robertson, NY Times, 8/11/2011.

Well, as Ringo says when he sees what he thinks is Wyatt Earp walking toward him at the dramatic climax of Tombstone, this is a surprise. 

Crusader AXE has made no real secret of his attitude toward religion in the US or toward the religious.When Howard Dean, the last leader of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, said that the Democrats needed to focus on issues of justice and common good, he labeled the Republicans the party of "god, guns, gays and abortion" in terms of their core issues. Now, when the AXE was just a hatchet and my brother Defeatists were just sperm and eggs floating in the visceral fluids of their various parents, Christian Leaders in the United States actually stood for something...Daniel Berrigan, SJ; Phillip Berrigan; Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King; Reverend Ralph Abernathy; the Sanctuary Movement; the Anti-war movement; Cesar Chavez and La Raza. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers Movement. Pope Paul VI and John Paul II published encyclicals that condemned out of control capitalism, greed and the failure of western society to live up to the standards of the New Testament. 

But, if the New Testament preaches a doctrine largely of social justice, care for the poor and the duty to be good Samaritans, the focus of traditional religious institutions in the US and in much of the world shifted toward concern about periperal issues -- the Gods, Guns, Gays and abortions. In Catholicism in particular, the focus shifted toward protection of an internal culture not all that different than that of The Family in this country with a goal of preserving a secet culture of privilege and abuse by the powerful by focusing on the transgressions of the weak. A pederast priest wasn't evil; no, the child he abused was the evil, the seducer, the temptation of christ. What appeared to be an Irish anomoly -- archbishops with families on the side and sanctimony served up front along with the communion wafers -- turned out to be the sunny side of a system of abuse, exploitation, coverup and concealment. Jesus probably wept over a lot of things; it is worth noting that the people Jesus really had issues with were bankers, wealthy exploiters of the poor and weak, and the religious hierarchy of his faith. We know of one time when Jesus got really angry and lashed out. The cleansing of the temple. I'm guessing in the comfortable parishes of Orange County and suburban Columbus and Indianapolis that text is seldom chosen. That is a shame. We know only a few that Jesus condemned -- those who hurt children, the rich, and the religious hierarchy. If in a parable he was seeking a subject who was clueless, corrupt, selfish, sanctimonious, abusive or evil, he chose the rich, the Pharisees and the Saduchess. Not the Romans, not the gossiping fishwifes on the sea of Galilee, not the whores, publicans, thieves, tax collectors -- the priests, the temple bureaucrats, the establishment, the wealthy. 

So, while I've been disappointed by the role of religion in American life, where people largely seem to be more interested in Leviticus and Revelations than the Beatitudes, the Passion and Death of Jesus and the spreading of the Good News of brotherhood, shared sacrifice, social justice and charity for all, I am surprised to note that in Alabama, the faith community may actually have decided to stand with the lambs of god as opposed to the butchers, with the Good Samaritans as opposed to the Pharisees and Levites and the Rich. 

Alabama and Georgia as well as Arizona have all implemented legislation based on the idea that they are being overrun by illegal aliens; now, they're having to deal with a certain amount of reality. Most Americans don't want to hoe cotton or pick lettuce and strawberries with short handled rakes in the intense heat of this summer of climate change and warming. So, if you drive out the illegal immigrants, the crops don't get picked and the food rots in the fields. While this might actually be good organically for the ground, it's not a good thing for the economy. For the farmers. For the consumer. 

But, the law itself is pretty draconian. The sanctuary movement in the southwest was based on radical civil disobedience. If I'm going to help an illegal Salvadorian immigrant in Tucson, Reagan's version of compassionate conservatism made it a crime. If I fed the poor, give water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, shelter to the homeless, I was a criminal. The Bishops and Catholic hierarchy in the southwest endorsed and many churches practiced Sanctuary. They'd feed, clothe, shelter and get medical aid for those who came to seek help. They did this knowing that the authorities were taking down their names. They were successful to a large extent, in Arizona and Southern California and New Mexico in publicizing and mitigating the plight of those who were being blamed for being poor, hungry, alone and afraid. 

Now, in Alabama, the Christian wing of the Christian Religion is responding to the same sort of evil and doing it in style. Individual ministers and priests are preaching the evil of the law; but three bishops -- a Methodist, an Episcopalian and a Catholic -- are suing the state of Alabama for interfering with their right to exercise their religion. This is the state where clowns got attention in 2010 for channeling the ghosts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in support of the Tea Party and radical nonsense; where it actually seemed possible that a clown in a cowboy hat riding around complaining on his horse and shooting at people defacing his campaign signs wasn't in danger of being locked away for his own protection and that of the local community, but elected to public office. 

