Citizen Corporation vs. Birth Control

                It was perhaps inevitable that following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which solidified the claims of corporations to “enjoy” rights that liberal democracy has been trying to bestow upon people, that some such person-like entity would claim that his (or her?) right to practice religion is violated by government’s efforts to make sure all people are treated equally and fairly.  Indeed this has happened, as Ian Millhiser reports on ThinkProgress¸and a US Court of Appeals has lent credence to her (or his?) case.  The effort to help insure that people are treated fairly in question is the provision in the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, which I’ll pass on referring to by its pejorative name even though I think it’s bad legislation) that employers of more than 50 people must provide health insurance to all their full-time employees, and that said insurance needs to meet a number of various criteria so that people need not worry excessively about their inability to pay for basic healthcare, and among these criteria is a mandate that certain forms of birth control that are commonly administered as health care service be included. 

                There are many good, sane reasons why this provision makes sense:  birth control is commonly utilized by a vast majority of Americans, particularly women who, because of biology, bear the consequences of not using it; the cost of birth control is much higher for women than for men and women are generally more reliable users of it when it is available; alternatives to providing birth control outside of the medical system are there, but tend to be less reliable and more dangerous;  easy access to birth control is the simplest and most cost-effective way to minimize unwanted pregnancies and abortions; birth control for women is inextricably linked to many facets of health care in addition to preventing pregnancy.  There are more, I’m sure, but these alone constitute some very compelling reasons why the people, acting through the state, are justified in making sure that access to birth control, for those who choose it or need it, is available to as many people as possible – especially women.

               

Crazy Walk

                I took a walk today.  Is that crazy or what?

                I mean, seriously, is that crazy?

                Before we consider that question with sincerity, I’ll say right off that I love taking walks.  I take them all the time – every day if I have the chance.  Sometimes my walks are long and at least a little rugged, sometimes way up in the mountains or on the shore of a lake.  But usually my walks are not very far – maybe a mile or so – and cover familiar territory in my neighborhood.  In fact, I have, in essence, a very well-worn path between my house and the nearest store where I do all my routine grocery shopping and whatnot.  I don’t have all the leisure time required to take walks every day, but I find if I combine my walks with errands, that allows me to take more of them, and, at the very least, not feel as if I’m “wasting” my time doing so. 

                It started over twenty years ago, when I had a suspended driver’s license (another story for another time.)  I wound up moving to a different state during the period of my license suspension, and was unable to get any limited driving privileges at all.  So long before it was at all trendy, I’d every few days grab my heavy-duty canvass shopping bags and walk a mile or so to the grocery store, buy as much as I could comfortably carry, and then hoof it home again.  And I grew to enjoy those outings; enjoy them so much that I continued taking them after I got my driving privileges back.  Since then, I’ve lived in a dozen or so different homes in different parts of the country, some in big cities, some in sprawling suburbs, some in remote rural areas, but wherever I’ve lived, I’ve tried to establish a routine in which I can take frequent walks and do my errands at the same time.  At a couple of the remote places I’ve lived this was pretty impractical; but most of the time it’s been great.   I’ve actually come to dislike driving my car – at least on short trips around town – so much that I do as much of my commuting and errands as possible without using my car.  And, I say with all sincerity, I love it.  I don’t do it because I have to or out of guilt, I do it because it’s enjoyable and good for my body and spirit. 

       

But WE Can Give them Stuff, Too!

            Let’s take a walk through the theater of the absurd.  Thanks to deranged folks at Fox News like Bill O’Reilly, it’s not a very long or arduous walk.

            We’ll start last summer, when President Obama, citing the repeated failure of Congress to pass something like the very reasonable and patriotic DREAM Act, instituted a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.  Under DACA, children of people who came to the US without documentation can avoid the threat of deportation as long as they meet certain requirements such as staying in school, staying out of trouble with the law, etc.  Conservatives cried “foul,” and claimed that Obama was “pandering” to Latinos for political purposes, apparently hoping that nobody in their audience would notice that pandering to anti-immigrant white people looks equally undignified. 

