Bad stuff running through the veins of the American Heartland

February 2, 2016February 2, 2016 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

He claims to be talking about Washington, but in reality, he was talking about the political drug problem in Iowa.

Iowa has failed itself. It needs a 12-step program for its politics.

As the tracks on the arms of all those involved in the Republican Iowa Caucus reveal, there is some bad stuff running through the veins of the American Heartland. Conservatism is like emotional methamphetamines to these people. It charges them up and makes them do and believe crazy things. And Ted Cruz is the leading character in Iowa’s version of Breaking Bad.

Donald Trump tried slipping his rich brand of opiates into the mix. But in the end, even his “I’m Your Hero” brand of heroinism could not satisfy the desires of conservative dope fiends high on bongs of pig shit, religion and hashpipes stuffed with layers of Right Wing ideology. Those are the drugs of choice in some parts of the Midwest, and can make farmers vote Republican even when corporate farming comes back around to steal their tractors, seed, crops and land. But the flow of monetary drugs known as agricultural welfare cannot be denied. And the Democrats are druglords and pushers as well.

Like most drug cultures, one can seldom tell the users from the sellers. They all feed off each other’s habits while denying they have a problem in the first place.

The stench of denialism out in Iowa got so bad this time around, even that religious druglord Mike Huckabee had to pack up his political Airstream and pull out of the presidential race. He’s been holed up at the Jellystone Park of American politics for just over a year now, and the camp fees from Fox News and other Right Wing Rangers were coming due.

But that’s not the real problem for the Huckster. There have been persistent rumblings from his neighbors that the rumblings and shaking come from that trailer were far from Holy Fare.

Some suggested the Devil himself had, by invitation it seems, taken up residence with Huckabee, and it makes sense. It’s quite clear the Huckster has proven willing to sell his soul all along if it will aggrandize him with his perceived church of political believers. His babblings prove the point, for they became so confusing a league of Angels could not sort them out, leading even true believers to consider whether the smoke of the Devils hot language was having hallucinatory effects on the man who can’t seem to sort fact from fiction. “I think people forget that bipartisanship is really the burden of the victor, not the loser,” Huckabee drooled. And that point, his trailer park neighbors slammed his Airstream door shut and sealed it with duct tape. And that seems to be the end of the Hucksters dream of becoming President of the United States.

His last words seem to be both a defense and an indictment of the Winner Take All philosophy that has taken over the conservative movement these days like a man with a coke and a spoon at a Studio 54 party. It’s a bad scene all around, and no one knows if the high strung whine of people with white powder on their noses shrieking about “patriotism” and “liberty” is ever going to end. it is clearly the chorus of the insane, only crazier.

Some of that noise is shrieks of fear. Because like those acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing in the Bible, everyone knows on the Right knows you take no prisoners whether you win or lose. Which means no one can afford to have political witnesses around anymore.

That explains the entire political career of men like Newt Gingrich, who sealed one of his wives into a cancer casket using her own divorce papers. That’s hardball stuff, and not every brain can take that level of stimulation and survive. But Gingrich rose again like a specte the last election cycle, and Right Wingers recognized his special brand of crazy right off. But alas for comedians and Democrats, even Gingrich could not hide the bulging veins in his political forehead, and he was cast into the opium den of irrelevance. At last.

These are the ways of the Breaking Bad men that have been running the Republican Party. Even Ronald Reagan had to deal with his rank of Right Wing Addicts in the end. They obfuscated with a trunk full of his money to deal in the arms trade with Iran to shunt money off to the Contras down South. This business of war is always ugly, and drugs often fuel the fun stuff done by mercenaries in the name of God. The only reason Ronnie Reagan himself didn’t get thrown in jail is that he was already too senile or drug-addled to realize what he’d allowed to be done in his own name. No one could bring themselves to blame Grandfather Ron for all that. Well, perhaps his own son. But that’s a different story for another day.

dennis-hastert But speaking of Father Figures. We should recall the recent revelations about the once honorable Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House. It turns out The Coach had a sordid history of fondling boys and paying them to keep quiet. But when that bit of conservatively concealed chicanery came to light, it ruined the man’s reputation and his net worth. Drugs of choice (be they of substance or appetite) from the wrong side of the tracks will do that to a person. At first, there’s a power rush. Then comes the crash.

Which also explains the firey hulks of Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina, who by now are likely stuffed into smelly car trunks like burnt mummies by those political drug lords Reince Priebus and Karl “The Rover” Rove. It doesn’t pay to cross men with names like Reince or nicknames like Turdblossom. That’s always going to wind up in bad places.

Those petulant rubes Jeb and Carly have come off angry and joyous as Saturday night drunks stumbling out of the Happy Joes Pizza joint in Newton, Iowa. But then they kicked in the car door of the local sheriff, and spit on the Mayor’s wife while calling her a slut. Things got ugly fast, and muffled words were exchanged. Their campaigns are either over or owned entirely by the Syndicate as a result of their sputtering antics. Ever since Monday night they have been stuck in the back end of locked up sedans behind the Ace Hardware. They’ve both been trying to kick their way out of the trunk, whimpering for help from God, or at least some kid with a screwdriver. That’s the kind of thing that happens to traitorous mob flunkies and failed Republican candidates. The fact that they can hear each other screaming only makes it all worse. The first one out of the trunk will claim to be the victor. Because that’s what politicians do. Kick the person on the rung below you. And no excuses.

CQVsQ1bUEAAecjr Then there are those political personalities that just won’t go away, no matter what you do, or how high on their own expectations they get. Because who knows what Ben Carson’s been smoking out there in the Iowa cornfields. From Day One, the gentleman has contradicted himself like some drunken uncle at a Thanksgiving feast. “Even if you’re Bill Gates, you’ve got problems,” Carson blurted last year. “I’m sure he would probably easily give a few billion dollars to get rid of all the problems that he has.”

And then there’s this brain-addled Carson gem: “And I’ve always said, ‘If two people think the same thing about everything, one of them isn’t necessary.’ We need to be able to understand that if we’re going to make real progress.”

Which proves that listening to Ben Carson is really like listening to Adolf Hitler on crack. Carson even said this about the United States military, which is bigger by far than the next 7-8 countries of the world combined: “What we have to stop and think about is that we have weakened ourselves militarily to such an extent that it affects all of our military policies.” Ben, go back to whatever political substance you’ve been smoking and drinking and leave us alone. We don’t care. You don’t matter. And we don’t need your brand of narcotic falsehoods running through our veins.

Ben, go back to whatever political substance you’ve been smoking and drinking and leave us the hell alone. We don’t care about you. You don’t matter. You don’t even believe in science and you’re a brain surgeon! And we don’t need your brand of narcotic falsehoods and conservative banalities running through our veins. They are poison.

Paul-Ran But while we’re at it, let us consider (and then ignore) the barbituate level rantings of Rand Paul, a Libertarian candidate who claims to speak for the intellectual side of America, but keeps fumbling over his own thoughts. “I have a question, a question for the president: Do you hate all rich people, or just rich people who don’t contribute to your campaign? Do you hate poor people or do you just hate poor people with jobs?“

That is Rand Paul trying to sound cogent and sober. Instead his red tie looks like the thermometer for his overheated brain. Barbituates will do that, especially those of the contrarian type favored by Libertarians, where the best form of government is no government at all. Have some weed, Rand. You need it.

The rest of the Republican dope fiends are not worth mentioning, except their stories are so amusingly narcissistic they cannot help be told. They all follow in the footsteps of men such as Ulysses S. Grant, a man who drank himself to both military and political success.

Indeed, the Republican debates have been like listening to a pack of drunk farmers standing at a dive bar in some sad little town out past Ames, Iowa. They all drink and shout until they can actually stand the idea of going home to their equally angry wives. Each man claims he has the better tractor, and then they wind up making jokes about how Chris Christie’s farm implements all have flat tires because he’s so fat.

We can easily imagine the muttered joke about how Carly was rumored to be fornicating with a pig. That was a Trump special, grant you. He excels at his own brand of Down On the Farm humor. It absolutely frightens Republicans that Trump might be City Slicker dressed up in Salt of the Earth clothes, but if the Iowa Caucus process is any indication, Trump is the one who has apparently screwed the pooch one too many times. Even Republicans get angry when the family dog is butt hurt and whining.

The conservative belief system all comes down to singularity. We all know that even the worst drunks in the world can drive a car pretty well because when they get enough practice at it. If a few people die along the way, so be it. The ends justifies the means. Teddy Kennedy taught them that lesson, and the Right has learned it all too well.

