Thinking back on Santa Claus

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

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On the day after Christmas it is not uncommon for many of us to raise our heads and wonder, “What the Hell Just Happened?”

And, who the Hell is Santa Claus, really? 

That’s the question we never asked as kids. We did not care. Santa brought gifts. That’s all we wanted from the dude. 

Other figures

Of course, the same thing goes for many great religious figures, as well. The Catholic Pope, for example, has proven to be an enigmatic symbol for the faith over the ages. Some popes are conservative. Not many are considered liberal. Yet the very ideas upon which Christianity is founded are liberal in foundation, if not practice. It can be hard to tell who to believe, and what, once religion becomes dogma. 

Questioning beliefs

Recently The Catholic Church has enjoyed a higher and possibly more positive profile thanks to the fresh outlook of Pope Francis, champion of the poor and provocative advocate for the disadvantaged in general.

But the Vatican has some catching up to do, and plenty of company in the indulgence of overreaching with its religious authority. Of course populist religion can be just as overbearing and at times ridiculous in its efforts to create and control the doctrinal status quo.

Beating up on Harry Potter

You may recall that when the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling became popular, some Christians took offense at the notion of children reading about wizardry and witchcraft. While librarians and educators across the country celebrated the fact that so many children had returned to reading through interest generated by the Harry Potter books, a few vocal Christians called for a ban on Harry Potter material because the books contained “magic, sorcery” and other material deemed to be “anti-Christian.”

What the anti- Potter clan fails to mention is that the Harry Potter books contain no more magic, wizardry and witchcraft than a similar series of books by C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologetic writer who authored the Chronicles of Narnia The Narnia books depict a world where witches rule, animals talk and a giant lion repeatedly rescues a band of children who achieve the status of royalty––a most undemocratic result. The seven books in the series combine to form an engaging fantasy that can be read as simple adventure stories or analyzed for spiritual symbolism in the characters. But there is no escaping the fact that sorcery and magic play a major part in the plotline where talking animals, transfigurations, dragons and Deep Magic figure prominently.

Belief bait

Author C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia in a literary form that conveyed Christian values in a fantastical manner, the better to interest children. Christian apologists might argue that even though sorcery exists in the Chronicles of Narnia stories they should be given a pass because the plotline hews closely to the Passion Story of Jesus Christ. The main character in the Chronicles of Narnia is a lion named Aslan who sacrifices himself to save the world.

 Hobbits and Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, was a collegiate classmate of C. S. Lewis, who used similar standards in writing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien’s work which features magical elves, wizards and mythical creatures throughout. There is no question sorcery plays a major role in the plot line of Rings Trilogy, yet when movies based on the Tolkien works hit theaters, Christian scholars scrambled to highlight the spiritual message, not the sorcery it took to achieve victory in the end. It seems that when secular literature plays on fantasy, magic and sorcery, it is some kind of sin. But when books with apparently Christian underpinnings do the same, they get a pass. This double standard ranks as hypocrisy.

 Moral messages

The message that good conquers evil in the Harry Potter series matches that of the Narnia and Rings series. And since everyone in the Harry Potter series is doing magic, it cancels out the supposedly mythical advantage of being able to wave a wand to save the day. The issue of consequence may be that Harry Potter gets as much help solving problems from his associates as he does from some metaphysical force that can be equated to God. Perhaps it is the practical, humanist message of personal autonomy and self-actualization that is most offensive to Christian apologists.

Education matters 

There is a practical and valuable solution to these literary conundrums, and that is education. Any person who is taught the basic laws of science and physics knows that the type of magic in metaphysical trickery has been long proven to be impossible. This fact alone proves the Harry Potter books are based on fantasy. Yet the books honor a healthy and vital aspect of childhood: imagination.

Of course the religious apologist who believes strongly in miracles cannot logically explain why magic should be impossible for Harry Potter yet possible in the Bible.  This is where the worldviews of literary metaphor and biblical literalism collide. The advocates for biblical literalism would just as soon murder the apparently faithless fantasies of Harry Potter than be forced to prove the validity of their own set of miracles to the culture at large. In this way the evil riddle of literalism muddles the otherwise separate worlds of fact and fantasy, undermining the natural order of rational determinism founded on common sense, discernment and logic.

And who abided by that last bit of common sense? Why, none other than Jesus Christ himself, whose parables contained organic imagery that served to illustrate spiritual truths. 

Metaphor rules

As for the lyricism of Christmas itself, there is little harm in indulging a child’s fantasy, to a point. The legend of Santa Claus used to enliven the Christmas season is a case in point. Santa Claus is nothing more an overgrown magic elf with the power to fly, squeeze down chimneys and conjure Christmas presents at will. Talk about your potentially dangerous fantasies! Yet children sooner or later figure out that Santa Clause is not real, a rite of passage for many. The innocent game of charming children with the surprise of gifts that arrived in the night is a cherished tradition for many families.

But if you really analyze the Santa Claus myth, it is as goofy, fantastical and full of magic as Harry Potter. Yet the same people who willingly accept magic as harmless fantasy in association with their religious holiday somehow refuse to accept the role fantasy plays in literature and deem the Harry Potter series evil.

The propensity to project evil on the world is a hallmark of biblical and religious literalism. The most common targets happen to be competing story traditions. Meanwhile the implausible exaggerations of biblical storytelling are excused from critical scrutiny under protection of their exonerated status as “scripture.” Biblical literalism can be a pretty prejudicial worldview. Worse yet, it pretty much confuses the issue of truth no matter how you look at it. 

 

Portions of this blog post are excerpted from The Genesis Fix: A Repair Manual for Faith in the Modern Age by Christopher Cudworth

A Duck Dynasty we could do without

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Common Goldeneye ducks in a group of 3 males and one female.

My brother and I often trespassed in our backwoods exploits. On a particular fall day we entered a private marsh near the entrance. It was there that a peat mining operation stored a rickety-looking crane. It stood awkwardly by a galvanized metal quonset building covering a concrete slab.

The peat miners worked the far northern end of a property called Nelson Lake Marsh. There were long shallow pits where the peat had been stripped away and sold. They rolled the crane in and out of the marsh on a raised gravel bed fortified by metal strips to keep the weight of the heavy machine evenly distributed. The huge metal treads of the crane clanked and rolled as it worked, an archaic and somewhat anachronistic operation it was.

The peatmining road followed the foot of a shallow hill on the west side of the marsh. That hill was covered by a stand of burr oak trees, beneath which grew verdant wildflowers in spring. This was a former savanna habitat, not timbered in more than 150 years. The trees growing there were thick and gnarly. From a distance they formed a thick dark wall behind the long course of cattails reaching north to south.

As my brother and I walked the road to the main body of water, we kept an eye out for the property owners, who would likely throw us out if we were caught. It was close to a mile’s walk along the west woods to reach the point where a small wooden shack stood among the cattails. From there you could see a series of well-constructed duck blinds along the south side of the lake, which swung to a southwesterly direction, almost as if the wind had suddenly come up and blown it that way.

The wind could be fierce over the lake on the wrong day. But on an early October day with sunlight popping the last of the green grasses into high relief a light breeze was fine company.

Duck heads on a wall

We reached the wooden shack to find a pair of shallow boats resting upright, drying from their duty on the previous day’s fall duck hunt. Inside the cabin we found 10-12 duck heads nailed to the wall. These were indicators of what had been shot on the lake so far that fall.

There were wood duck and gadwall, mallard and pintail and even a black and white scaup head. My brother and I studied the duck heads closely. Our access to real creatures was prized. My brother was a trapper and fisherman, and we both birdwatched. But neither of us was a duck hunter. We didn’t own guns.

Fall focus on ducks

We carried binoculars instead. Everywhere we went.

Our birding life lists grew rapidly. Sites such as Nelson Lake Marsh were treasures of yet undiscovered species, including American and Least Bittern, Sora and Virginia Rail. The rare sighting of a yellow-headed blackbird this far east in Illinois was also treasured.