So, in such an environment, for the faith community to throw off it's doctrinal slumber and focus on the periperals as opposed to the brutal, exploitative and greed-drenched reality of the world that they inhabit and have a duty to renew is worth noting and remarking on. Jesse Ben Joseph would be proud of these guys and I suspect gals since the Episcopalians and Methodists do have ordained women clergy. Hopefully, they can inspire their congregations. I'd say that the odds are about 60-40 against, but what the hell -- the alternative is what we have, and it's nice to know that someone else thinks it's unacceptable. 

In the corner of the barroom
Lives the ghost of Langston Hughes
He’s takin’ notes and smokin’ cigarettes
Sippin’ slowly on his booze
Got them goin’ nowhere blues

And on the stage beneath the spotlight
Woody Guthrie sings the news
He’s always ready for the good fight
Never thinkin’ that he’ll lose
Got them goin’ nowhere blues
Through the back way in the alley
Sellin all you should refuse
Looks like Jane has finally given in
Hey, what the hell it ain’t no use
Got them goin’ nowhere blues

Out the front around the corner
Martin Luther shines your shoes
He’s preachin’ justice and equality
I guess Martin’s payin’ dues
He’s got them goin’ nowhere blues

On the other side it’s a free ride
You’ve got money you can burn
When the ground shakes and the earth breaks
Which way you gonna turn
Are you ever gonna learn
In the poolroom on the table
Swillin’ wine and smashin’ cues
They locked him up last night for fighting
Cesar Chavez blew a fuse
He’s got them goin’ nowhere blues

All the members of the union
All the farm and labor crews
They used to be meet here by the dozens
They disappeared in ones and twos
Got them goin’ nowhere blues
So you wonder why they come here
They come here to look for clues
Passin’ time until they live again
To fight these going nowhere views
Leave these goin’ nowhere blues
To fight these goin’ nowhere views

--Robert Earle Keen

AMEN Brother, pass the pillar of salt...

 

There's a marvelous movie from the 70s, The Man that Would Be King. Sean Connery and Michael Caine play a couple of English Sergeants in the 1870s or so, who decide to go carve out a kingdom in the vast central Asian interior. They find a true believer in English invincibility, a retired Gurkha, who joins as translator and factotum, and wander into farthest Absurdistan until they find a likely place from which builds his empire from another mass of true believers, who believe he is the second coming of Iskander or Alexander the Great...anyway, everything goes swimingly until Connery decides to marry a gal who isn't all that keen on the idea, and she bites him drawing blood. The elders realize that he is not whom he said he is. Hilarity ensues, if by hilarity slaughter, crucifixion and retribution are qualified. But, except for the incidental cut, everything would have stayed the same...

These people were not really true believers in the Cult of Danny and Peachy. They see an indicator of a problem and rather than ignore it and do the believer's chant of "I see nothing...it's just a test...actually, since he got cut but is still alive and well, he's really more invulnerable than we thought. It really is..." they chop up the Gurkha, throw Connery into a chasm and crucify Michael Caine. Ah, good times...

The True, True, True Believers are the ones who see the results and yet still want to carry on. Christianity is an eschatological religion; the original Christians and the wave of converts through the next centuries all assumed that one of these days, Jesus was going to show up and man, these Pharasees, Saduchees, Romans, Greeks, Eygptians and so on were going to get really fucked over. Read the Book of Revelation -- it's kind of like some bad Science Fiction on peyote. When Jesus didn't come back, the religion began to do work arounds. It's continued to do so...I really don't think a lot of mainstream Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran or Orthodox thinkers and theologians spend a lot of time worrying about the last Judgement. But, I'm sure that in the hinterlands of grass roots, snake handling, tongure talking, born again, dancing and singing Christianity, they are just dancing around the Oral Roberts Prayer tower, waiting for the word. 

One theme I'm noticing with a certain degree of perplexity is the number of nutjob right wing true believers who are either Catholic (the more moderate amongst them) or totally off the reservation former Catholics. Three names come to mind immediately -- Glen Beck, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Newt Gingrich is now Catholic; Scalia is Catholic; Clarence Thomas was a Catholic and is now some hybrid born-again Evangelical sort of Catholic. Roberts and Alito are Catholics. Boehner is Catholic. Note the trend -- the real dipshits are out there types who embrace the snake handling; the really dangerous ones are still going to Mass and listening to the Pope. 