But where Kennedy was selling the political drugs of family legacy and populism, the political drug of choice for Republicans is authoritarianism. And it works like a charm. Just like an overdose of Ritalin, an ADD drug designed to hype you up so bad it actually calms you down, mainlining authoritarian works by getting people to go along with whatever you tell them to think. One might argue the same thing for Oxycontin, Rush Limbaugh’s favorite chemical for many years. His drug abuse was easily forgiven and forgotten by his dittohead listeners because it was mainlined with an arrogance and authoritarianism that made it look like Rush had no drug problem at all. He was rich and had a big mouth. Thats was all that counted, or ever counts, and that’s why Limbaugh likely hates Trump. Who stole his act.

And then Ted Cruz stole Trump’s act as well. And Marco Rubio is next in line. Authoritarianism is the stuff Republicans have been selling on the street corners of Iowa towns and they are about to unleash it on the nation as a whole.

Politicals sites like The Blaze have been dealing the same thick substanc and its boutique drug is Glenn Beck, who was so high on himself even Fox News had to kick him out of the Conservative Drug Club. Now Cruz and The Blaze are hoping that this newest batch of authoritarian dopamines and the low information needles necessary to inject it will serve like crack cocaine in the veins of conservatives everywhere.

That’s what was running through the veins of conservatives in the American Heartland last night. It’s a sad sight, but like any relative given over to addiction, we can hope some country doctor kicks some sense into them. That’s how it’s always worked out in the Heartland, where drugs are often as common as Communion wafers, and just as deadly.

Jonah Goldberg is correct, conservatism has dug itself a big hole

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Sinkhole Much to my surprise, I opened the Chicago Tribune today to find what amounts to a confessional column by conservative stalwart Jonah Goldberg. It starts like this:

“I’ve been hearing about the impending “conservative crackup” for nearly 25 years. The term was coined by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder of the American Spectator. He meant that conservatism had lost its philosophical coherence. But the phrase almost instantly became a catchall for any prediction of the right’s imminent demise or dissolution.”

What he really means to say, but hasn’t the actual courage to admit, is that conservatism was a falsehood from the beginning of its “revolution.” That would be the attempt, since the Reagan years, to cobble together a band of dissolute believers into some sort of conservative whole. But true Christianity never really had much to do with fiscal conservatism, and the pro-gun capitalists have never really squared intentions with the anti-abortion socialists. It’s true. Conservatism ultimately sinks under the weight of its own contradictions.

That was always the problem. That conservative whole rapidly turned into a conservative hole, as in, “we keep digging a bigger one.” The entire political philosophy of the movement has been to dig a hole under government in hopes that it will sink below the surface, never to be seen again.

Reagan even proudly stated that government was not the solution, it was the problem. How anyone can say that and continue to serve as President of the United States proves that he 1) has a hole in his head 2) lacks conscience and 3) has a cognitive dissonance in his political philosophy. You simply can’t head up a government and claim it is the main problem. That’s impossible to do. With any sort of true logic, anyway.

But conservatism is not about logic. It is about ideology. And to a major extent, the hole-digging philosophy has worked wonders in taking our nation and government down a rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole is always about money. Conservatives have tried repeatedly to cut taxes. With each new wave of tax cuts, the nation has gone further into the hole.

Conservatives have even purposefully shut down the government. That threw our country into the hole with nations around the world. All that accomplishes was to sink the nation’s credit rating.

In fact everything conservatives have tried to “fix” in America has sunk its standing here at home and around the world.

The most recent Bush years resorted again to tax cuts and like Reagan, bloated military spending. That resulted in an economy running on fumes and led to a crash that was a grand imitation of the Great Depression (get the joke? A Depression is a hole.)

This time the hole created by big banks had to be filled with public money just to keep America afloat in the cesspool of speculative losses and the brain dead activities of The Fed.

But it seems that no matter how much America’s economy is sputtering there is somehow always money to buy guns, ships, bombs and jet planes. It seems the only answers conservative have to social and economic failures is to spend more money on the military. Conservatives consider the military America’s backbone, but along with the auto industry, the Bush years essentially required bailouts for both.

But conservatives aren’t all failures. Let’s not forget the thriving porn, gambling and fantasy league industries. And while we’re at it, don’t neglect the success of the sex trade and human trafficking, which experiences hard spikes whenever there’s a Republican convention in town.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that even America’s leading conservative spokesperson, Rush Limbaugh, is having his doubts about the future of conservatism (itself an oxymoron.)

The four-time divorced, prescription-medicine-addicted Limbaugh has never done a single positive thing for the nation. Yet somehow he remains a voice for conservative interests because he’s angry, impatient and selfish. That’s the calling card of any respected conservative. But right now, even Limbaugh is confused and disgusted by the present state of conservatism in America.

Jonah Goldberg quotes Limbaugh this way: “Forget the name is Trump. If a candidate could ‘guarantee to’ fix everything that’s wrong in this country the way the Republican Party thinks it’s wrong, if it were a slam dunk, if it were guaranteed, that candidate will still be opposed by the Republican Party establishment. … If he’s not part of the clique, they don’t want him in there.”

And that, my friends, is because conservatism is a longstanding failure. Anyone who seems like a threat to show up the “establishment” is deemed a danger. This is especially true for a man like Trump, whose racist, misogynist, xenophobic rants sound all too much like what most Republicans generally keep secret and only repeat in the back rooms of posh hotels or speaking engagements featuring Mitt Romney or Oliver North. That’s how the “establishment,” as it were, is accustomed to conducting business.

Now that their methods and ideology have been exposed, the hole they’ve dug is looking uglier than ever. It’s much harder to shovel people into their economic and social graves when they can see clearly what’s coming. Trump has revealed what’s in store on the Republican highway. It’s a sinkhole of angry prejudice and ego. Even his supporters aren’t sure he won’t shove them in with the rest of the stinking masses.

In other words, conservatism is digging a deep and terminal highway to hell. We should never forget that Ronald Reagan, the conservative scion who started all this hole-digging, had one of the most corrupt administrations in the modern era. His Iran-Contra affair should have resulted in impeachment. Instead, he walked while his minions took the fall. America forgave the Old Man his transgressions because it seemed impossible he wanted to hurt anyone.

Mick Jagger and the Stones tried to warn us about falling for the sweet words of men like Ronald Reagan. People who seem like heroes often turn out to be the greatest offenders of all. This verse from Sympathy for the Devil seems rife with predictive merits about how the world is working these days.

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint

Yes, conservatives have long pointed to Reagan as their hero. But he was the devil in disguise. Conservatives have long refused to recognize that Ronnie the Saint dug a deep budget hole of his own through tax cuts and military spending.

Then along came the Bush family, a pack of smiling devils if there ever was one, and picked up where Reagan left off. At least Bush Sr. (Read My Lips, No New Taxes) showed some restraint by not entering Bagdad with the American army. He recognized that the Saddam Hussein was a devil with a purpose. So we walked away from that hellhole the first time.

But conservatives and the Bush family couldn’t restrain its crazed fury the second time around. Georgie (that smiling devil) unleashed eight years of conservative chaos at home and abroad. It started with a stolen election. That was followed by the 9/11 tragedy. Then a mess of a hurricane called Katrina along with an Iraq war of choice that cost America trillions of dollars. The ugliness of that scene also led to approval of torture and war profiteering on scales never before attempted. Yet Cheney succeeded in shoveling billions into the maw of Halliburton and other hellborne partnerships.

Like the American devils we are, we went to Iraq on false pretenses, and 4000 soldiers died. Many more were wounded. But perhaps that was somehow a precursor for the economic crash that followed, and millions of people lost their jobs and life savings. The hole dug by conservative ventures threatened to swallow American whole.

Yes, the conservative crackup is finally here. It is long overdue and well-deserved. Some of us have also long tried to expose the hole-digging habits of men like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Dennis Hastert (now indicted for hiding sexual abuse and making illegal payoffs) as well as Newt Gingrich and the entire racist, gun-toting cabal that conservatism embraces. These forces of evil have undermined the very foundations of our country.

So thank you, Jonah Goldberg, for finally admitting what those of us who follow conservative politics have known all along. The conservative cause is a black hole of empty suits and people who lack the conscience to ever do the right thing. Ever.

And of course, now they have Donald Trump to blame for exposing the decaying foundations of conservatism as a movement. He’s a man of absolutely zero conscience, or perhaps less.

As Goldberg states: “There’s no shortage of reasons for why the right is at war over whether or not to take a flier on Trump. All of the various establishments and the counter-establishments overpromised and underdelivered in recent years. Congressional leaders talked a big game while campaigning but played small ball once re-elected. Cruz and his supporters accused his fellow politicians of being corrupt sellouts, and so many people believed him, they’d now rather take a gamble on Trump than back Cruz, a mere politician. Tomorrow seems closer than ever before.”