But in fall we focused on the ducks. There were mergansers; Hooded and common, and redhead, canvasback, ruddy ducks, baldpate (wigeon) black duck, shoveler and two kinds of teal, blue-wined and green-winged. More than 20 species of ducks passed through in migration.

I also recall a green-winged teal head nailed to the boat house wall as well. The tiny cinnamon head had an emerald eye patch lined with yellow. The colors were riveting, even more beautiful up close than either my brother or I could imagine. That is why we loved birds. The diversity.

If duck gizzards could talk

Later in my birding career I studied field biology in college. We learned how to do taxidermy on ducks. We also learned that many species of waterfowl were suffering a malady that turned their gizzards green with poison. The lead shot used by hunters was being ingested and it sat in their crops until the lead leached into their bodies. Lead poisoning.

It was the first time I realized that a seemingly innocent American past-time likc duck hunting could have such an insidious consequence. It was also entirely preventable but for the selfish priority that lead shot gave hunters better aim. It enabled them to kill more ducks. As it turned out, that fact was true, twice over.

I saw the consequences of lead shot up close, and first hand. Perhaps it even made them fly slower, making them easier targets for hunters. It was sad to realize that lead poisoning made ducks sick and countless of them must have died slowly and silently, collapsed in the marsh where they would not be found. But they might be eaten by other creatures, a fox or coyote perhaps, who would also slowly absorb the perils of lead poisoning.

Critical disadvantages

Life and death works through critical disadvantages, and nature too. On both the biological and social level, it is the slightest disadvantage that can cause destruction of an individual. If the disadvantage is broad enough t0 impact an entire population, the whole species can suffer and even disappear.

If that disadvantage is forcibly or even casually imposed among creatures aware of its presence, but disavowed of even casual concern, it is certainly not a just or human level of behavior. In fact it is plainly immoral to cause suffering to fellow human beings, then claim it is your right.

Suffering that is caused unwittingly or by neglect is no better than that which is intentional. We should recall from the Bible the passage in which Jesus lectures a group of people who are asking questions about how to treat others. 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

So much human suffering is the product of force of habit or traditions that favor one element of society or another. We’ve been through that with slavery in America, which bled into racial discrimination that continues to this day. We’ve seen it in centuries of persecution toward the Jews on basis of egregious interpretation of the Bible that makes them scapegoats for the death of Yeshua (or Jesus). First it made the Jews target practice before the Crusades. Then it contributed to the mindset of Holocaust.

Poison parallels

The allegory of poison shot is therefore profound. Prejudice and discrimination are essentially the lead shot of society. They may not cause death and disadvantage right away, but they can. And when left “out there” they are a slow and deadly poison to the soul and body of others.

The unrecognized tragedy of this poison is that the lead shot of prejudice essentially kills both the hunter and the hunted. It kills the hunter through accumulation of hatred, which rots the soul. It kills the hunted by penetrating the body and mind, killing people from the inside out.

So when people like Phil Robertson of the television show Duck Dynasty go shooting their mouths off with the lead shot of discrimination, hatred, intolerance and prejudice, it poisons our whole society. That type of poison, even disguised as free speech or religious liberty, is ultimately ingested by innocents where it rots their proverbial gizzards from the inside out.

Lack of progress

On both an allegorical and practical basis, it is interesting to note that the use of lead shot in America has still not been banned altogether. We’ve long known that lead kills. Lead paint is banned from use and yet children still ingest the stuff in old homes and cleanup can be costly. There are some that speculate that it was lead pipes that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. 

Lead shot

We should ban lead shot completely. Yet the gun lobby has successfully protected against banning lead shot. It’s as if the freedom to shoot straight should trump any ill consequences and poison that lead ammo brings upon the environment. It’s really a sad, sick commentary on priorities that a tradition known to be dangerous should be protected by those who selfishly profit from it.

That is the real Duck Dynasty at work in America. It’s a different kind of Duck Dynasty than a bunch of charming rednecks squawking and then praying their way through life as they get rich off the cumulative ignorance of others. It all transpires with a wink and a nod behind the scenes. And it has to stop.

Money and free speech

Free speech is all too often about money. That’s what the real Duck Dynasty is all about.

When Phil Robertson rips homosexuality from a position of moneyed prominence, he is abusing the right to free speech by poisoning the environment for others. That truly is the type of talk that rots the nation from the inside out. And just as lead shot rots the gizzards of the wild ducks upon which men like Phil Robertson have made fortunes, his toxic words lurk in the environment and poison the parlance upon which we all depend for survival. You need to understand that people gobble this stuff willingly, as if it were the food of the Gods. Fame is the toxic spoon of culture.

The fact that people like Sarah Palin call such toxic words “free speech” and complain publicly about restrictions on what amounts to hate language is a sign of the level of poison to which our nation has too long been accustomed. It’s almost as if Palin is saying, “If you don’t like our beliefs, then you’d better duck, because we’re going to shoot off our mouths and engage in hateful language no matter who it hurts.”

You can read it either way. “Lead poisoning” can be read as “lead” or “led.” When it comes from leaders who don’t understand the toxic shots they take at society, it kills.

Endangered species, endangered souls

Lead shot is now, finally, being banned in many parts of the country because it kills more than ducks. Even endangered California Condors wind up ingesting lead shot, poisoning themselves as result.

Our allegory comes full circle, you see. Even a seemingly innocent guilty pleasure like a Duck Dynasty comes with risks when you ignore it’s full portent. The things we casually consume really can hurt us as a nation.

Yet some people will tell you that such “political correctness” goes too far, or that the “Nanny State” is to be avoided at all costs. But those are the rationalizations of the privileged, and also the cloying attempt of the weak-minded to align themselves with people in positions of power. We need to demand better from ourselves. But you can always expect a threat and a fight in return for any attempt at wiser morals and accountability.

Guns pointed at me

But let us pause for a moment, and consider a subtle variation on the theme. Because all perspectives deserve consideration.

For example, my own intersection with duck hunting took some strange turns over the years, and it taught me a few things.

I recall walking the Nelson Lake March property once it was purchased by the country. Much of the land surrounding the near shore of the march had been purchased except east hill and the south shore where the duck blinds remained. That meant in fall there was still legal hunting. I could easily hear the repeated shotgun pops from the reed-stuffed blinds on the far shore. Sure, it was a romantic scene, and I never had anything against the hunters. Some days I thought it would be fun to join them.

But once I heard shot plopping in the cattails around me, it made me wonder how much longer the tradition of hunting the lake could safely carry on.

There were also hunters who perched on a hill on the north side of lake where the property was still being farms. Once the corn or beans were harvested, hunters would set up jump blinds and shoot ducks that lifted off the lake into the north wind.

The low land below that hill was by them owned by the county. As I walked through an area where glacial seeps made great habitat for rail and snipe, a pair of hunters sat sullenly in their camouflage gear above me, staring at me with a barely concealed rage. In their eyes I was invading their turf, getting between them and the ducks and geese they hoped to shoot.

It was a strange and awkward situation, because they had every right to be where they were, but so did I. That had an odd requirement to shoot straight up to avoid knocking out ducks that landed on public property. But the situation did not last long. Just a couple seasons.

Soon enough the county bought that farm as well, then the south shore. All that was left to hunt was one last bastion, a farm on the east side of the marsh.

And sure enough, one morning I was walking that side of the park looking for birds when a voice rose from the thickets above me. “Get the F*** off my land,” the voice demanded. “Before I shoot your F****** head off.”

Transitions

The park line was in that area was still ill-defined, so I moved quickly toward the lake, walking backwards as the hunter pointed his gun muzzle in my direction. I’m sure some people might have approved him shooting me in the chest at that moment.