            Fast forward.  The DACA program is a (limited) success, the sky didn’t fall, and Obama wins the November election.  Enter O’Reilly, who grabbed headlines on election night lamenting that “it’s not a traditional America anymore and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff.  They want things.”  (Read Jesse Hagopian's wonderful take on this, please!)  It doesn’t take a Poly Sci major – though it might take some elementary level of self-awareness – to recognize that people in O’Rielly’s “traditional” America (read: straight, white, middle-class English-speaking Americans) want stuff too.  Stuff like tax cuts, less spending on social programs, big defense contracts, property rights (to protect property they own at least in part because of their historical status,) and lots of tough-on-crime kinda stuff so they can feel oh-so-secure in their suburban enclaves.  Mostly, perhaps, they want to feel like the stuff they want is somehow more legitimate than the stuff other people want – stuff like a government that protects them from excessive exploitation in the labor market, and guarantees some basic necessities for living in a country that “enjoys” the widest gap in wealth and income disparities in the developed world.  That kind of “stuff” is – in their minds – illegitimate, and they can only get it by getting powerful politicians to pander to their needs.

            So far, I’m not sure this fits the definition of absurd – just the painful ironies of our incredibly immature political dialog.  But what strikes me as truly absurd was the reminder I saw yesterday about what Bill O’Rielly’s preferred candidate in this election said at the Republican National Convention only two months before.  Mitt Romney told the delegates – and the TV cameras, to be sure – “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet…” He said to jeers. “My promise… is to help you and your family.” How, Mr. O’Reilly, is a Presidential candidate promising to “help you and your family” different from people wanting “stuff?”

            The absurdity of this is the expanse of the hypocrisy; but I’m wondering – again – if it’s not something more.  I’m wondering again about this Jungian meme: do conservatives really hate liberals so much simply because they (liberals) remind them (conservatives) of themselves?  Even when they have to go to the extent to re-invent liberals in order to provide a straw man for them to hate?  Mr. Romney’s own admission is that liberals care about things other than themselves, things like oceans and planetary health; and his remarks also make it clear that conservatives are actually proud to not care about such things.  (At least in the “privacy” of their own conventions.)  By this logic, we can understand Mr. O’Reilly’s outrage as probably actually directed at his own allies: Mr. Romney and the many other Republicans who lost this election promising to deliver “things” to all those hard-working, middle-class (read: white) Americans.

            And so now we’re hearing that Republicans, praise the Lord, are “softening” their hard-line stance on immigration reform.  That’s a huge bet – that they can actually convince the very people they’ve been so dismissive of all these years that Republicans can give them stuff, too. 

            Let’s call it liberal envy.   And don’t worry, Bill O’Reilly, I’m sure there’s a therapist that can help you.

The Arrogant Storm

It's been a year and a half since my last post (a portion of which was published in Orion magazine -- how 'bout that?) and tonight I'm surfacing just after election 2012.  So the story that I could perhaps stick to could be that I've simply taken time off from blogging during this god-awful election season; and this god-awful election season really is about a year and a half in length.  So I'd better write quick before the next one starts -- if my goal is indeed to write about politics but in a manner completely separate from the two-party circus.

Truthfully, though, I've been prompted to write because I've been thinking about memes.  Sorry, the truth often isn't as funny or as interesting as the stories well tell ourselves.

I've been thinking about memes for the last week or so, after seeing a post on facebook by a friend of a friend.  The friend posted something about hurricane Sandy and possible links to climate change, and the friend of this friend commented on it by saying something like "it's pretty arrogant to believe that we humans can cause these kinds of storms."

On one level I can't resist the temptation to call bullshit when I see it -- though I did resist adding my comments to the thread.  So I've been prompted to write simply to respond to this nonsense -- believing that it is arrogant to suspect that human-induced climate change could contribute to stronger storms.  I suppose it is arrogant if one has absolutely no idea that climatologists around the world have been warning for the last couple of decades that yes, we humans are altering the atmosphere in a way that will probably lead to warming, and yes, this trend could likely contribute to more frequent and intense storms, and if one has no idea that the vast majority of scientists who study the weather all agree with this warning, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has urged global action to minimize these effects, and most every government on the planet has made some kind of explicit commitment to at least try to curtail emissions that could contribute to global warming.  Yes, if one has no idea about any of these things, then I suppose it would be rather arrogant to simply assume that because there's been a few more nasty storms this year than most that we humans must be behind them in some way, shape, or form.  As if nature is somehow incapable of whipping up a few nasty storms on her own.

But what if one does know about these things?  What if we actually pay attention to what the scientific method is revealing?  Is that arrogant?  Or is it arrogant to choose to ignore the science? Is it arrogant to know that human civilization is annually pumping some 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the global concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has been steadily increasing at a perhaps unprecedented rate and still believe that our emissions can't possibly have any effect on the actions of the very atmosphere we're demonstrably changing?