It strikes me that the Bachmann-Palin-Beck-Thomas crowd are fascinating studies in the totalitarian approach to life. They left something with nuance, a logical structure, and a conservative Conservatism as well as an emphasis on social justice for something that is...well, none of those. Gingrich's wife pulled him back from the far nutcase land; but, Gingrich is really an entrepreneur at the moment, not a politician. Bachmann, Beck, Thomas -- Catholicism wasn't restrictive, authoritarian enough for them? 

The other thing that amazes me is the nexus of Ayn Rand's Objectivism and born again Christianity. If you are a sincere follower both of Rand and a follower of Christ, you are operating at a level of cognitive dissonance that transcends hypocrisy and reaches a blissful level of schizophrenia. There have been some great articles on Wonkette, the Exile and other sites on the whole Paul Ryan-Rand Paul cult thing. Because that is what it is -- there's no qualitative difference between Objectivism and planning on riding off on Hale Bop. Shit, her disciples used to sit around and babble nonsense with her, and whomever babbled the most bullshit got to sleep with her. Actually makes Nike-Wearing castration and suicide seem an only slightly less reasonable alternative.

The biblical Christ talks of difficulty of the rich man entering the kingdom of heaven because he is rich; he says the poor are blessed. Rand and her followers say that greed is good. It is an atheistic, dehumanizing and totalitarian approach to the world, to politics to economics. And, it doesn't fucking work...

Tax cuts for the rich have resulted in lower economic growth, the deficits that have the tea party so incensed, and the destruction of the social safety net. So, they want more, and get more (or less given the lack of accomplishment by the Republican House) and things get no better and slide worse. If the Republicans had the majority and the presidency, there'd be a lot more homeless and unemployed...the stimulus was too small, too dedicated to what didn't work, and generally poorly executed. It's that simple -- the private sector screwed up the economcy with the blissful ignorance of Bush's non-regulators and fools. And, to be bi-partisan/post-partisan/whatever, the Democrats in the Executive Branch and the Senate cobbled together compromises that didn't work as compromises and sure as hell didn't work as governing. Nancy Pelosi and her crew in the House gritted their teeth and were good soldiers, but the whole conservaDEM/ball-less kum bah ya approach to governance didn't work from 2009-2011. 

And now, we're entering the election season. We're more than year away from nominating conventions, and I don't know what to think except dark thoughts and sharpen the old AXE. Hobbit-Slicer really needs some honing...

The superb Matt Taibbi has a great article in the new issue of Rolling Stone. He discussed it with Obermann the other night, and it is incredible. I happen to think that sane people outnumber nutjobs by about 3:2, and so if Michelle gets all the Republicans and people to the right of the Republicans to vote for her, she probably won't win the general election. But in the Republican caucuses and primaries, the nutjobs are normally the majority.  But his history of her political career and overall critique gives me some pause...

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.

It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics...

Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."... But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.

Bachmann is a lawyer. When I think about lawyers sprouting idiocy, I recall Clarence Darrow's advice to the profession -- When the facts favor your case, argue the facts; when the law favors your case, argue the law. When both the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell.

But you see, she believes what she is saying. Whether talking about anti-American congressmen being investigated by the media or babbling about Obama the baby-killer or how fluoride is rotting our brains, she believes this crap. And, that ultimately makes her vulnerable -- get the True-True believer out on a limb and they'll gladly accept the light saber to cut themselves off and down. But, she has a crowd of people who believe not only with her but in her. And, being the True-True believers themselves, Taibbi points out that they not only catch her when she falls, they lift her higher. 

Snickering readers in New York or Los Angeles might be tempted by all of this to conclude that Bachmann is uniquely crazy. But in fact, such tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you're a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they're even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.

Bachmann is the champion of those tens of millions of Americans who have read and enjoyed the Left Behind books, the apocalyptic works of Christian fiction that posit an elaborate fantasy in which all the true believers are whisked off to heaven with a puff of smoke at the outset of Armageddon.

 So, Amen Brother...pass the pillar of salt. 

 

Truth...and I don't mean to bore ya but there's no such thing as auras!

Tim Minchin is a Australian, a madman, and a poet. We used to have a post up that I mistakenly labeled in such a way as to attract the google monster when abused by pederasts and weasels. While it was popular with these guys, it made me squeamish, and I decided this morning to delete the post and all those strange comments...And while looking for the thing to post it as something else, I discovered that the first Minchin piece I ever listened to has been made into a cartoon...and, here it is!