All I could think was that the Lord’s Prayer tells us to forgive our trespassers, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

It was a bitter and difficult moment, because I empathized with the duck hunters at that point. I always had. A longstanding tradition was slowly being erased. You can hardly blame the hunting community for being a bit peeved in having its shooting rights slowly taken away.

But it came down to a numbers game. Either the marsh and all its inhabitants could be protected for environmental reasons and the public good, or it could remain a private reserve owned and used by a lucky few. The public good ultimately won out. Now thousands of people per year visit what has become Dick Young Forest Preserve, named for the man who patiently chronicled its rare plant communities. A team of us birders conducted surveys for a decade to fill in the picture of wildlife and birds seen on the site. It is one of the most popular recreation areas in Kane County, Illinois. So the common good has been served.

Changing traditions

Sure, in some ways it hurt to lose the old ways. We romanticize them. But in some cases, lose them we must.

That may someday also mean a permanent ban on lead shot to keep animals from being poisoned. And on a cultural level it may mean demanding that people temper the impact of their poison language, for the times really are changing, and for the better.

The dynasty of prejudice and selfish discourse has a long history, but it has been a dynasty long enough. The words of Phil Robertson are the echo of a poison interpretation of the Bible that refuses to recognize that we no longer take significant parts of the Bible literally, and that it should not be regarded as infallibly composed or regarded as literal truth. It the Duck Dynasty still believes that, then it deserves to fall.

Society is about much. much more than nailing duck heads to the wall.

 

Pope Francis and the Brand New Day

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

By Christopher Cudworth

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Pope Francis seems to be saying to the world, “Hold on a moment. I’ve got something to say…”

With the advent of a new Pope, all of Catholicdom held its breath a few months ago. Now that Pope Francis is taking names and kicking ass on practical and theological issues, even people outside the Catholic faith are breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not just business as usual in the biggest Christian organization on earth.

Of course Catholicism makes some legitimate claims to the origins and sustenance of Christianity as a whole. The whole Roman Catholic history serves as one big pipeline back to the days when early Christians first struggled for survival in the face of political oppression, then duked it out over what the faith should really mean and finally got the stamp of approval from Constantine and a success line of rulers and kings all the way through to the modern age.

Cocky Catholics? 

But along the way, Catholicism got a little cocky and a little arch in its practices. Catholics persecuted a fair share of people over the ages, and got a few things wrong about the cosmos too. Remember Copernicus and Galileo? Neither were accepted as practical authorities on cosmological matters.

A few Crusades and an Inquisition or two later, Catholicism grew into a faith that tolerated little dissent. It took one of their own priests, Martin Luther, to bust open the bible and bring back the true meaning of faith through grace to the Christian world.

Open and shut cases

The gates of Catholicism have still slammed shut on some issues. Recent popes did little to get the rampant issue of priestly abuse of children under control.

Then along comes Pope Francis. What a surprise. He started off with an equivocal but intriguing statement about homosexuality (“Who am I to judge?) and proceeded to demand that his own hierarchy live the faith by dumping a higher-up in the faith for living high on the Christian hog.

The general message of Pope Francis has been something Jesus might have said. “Don’t be like the Pharisees.”

In other words, Pope Francis is calling all Catholics to consider what their faith is really all about. Caring for the poor. Looking out for the disadvantaged.

Hell, Pope Francis even has the guts to throw a gut-check to the primary religion in America, which is capitalism.

Here’s what he said:

“Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”

Slapdowns

It is somewhat stunning as well to see the term “survival of the fittest” daringly inserted into a religious argument for social justice. Do you get what that means? Pope Francis essentially acknowledges the practical truth of evolution with such a statement. In that regard his slap at the hindquarters of capitalism is also a slap in the face to evangelicals who can’t come to grips with the science that drives our understanding of the world.

The Pope just yanked the respective chains of economic and religious zealots. Do you get what’s going on here.

The time has come for a new Reformation. The time has come to question all the dogma and complacency driving our current religious dialogue. The Pope is using a mixed martial arts approach to theological discourse to challenge those who think they can get away with the same stupid shit they’ve been pulling for the last 30 years.

His real statement is this: “Your time is up. You’ve had your say. The world is ready for a brand new day. Get out of the way.”

Hurrah for Pope Francis. He may not be perfect, and he would be the first it seems to admit that. But he may be what Catholicism needs, and by proxy the rest of the world might take notice.

 

The Christmas message in red and green

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Red for grief and Green for Joy

With loss so much a part of the human condition, it should be no surprise that recognition of the pain and joy in life are woven into the symbols of our holiday traditions.

For billions of people around the world, the Christmas season is a period of joy in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. The traditions surrounding Christmas now reach in many directions, but the most recognized aspect of the season is use of the colors red and green.

One cannot really consider the story of the life of Jesus Christ without acknowledging the grief that wraps itself around the intentional joy of his existence. His short life ended in a rather sudden crucifixion at the hands of authorities who viewed him as a somewhat enigmatic political figure. Some Gospels note that a sign was hung over the cross where he was hung by the wrists and ankles to die. The sign is reputed to have read “King of the Jews.”

The biblical accounts of the life of Jesus vary by author and Mark, Matthew and Luke seem to share some common source, but the message is clear in all three, along with the book of John, that something remarkable happened on earth in the form of a man who transcended all understanding.

The fact that he was given over to authorities to be slaughtered like a common thief makes one’s blood run thick. Jesus exposed the ugly intentions of the religious leaders in his own community who turned their faith tradition into political advantage. Jesus also made a mockery of the political authority of Pilate by not putting up resistance against a man who was carrying out the law with a fear for his own position in life. In both cases, Jesus represented the higher law of true morality.

Which is why red is an appropriate color for the Christmas season. It is both festive and threatening. We ignore the threat for the most part during the holidays because we center on the joys of family, togetherness and gift-giving. It’s absurd of course, and so typical of the human condition that we turn our heads from the pain to indulge in the joy. In so doing, we often miss the real message of the season.

That is grief wrapped in joy. The birth of Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecies and yet the life of the man between his early youth and his maturation into a ministry of salvation is hardly mentioned. We see Jesus as a 12-year-old wise beyond his years and suddenly he is performing miracles and preaching with authority.

Of course those of us with years under our belts feel the same way about life at times. Our youth and early marriage years are a blur of events and suddenly you’re dumped out the other side with grown children and a call to figure out what the rest of life is supposed to bring.

Into that picture comes another type of grief, that of regret or sentiment that wears us down if we are not careful to keep it in perspective.

At the age of 50 our friends start to suffer health problems and some may even die. Our mortality comes rushing around the corner to say “Look at me!”

And then another Christmas comes along. We immerse ourselves in the season and those of us lucky enough to have family make an effort to hug them close if we can. The month of December with all its red and green is a salve against the dark, short days of transition from fall to winter.

It is no wonder that early Christians essentially stole the “pagan” tradition of a winter festival. What a brilliant coup, for it gives us opportunity to turn grief into joy. Yet like a double helix, our grief and joy are always mixed in the Christmas season. Red and green wind round and round in lights and ribbons and songs that sound like those colors come to life. Many of our Christmas songs are plaintive and full of longing. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” And so on. 

For those of us who have experienced the loss of a very close loved one in the year leading up to Christmas, it is almost as if one of those important colors is missing. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is missing, the red or the green? We wander into the Christmas season wondering what it will bring. What do we do with our emotions? Point them toward the red, or the green? 

To let loss rule your soul is not the meaning of Christmas. Of course it is normal and good to miss those recently departed. If the loss was sudden it can seem like an Act of God. We tend to turn the entire operation over to faith or the fates at that point.

If the loss was prolonged, one may have grieved long and not known it. Then the loss can seem like a quiet liberation that you do not dare admit. Not out loud at least. To watch a loved one suffer is no joy at all. You think back to holidays when they wanted to feel joy and felt only pain. The forced smiles and quick hugs were given in hope. That is good. That is right. That is true. There is always hope in Christmas. That’s the whole point. The Christian message is that sorrow turns to joy beyond this life. 