Arrogance is a complex thing.  It is arrogance, after all, that got us into this mess -- the arrogance that just because there's coal and oil and other burnable substances in the ground and we have technology to extract them then we should do so with utmost haste and assume there will be no negative consequences for this -- ever.  And when some people are faced with at least the prospect that our arrogance has caught up with us, then they respond to this by claiming that it is arrogant to stop being arrogant.

Are people really that dumb?  Or delusional?  This reminds me of Jungian psychology, on a political/social plane.  We're pointing to our own shadows as the cause of our distress while remaining totally oblivious that it is our shadows of which we are afraid.  What we fear most is ourselves.

My reaction to this facebook comment also stirred something on another level, which is why I've been thinking about memes.  I know that the subject comment was not the first time I've heard or read somewhere somebody saying something about it being arrogant to believe that anthropogenic climate change is a real danger.  I'm quite sure I've heard it before, several times.  Yet I don't know where that thought originated.  I'm willing to bet that some Rush Limbaugh-like character made some brief reference to it one day awhile back, without actually putting forth a coherent argument in favor of it (since no possible coherent argument could be made in defense of something so silly -- even by Rush Limbaugh.)  But a brief mention of an idea like this -- an idea that is logically ludicrous but carries a powerful emotional wallop -- just might be enough to make it stick in many people's minds.  And then they start repeating it, perhaps without even remembering where they first heard it, on facebook and in conversation etc, etc.  Next thing you know, we have a meme, and we have people everywhere believing something so utterly senseless yet so powerful.  Nobody wants to be arrogant, even though arrogance is a defining characteristic of post-industrial human beings.  And since nobody wants to be (consciously) arrogant, we slap and quiet ourselves next time we worry out loud that our actions have consequences that we -- or our ancestors -- did not foresee.

Dry Beach Walk

Spring is drawdown season on Lake Roosevelt.   As the winter snows begin to melt, by some complex interaction of decisions by officials at various agencies, the water flows increase through Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam and the surface level of the over one-hundred-mile-long reservoir begins to fall.  As this happens, the sandy and rocky shoreline along this popular recreational lake begins to grow.  Between the dark blue waters and the deep green Ponderosa Pine forests that surround it emerges a bright whitish-tan oasis that wiggles its way around and through the lake’s many inlets and the region’s precipitous hills.  This is always an odd sight for those of us who live around Lake Roosevelt, still known by many around here as “The River.”  This year the sight was particularly impressive, as the lake level dropped by more than usual, some seventy five feet below the normal fill level.

                For those who haven’t seen it, a seventy-five foot drawdown may not seem like much in a one hundred mile long lake.  Engineers say that one hundred and thirty two thousand acre-feet of water is missing, which helps illuminate the scope of the project.  But to truly appreciate the amount of water that was not held back by the dam this spring and, by extension, the amount of water that is held back annually or even daily, nothing beats a little walk on these expanded beaches in the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area.

                This stretch of the Columbia River used to be the focal point of a tribal way of life that relied on the abundant salmon that migrated hundreds of miles upstream to places like Kettle Falls, where they were often caught by the native people who fished there.  Now the lake is the focal point of another kind of culture: as the spring drawdown reverses and the beaches revert to thin bands of sand dotted with boat launches, campgrounds, and swim platforms, the annual migration of tourists driving big recreational vehicles pulling even bigger boats to their summer playground begins.  Before these summer migrants arrive, locals like me can take a walk on these deserted and expanded beaches, and get a sense of what the area looked like seventy years ago before the water was detained.

                I took such a walk a few weeks ago.  I strolled past a marooned swim platform, and, a few yards further out, a string of chained-together logs that will soon float in formation to outline a designated swimming area.  But that was just the start, for the shoreline lies several hundred yards further out the gently sloping sand and dried mud bank that once contained orchards, roads, towns, and lots more Ponderosa Pines.  Going out further I found many stumps from the clearing of the flood area seventy years ago, and the remnants of an old road.  Entire towns used to be out here, and people and many other creatures called this slope home.
 