Goldberg’s lament is long overdue. But these are sad, difficult days. The hole dug by Republicans is now a permanent fixture of the American landscape. We’re all staring into the abyss together. Yet all Republicans can think to say is, “This must be your fault. We don’t know really how to dig holes.” They regard their own actions as bastard sons to be disowned and foisted on the public where profits are privatized and the losses are socialized. Then they call us the suckers for believing in the power of socialism to fix public ills.

Fearful conservatives are afraid that men like Bernie Sanders will try to fill the hole they created with public funds and tax money. Sanders (and Democrats in general, to some degree) actually want to require American corporations to stop burying money in the backyard with offshore accounts. President Obama has his chums on Wall Street, but he’s done a decent job of at least ushering America away from a perilous edge of conservative holiness, which is in truth is unholiness. But we still need to figure out how to fill this moral, social and economic vacuum created by conservative credulity.

And God Forbid we should actually try to level the playing field for the middle class. Conservatives call that “transfer of wealth” when in fact the most massive transfer of wealth in history has occurred right before our eyes, from middle class to the superwealthy. As a direct result, Americans have been falling into a financial hole by running up credit card debt while making something like 50 cents on the dollar compared to comparable worth of earnings 40 or 50 years ago.

Perhaps the best thing we can do with the Republican whole is to herd the lot of them to the edge and drive them over it with a bulldozer. Let their bloated political bodies (starting with Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, to name a few) serve as ballast until America can decide how to repair its crumbling infrastructure and bury the rotting timbers of the Republican platform.

It’s time to say good riddance to the likes of Jonah Goldberg (and his National Review, the worst rag on the earth) along with Charles Krauthamer and his shrill counterpart, Ann Coulter. We should have no sympathy for these devils, the people that have cheerleaded Republican thievery for decades. Yes, Democrats mess things up too, but usually by mistake, or by overeager hearts. By contrast, the soulless theft by Republicans is calculated, cruel and merciless. That makes for a much more abrupt and even brand of hole, not the gradual kind you get from erosion, or a flood of overeager hopes.

The only near term salvation may be that the hole dug by Republicans might temporarily reach all the way to hell. We can be sure a few of them will be welcome guests for what they’ve said and done to this nation.

Who is really keeping us safe?

November 19, 2015November 19, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

“If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative by the time you are forty, you have no brain.” –Winston Churchill

Years ago I read a massive two-volume biography of Winston Churchill. It was with great disappointment that I learned that the author of those first two books had died. The third would have covered the period including World War II, and that would have been fascinating to study the actions and philosophies of the man that ushered Great Britain through the war.

Yet even with Churchill, his strong points as a war leader turned out to be challenges of a sort in the political realm. He was initially defeated for the role of Prime Minister after the war, yet returned to that role again before suffering physical and mental decline that may have resulted from strokes and heart issues.

A wealth of protectors

While obviously a man to admire, Winston Churchill’s determination that conservatism was the ultimate form of philosophical sophistication may have been formed more from his upbringing in a wealthy English family than his own evolution as a military man and spokesman. He was great at both those things, but there is an abiding factor to how these were developed and sustained that made it possible for Churchill to think like a conservative at all.

That factor was the presence and alliance of both the United States and the Soviet Union in World War II. Without that partnership, Great Britain would have been sunk under the pressures of Germany to take over much of Europe.

It was the liberal support of America’s Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and the hard right determination of Joseph Stalin that fought back Germany’s considerable will to conquer and subjugate. That enabled Churchill to essentially occupy an important middle ground from which he could flexibly consider and pursue his necessary options. That is conservative in the good sense of the word, in being considerate.

Modern times

Fast forward to the current world perspective in which we live. America’s President Barack Obama has behaved as a noted centrist on the world stage. And like Churchill, there have been wins and losses, risks and seeming triumphs associated with that centrist position. Obama has been the considerate if quietly brusque leader, not prone to launch off new wars, yet capable of effecting deadly drone strikes that many people protest as cruel and miscalculated.

Such are the risks of all world leaders. The apparently noble fight of America, Britain and the Soviets against the Germans, Italians and Japanese Axis was full of death and destruction. And while Germany clearly committed war crimes, the rest of the fighters were not a group of innocents. America ultimately dropped a massive nuclear weapon on Japan’s big cities, killing thousands of civilians in the process.

During the leadup to that event, America engaged in some rather heinous efforts to protect itself, ushering many of its own citizens of Japanese descent into camps. The object at the time was to “keep us safe” from perceived threats because Japan itself was such a threat.

Fear and strange decisions

Fear drives all kind of strange decisions in this world. And while some of our fears are very real, the collective anxiety of a culture can often be extremely misguided.

Such is the case wth current concerns over America’s possible acceptance of Syrian refugees. While France opens its borders willingly to Syrian refugees even on the heels of the terrorist attacks on its own soil, America’s arch-conservative population wants to ban them from entry into the country. All of this is based on the idea that terrorists will somehow disguise themselves as refugees and come to this country to kill Americans.

Raging debates

Having engaged in considerable political debate with a number of anxious conservatives on social media, a few simple things have emerged in the argument. 1) They don’t trust Obama or the government 2) They don’t trust the government or Obama 3) They really don’t trust either Obama or the government. That’s the substance of their arguments.

In the process of defending those arguments they also engage in considerable name-calling while simultaneously denying that the Bush administration or any conservative before him had anything to do with creating the terrorist problem in the Middle East. We all know that started with the Reagan administration, was fostered by the Bush relationships with the Saudis, and carried on with the patsy treatment of the bin Laden family right through the 9/11 terrorist attacks when our first priority was flying remnants of that family out of the United States when all other flights were suddenly banned. Conservatives also created the Saddam Hussein we overthrew, and set up the Shah of Iran that led to that country being so pissed off at the Western World.

Yet somehow it’s all Obama’s fault that we have problems in the Middle East.

Brotherly love

Of course, Jeb Bush, the equally inept brother of George W. Bush, is now running for President of the United States. And like any conservative worth his radical salt he has publicly claimed that his brother “kept us safe.”

So for the sake of analysis, we should examine what he might mean by that statement. The expectations of conservatives about what “keeps us safe” clearly breaks down into categories that were demonstrated by the Bush administration’s actions in the Middle East. And we’ll get to those in a minute.

But first we must admit there was little resistance by the Democratic Left to any of Bush’s policies overseas. That was a sick and sad chapter in our political history as well. Either by choice or by fear, the Left stood down under considerable pressure from conservative dominance of all three branches of government. That included the power of the Presidency, a willing Congress and Senate and even the Supreme Court that handed Bush surveillance powers that broke every rule in the Constitution about personal privacy.

So Bush and Cheney were given free license to engage in a series of cynical acts of aggression designed, in their minds, to “keep us safe” from terrorism. These included:

Bomb first, ask no questions later. When faced with threats, conservatives love to bomb things because it makes them feel as if they are taking action against that threat. Of course, civilian casualties resulting from those bombings inflamed hatred for the United States as innocents perished. But that’s the apparent price of thoughtless war. “Collateral damage” they call it. The ultimate euphemism of course. Conservatives bomb, and then move on without a second thought about what the real effects of such bombings could be in terms of perception among enemies or friends.
Torture is acceptable. Arguments in favor of torturing Iraqis and potential terrorist focused on the fact that such tactics were necessary to extract information that could “keep America safe.” That connection between information and actionable intelligence really never happened in any substantial way. And yet the apparent thought that our supposed enemies were being tortured made a certain segment of our society feel happy because we were “doing something” about terrorism. Never mind that many of the people we tortured and even killed through torture and mistreatment were in fact completely innocent.
Spying on your own people is desirable. How ironic it is that the political force in America that claims to hate government most and wants to reduce its influence in our lives should choose to open a surveillance program that brought government into the very conversations we all hold over our telephones and cell phones. It seems a common phenomenon that the things conservatives most hate in others they ultimately become themselves. It happens on the social front when people who claim to stand for family values turn out to be serial wife cheaters or sexual predators. This repression haunts the conservative party like a ghost of unvirtuous fact.
Always blame the other side. For all these insane actions and remorseless activities, conservatives have developed denial of responsibility for the evil outcomes into a very fine art. The virtual memo that says “never admit you were wrong” has been hard-wired into the consciousness of political, military and civilian conservatives. In fact, it is perhaps the greatest social conspiracy ever contrived as a political strategy. Its level of secrecy is protected by a devotion to denial and an entire lack of accountability. It is thus quite breathtaking in its scope and effect on civil discourse. Its main mouthpiece, of course, is Fox News, whose claims of being “fair and balanced” as a “news organization” are the absolute expression of the virtue of lying with a smile on your face and putting tits above the fold as a distraction of the very audience you intend to recruit.