Our family lost a wife and a mother this year. She was a friend to many, and she absolutely loved the Christmas season. It will be hard not to miss her. Yet the message of Christmas is that there is hope. It abides in the greens we hang and the trees we decorate. We try to move past the pain of death and into the joy of memories and hope their life conveyed. Life and death are a double helix too. We can’t experience one without knowing the other is present. 

The red and the green are interwoven. The Christmas season has meaning that at once contains both grief and joy and also releases it into the world. That is all we can hope for. All we can hope for indeed. 

From Django Unchained to Men In Black, a critical take on American Exceptionalism

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Django. Making escape from slavery look good.

Django. Making escape from slavery look good.

The Academy Award-winning movie Django Unchained, written and directed by the always violent mind of Quentin Tarentino, has a simple plot line. Slave gets rescued by a bounty hunter who needs him to identify some bad guys. Slave learns ways of bounty-hunting and takes it to a naturally new level. Slave earns possible freedom for himself and the love of his life if he helps pull off a ruse with a sickeningly manipulative and violent Southern plantation owner. Things go awry and people get shot. Things blow up. And Django, well, we wouldn’t want to spoil the ending. 

"The difference between you and me? I make this look good."

“The difference between you and me? I make this look good.”

The plotline of Django Unchained closely resembles another movie in which a black character emerges as an eminently good student. That movie would be Men In Black, with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. One of the key similarities is that the Jamie Foxx character in Django and the Will Smith character in MIB take their roles seriously with a compelling flair. I paraphrase, but the Smith character states, upon putting on the MIB suit, “The difference between you and me? I make this look good.”

The parallels are interesting because one movie is about the very earthly fact of slavery as a scourge upon the American conscience, while the MIB series is all about the fact that aliens live on earth without 99.99% of the population knowing. Even Dennis Rodman, Elvis and Sylvestor Stallone are implicated as aliens in the plot. 

It is interesting to realize that one movie, set in the past, points out that American history is not so exceptional as it is sordid. While the other movie, set in the present, lampoons the notion that our government and our culture are somehow superior by nature. 

In other words (and other worlds) American Exeptionalism is a literal and figurative bunch of hooey. 

In fact what you realize upon comparing these two movies is that America is exceptional despite its supposed superior foundations and conservatively interpreted Constitution. The only thing that has made America great over the years is a deep willingness in its most liberal citizens to an ultimate sense of justice. Liberalism, not exceptionalism, has been the true expression of America’s finest values. 

Django Unchained and Men In Black both illustrate that America’s black citizens have had to be exceptional models of patience and ingenuity with an almost magic flair for perseverance and creativity. The object of Django’s affections and the entire goal of the venture is to rescue his enslaved wife, a German-speaking woman named Brunhilde, which happens to link with the German legend of overcoming seemingly insurpassable odds in the name of love.

What better characterization of black culture can there be, except that it somehow must be defined by a legend from a primarily white culture. It is the ugly fact that both movies pair an initially clueless black character with an obvious savvy white character to educate an unleash the powers of the black man. And ultimately, the black woman. 

That’s the problem with the attitude toward equality of black people. It still needs nurturing somehow? Not at all, in truth. Nor does the equality of gays in America need a mentor. Or women. Or Mexican people. Immigrants of any kind. Yet that is our national narrative in some respect. The melting pot somehow harkens back to a white chef. 

And that is the sad underlying fact of so-called American Exceptionalism. That whites are the true core and fiber of American success. It held that blacks could fight in World War II and still come home to a highly segregated society where equality did not exist. And it still held that the 1960s were the ruination of a society with all the liberation of social and sexual mores. It holds that a certain religion has driven the God-given, blessed existence of America. 

American Exceptionalism then held forth that 9/11 was the greatest affront, an event that gave us permission to do whatever we wanted in the world, even to torture terror suspects in so-called “black sites” around the world. Do you start to see it all circle back into a cesspool of “exceptionalism” that is exceptional only in its arrogance and supposition that Americans can do no wrong. Not even when we enslave. Torture. Discriminate. Oppress. Even legislate these same evil practices into law. And in today’s culture! Years removed, we should be, from the need to use our government for religious and social prejudices. Yet some persist, denying basic civil rights and running political parties that make very public attempts to suppress the vote of minorities so that they can remain in power. And then complain about why people are not attracted to their “party.” Some party it is that cares only for its own right to rule without granting even basic human rights, denying health care coverage to millions under the so-called free market laws that also discriminate by conveying unfair economic advantage to those already in power. 

And what of the supposed unnecessary or gratuitous violence depicted in Django Unchained, and to a certain extent, even in Men In Black. Well, when you consider that our gun laws have led to a culture where more Americans have been killed––or killed themselves––through gun violence than all the soldiers that have died in our combined wars over the years, there is nothing gratuitous about the violence in Django Unchained at all. At least the movies showed those who got shot writhing in pain and cursing desperately. That’s the reality we seldom see in the movies. Gun violence maims and kills, and that is celebrated in video games that splatter brains and even the 5:00 news, where it leads when it bleeds. 

It’s about time we figured out that the glossed up image of America as a free society is still an illusion. There are people living in chains to this day. 

You can hear the fear in the voices of those who want to keep it that way. The increasingly shrill call by Rush Limbaugh to suppress women’s rights, and the barely disguised racism he shows toward President Barack Obama, to whom Limbaugh refers as “The Magic Negro.” 

That is exactly how dismissively the character played by Leonardo di Caprio speaks of black people in the movie Django Unchained. He speaks of the fact that only 1 in 10,000 “niggers” is exceptional, worthy of his respect in any way. The rest he sees fit to serve to the murderous dogs who tear apart a runaway slave in retribution for costing the di Caprio character his “investment” of $500. 

If that’s still the value of human life in the eyes of some who portend to lead America, then we’ve got enormous problems of exceptionalism that cannot be wished away by claims of patriotism or supposed righteousness. That kind of exceptionalism is the most disgusting form of hubris imaginable. 

It has taken years and decades and centuries of liberal salvation to bring America somewhat out of its own pit of racial selfishness and greed. Still we suppress minorities, and still we crash the economy through lack of jurisprudence so that the wealthy can gain more for their appetites. 

We’ve still got to make up our minds whether the nation is a plantation or reasonable place to live for the so-called “aliens” among us. The arc between Django Unchained and Men In Black has a lot to teach us if we care to learn the allegorical lesson. 

Falling short of that enlightenment would only be exceptionally stupid. 

 

 

What American originalism really looks like

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment
American originalism is founded in its government, and ever shall be

American originalism is founded in the equity of its government, and ever shall be

According to a certain brand of conservatives, government is the problem in the America. To be more precise, they say the size of government is the problem.

Ronald Reagan once said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

He may have been speaking about a specific economic or social issue relevant to the early 1980s. Yet the quote by Reagan has since been distilled into a blanket statement that blames government for everything is wrong with America. Not too long ago the tax zealot known as Grover Nordquist once said, “Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bath tub.”

Looking for the real enemy

Norquist is one of the so-called conservatives seeking to agitate American citizens into thinking government and the taxes collected by said government are the enemy.

But if we study how our nation came to be, and why some political firebrands seem to be so pissed off at what America has become, the answers are quite surprising. Government is not the problem with America.

To understand that statement, let us consider for a moment how America got started.

The progression toward equality

In order to have an America there needed to be a government. That was the first step. The Constitution was written to address the needs and rights of the people that government would affect. But America did not exist until the government was formed. The size of a government also evolves to match the size of the nation is upholds. To radically shrink government for the sake of drowning it in a bathtub as some symbolic sort of ideological statement is not just naive and selfish, it denies why the nation was founded in the first place, and why government is a necessary and beneficial expression of that foundation.