Then I turned around and looked toward the shore.  I saw the swim platform lying on the dry ground just a few yards away from the beach proper, and from the trees and picnic tables and parking area that are all in immediate proximity to each other.  I walked back toward the summer playground, and tipped my head back and gazed up at the imaginary water line that extends horizontally from the summer shore to a place that is about as high over my head as is the roof of a six-story building.  For a moment I saw the water above me and all around me as I stood on the bottom of this artificial lake.  I imagined all those seemingly massive boats floating up there, and, closer to shore, tourists by the RV load bobbing around in that tiny corner of water delineated by the chained-together logs, and I realized how small these things are compared to the one hundred and thirty thousand acre-feet of water that in a few weeks will be above my head.   Humans can do big things – build big dams and make even bigger lakes on which to put our big boats.  It’s truly impressive. 

This year’s drawdown was bigger than most because of worries about the nearby Odessa aquifer that has been declining in recent years.  And a new study by researchers at the USGS and the University of Washington reports that tree-ring studies show that mountain snowpacks have been dropping to levels not seen in almost a thousand years.  If these declines – which are attributed at least in part to global warming – continue, then water shortages will continue to grow, and, most likely, so will the extent of the spring drawdowns.   As reported in the Seattle Times, the findings “highlight a fundamental flaw in how the U.S. views Western rivers… Assumptions about how to allocate water have largely been based on early 20^th century hydrology and flow patterns that may not be sustainable.”

Yes, humans can do big things, and often make very big mistakes when doing so.  We all may be taking more surreal walks on artificial beaches in the future, wondering what to do with all these blasted boats.

A Message of War

So this week, as many Americans celebrated the death of the most evil man in the world, and proclaimed our “victory” in the war against al-Qaida, we were told by many commentators that this event marked the end of an era, a chance for closure from the horrific terrorist attack that happened almost ten years ago.  Yet not all of us celebrated – I, like many compassionate peace-loving people, felt no urge to dance, sing, or shout upon hearing the news that special forces of the US military hunted down and executed Osama bin Laden a decade after he claimed responsibility for the most significant terrorist attack against Americans, and some two decades after he became a declared enemy of the United States.  Some sense of relief, yes, and – yes – some sense of gratitude for the special forces personnel and all other hard-working souls who have in some way put their own lives on the line over the last decade or two pursuing this villain.  But celebration? No.  And closure? Quite the opposite, actually.

          No, my reaction was one of sadness – renewed sadness for the victims of that horrible act of violence on the East Coast many years ago, sadness for the violence that was broadcast on the news last Sunday night, and sadness for all the violence that happened in between, and around the world, every day and in every place.  This was just one more act of violence, one more death – several, actually – in a world that has become too tolerant of acts of violence large and small.  That many of my otherwise clear-thinking and compassionate brothers and sisters here in the US felt the urge to celebrate upon hearing this news was simply a reminder of how tolerant we've become, and how easily we dismiss another person's humanity because of perceived differences.

          So I hold up Julia Ward Howe's call on the first Mother's Day of Peace for women to “now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.. (to) meet first... to bewail and commemorate the dead.”   

         Soon after I first heard the news of what happened in Pakistan last weekend, I heard our Secretary of State declare that this act would “send a message” – as politicians love to say – to all the would-be terrorists around the world that engaging in terrorism against the United States has consequences.  While I'm sure that many messages were sent with this act, I doubt that that is the message heard by those who are drawn to commit acts of violence against the US empire.  I'm willing to bet that that particular message was intended more for US voters than any would-be al-Qaida operatives.  If I can imagine being a terrorist – a “would-be terrorist,”  I would probably hear two messages loud and clear:  One, that the US likes to “play ball” as much as I do, and is fully engaged in this ongoing game in which we commit acts of violence to send messages; and two, it took a decade or two for the mightiest military in the world to track down and execute this one criminal whose own influence and power has all but disappeared among his most loyal troops.  And we were only able to do this, it seems, by stretching our mighty military to the limits, declaring de facto war on one-third of the world, and bringing the biggest economy in the world to the brink of bankruptcy, all the while watching helplessly as other forces in the Muslim world take power into their own hands.  The message is, in other words, yes, we're in the game, and yes, we can be beat.

          Yet here at home, we celebrate.  Why?  Perhaps it is because on some level, we know this to be true, but we'll do everything in our power to convince ourselves otherwise.  To do so, we tell our stories, for stories are the basis of identity – not truth, but identity.  Well tell the story of old glory, of the rich and powerful U S of A fighting for justice and freedom, and prevailing.  And we tell the story of how our mighty military can do anything, even bring “closure” to a tragedy that was born of the very violence our military uses.  I'm afraid that this act does not bring us closer to closure, for that will only come to those who recognize the universality of suffering, and accept our powerlessness in the face of tragedy.  My thoughts and prayers, upon hearing the news of the death of Osama bin Laden, went to those who have endured the profound loss of death and destruction on September 11, just as it went to the victims of all this senseless violence in all parts of the world both before and after that day.  And my prayer is that all might yet join the spirit of Julia Ward Howe and “take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, and each bearing... the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.”  That is where we'll find closure.