There’s a reason for all this aggression, repression and secession going on within the conservative cult in America. Only when a conservative breaks completely free of the party entirely, which means they can never go back, do we hear an ounce of truth and admission about what really goes on behind the scenes. The recent inadvertent confession of a certain Congressman on the real reasons for the Benghazi investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are just one such example of politically motivated use of government to harangue and discredit anyone that dares resist the conservative cartel in America.

It goes back a ways

John_F_Kennedy Resistance to this secret society of Conservatism with a Capital A (and its apparent arm, the CIA) is what got President Kennedy killed back in the 1960s. So the phenomena of killing threats to the cabal is not new.Kennedy was no saint, that’s for sure. But what he also represented as a political liberalism that some perceived as a threat to the security of America. But again, the considerations shown by John F. Kennedy in negotiations with the Soviets in the Cuba Missile Crisis are likely what prevented nuclear war. In other words, his small “c” conservatism kept us safe, just like Winston Churchill’s small “c” conservatism helped guide the Allies through World War II. It is this conservatism to which I believe Winston Churchill is referring in the quote above this column.

But it keeps happening that large “C” Conservatism is trying to kill its perceived enemies. And true to form, the conservative cabal went after Bill Clinton over engagement in a harmless blow job. The ensuing scandal turned into a political spectacle that distracted from Clinton’s ability to do his job, and keep us safe.

At that time, Clinton wanted to take action against bin Laden and potential terrorists in the Middle East, but was discouraged from doing so because it would appear he was attempting to “wag the dog” and escape accusations and impeachment over his extramarital affair. We seriously need to ask what would have kept us more safe in that scenario, the Starr Report or actually paying attention to real threats to our security. Capital A Conservatives clearly chose the former over the latter. America has paid the price ever since for this selfish, politically motivated debacle.

Fear, loathing and power

New House Speaker Paul Ryan

So you see, the goal of conservatism is never really to keep us safe. It is to gain and keep power, and that is all. Conservatives use fear to accomplish that mission all the time. That is why the call to war is so strong among them. War creates a deep tide fear in the populace, accentuated by methods such as “terror alerts” that the Bush administration turned on and off as needed to sway political will and push the perception of power in their direction. These are all tricks to get people to fall in line. Authoritarian thinkers on both the proactive and responsive side love these methods because it gives them a sense of control in otherwise chaotic circumstances. Of course it is all a ruse, but that does not matter.

FlagWaiver Indeed, Conservatives with a capital “C” want Americans to behave like Pavlov’s dogs in response to the call for war and acceptance of violence as status quo. They wave flags as patriots in fear until the very meaning of the flag is all worn out. Our flag has come to represent a national attitude of fear and a worn out ideology as a result.

Witness the marketing methods of the NRA, which flouts fear about race and crime as reasons to arm American on claims that more guns will “keep us safe.” Again, these are lies of massive proportions. More Americans have died from gun violence on American soil that all the soldiers ever killed in foreign wars. This is not “keeping us safe.”

Money kills

In the end, the sad thing about all this fear and terror and power is that it is all about money. Conservatives simply love money and all that it gives them. That’s why so many conservative whine about high tax rates and complain about giving their dollars through any social programs that might help the poor or elderly. This is the brand of conservatism that has evolved in America; selfishness as a life philosophy. It stands in direct opposition to the Christian call for charity and even giving away all you have to serve God and Christ. But modern conservatives (oxymoron intended) ignore all that real Christian stuff. That part is old-fashioned to them.

And we must return to the fact that top level Conservatives have always liked war because it enriches them. Former Vice President Dick Cheney used the Iraq War to increase the value of companies like Halliburton in which he has long held financial interests. The snarling visage of the man who almost singlehandedly leveraged America’s fortunes into his own while ruining our reputation overseas is like the Ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge, who without ever having gone through the happy change that made him into an advocate for the Christmas Spirit acts instead like the Grinch Who Stole America.

No Churchill

dick-cheney Cheney was no Churchill, let’s all agree on that. He seems to have envisioned himself that way, but where he falls short is in the ability to recognize the advantage of being a smart conservative with a small “c.” That is one who knows that conservatism actually involves consideration. Cheney appears to have none of that capacity, and as a result his version of “keeping us safe” turned the Middle East into a morass of angry terrorist hornets hoping to break free and sting the invader of their nest.

So let’s stop pretending that stirring up the hornet’s nest in the Middle East with bombings, torture and boots on the ground is a conservative strategy at all. It is not a conservative strategy, and it does not keep us safe.

And as for hornet’s back home, we’ve already got a system in place to detect their angry buzz. Typically they can’t keep quiet. Not if we open our eyes and ears and pay attention. And let’s not ignore those clear warnings this time, as Bush did back when he and Cheney were plotting to take over the entire Middle East to steal the oil and get some archly conservative kicks. That was stupid. And we’re getting stung as a result.

The only thing that isn’t fake

October 21, 2015October 21, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Somehow I stumbled on this propagandistic video about Dr. Ben Carson, a Republican candidate for President of the United States. I found the video stunningly obvious in its structure and production values. Then when I looked at the comments, they all seemed manufactured. And as you’ll see if you visit the comments section, I asked the people who commented if they were fake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMAsRSuQrhc&google_comment_id=z13sw5rzrnihyjwwb04cinw4vxndt5hj1rk0k

Turns out they’re real people. Sort of. Which surprised me a little. But the nature of their comments and the banal, surface level responses to the video still strike me as very fake. In other words, I have my suspicions whether these particular self-described “millennials” are “real” in the sense that they are not paid for their comments on the video.

Listen, public relations in the video age is a highly crafted art designed to sway public opinion. But the one thing that isn’t fake in this video is how patently disconnected from reality Dr. Ben Carson truly seems. Now understand, I voted for Barack Obama twice, and I am proud of both of those votes. So this is not some hidden racial meme or dog whistle call to sink the lone black candidate on the Republican side.

Personally I’d love to see a conservative black candidate succeed. If someone in America can proceed with an agenda that delivers on ways to acknowledge and value the contributions of black Americans to society, I’m all for it.

Basic coherence

But Ben Carson is not the guy I’d like to see running our country. That’s a disturbing thought. His inability to proceed on any subject with consistency or even basic coherence is a problem. His mental health has even been raised as an issue.

Right away, Internet resistance was raised against the idea of calling Dr. Ben Carson mentally ill. This was one of the points of contention: “There is nothing, I repeat nothing, that rises to the level of evidence of a diagnosable behavioral pathology cited by Palmer. And yet, the piece plays into the all too readily accepted narrative that any person with whom we disagree on a vitally important issue must be a flawed, damaged, and ethically compromised human being.”

Get help

Here’s the difficult part in all this. For people experiencing the effects of mental illness, the most important thing anyone can do is to help them get help.

Many years ago a friend and runner from another community near my hometown was experiencing the first stages of a mental illness that would come to dominate his life. He showed up at our school with a bag of bread and tracked me down in the hallway. “I’m feeding the foxes on the bridge,” he told me. The foxes on the bridge were made of bronze.

Later this fellow went on to become an individual All-American runner. But he did so by engaging in some extreme behavior, training up to 250 miles per week as preparation for racing just 5 miles in cross country competitions. One could make a compelling observation that to this young man, the only thing that didn’t seem fake in his world was his running. Because after college his mental illness took on a different form, making it difficult for him to function in work and other activities. He did get help but as his mental illness progressed, even medications could not harness some of the delusional qualities manufactured by his brain. But the fact that he got help was the most important aspect of his particular journey. Without that, he likely could have harmed himself or others.

Because I had another running friend that tried to take his own life. And we all know that with accessibility to guns, people in that mental condition can certainly harm others.

And so can politicians whose mental state gravitates to extremes.

Loving the extremes

I think there’s a compelling case to make that for some people, politics is both their sport and their passion. And just like my friend with mental illness who ran 250 miles a week just to compete in a five-mile race, there are people with a propensity to go to extremes in an effort to make their point, and create a reality in which they feel more alive.

In fact I’ll argue there are many people in politics who think their extreme views are the only thing that feels real in this world. That’s how we’ve gotten the long list of extremists running for the Republican nomination. And there’s little doubt that on some days, men like Donald Trump talk and act a little insane.

We also know there have been plenty of zealous religious believers whose obsession with the end of the world has led to manic predictions and even death rituals. Entire cultures get caught up in these visions, as much of the world did with the y2K obsession.

Making it real

There are high-level officials here in America whose obsession with a Zionist vision of Israel have made them hunger for war in the Middle East, and Armageddon, which might bring on the apocalypse. So there is both inherent and operative insanity at work in this world.

Sometimes, and to some people, the only thing that isn’t fake is either that reality is out to get them or there is an opportunity through politics to create a reality that suits their particular brand of economic or cultural prejudice. That explains the KKK, the Third Reich and the threat we call ISIS in a nutshell. These are people pissed off to the point of world domination. And they’re everywhere.