The formation of our nation’s government was followed and further defined by a Bill of Rights, which meant the establishment of laws to govern the nation and protect the basic principles of liberty and freedom. The form of government we have is called a republic is undergirded by a philosophical principle we call democracy. Government by the people.

That is what our government does. It protects the republic, promotes democracy and represents the will of the people through laws that define the nation.

We have a Congress to legislate new laws and determine the expenditures of the nation. Our Supreme Court ostensibly enforces both the voice of the Constitution and the laws that spring from it. Arguably we also have the entity known as the 4th estate and freedom of the press to keep even the executive, congressional and judicial branches honest and in balance.

These collective activities along with departments designed to manage our treasury, protect our environment and conduct the defense of the nation are all part of our government, our nation, this thing we call America. Government.

Things begin to change quite rapidly once we emerge from the halls of government and the laws it issues and manages.

After laws comes commerce. The act of doing business.

After commerce comes the economy. The dynamic of free market enterprise, our chosen model for commerce.

After economy comes wealth. The accumulation of assets, property and money.

After wealth comes equity. This is both a monetary and social principle that measures how wealth is distributed. Equity is both a description of value (monetary, for example) and a description of values (fairness). When equity is out of balance in either respect the nation is prone to falter.

Some like Grover Nordquist currently blame the government for falsely redistributing equity and wealth. In fact the opposite may be true. When wealth becomes so concentrated in one segment of the economy or in the hands of too few, there is no equity of purpose, fairness or equal opportunity. We have oligarchy instead of democracy.

We also know that the distribution of wealth affects both personal and national security. Gun crimes are rampant in areas where economic security and health are compromised. So people invent their own form of law, and commerce, and justice. The Second Amendment advocates a well-regulated militia, but the one we have now in America has killed more than 1,000,000 people since 1980, more than all the soldiers who’ve died in America’s wars. Many of those deaths were suicides, granted. But people commit violence against themselves for reasons of despair. Often that despair is over economic circumstances, or failure of hope. Inequity.

The whole nation suffers as a result. Because whenthere is no economic health, there are no customers for the people who create and sell. It doesn’t matter what the so-called “job creators” do if there are not enough customers to buy their wares or services. The rich can create all the jobs they want–or are wont to do. Without equity in America their enterprises are due to fail.

Worse, when the nation and our government fails its responsibility to regulate commerce, maintaining fairness as a foundation for the economy, the inequity of wealth begins to assert itself on the lives and welfare of all.

So the inequity of wealth is also the iniquity of a nation. Iniquity is immoral or grossly unfair behavior. It almost always occurs in relationship to inequity.

The Bible warns us against such iniquity. Yet the propensity of a people to tolerate and even admire the inequity of wealth and the iniquity that comes with it is one of humankind’s most famous foibles. America is currently a nation of both inequity and iniquity.

What the Bible says about it

In the Bible, Jesus encourages us to stand up against inquity. “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated inquity, therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”

Men like Grover Nordquist never seem consider the furrowed brow of iniquity, which casts hateful words against those who oppose it, or who seek to rectify iniquity through criticism of inequity. The typical defense of iniquity is the turnabout of accusation, such as;  “Why do you hate the rich?”

Men like Nordquist blame the government for stealing the wealth of all those who call America home. They point fingers at social programs, calling them “entitlements” when in fact they are simply insurance programs in which Americans invest in the wholesale support of those who are aged, with social security. That is nothing more than prudent savings in advance of the time when people are too old to work.

How ironic that a group of conservatives should force the US Postal system to pay its pensions 75 years in advance, yet hate the idea that the collective wealth of the nation is sufficient to provide dignity and economic security to people in their old age. The same goes for Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are not hard to fund if ideology does not stand in the way. Yet the richest Americans pay nothing into Social Security. If they make a certain amount of money per year, they get to take a pass. Like getting out of gym class if you’re already in a sport in high school. That’s how childish our nation’s economic policies are, a distressing habituation to worshipping the wealthy to the point that we do not force them to contribute like everyone else. Likewise with corporate welfare. We give billions to industries that do not need the government’s money. Who make billions upon billions in profits, and still come begging because it lines their pockets. Or buy off politicians to make sure the money flow keeps coming. That is inequity and iniquity balled into one.

It is not the government per se that is at fault here. But the iniquity of those whose selfish behavior is sucking the nation dry.

Grover, in other words, is a shortsighted man. Because a nation starts with government, which sets the laws, legislates and regulates commerce, fuels the economy, and that creates wealth. But Nordquist wants to put a twist in the hose at the very source of commerce, the government that runs our nation. He’s aiming at the wrong target. It’s not the amount of taxes that are collected that affect the economy. The Clinton era proved that. It is the amount of the economy that is fairly and truely available to We The People that matters. Government is not the problem. Financial iniquity is the problem.

That’s pretty rich

No one hates the rich without the rich first coveting their wealth above all other things, taking advantage of others and even exploiting the poor. Then wealth leads to inequality, the opposite of equality, which is the true and original foundation of the United States Constitution. Take note, Justice Scalia. Two can speak the language of originalism.

Of course it has taken more than 200 years for America to achieve anything near the principles of equality proposed by the Founding Fathers. Let us not forget that they somehow forgot to grant equal rights to all citizens. Actual and true civil rights have taken more than 200 years to come to fruition, including racial, women’s rights and now gay rights. All have had to be wrested from the hands of iniquitable power and authority. People who already had wealth and position in society and did not care to share it.

The War On What?

That is wrong. Equality means equal health, welfare, liberty and justice for all. Clearly we are still nowhere near a level playing field for millions of Americans whose civil rights are not guaranteed or protected in our society. That holds true for our economy as well, where the rich and powerful have seen fit to declare themselves above the law and “too big to fail.” So they walk off from heinous financial crimes, unscathed. No one questions these crimes. Instead we’re busting millions of minor potheads and throwing them in jail as if they’re the scourge of society. The War On Drugs. What a joke. We should be conducting the War On Bankers. They’re the ones who have gutted the nation’s economy. Over and over again.

The real costs of war

And recent so-called conservatives even took our nation to war under false pretense, then squandere billions from the national trust in undbudgeted warfare that is still costing the country $2B a month in Afghanistan alone, $800M of which is borrowed money.

And Grover Nordquist thinks government is the problem? As if shrinking government and cutting taxes would solve everything. As if the good nature of people with money will step in to save our country when it runs astray.

No one has volunteered so far to do that. Instead we saw wholesale war profiteering under the Bush-Cheney regime where billions in government money got spent and wasted on soldiers of forture and firms that overcharged our own military by 1000% because they knew they could. Iniquity. It’s the same pattern whether it’s in banking or in war. Take what you can. Laugh at the suckers. Like Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. Despise the rabble while you seek monopoly.

We’ve allowed, even encouraged the wealthy to exist in a world apart from our nation. Look at the last candidate the Republican Party threw up for the presidency. Mitt Romney. Vulture capitalist. Offshore banking. A seemingly moral man whose living is made from the proceeds of iniquity. This is no coincidence. This is what the American system has been manipulated to encourage.

Hence the offshoring of money in tax havens, the offshoring of labor to foreign shores. And with it, the capital that is supposed to flow back into American society through fair pay to labor is no longer here. Manufacturing has dropped from 47% of the American economy in the 1960s to just 9% or so in 2013. We still make a lot of good things, and still can. Our government can help us compete worldwide. See, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Government helping business in the interest of the nation. Duh.

It works like this: citizens who are employed in manufacturing, infrastructure development, science or any other host of government boosted industries (like the automotive industry we bailed out, now doing fine…) will buy the goods that the so-called jobs creators produce.

Without equity and equality for those citizens, there is no nation, no exchange of commerce. Our very nation is otherwise dissipated and soon enough austere when we yank our government out of the business of building our economy and competing on the world stage. Reducing taxes for the sake of reducing taxes, as Nordquist proposes, does nothing to help our economy. Rich people don’t take the money they earn in profits and just hire people for the sake of doing so. That’s a lie! Grover Nordquist and yes, Ronald Reagan had it all wrong.