The Season of Peace in a Time of War

adapted from a sermon by Rev. Ken Jones, delivered December 5, 2010


You ever have this experience when you pick up a newspaper just hoping for one nice little story of good news now and then? But then all you find is bad news?
Like the news that we're set to break the Soviet Union's record for the longest futile military occupation of Afghanistan.
Or like the news about the initiation of so-called “war games” between the US and South Korea, apparently in response to North Korea's own version of “war games?”
Or the news about that crazy outfit that published all these “leaked” documents from the US State Department, showing us that our high and mighty diplomatic corps is, at heart, not always very diplomatic? Or how they seem to relish the thought that some repressive Islamic kingdoms that happen to be friendly to our oil companies secretly want the US or Israel to attack some other repressive Islamic clerical states, drawing us further into a religious war between Sunni and Shia Muslims?
Or how about the news about that disturbed young man in Portland who almost blew up a van full of explosives in the middle of a family-oriented Christmas tree ceremony?
Or how about the news that the President we elected two years ago on an anti-war platform, has yet to demonstrate that his year-old “surge” in Afghanistan is doing any good? How about the continued stream of violence and mayhem that eminates from that country? Or about our inability to even be sure who the enemy is?

The Illusion of Democracy

I wish I remember which Soviet dissident once said that the difference between people in the old Soviet Union and people in America is that the Soviets knew they were being lied to. The pathetic display of bravado and self-importance displayed in this week's election reminded me of this truism. Not only did we have to put up with the usual empty rhetoric and meaningless slogans, we were subject (just as we were by the Obamaniacs two years ago) to countless propositions that this or that politician is going to change the way things get done in Washington. The saddest part about it all was listening to all the naïve dupes interviewed on places like NPR – so called everyday normal voters – who expressed some degree of enthusiasm that their vote, and the mandate of which they felt a part, would actually make a difference. People in America – at least the politically naïve, who account for the majority – actually believe that changing who is “in charge” in Washington is actually going to change the system! It seems completely lost on them that the system gives them these so-called choices every now and then precisely to distract them away from doing anything that actually might change the system. It is their votes, in a very simple sense, that keep up the very status quo they hope to change.

Don't Legalize!!!!

It seems as though there is momentum building toward a day when marijuana use and sale will be legal.  This is the libertarian's and the pothead's best dream come true, and I admit that I have often yearned for such a sensible policy decision.  The war on drugs does untold damage -- not only is it completely ineffectual, it also causes crime, violence, and increases economic disparity.  So legalizing it, I've often thought, is a good thing.  Wrong.

Just imagine if you will that future day when pot is marketed and sold by the likes of Phillip-Morris, Pepsico, Wal-Mart and Monsanto.  Just imagine what a sweet deal legalization could be for all these mega corporations, who will most likely simply make deals with the existing cartels in Mexico and Columbia, and then draw in incredible profit margins bringing the stuff into the US and selling it in mass quantities.

I'm not against marijuana use, both medicinal and recreational, but what I am against is our current global corporate economy.  One the other hand, the current underground economy in which small growers grow and sell the stuff in informal networks is exactly the kind of economic model on which we should rebuild our whole economy.  The only problem is this god-forsaken war on drugs, which introduces a whole slew of problems into the existing network (the fact that the underground network survives so well even with all these externally-imposed barriers is testament to how strong small local economic networks are.)  The war imposes greatly increased startup costs and overhead, violence, mistrust, and, with all these, encourages consolidation. 

So what we should be doing is not legalizing, but simply defunding the war on drugs.  Just let the underground networks survive, leave them alone, and I predict we'll see the most efficient, safe, well-run sector of our economy in no time.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of hope that this will come to pass.  As soon as we pass the threshold in which pot use becomes socially respectable enough to be legal, I predict that the corporations will once again see dollar signs in their eyes and pounce on it.  And smother us all -- potheads or not.