Haters and baiters

We see people who hate the rich and we find people who despise the poor. We see people who fear for the climate because of human activity and we see people who think that no one but God can alter a single thing about the world.

It’s the longtime struggle between the willingness to change and the fear that change will ruin everything. The very state of the human condition is one of madness in dealing with his dichotomy. When people say things like, “The world has gotten crazy,” this is what they’re talking about.

And when we selectively view politicians such as Dr. Ben Carson or Bernie Sanders, we see them through very different eyes as a result. Both are obviously passionate people. Both are struggling to change the status quo. There are people who call both of them crazy. And there are people who take the bait.

Hard-liners

Extremism is a byproduct of trying to make sense of this dichotomy. People simply choose sides and gravitate to the far ends of the spectrum. Standing somewhere between the will to change and fear of change is known as being a moderate. But those voices can barely be heard over the screams of the extremes.

Perhaps more commonly, people choose candidates who represent their views or fears, and somehow Dr. Ben Carson has attracted a fair number of followers. But what creeps me out about the guy is not his potential mental illness. It is crazy ideological statements such as this: “No body with bullet holes is more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” And granted, that might be some form of hyperbole. Even Jesus Christ was known to exaggerate to make a point. But there’s no way Jesus Christ would equate the right to bear arms as more important than human life. So I think Ben Carson is the one that’s talking crazy talk.

And statements like those are why Ben Carson deserves to be scrutinized from every perspective possible. Because they evidence that fact that when it comes to issues of moral gravity, Ben Carson is either a fake, or he’s purposely faking it. Which is even more disturbing. Because what is his true agenda? No one can really know for sure when the “real” statements he makes cannot be separated from the supposedly playful manner in which Carson takes issue with serious social issues.

Fox News “reality” show

Consider that even in the cloistered environment of Fox News, where conservative viewpoints like Carson’s are cherished and promoted, things get strange when talking about standing your ground during a mass shooting or running away.

As reported on Salon.com: “On “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning, he (Carson) said that “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.’” When asked about the remarks by ABC News later that day, he repeated his assertion with a smile, which Kelly said many people would take as an evidence of callousness. (italics by the author)

Carson disagreed, saying that “I was laughing at them, at their silliness. Of course if everybody attacks that gunman, he’s not going to be able to kill everybody.”

Actual military veterans who were armed and on the campus while the shooting occurred didn’t abide by the dictates of Carson’s assured tactical acumen, but that’s beside his point. “If you sit there and let him shoot you one-by-one,” Carson said, “you’re all going to be dead.”

This is a man operating in an imaginary world, where his ideology rules the day, and reality be damned. That’s why people are questioning his mental fitness. It’s not because he’s a conservative. Or he’s black. Or any other reason. He simply refuses to make sense.

“Getting” Carson and Cain

Some claim that he’s so smart the rest of the world doesn’t “get” Ben Carson..because he’s a brain surgeon, you know. And a Christian, apparently. And who knows what else?

Well, the Republican Party keeps trotting out ostensibly conservative black guys as evidence they “get” the needs of so-called minorities.

Herman Cain was the last iteration of this brand of conservative, running on grounds that people did not “get” his message. But he had other axes to grind as well. “I honestly believe that there’s an element in this country, in our politics, that does not want to see a businessman succeed at getting the nomination for the Republican party, and does not want me to succeed at becoming President of the United States of America.”

Well, now that’s a bit of news isn’t it? How many millionaires do we now have in Congress? And why does Wall Street throw millions of dollars behind candidates like Mitt Romney, the businessman and massively callous job-killer whose main professional accomplishments were delivering profits to shareholders? Or Donald Trump, an erstwhile businessman who now leads Republican polling?

But Cain was delusionally obsessed with his inability to convince people he was right. So he blamed others.

Blame and shame

Again, the methods of extremists are always to blame others for their failure to get elected, or to govern. Right now the brother of the former President of the United States of America, candidate Jeb Bush, is busy denying that his brother GWB bore any responsibility for preventing the attacks.

This is mental illness as a political ideology. This is imagined reality superimposed on reality. This is why extremists and political ideologues such as Dick Cheney and perhaps Dr. Ben Carson cannot be trusted. They made not be mentally ill, but they certainly act like it. And that’s the only thing about them that isn’t fake.

Are we fools for being liberal or Progressive?

September 8, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

One of the abiding themes of criticism leveraged at liberals by conservatives (and to some degree, libertarians as well) is that liberals are fools for believing in the things they do.

That’s an interesting contention. Because foolishness is defined as “lack of good sense or judgment; stupidity.”

So let’s take a look at a few of the big and small things conservatives––across a spectrum of religion, politics and culture––have stood for throughout history, and why.

The example of Jesus

First, we might consider that a certain Jesus Christ was highly frustrated by a group of conservative religious leaders in his day who turned faith into legalism by imposing all kinds of rules people had to follow. When Jesus questioned their authority, they paid to have him betrayed and killed.

And wasn’t that foolish?

The bad example of the church

Then when the church grew, it basically started asking people to buy favor with God. When Martin Luther questioned their authority in doing so, they threatened his life.

The same thing happened when men such as Copernicus and Galileo questioned the view of the Church that Earth was at the center of the universe. For hundreds of years the church persecuted and imprisoned all those dared make such a claim. Because the church was behaving like a pack of fools.

Foolish Crusades

It was conservatives on both sides of the Muslim and Christian religions who led the Crusades and engaged in wars over the City of Jerusalem and land claimed by the nation of Israel. These bloody fights were based on ancient claims to ownership of the so-called Holy Land. In the process, hundreds of thousands of people gave their lives for no real reason other than an attempt to prove that God was on their side.

And that is always foolish.

Wars of foolish greed

Speaking of wars, it was conservatives from the Confederate South who wanted states to have all authority in all matters. These same conservatives favored slavery and used religious justification to impose their will on people captured and forced into slavery.

Conservatives then forced America into a Civil War over these issues that cost the nation 750,000 lives.

Even after they lost that war, conservatives still didn’t give up their angrily foolish ways. Conservative white racists imposed Jim Crow laws across the nation to further persecute and control black Americans even after an amendment was added to the Constitution guaranteeing them equal rights. Hundreds if not thousands of black Americans consequently were beaten, tortured, hung or burnt to death by angry white conservatives fearful that their “way of life” was at risk by granting black American’s equal social status.

Foolish societies

These conservatives even formed societies such as the Klu Klux Klan specifically to terrorize and persecute blacks and people of other races and religion apart from conservative white Christianity. This breed of conservatism raged full bore from the early 20th century all the way into the 1950s and 60s. The KKK persists to this day, euphemistically claiming they only favor “white rights” versus persecution of others.

But history proves we’d all be fools to believe such claims. Liberals to this day have a hard time convincing such people of the foolishness of their ways. Yet liberals are blamed by conservatives for “ruining the country.” This is a cynically contrary euphemism for providing equal rights to people that were formerly oppressed.

Foolish money

The same aggressive meme holds true for conservatives accusing liberals of ruinous economic policies. In the wake of the stock market crash where conservative bulls ran the economy right into the ground through deregulation and speculative investments, liberals acted to install programs to protect everyday citizens from the ugly vagaries of such behavior. The Social Security insurance program was set up to provide a common man’s return on investment through a government program that would be available to people no longer engaged the labor market. The program leverages the investment of society to build interest and provide for all those in need during their waning years.

Up until the 1960s, conservatives saw the safety and common sense of such an insurance program. Republicans supported and even expanded Social Security.

But then conservative stalwarts got greedy. It seems to drive them nuts to think they can’t get their hands on all that money through privatization. The wealthiest Americans don’t even pay into the program, and yet those are the same people who seem to be lobbying against the fact that a socialized insurance program works to protect the neediest in America.

And that is the logic of ignorant, greedy fools.

Hatred for common sense

It holds true also for Medicare, a social program set up to protect primarily the elderly from increasingly burdensome medical costs as they age. And Conservatives (note the Capital C) hate it. And so it goes with conservatives hating common sense for the very fact that it is both common, and sensible.

Instead the conservative faction in American seems to abide by contradictory logic as a rule of thumb. That is how, and why, they currently protest abortion while lobbying against organizations such as Planned Parenthood that provide legal birth control to women to help them avoid unwanted pregnancies.

Conservatives claim on supposedly moral grounds that only abstinence is a rightful method for avoiding pregnancy. The real goal it seems is to take away that decision-making capability from women, whom conservatives consistently persecute over all such decisions of sexual or personal freedom.

Rhythm nonsense

Even the Catholic Church looks like a fool on such issues because more than 90% of its own member base chooses by practical intuition to ignore the dictums of the church’s morality-based yet hypocritical bans on birth control. The so-called “rhythm method” so long advocated by the Vatican is nothing more than a falsely moral attempt to avoid pregnancy as well.