The Supreme Court of inquity and inequity

How ironic as well that our Supreme Court has taken the “liberty” to further grant corporations the full status of personhood. That allows further abuse and corruption of free speech and yet another push of money again up the ladder of iniquity so that average, individual people have an even harder time getting their voices heard in government. That’s called “fixing the game,” and no amount of tax cuts will help average people even up the score. In fact tax cuts generally favor the wealthiest of Americans, especially loopholes that only the wealthiest can gain, such as low taxes on capital gains. That’s Mitt Romney’s game. He tried hard to hide it in his campaign.

Thank God there is still enough common sense in America to vote against candidates who would further rape the nation if given the chance.

Let’s drown iniquity in the bathrub, not the nation

The problem isn’t government, or the size of government. It is the iniquity of those who not only refuse to share the wealth, but aggressively seek to exploit everyone in the nation. Our Constitution and our government are under attack throgh laws that are being undermined. Commerce is being manipulated along with an economy whose equitable foundation has been lost through the iniquity of those who steal and cheat and lie for their own advantage.  The very merits of equality are in a constant struggle to survive against  people who see no shame in using even the mantle of religion to claim the economic righteousness in their own iniquities. Jesus would puke if he saw us now.

Men like Grover Nordquist and yes, Ronald Reagan are the problem with America. Reagan had it all wrong back then, and it is still wrong today. Government is precisely the solution to our problems. But we had better use its power quickly and directly, for the forces of iniquity are gathering strength.

What Christian nation? 

So many people claim that America is a Christian nation. Yet the Bible warns those Christians who partner with the forces of iniquity that they are the ones who will be cast out in the end. Matthew 7:21-23. “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; be he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in my name done many wonderful works? And then I will profess to them, I never knew you; depart from me, yet that work iniquity.”

Now that, in a nutshell, is what a Christian nation would really look like. Throw the iniquital bums out. They don’t deserve a seat at the table, much less the head of the table.

 

This piece is also published on my blog at RedRoom.com

 

 

 

 

CPAC, Republicans and aggressive stupidity in politics and religion

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment
FlagWaiver

Aggressive stupidity is wearing us all out.

Another round of CPAC madness is nearly through in America. A parade of Republican zealots highlights the speaker list, with Grover Nordquist standing proudly at the front of the line proclaiming that any Republican who agrees to tax increases of any sort “are rat heads in a Coke bottle. They damage the brand for everyone.”

How is it that Nordquist fails to see himself as the rat in the bottleneck of Republican common sense?

And how interesting that another CPAC attendee, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana–himself a possible presidential candidate in 2016–once said of Republicans, “We’ve got to stop being the stupid party.”

Jindal has been castigated for that remark, of course. It is not in the nature of conservatives to admit they might be wrong or stupid about anything.

What wrong looks like

Even when proven desperately wrong by enaction of their own nation-devastating (America and Iraq, to name a couple) policies during the horrid debacle of the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney years, Republicans would not find any ground for confession that their whole ideology might just be aggressively stupid. Even when conservatives ruled all three wings of government, things didn’t go right. Bush racked up a trillion dollar bill for his wars of choice that America can’t pay off. We’re still borrowing to pay $2B a month to mess around in Afghanistan. So what do Republicans do? They point fingers at social insurance policies such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the problem as if saving older people from destitution and medical disaster costs a nation more than war. 

Bad habits

Aggressive stupidity is a bad habit that can be fixed. But it’s hard, like shaking alcoholism or more accurately, a gambling addiction. Aggressive stupidity is a gambling addiction, to be precise. You are gambling that your brand of stubborn ideology, if backed by sufficient bets on the table, will win the day. Of course that’s been America’s global defense policy for decades. We now spend more on defense than the next 17 nations combined, and in many ways are less secure than ever. Yet here was Mitt Romney standing before the CPAC and insisting that Republicans put a powerful US military at the top of their agenda. “Do whatever you can to keep America strong, to keep America prosperous and free and the most powerful nation on earth.” Rah rah Mitt. That’s what got you where you are, buddy. A loser claiming you had all the right ideas. 

For perspective, that statement by Romney pretty much fulfills everything President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about when he cited the evils of the military/industrial complex as our worst enemy. The idea that we cannot be free without killing everything in sight is ludicrous, expensive and costly to the American spirit.

Killing ourselves in the name of the Constitution

It was recently learned that more Americans have been killed in their own country by gun violence than in all the wars ever fought by the nation. Yet we are locked in a battle over Second Amendment rights that Republicans use as a blunderbuss to cow a bunch of ignorant, one-issue voters into thinking Democrats are going to take away their guns. And when reasonable gun control laws are proposed, such as required background checks, Republicans run for cover behind the blazing guns policies of the NRA, who could think of nothing better to do in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings than to stick a bunch of armed guards in every school in America, and force teachers to get gun training. And to arm the teachers.

That is aggressive stupidity. One feels no shame in calling out stupidity in such circumstances. There is no risk of insult when the stupidity is so glaring in so many cases. Republicans are not stupid people, although even the wealthiest were targets of the incisive wit of one Mark Twain, who warned us, “All is takes is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.” The humorist knew that aggressive stupidity really can win the day.

Elections versus selections

And when Republicans lose as they did in the 2016 selection (it wasn’t an election, but a selection of Obama against aggressive Republican stupidity) the party can think of nothing other to do than find a way to cheat the system. So Republican governors are gerrymandering ways to stifle Democratic voters any way they can.

The conservative party is shrinking like a set of testicles in a cold wind. Their policies appeal mostly to rich white voters, who are aging, as well as the ignorantly disenfranchised brand of gun-toters and a huge block of fearfully religious bigots who can’t seem to understand that their own Bible contradicts everything their party stands for.

Coming out to common sense

God Bless Republican Senator Rob Portman, who came out in favor of same-sex marriage once he learned that his own son is gay. “I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, personally, I think this is something that we should allow people to do, to get married, and to have the joy and stability of marriage that I’ve had for over 26 years,” he told CNN. “That I want all of my children to have, including our son, who is gay.”

The Bible is wrong about homosexuality, just as it is wrong about slavery and hundreds of other former laws of religion that no one ever follows. Yet biblical literalists foment their brand of aggressive stupidity toward gay people with tired old contentions that homosexuality is a sin against God, and that being gay is a choice, a lifestyle, and to one all should be opposed. The Republican Party has embraced this brand of aggressive stupidity for years because it wins them votes, gains them power and makes them feel all righteous and true.

Until one of their own finds out they have a gay child. Even the Heart of Darkness Dick Cheney admitted that he loves his daughter and can’t persecute gays any longer as a result.

Not so cool

As for Portman’s position, Republicans were aggressively cool to his very personal admission that his life has changed for the better in accepting his son for who he really is. Politics trumps all other notions of sanity, you see. As quoted in a New York Times story, “A spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, who is also from Ohio, said Friday that while Mr. Boehner “respects” Mr. Portman’s position, “the speaker continues to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

That’s a form of aggressive stupidity, Mr. Boehner. Because if we took a certain pronunciation of your name quite literally, we would be forced to believe that you are actually a turgidly erect member of Congress that has no conscience. Well what do you know. It turns out that some forms of aggressive stupidity do prove true in practice. Two can play the game Republicans like to play.

Pope Francis the contradictor

We’re even forced to consider the aggressive stupidity of the new Catholic Pope Francis I, who embraces the poor but opposes birth control. That so-called “position” makes no sense if you spend a moment considering how overpopulation vexes the entire world.

But what do you expect from a religious brand that demands its priests to be celibate, then denies their policies have any consequence when a scourge of child sex abuse infests the church. Birth control dictates are ignored by more than 90% of its members, some polls report, yet the church and its patriarchal brand of aggressive stupidity keeps on rolling with a pope that stands by the position that spending sperm in a condom is a bad thing.