Gandhi Meets the Matrix

So I recently re-watched The Matrix (movie) and was reminded again that the idea that humans are cancer is not new nor mine.  The idea was articulated in that movie by one of the (apparently) evil "agents" of the computer that dominates and enslaves the human race.  It was one of those instances in which a scriptwriter attempts to momentarily confuse the viewer, when this agent of evil is torturing one of the good guys.  But wait a minute, he says something we know to be true, so, even for a moment, are we to think that maybe this bad guy isn't so bad after all?  Maybe fighting against this evil computer is not only pointless, but also misguided?  Then after that brief moment, we return to the vivid and chair-gripping action we paid good money to see, and all ambiguity is gone once again.  Whew! close one.

There's no need for ambiguity, you see, because the "evil" that the computer (or "Artificial Intelligence") perpetuates is enslaving the human race, even though almost nobody is aware of it.  So while the computer provides for everyone an illusory and yet seemingly real existence, it is evil because it deprives us of the one thing that we seem to think is worth fighting for -- our freedom.  (It would probably be more correct to call it "freewill" in this context.)  The implication of this scene, and really the whole struggle on which the film is based, is that it matters not whether there is truth in the statement that humans are cancer, it only matters that we fight to maintain our freewill, even if that freewill is only an illusion.  (Just as the computer provides an illusory life, part of that illusion is a certain amount of freedom.  It is not altogether clear from the film [at least the first one] if freewill exists outside the illusion created by the AI.)

Is freedom more valuable than truth?  If it turns out that our conception of freedom exists only to gratify our egos, is it good to kill and destroy whatever gets in the way of our maintaining that freedom?  I wonder about these things.

It occurs to me that I'd like to do a re-make of this movie, one that takes the basic precept of the script but takes out all the violence and with it all the violence-glorifying implications.  In Keaneau Reeve's role, I'd cast a Gandhi-like character whose enlightenment is not "the one" that can fight the machine, but the one who learns how to non-violently non-cooperate with it, and teaches others to do the same.  Come to think of it, maybe that's what really happened in India nearly a century ago, and we've all been living in an illusion since then.

Fascism Runs Deep

Matthew Rothschild's commentary in The Progressive about the yearning for Fascism in America is important reading.  It's important because his warning is real, and because it represents a rare example of more or less "mainstream" media taking the work of people like Chris Hedges seriously.  It is not enough for good-hearted liberals and traditional, tolerant Americans to simply dislike people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, we need to do more to discredit them, relieve them of their audience, and put them to work at minimum-wage jobs doing things like cleaning bathrooms and cooking "freedom fries" and whatnot.  Yes, this rising anger and intolerance is approaching truly dangerous proportions, and we ignore it at our peril.  But we have to remember that this wave of hatred has been building for quite awhile, and Mr. Rothschild and others fail when they attribute it to the lack of jobs and the current recession.

Restoring Honor with Dishonor

Yes, one more comment about Mr. Glenn Beck's insane antics in Washington this weekend.  Most of it has been said, but I'm just wondering one thing more.

Mr. Beck will stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, on the same day when 37 years ago Rev. King inaugurated the Civil Rights movement with one of the most -- if not the most -- important speeches in US history.  He will do so under the guise of "restoring honor" to our troops, and with a stated intention of "reclaiming the civil rights movement."  Mr. Beck has also previously urged people to flee from any church that advocates social justice or economic justice.

So let's get this straight -- Mr. Beck is being presumptuous and arrogant enough to claim some aspect of the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King, a man who named "militarism" one of the three core evils of American society, and who possibly did more than any other human being to urge churches to take stands on social and economic justice.

Let us all pause for a moment to consider this question:  which is more disrespectful of sacred space and history: building an Islamic Cultural Center a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site in the middle of a very crowded city?  Or standing on the very steps made hallowed a generation ago by one of our great spiritual leaders and attempt to undo what he accomplished while pretending to carry his torch?  Geez, even Joe McCarthy had a little bit of shame.

Would Jesus be a Fascist?

Every now and then, I am overcome with "shock and awe" in reaction to some amazing feat of intellectual contortion-ism coming from some unlikely place.  Today it came from a facebook post, from someone I don't know.  It was a "comment" from one who I believe is a "friend" of a "friend" of a "friend," in reaction to a post from a different "friend" of a "friend" of a "friend," the common thread being that I think the second "friend" in each chain is actually a real live relative of mine.  (I'm explaining this using facebook terminology in part to illustrate the contortions that much of our popular discourse goes through, suggesting that that could be one reason for the bizarre contortions themselves.)