Pro-nothing

And when it comes to abortion, conservatives calling themselves “pro-life” who also protest distribution and use of birth control are not in favor of anything. They’re simply “anti” with no room for solutions on a practial scale. That’s not “pro-life.” It’s anti-living. Positions like that are aggressively foolish.

Naturally foolish

Equally foolish and equally aggressive are Christian conservatives claiming that science is out to kill religion simply by teaching the theory of evolution. That strange claim ignores the fact that Jesus himself taught using naturalistic parables to illustrate spiritual concepts. Men like the stalwartly foolish Ken Ham, a leading creationist, seem to have no ability to connect the organic fundamentalism of the Bible with modern science. As a result, they remain engaged in an increasingly Quixotic attempt to knock down the windmills of science. And when that fails, new labels such as Intelligent Design are invoked in an semantic battle for supremacy. But that too has failed in the face of plain and rational logic on the side of science.

Proving that creationalism is pure and unadulterated foolishness.

Fool for politics

It all spills into the realm of politics where the current band of conservative leaders is struggling to become ever more extreme in an attempt to prove themselves securely “sensible” in the eyes of their zealous and crazed base.

The height of this tomfoolery is now on full display in the cartoonish manner and statements of men such as Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee. who blather on like homeless and mentally ill individuals society on a street corner.

Adding to the manic display of such foolishness are women such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, whose conservatively-driven rants split off like solar flares in the political universe. These particular women offer little more than conservative hot energy, yet people foolish enough to consider them bright stars don’t recognize the burnt out nature of their message. Like most conservative messengers, they are not prophets, but parrots. They repeat only what they’ve been able to learn from worn out ideals.

Fools for anger and fear

But their parrotism feeds on the same anger and fear that has driven conservatism for ages upon ages. From the religious conservatives who tormented Jesus to the Facebook fools who torment liberals for believing and acting on social justice, racial, gender and sexual equality, economic parity and environmental protection, conservatives keep believing they see fools where in fact what they are seeing is people committed to rational solutions.

Because it has been the liberal enterprise that has delivered on the promise of humanity and God.

Liberalism has led the way on all great scientific discoveries. It has fostered social revolutions in democracy and equality, because even when men like Ronald Reagan were lobbying against the Soviet Union, it was the liberal enterprise of America initiative for which he was a stalwart defender.

Our Founding Fathers authored a Constitution guaranteeing freedom and liberty, which simultaneously loosened the binds of religious authority where it constricted human understanding. America is a nation dependent on freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion. It is not, as some conservatives love to claim, a Christian nation by definition.

Throughout history it is liberalism that has built societies where human respect is paramount, yet God is quite welcome. But we recognize that all words are symbols, and all scripture is composed of words. That means metaphor should be welcome at the table of truth. Literalism can be the enemy of truth.

Disclaimers

So it is not liberals that are the fools. It has long been proven that conservatism with all its rigid and anachronistic tendencies are the bane of culture, government and the earth. The main thing we need to extract from these lessons is that it takes a strong will, a rational mind and a commitmen to liberal convictions to resist conservative foolishness at every turn.

And that, my friends, is no foolish exercise.

We’ve reached the point where some people are too Christian to function

May 1, 2015May 1, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

In that cinematic pillar of conscience titled “Mean Girls” starring a still-functional Lindsay Lohan, there is a marvelous scene in which the male homosexual character (Damian) in the movie is the subject of commentary by some of his close friends. “He’s almost too gay to function,” someone says.

What that means is that his gayness places so much emphasis on consideration of fashion, behavior and grooming it is almost impossible to move around in the world for fear of breaching some gay standard.

Yes, gays have standards. Plenty of them in fact. If you ever stumbled on the show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, you might have witnessed the transformation for formerly slobbly, careless men into creatures that actually knew how to dress and groom themselves so that women (not men) would be attracted to them.

Yet there are no cliches that apply to all gay men or women. The large population of gay and transgender people is this world is too large and diverse to make generalities about.

We can be thankful that society is beginning to appreciate the contributions of gay people to professions and industries of all types. That’s because the last 20 years have produced an increasing openness about homosexuality.

Of course this trend has been resisted by those who still view homosexuality as a lifestyle or a choice rather than what it is: a manifestation of the biological, emotional and psychological diversity found in the human species.

But because there are scriptures that single out homosexuality as a sin, some people take those words verbatim and claim that there is no way society can tolerate or accept homosexuality in any way, shape or form. Some scholars such as Bishop John Shelby Spong have made the case that the Apostle Paul was actually a repressed homosexual. Repression never seems to come out well. It’s a highly dysfunctional aspect of social behavior. Often it turns out those most opposed to a social issue are those who struggle with some other form of repression in themselves.

They are too repressed to function.

Now that brand of confrontation is coming to a head. The Supreme Court of the United States is considering cases pertaining to gay marriage. Never mind that the Constitution already states that religion has no say in the matter. The guarantee in the Establishment Clause says it clearly: the nation shall make no law establishing religion as the law of the land, nor preventing its free exercise.

Some people insist that second section of the clause proves the right to oppose and repress the right to gay marriage. They claim it imposes restriction on their beliefs.

It so happens that conservative Christians also claim that teaching evolution in public schools is also a breach of their beliefs.

Yet how convenient it is that there are Christians out there preaching a prosperity Gospel on claims that God wants us all to be rich! Well, the Bible is full of indictments on the worship of money. So which is the truth?

Meanwhile the Catholic Church has for decades banned use of birth control among its members. Yet some 90% or more of its members ignore this dictum.

See, there’s this problem with Christianity and the functionality of society. Since there is no single interpretation of the Bible accepted by all Christians, it is impossible to make exceptions for all variations in interpretation of the Bible. Otherwise we would not have national holidays or even celebrate Christmas according to some branches of Christianity. We would all be forced to consider the strictures laid out in a set of golden plates if the Church of Latter Day Saints were to have its way as well.

That is why the Founding Fathers made plain that no religion can define the activities of the nation or state. They knew that people become too Christian to function at some point. Unable to distinguish between their personal beliefs and the law of the nation, they too often choose to impose their personal beliefs and concepts of God on others, sometimes forcefully.

Christianity really is too Christian to function as the law of the land.

How the Republican Party will blame liberals for climate change

April 7, 2015April 7, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

It seems almost impossible to think about. Yet one day soon all those who spend time denying the fact of man-made climate change will embrace it as a way to blame liberals for ruining the world.

Here’s how it will go down. There will be a conference somewhere amongst all those that have spent the last 10 years hating Al Gore for stating the inconvenient truth. And the financiers of phonily constructed research that denies the existence of global climate change will suddenly find ways to fund credible science because it serves an all new, entirely political purpose.

That purpose will be to blame liberals, especially environmentalists, for anthropogenic climate change.

There will still be an anti-science motive behind the science climate change deniers use to suddenly reverse positions on the idea that humans can effect climatologically disastrous levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

That motive will be to bring religion to the forefront of the so-called argument over climate change. Religious conservatives will contend that it is the policies of environmentalists that have gone against the will of God. They will claim that it is the arrogance of all those seeking to outsmart the Creator by imposing manmade laws and environmental regulations that has led to our pending climate disaster.

Predictable outcomes

Playing righteousness for political favors and power is how conservatives always operate in this world. It doesn’t matter that there is no logic behind the argument that conservation laws and international governmental agreements to reduce carbon emissions are the cause of global warming.

What matters to conservatives is framing the argument under terminology they can control. That’s where religion comes in so handy. They will point to passages from the bible where people defying the will of God have suffered punishment. The exile of Israeli people to Egypt and to Babylonia will likely serve as the apocryphal bludgeon used by conservatives to illustrate how God punishes those who try to think for themselves and “fall out of worship” with God.

Falling away from God

That means conservatives will rally all the talking points they use to assail what they call liberalism. Which is in fact nothing more than guaranteeing basic human rights. But that has never gone over well with conservatives. For a long time it was persecution of black people that occupied their attention. Then came the 1960s and social revolution. Then women’s rights became the enemy. Now tolerance of gays will be cited as a sign that America, which conservatives brand a Christian nation, has fallen away from the ways of God. For sure there will be a bit of apocalyptic fervor and imagery thrown in for good measure. Just to appeal to the frantically preoccupied base that believes the end of the world is coming about anyway. Nothing like a bit of threat and lost hope to motivate those who see the Bible as a set of bookends with Genesis and Revelation providing the sudden beginning and end of the world. How very convenient it all fits together.