Some history…

Well, has the Catholic Church ever been wrong before? They almost killed Galileo for sticking up for the scientific perspective on matters universal. Then there were the Crusades, and the Inquisition, and for a while there, an insistence that the theory of evolution is wrong.

Aggressive stupidity runs through the most powerful organizations on earth. It is the hallmark of psychopathy, the aggressive will to dominate and coerce and kill in order to have your way, and have it now.

I’ve got mine and I hate yours

It’s the “I’ve got mine and I hate yours” brand of politics that is gutting America. Yet here is the CPAC closing comment. “The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away fro conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two elections,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry, who when asked couldn’t seem to remember what programs he’d like to cut if he were president, “That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”

The all-time king of aggressive stupidity, however is Rick Santorum. The man combines both dunderheaded conservative politics and a conservative catholicism that forces him to spew hate while pointing fingers at Americans who don’t think his way. He had this to say about why Republicans are failing so miserably at convincing Americans their way is the right way, “Face it, the left can always promise more stuff, and make is sound like they care more, because they make it easier for Americans by providing stuff for them, through government programs, paid by by somebody else’s money.”

Jesus loves you Rick. But he would tell you that you’re an insane hypocrite. Just like the rest of the aggressively stupid people who run your party and elections by running lies and manipulations up the flagpoles of country and God.

America’s concussion problem just won’t go away

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

by Christopher Cudworth

America is seeing stars, and stripes, but not the way we're accustomed to seeing them. Painting by Christopher Cudworth

America is seeing stars, and stripes, but not the way we’re accustomed to seeing them. Painting by Christopher Cudworth

The news about concussions is everywhere in pro sports. Retired football players are suing the NFL for failing to protect their noggins, while active players are taking concussions far more seriously. America’s favored game of football may be at risk all the way from youth leagues up to the NFL. And no one seems to know just what to do about it yet.

It is no coincidence that America’s favorite game involves bashing heads to the point where players suffer brain trauma. That’s how Americans live. We smash and bash and crash our way through history without apology. We even have a fancy name for our concussive obsession with being #1. It’s called American Exceptionalism.

Violence has a cost

But the habit of a nation so absorbed with its own violence comes with a cost. America as a nation has a concussion. We can’t seem to stop thrashing about even as our minds grow fuzzy from the slam-bang practice of imperialism.

To put a metaphorical point on the idea that America is concussed, consider this description of the effects of concussion from the Mayo Clinic:

The signs and symptoms of a concussion can be subtle and may not be immediately apparent. Symptoms can last for days, weeks or even longer.

The most common symptoms after a concussive traumatic brain injury are headache, amnesia and confusion. The amnesia, which may or may not be preceded by a loss of consciousness, almost always involves the loss of memory of the impact that caused the concussion.

The definition goes on to describe concussion as a ‘temporary loss of consciousness, followed by confusion or feeling as if in a fog.”

Welcome to a concussed America.

9/11 a big blow to the head

One could argue that the most recent big blow to our national consciousness was the terrorist strike on 9/11. America didn’t know what to do at first. We wandered our quiet streets trying to figure out exactly what hit us. By the time we figured out it really was just a lucky band of religiopolitical extremists, our President had dragged us into a war in Iraq. That’s where the blows to the head of our American self-image started with a display of Shock and Awe that, unbeknownst to most US citizens, would lead to a percussive series of events that would further destroy our credibility worldwide. It started with stark images of unmanaged chaos in the streets of Baghdad, wrought by the lack of an American plan once we knocked Saddam Hussein off his pedestal. That debacle was followed by images of tortured Iraqi civilians that struck us in the head like a force from a blunt instrument. And it was just that. The strike-first ideology of a leadership bent on world domination bounced right back and hit us in the cranium.

There were plenty of people who recognized what was going on, who had the guts to stand out of range of the war-mongering and media blitz that promoted war while giving Bush & Co. a collective pass in questioning the motives of an illegal and unnecessary war. Recall that America was still reeling from 9/11, but some of us cleared our brains quicker than others.

In an editorial written by Walt Williams 2004, the early warnings of political concussion were already being documented, “Sound presidential decision-making structures do not guarantee a successful policy. But the worse the decision process, the greater the danger that the policy devised will fail and wreak havoc on the nation when it is a major initiative.”

“President Bush’s decision to launch a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq is as good an example as I’ve seen of a severely flawed decision-making process producing an ill-thought-through decision that quickly became a nightmare as that misbegotten policy was put in place.”

Concussion. That’s what it was. And it kept on going for 8 more years.

Pulling back

Barack Obama has since pulled the majority of troops out of Iraq. Yet the damage wrought be mercenaries hired to run the operations in Iraq all those years is not easily repaired. Mercenaries are like the brain aneurisms brought on by concussion. They bleed us out from within. Just look at the billions spent and lost somewhere in the fog that was Iraq. We don’t even know where all the money went. We never will. Some of it apparently fell into the hands of our enemies. Nice work, fellas. But it was just a precursor of the loose-ended fiscal policy of an era with no accountability. We were punch drunk and stupid. Banks were running America into the ground and the mortgage industry was behaving like a manic-depressive on speed. It all had to hit us somehow. Then came 2008. The economy crashed. Was it really a surprise. Not to those of us who have doubted the apparently mad doctrine of close-fisted politicians from the start.

Concussion of debt

That whole doctrine put America is in fiscal and philosophical debt. Now it keeps pounding on us like a mean-ass middle linebacker with a grudge to keep. We’ve already wandered around for 10 years or so in a concussive state thanks to the original thumping dealt by Bush and Cheney who kept on hitting America with warnings of fear and terrorism while telling people to “go out and spend money” that no one really had. If Bush and Cheney had been football coaches instead of President and Vice President, they’d have been fired and kicked out of the American stadium for life for abusing the players. Instead we still have listen to Cheney being trotted out to criticize the American team strategy. That’s like the last place coach in the NFL pointing at the winning coach of the Super Bowl and saying, “He’s not doing it right!”

But it’s America. Even the losers get to speak out. The right to free speech is in our Constitution. That doesn’t mean we need to listen to our key abusers.

Through all that abuse of the Cheney years we simply couldn’t arouse ourselves from the national nightmare and brain-dead policies of neo-conservatives concocting their world domination schemes under shrouds of darkness. They even depended upon “black sites” to extract information from those they most feared. When darkness and confusion are allowed to rule, only darkness and confusion make sense to those who rule. That is the concussive mentality. We’ve seen it for years in the practice of sending football players with brain trauma back into the game. But American needs to be smarter.

National brain trauma

It is darkly comic that President Obama is supposed to fix all this national brain trauma with a wave of his hand. The Republicans who so vehemently oppose him started out by saying their only goal was to knock him out of office. More concussive talk. So ugly and stupid.

It’s no wonder their nominee in the last election amounted to the last man standing. They beat the hell out of each other for so long, no one on their side could believe what really happened. They still can’t. Romney stalked around believing he couldn’t lose, blathering on in debates, never worried whether what he or his running mate Paul Ryan said was the truth or not. “Fact checkers come to this (campaign) with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” said Ashley Connor, one of Romney’s aides.

It’s because the Republicans don’t know how to play nice. They’d rather die than tell the truth if it contradicts their aims. Democrats often fall for the same self-sustaining ruse. Americans can hardly recognize the truth anymore. That’s the result of our concussive state of existence.

That brand of hit first politics is beating the hell out of America’s confidence in its government. Of course that’s the way conservatives like it. They hate government because it actually requires the ability to slow down, consider the options and stop running back into the free market game without wearing a helmet.

Neo-conservatives want to privatize everything because they know that a smashmouth culture delivers great advantage to those with the biggest clubs, and we’re speaking both literally and rhetorically here. The clubbishness of America’s oligarchy is like one big fraternity set on hazing the plebes into submission, even if it takes a few strong blows to the head. If a few people die along the way or the economy teeters and falls over in a concussive stupor, so be it.