In any case, here's what I saw: one person, apparently a Christian, posted a link to a newspaper article about the novelist's Anne Rice's aversion to "organized religion."  Several varying comments later, someone else, also claiming to be a Christian, weighed in by saying that standing up for something can make one unpopular (a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree, as I will explain.)  As an example, this person suggested that Jesus would object to someone calling a person an "immigrant" when the term "illegal Immigrant" might also apply.  The commenter when on to ask if Jesus would condone "people breaking the law, stealing from other people's children, etc." apparently referring to people that this commenter (and popular opinion) would label "illegal immigrants."

It boggles my mind that a person who claims to have a close relationship with the spiritual essence of Jesus of Nazareth, and, apparently, some level of understanding of the gospels, would and could completely turn the message and theology of Jesus so completely around.  I can think of no other political question today in which the theology of Jesus is more clear: those termed "illegals" are the Samaritans of our day, God and compassion are unaffected by trivial political boundaries, and the higher law of God clearly trumps the imperfect laws of humankind -- especially laws, like our immigration laws, that are designed to protect the privilege of the rich over the problems of the poor.  There is no question that if he were walking this Earth today, Jesus would stand on the side of those who risk life and limb migrating across artificial boundaries to try to provide sustenance for their families in the best way they know.  It is also clear to me that not only would Jesus not object to someone using the term "immigrants" when "illegal immigrants" might be more popular, he would furthermore object to just about any usage of the dehumanizing and divisive term "illegal immigrants" in any circumstance.

Yes, taking stands with moral purpose, including the kind of morals for which Jesus was crucified, is often unpopular.  I feel this when I say that we ought to hand out green cards at the border to any and all coming to look for work, but I take comfort in the knowledge that even though many people think I'm crazy for saying such a thing, the spirit of Jesus is on this side.  Yet I am still shocked and amazed when people can turn Jesus' message around so completely and still justify it because of the popularity of the sentiment expressed, and then in the same breath justify such an anti-Christian sentiment as being "Christian" merely because the person expressing it might feel some twinge of guilt knowing, deep in his heart, that such sentiments are simple-minded and wrong.  But hey, if on some level I feel bad expressing my intolerance for immigrants (er, excuse me, "law-breakers,") I can feel better merely by claiming that Jesus and his disciples were persecuted for their beliefs, so any criticism of my arrogance must be the same!  After all, all I need to do is claim a personal relationship with Jesus and voila! He's on my side!  How easy it is to be a "Christian" in our world today.  And what a shame that is to the spiritual legacy of Jesus.

The Deepest Fear in America

Okay, not yet another commentary on this week's biggest overblown news story, the Shirley Sherrod incident?  Yep.  But I want to say very little about Ms. Sherrod, confident that as far as I can see, she has been completely cleared of all the false charges.  But I do want to reflect on these false charges, where they came from and why.  For I think it is indicative of something that is so profound and deep, something that prompts the fear of mainstream American so violently that all talk of it is nearly censored out of popular discourse.

We know pretty much what happened.  A sleazy blogger, looking for attention and fame, doctored up an old speech that Ms. Sherrod gave in a way that made her look like she favored black farmers over white farmers many years ago (back in the days, for example, when South Africa was still ruled by a white minority.)  Then the rat-infested filth that calls itself the newsroom at Fox News jumped on the story, and gave yet another boost to their undeserved ratings by pouncing on it and making every effort -- without bothering to do the one thing a professional journalist should do more than anything else, which is check the validity of the story -- to pipe it into every TV set in America to prove how racist black people in power are.  Then the final blow came when our "hope for change" administration, including President "racism is a persistent evil in America" Obama, cowered in fear of those big, bad, bullies over at Fox and instantly -- again, without bothering to check the facts -- fired Ms. Sherrod, the only sane person in this whole ordeal.

Of course there's lots in here to make even the laziest journalist or pundit happy, lots to prove that political discourse in this country is about on a third-grade intellectual level (except that I can't imagine the worst bullies on my elementary schoolyard being so sleazy.)  Yes, Fox News -- if only it's millions of idiot viewers didn't actually believe their crap -- makes even the Daily Show look like old Dick Cavett reruns.  What troubles me, though, is their very deliberateness that they displayed in this affair.  And it is only one particularly grievous example of what they do every day.  But as an example of what they do every day, I want to examine it for a moment because I do think it reveals something about the deepest fear in America -- the fear that if "we" give them any power, people of color might turn out to be almost as bad as the white people who have ruled this country for the past two centuries.  The fear, in other words, that white people's privilege might yet turn out to be ill-gotten gains, and that judgment day is coming.