Murderous ways

Never mind that our endless wars of choice and murderous habits of the CIA and other secretive organizations within government do far more evil and murderous things in the world. None of that matters because, in the minds of those who believe in American exceptionalism, none of that comes home to roost. We’re trying to change the world for the better, the argument goes. A few eggs are going to get broken in the process. Some of those “eggs” might have included the killing of JFK or even the complicit design of 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq for oil and influence. People lose their lives to these murderous schemes. But what matters more to conservatives is that someone might lose a little profit due to environmental regulations? Talk about skewed priorities.

Shame and blame

So the calculatedly blameless core of the religious and political right will have absolutely no problem blaming liberals for anthropogenic climate change. The sin of trying to act like God by invoking environmental protection laws is to blame for God’s swift justice on this earth. God is changing the climate to punish us all, they will say.

And it won’t be very long before this narrative comes to the forefront of American and world politics. The pressure to recognize this reality is soon going to force conservatives to admit they were wrong. But that just means they need to find someone to blame for their own egregious behaviors.

Need proof? Look at how quickly the religious and political right concocted the narrative that George W. Bush and Republican policies had nothing to do with the economic recession. Or that Bush and Company somehow screwed things up in the Middle East. No, there was no responsibility there on the part of the GOP or worse, the operatives that carry out the will of the corporatocracy.

Because that’s how it all really works. The confusing mix of business, religion and politics all mix together in the netherworld of people who want to own it all and accept no blame for the consequences of their actions. God comes in handy in those circumstances. All you have to do is claim you’re on God’s side and people find it hard to argue with you.

You heard it here first. It shouldn’t be long now. In fact they’ll probably steal the idea from this blog. We can only hope the Pope speaks out against the plot of the new Pharisees.

When religious freedom becomes a farce

March 29, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / 5 Comments

Farce: a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.

A friend pulled me aside to ask what the hell was going on in Indiana with the bill that apparently opens the door for people to discriminate based on religious beliefs.

Only here’s the challenge my friend wanted to know: Why can’t private businesses choose who they serve or don’t serve? Isn’t it their right in a free market to make that choice?

That shows the confusion most people face over the questions about Indiana Bill 101 (no pun intended) and why it is a farce of dangerous proportions.

The issue of discrimination on basis of religious freedom comes down to a basic Constitutional statement contained in the Establishment Clause, which is described this way by the website Revolutionary War and Beyond.

The Establishment Clause states that Congress shall make no law “respecting an establishment of religion.” This clause is generally interpreted to mean three things. 1) That the Congress may not establish an official religion or denomination and require people to support it or believe in it. 2) The Congress may not favor in its laws one religion or denomination over another, and 3) Congress may not favor or disfavor believers or unbelievers in any religion or denomination over any other.

And there you have it. According to our nation’s Constitution, the Indiana law does not promote religious freedom as it claims to do. Instead, it imposes one religion’s belief on the citizenry as a whole. And that, my friends, is unconstitutional.

The argument that being “forced to serve gays” is an impingement on religious belief is a farce. Here’s why. Interpretation of the bible is, by definition, a highly selective process. There is no “law” that holds true even from one Christian to the next. There may be creeds and general agreement on the statutes of faith, but even in practice from city to city and town to town, or within a specific synod. the practice of religious faith is both highly varied and highly inconsistent.

And that’s perfectly fine because that is the absolute definition of religious freedom. That’s what’s protected by the United States Constitution.

Yet the Constitution also protects people from having to practice any sort of faith at all. There is no qualifying pledge of religious faith to be a United States citizen. Even the farcical phrase “under God” was jammed into the Pledge of Allegiance late in the game by a bunch of conservative politicians fearful of communist incursion in the minds of youth.

And that’s a farce as well. Which is why the Pledge of Allegiance is kind of a joke these days. Sorry to tell you that folks. It never meant that much in the first place. Kids have always recited the Pledge without any real knowledge or conviction about what it meant. It just makes some adults feel good to hear kids barking about patriotism.

The Pledge of Allegiance is a relatively harmless farce compared to the State of Indiana taking up the banner of religious freedom and turning it into a discriminatory manifesto against a segment of the population that frankly can’t be readily identified by appearance or any other measure. So the law is just mean-spirited by nature. It is an ugliness of attitude that deserves to be shouted down because it is the product of political buffoons who govern by fear and hatred rather than consideration and honesty.

There is no justification for any business to discriminate against customers for any reason. Otherwise, as my friend who raised the question ultimately concluded, “there would be chaos.”

Think about it. If you or anyone you know has to constantly question whether they are accepted by a given business either as a customer, as a potential employee or a vendor, that’s not a “free market” at all. There’s another term for that type of business. It’s called the Good Old Boy network. It leads to cronyism and monopoly. It also leads to corruption as every transaction essentially becomes a secret between those doing the exchange.

Is that the kind of nation our Founders sought to establish? Far from it. Of course our Constitution was not perfect from the start. As a nation we’ve had to emphasize aspects relative to personal freedom. This is especially true relative to matters of equality and discrimination. It’s been only 50 years since Jim Crow laws discriminating against blacks were eradicated. Yet we are still a long ways from equality in many categories of life.

So we’re facing a test with this farcical case in Indiana. We can let buffoons run our country or we can stand up against those who hide because chickenshit claims of religious freedom that amount to discrimination. Because guess what? Your religion is not the law of the land. That’s what radical Muslims want to impose with sharia law.

There’s no difference between what Indiana did and what radical Muslims are trying to do in countries around the world. None at all. Any religion advocating discrimination over equal rights is reduced by its own intolerance to a doctrine of hate. That’s not religious freedom. That’s religious intolerance.

Real Christians ought to know the difference. Jesus was welcoming of all people to the faith. According to the Bible, he spoke nothing at all about homosexuality. Not a word. Most references to homosexuality in the Bible were more about control of appetites rather than loving relationships.

And the Bible certainly said nothing about keeping gay people from buying or selling goods.

It proves that Indiana Bill 101 is a complete and total farce. It was drafted as an act of aggression by fearful, ignorant people in positions of power. Jesus called people like that to account all the time. He branded the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” and “hypocrites” for placing law over love in faith.

Those lessons still apply today.

Where is the real common ground between liberalism and conservatism?

January 20, 2015 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

The feedback one gets when commenting as a liberal on social media covers a contradictory spectrum. Either people blame liberal worldviews on an accident of thought (or afterthought) or else accuse such thinkers as having some kind of marginalized, crazily zealous outlook that does not comprehend how the world really works.

The word “liberal” is also used as an insult in such cases. Which is very strange if you actually slow down to think about it. The definition of liberalism almost seems like a foundational value for the American form of democracy laid out in the United States Constitution:

Liberalism:

progressive views: a belief in tolerance and gradual reform in moral, religious, or political matters
political theory stressing individualism: a political ideology with its beginnings in western Europe that rejects authoritarian government and defends freedom of speech, association, and religion, and the right to own property
free-market economics: an economic theory in favor of free competition and minimal government regulation

That’s like a checklist of American history and American values. So why do so many so-called conservative thinkers claim to hate liberals and liberalism?

There are quite simply explanations actually. The first-rate measure of any hard-line conservative is to have convictions from which you do not back down. But the ironically common ground here is that liberals have quite strong convictions as well. It is understanding the common roots of those convictions that holds the most potential for collaboration on important issues.

For example, despite accusations that most liberals are socialist or communist, liberalism (check the definition above…) most genuinely aligns with free enterprise than any social or economic theory that says change is not good.

Consider the definitions of conservatism as a value system if you do not agree:

con·ser·va·tism

reluctance to accept change: unwillingness or slowness to accept change or new ideas
right-wing political viewpoint: a right-of-center political philosophy based on a tendency to support gradual rather than abrupt change and to preserve the status quo
desire to preserve current societal structure: an ideology that views the existing form of society as worthy of preservation.

None of these values really align with a free market philosophy that says change is good at whatever rate it occurs. That’s a bit of cognitive dissonance on the part of conservatives. Yet we also find cognitive dissonance among liberals. Consider the following examples of parallels in cognitive dissonance between liberals and conservatives:

1. If the reluctance to accept change is a hallmark of conservatism, so is the reluctance to deny change a hallmark among liberals who think social justice is being compromised by the status quo.

Common ground? It is the appeal of individual rights and freedoms that forms common ground between conservatives and liberals.

2. Liberals frequently advocate change for the sake of change, no matter how rapid or gradual, as a sign of a progressive society. Conservatives find this to be a meddling worldview, especially when government is involved. And yet the American government was formed to foment and manage change. So which is it?

Common ground: If anything in this world holds true, it is that change occurs whether we want it to or not. It is the imposition of change on social standards that most offends conservatives. So we need to find shared examples of healthy moral change that conservatives and liberals can share as a tradition. These might include the changes wrought when Jesus confronted religious leaders in his day with a new message of faith founded on grace and salvation over law. That same message needed to be reiterated with the advent of Protestantism through Martin Luther and others. Each of these examples demonstrate that both liberals and conservatives have trouble conceiving the real meaning of change and from where it emanates. Even traditional institutions have need of real change.