Leading with the other cheek

Perhaps it really is time to hit back rather than absorb the blows. Despite the admonitions of Jesus Christ to turn the other cheek, it is the current brand of killer Christians we need to fear most in some cases. The recent convergence of concussive smashmouth conservative politicians with an American Taliban determined to stone all those who disagree with their brand faux-Christian crusades… against science and civil rights, to name a few of their targets, is the worst concussive force of all in the American landscape.

The butt of a pistol

The other force of concussive politics is the gun lobby. Despite the recent and revealing documentation that more Americans have been killed within our borders by guns in civilian violence than have been killed in all our wars should serve as a patent illustration that we’ve lost our minds over the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms is a political brickbat in America. The concussions of repeated gun violence in Connecticut, Virginia, Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, what do they all mean? Here’s what they mean: Each slaughter of innocents throws us farther into the fog of violence. We are concussed beyond recovery perhaps. America may soon turn and shoot itself in the chest, to put ourselves out of concussive misery.

Sequestering our minds

Perhaps it is about to happen. The Sequester threatens to gut the economy, sending the nation reeling as if we’ve run into a glass wall of our own making. We’ll be bleeding out the ears and nose, puking our own economic theories of trickle-down economics and unrestricted spending (don’t forget corporate welfare and the military industrial complex, Eisenhower warned us) and the world will have little to say as we drag the rest of them down with our neo-nothing self-absorption.

We need help, people. We need to stand up and say, “Who caused this national concussion in the first place, and why do they keep doing the same things to us over and over again.”

Here’s a hint. It’s not Obama. Although his fondness for drone strikes might speak otherwise, they really reflect the need for America to pull backs its forces and gather our wits rather than throwing soldiers and fortune at the double-vision we’d have in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s time for America to get its wits back together again. America’s game of football is teaching us a lesson or two about what it means to recover from concussion. We can either listen or win up on the sidelines for good.

 

Note: This material is also published by Christopher Cudworth on Redroom.com

 

 

 

The fatal flaws of originalism and fundamentalism as literalistic truth

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment
Originalism is a flawed ideology that is wearing down the wit and wisdom of the Founding Fathers. The same is true of biblical literalism and fundamentalism, which are anachronistic methods of interpreting scriptural truth.

Originalism is a flawed ideology that is wearing down the wit and wisdom of the Founding Fathers. The same is true of biblical literalism and fundamentalism, which are anachronistic methods of interpreting scriptural truth.

By Christopher Cudworth

The human instinct to distill ideas down to their simplest level is an admirable endeavor. Ernest Hemingway used words with economy. His prose still overflowed with meaning.

The authors of the Holy Bible also showed talent for saying what needed to be said. For that same reason the Bible can be difficult to deconstruct. Picking apart the supposed Word of God is no small deed.

In government, the United States Constitution enjoys a status that is similarly sacroscant. Legal scholars hesitate to embellish on the laws written by the Founding Fathers, who frankly beat the crap out of each other over every word.

But we too soon forget about that. Instead there seems to be a tendency for people of a certain legal bent who appear to believe the Constitution is on par with holy writ. Yet they also claim to be able to discern what the original authors truly meant through an interesting legal theory called originalism.

Originalism as an ideology

Originalism is just what it sounds like. Originalists believe the Constitution is to be taken literally, just as it was written, rather than interpreted or amended, as Americans have occasionally seen fit to do.

Originalism therefore operates in much the same intellectual sphere as biblical literalism and its dogmatic progeny, fundamentalism. Biblical fundamentalists believe the Bible says certain things that are immutably true. Absolutes. In its most literal mode, fundamentalism essentially does the same thing to Holy Scripture that originalism does with the United States Constitution.

Both deign to read the minds of the original authors, with sole right to do so bequeathed to those who think alike.

Backwards progress

The inevitable convergence of these cultural thought memes has been in progress for a long time, but most pronouncedly in the last 40 years or so, when conservative thought leaders on the political side began dragging America back to the so-called “original” interpretation of the United States Constitution and conservative religious factions began demanding that the Bible be represented only as infallible, inerrant and literal in its context.

The problem with both originalism and fundamentalism as social constructs is that they by definition ignore the significant social changes by which society has evolved to provide equal rights to all citizens regardless of race, creed, religion, gender or sexual orientation. To ignore these changes is to dumb down the culture rather than enlighten through social progress and yes, through revelation. Turning the words of the Constitution or the Bible into gods themselves is rather a form of idol worship, ignoring the plain fact that the words themselves are but symbols of the actions of humankind.

Slaves to ideology

For example, both the Constitution and the Bible in their “original” forms share a common flaw in tolerance and promotion of human slavery. This single aspect when it comes to civil and spiritual rights is sufficient to call other notions of originalism and literalistic fundamentalism into question.

In the book of Exodus 21, the Bible sets for the following laws. We can therefore also imagine them as part of the United States Constitution, which when it was written and installed as the law of the land did not ban slavery.

Exodus 21:  “There are the ordinances that you shall set before them: When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave declares, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person,” then his master shall bring him before God. He shall be brought to the door of the doorpost; and his master shall pierce hs ear with an awl, and he shall serve him for life.”

A different time? Not so fast.

Certainly arguments could be made that slavery was perhaps, in some way, a different social institution then than it is now. But that would just be lying to ourselves about the egregious nature of slavery as a social institution in order to accommodate the anachronism of a literalistic ideology that cannot account for social change.

The Bible was plainly wrong to advocate slavery, and so was the US Constitution in its original and sustained enactments until the passage of the 13th Amendment that abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude. So neither the literalistic fundamentalism of the Bible or the United States Constitution can be trusted with complete abandon. It took nearly 100 years and thousands of lives to accomplish the human rights goal of banning slavery in America. It took another 40 years or so to give women the full rights of citizenship.

The lessons of Constitutional Amendments

No less than 27 Amendments have been ratified to the United States Constitution, including those protecting the right to bear arms, which was not guaranteed in the “original” Constitution but needed to be defined to create the “more perfect union” through a Bill of Rights and amendments designed to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. As a nation we have deigned through amendments to the Constitution to bring clarity to many issues that deserve full measure of understanding. We have also struggled with many of these issues even with greater definition through enactments of law such as those that affect separation of church and state, so strongly implied in our history as neither establishment of a national religion nor the right to practice religious freedom. Clearly the only preventative measure to uphold that span of rights is a separation of church and state. Yet so many refuse to acknowledge even that plain truth, so determined are they to impose their own religion on the masses. Those efforts, in turn, have produced an erosion of scientific understanding, humanistic approach to civil law, and egregious attempts to control and define the private rights of individuals in medical, social and personal terms, right down to the womb of a woman.

Originally flawed

So despite the apparent aims of Constitutional “originalists” to drag America kicking and screaming back to a “literal” interpretation of the Constitution in which Supreme Court justices try to play mind reader or simply impose their own prejudicial will upon the nation on whatever issue they choose, there can be no such thing as originalism. It simply does not exist, did not exist when the Constitution was written, and later ratified, and so we should cease deceiving ourselves as a nation and quit trying to paint everything in our laws as “original” and/or black and white.

The same goes for literalistic fundamentalism, which bears part of the blame at least for the anachronistic mindset of a nation falling into intellectual ruin because 50% of its populace can’t make sense of metaphorical truth, not even when Jesus Christ himself was a teacher who made use of organic parables to convey spiritual truth.

Originalists and fundamentalists are lost in a maze of wishful thinking and backwards logic. Our Founding Fathers thought better of the Constitution to force it to lie there and play dead after it was written, and Jesus castigated the Pharisees and other teachers of the law for turning scripture into law. Neither is a legacy worth living, yet there are millions of people who believe they speak the truth without testing it against the wisdom of time and social change. That is a fatal flaw for any nation.