3. Conservatives love to claim ownership of the free market economy, but it is often true that the free market destroys as much as it creates. That includes many traditional institutions. Common ground: Liberals and conservatives can engage on which elements of society are “worthy of preservation” as outlined in both conservative and liberal ideology. This holds true across a number of fronts; economic, social, environmental and political.

And thus we have it: the real common ground between liberals and conservatives is in this single word: preservation. Of that which is good, including individual freedom and social tolerance. Of that which is prosperous, which includes stewardship as well as progress. Of that which is traditional, because all worldviews have traditions and many originate from the same stories of creation and good books.

The real challenge in all this is to identify and call out cognitive dissonance wherever it occurs. That is, the accusations made by one party against another are often simple ploys to hide the own worst flaws within each of us.

No lack of discipline on either side

The claims against liberals that they are undisciplined in their thinking and lack convictions ignores the fact that genuine liberalism requires real and honest work in terms of thought and belief. Jesus, for example, required much from his disciples while learning the meaning of his ministry.

As a rule, Jesus taught using parables that were metaphors for the true kingdom of God. He grew frustrated when his closest friends and supporters failed to grasp this methodology and missed the point of his teachings as a result. His liberalism actually served as an important tool and access point for the conservative goal of salvation.

No leadership without questioning

Jesus also castigated the conservative religious leaders of his day for accusing him of being too liberal with his behavior and his associations. But those same accusations came from Jesus’ own family and the liberal camp of admirers who loved his welcoming message but also wanted him to become an earthly king. They were disappointed when it did not look like that was going to happen.

So it’s a pretty incredible thing to realize how closely conservatives and liberals lie in this process of cognitive dissonance, and how its revelations illustrate how closely we all operate in the real world.

Failing to try to understand and accept the good things in another is the very thing God calls us to avoid. The real kingdom of God, including all faiths and all belief systems, is about finding and supporting common ground here in this world so that good will can be done “here on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Yet his ultimate method was patience. That is the common ground of Christ, and always that

Salvation from a liberal perspective

November 10, 2014 / Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

By Christopher Cudworth

The Second Presbyterian church in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania was our family’s religious home from my elementary school years through middle school. Then we pulled up roots and moved to the tiny town of Elburn deep in the cornfields of Illinois. My parents landed at a Presbyterian church in Geneva, nine miles east.

I got confirmed with a group of fellow 8th graders at a congregational church run by the pastor who was our neighbor. Then our family moved once again and my church attendance dropped away with obligations in high school.

A brush with conservatism

But then a group of friends joined Campus Life, the evangelical youth ministry staffed mostly by students from nearby Wheaton College, one of the leading bastions of conservative education in the Upper Midwest.

Most of us did not recognize the conservative ideology behind Campus Life when it first arrived in our town. We attended with students from other high schools, which was pretty radical for the time. So it all felt new and exciting in its way.

As the program grew and its participants were encouraged to dig deeper into the theology behind the feelgood high school ministry, I began to ask questions about what we were being encouraged to learn. Some of these questions exasperated the head of the group, who pulled me aside with a warning and an admonition. “If you keep asking questions you’ll never be a Christian.”

I ignored his aggressive warning and finished out the year with the group. But something about the confrontation made me even more determined to ask questions about the Christian faith and its teachings.

New laws

In college I received a C grade in a New Testament course. I failed to grasp that in that particular situation the path to success was to recite what we were being taught, not to question its verity.

As a senior I fell in love with a girl with whom I watched the television program Jesus of Nazareth. It’s narrative was basically traditional, but the emotion was compelling. My curiosity about faith was kicked back into gear. My questions about some notable aspects of faith were answered. For the first time in life I recognized the liberal truth of Christ. He resisted the wrong kinds of authority. He fought back against people seeking to control religion through literal or legalistic means.

Watching that program taught me that Jesus also asked and welcomed a lot of questions. In fact he won many of his most famous arguments by asking questions in response to legalistic challenges. I’d found a hero of sorts.

Narnian virtues

The summer following my senior year in college I took turns reading all the books in the C.S. Lewis series The Chronicles of Narnia. Christian themes were evident in the metaphorically fantastic story of a band of children who travel to a different dimension where animals can talk and evil sorcery is resisted by the lion known as Aslan. Much like the parables of Jesus the Chronicles of Narnia use symbolism to convey spiritual principles. That opened my eyes even further to the fact that symbolism is one of the most powerful forces in all of scripture.

Marriage and beyond

I did not marry that girl from college but our mutual spiritual exploration did have a deep effect on my life. When I got married in 1985 my wife and I began worship at a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation because that is the tradition in which she had been raised.

The pastor at the time was a wise former campus minister who once gave a sermon titled “Liberals, Bleeding Hearts and Do-Gooders” in which he boldly challenged the growing perception that the Bible was strictly a conservative document. His main point focused on the fact that Jesus himself was a do-gooder, a bleeding heart and yes, a liberal. Scandalous!

When that pastor retired the church brought in a fire and brimstone preacher from the St. Louis area. He wore a wickedly bad toupee and spent most Sundays railing about an angry God. But my wife and I hung in there even when the church itself became an angry place to be. This was a new and not delightful experience for both of us. We loved our fellow church members and continued our bible studies, church participation and teaching. Yet Sundays often left us sad and confused by the near hatred we kept hearing from the pulpit. We talked often of leaving. But we hung in there.

Facts and fictions

Through a succession of increasingly conservative pastors for another 12 years my wife and I served that church in many ways. She took a job in the preschool. I sang in numerous choirs and ultimately had the opportunity to sing and play guitar in Praise Band too.

Our children were confirmed at that church. But during the process they both admitted exasperation at the manner in which certain “biblical facts” were being taught. The pastor railed against evolution, for example. Both of them had learned plenty in school that taught them science was a reliable, well-founded worldview. Yet both kids dutifully recited what they were told to learn for confirmation and the pastor praised them as model students of the Lutheran faith.

As the church grew increasingly conservative, sermons attacked evolution as a godless belief and characterized homosexuality as a nearly unforgivable sin. After 25 years our family migrated up the river to an ELCA Lutheran Church with open communion and even women pastors. God Forbid.

Questions and devotions

All through this process of growing up and raising a family, the questions I had about faith did not keep me from a certain devotion to God. All the journals I kept about my running through high school, college and beyond express thankfulness to God for the opportunity to compete and sometimes win. I prayed for insight through both challenges and triumphs.

My 25 years of service to a Missouri Synod Lutheran church taught me there was no special insight gained from conservatism. As a board member several times over I saw how decisions were made, or not made, by people with ostensibly ironclad convictions. How desperately wrong they could be, and in so many ways.

That confirmed many of the suspicions I had about conservatism in the world at large. Starting with Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, It struck that conservatism was far more concerned with ideology than justice. When Reagan installed James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, he openly proclaimed himself an adversary of the environmental movement on grounds of religious views. Reagan himself claimed to be a protector of moral values in America, yet the so-called Great Communicator branded ketchup a vegetable and played dishonest games through the Iran-Contra affair. The fact that people called Oliver North a hero for his illegal activities and seemed to worship his “above the law” convictions confirmed my worst suspicions about conservatism and its methodologies.

Chance encounter

Ten full years after I had participated in the high Campus Life program where that evangelical counselor confronted me for questioning conservative ideology, I encountered the same man at a McDonald’s in my hometown. At first he avoided looking at me, but when our eyes finally met I could see tears running down his face.

Immediately I went over and invited him to sit down with me. We talked and he confessed that he was upset about what he’d said to be a decade before. I told him: “There’s no reason to be upset. What you said to me did not discourage me from a personal faith. I still ask questions. But I still believe.”

Perhaps he was surprised. We parted on friendly terms and I thanked him for his service to Campus Life. It still strikes me that so many people find it hard to believe there is salvation from a liberal perspective. As noted, Jesus often answered questions by asking questions of his own. This was particularly true when he encountered people with conservative opinions trying to impose their convictions on him. Here’s one classic example from the Book of Matthew:

That Which Defiles

15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ²“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

³Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’^[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’^[b] ⁵But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ ⁶they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,

    but their hearts are far from me.

9 They worship me in vain;

    their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”
And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m now a liberal and will always be a liberal believer. That liberal pastor in the conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran Church was also right when he preached the Jesus was a “Liberal, Do-Gooder and Bleeding Heart.” Salvation from a liberal perspectives comes through the very act of questioning false authority, and standing up for the social justice deeply integrated in the liberal Christian faith. That’s how it’s always been, according to Jesus at least.

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