We all know, of course, that Hannity, Beck, and all those other blowhards are just that -- blowhards.  But they, and more importantly their "editors" are not stupid.  (I put the term editor in quote marks because I'm not sure what you call a decision-maker at an entertainment organization that poses as a news organization; I suppose "decision-maker who plays the role of an editor" would do, but that's kinda long.)  I have complete confidence that these people at Fox knew that this story was a sham, and they probably figured that they would get "busted" for it -- but they went with it anyway.  Why? Because they knew it would sell.  That's what they do -- sell entertainment.  Why did they know it would sell?  Because it was an image that people fear more than anything else -- a black woman, allegedly in a position of power, saying that she just might have the guts to every now and then treat a white person the way that black people have been treated for just about forever.  Oooo, white people don't like that -- it's almost like saying that white people might deserve to be treated like that sometimes, which is awfully close to the truth.  Maybe we don't actually deserve it, but it would be understandable if it were to happen.  That's why white people fear it so much, and that's what white people fear about Barrack Obama.  The demagogues at Fox News are eagerly awaiting (and seeking out) confirmation that Obama's hidden agenda is to give whites what they, in many respects, deserve, which is second fiddle.

Of course, as his reaction demonstrated, that fear is unfounded.  As one of those hard-core lefties who never had much faith in Obama from the start, this episode was not surprising to me.  It was not surprising that he cowered more quickly than an ostrich can even find the ground in which to duck his head.  It was not surprising because we've seen it happen before -- with candidate Obama.  Remember how quickly he distanced himself from his Pastor, Rev. Jerimiah Wright, when the same sleazeballs assassinated his character?  Obama distanced himself, called Rev. Wright some obligatory bad names, and then boosted his popularity by making a stirring speech about the persistence of racism in America.  It was obvious then that Mr. Obama was all talk and no action -- for action would have been to actually stand up for his friend and fellow citizen and defend Rev. Wright as one who is entitled to express his views, even if his views make some people uncomfortable.  Furthermore, upon election, Mr. Obama would have included Rev. Wright as a key member of his special anti-racism team that he would have appointed on his second day in office.  That would have been action.

One day, these sleazeballs might actually find someone, a person of color, working somewhere in this person of color's administration, who might actually have the audacity to, even once or twice, side with a person of color in an effort to correct history.  When they do find such a person and crucify him/her, I'll know who the real hero is.

The Possibility of Cancer in our Genes

I'm going to write something here that would likely prompt many people to call me negative, a cynic, a dark and joyless creature.  So before I write it, I want to plead with any such reader (or one who would be sympathetic to such claims) to not judge too quickly.  I want to be considered, or rather I want my words to be considered, not as a negative assessment or a cynical vision of doom and dread, but merely as one possible vision of reality.  And if a reader is able to hear these words with an open mind as such, I hope that she/he would furthermore be able to grasp the implications of hearing what I have to say as a possible truth of our existence.  I, for one, have been thinking a lot about the implications of this version of reality, and it makes me wonder if we human beings are capable of grasping and accepting as truth something that makes all claims of cynicism or negativity moot – namely, that reality is far worse than we are capable of imagining.  In other words, perhaps it is not me who is biased toward negativity, but rather it may be that just about everybody else who thinks about the state of the world is hopelessly blinded by unfounded optimism and hope.  Perhaps the lenses in our eyes are, as a result of our own evolution, themselves rose-colored – no need for glasses.

Without further prologue, here is what I'm going to say:  I'm wondering if we human beings are Gaia's cancer.  I'm wondering if our mission on Earth – intentional or not, conscious or not – is to kill the Earth.  If we think of the Earth as a living organism, as the Gaia Hypothesis suggests, and all living creatures and organisms and species as various cells that make up this living Earth, there is good evidence to suggest that we human beings are the cancer cells in this big organism.  I know that Edward Abbey and others have made striking metaphors suggesting that we human beings – those in the industrialized world, anyway – are like a cancer, for we consume our surroundings at an unsustainable rate only to feed our irrational “growth.”  Those are powerful analogies, for sure.  But what I've been pondering is not metaphor – it's not that I think we are like cancer, I suspect that we are cancer.  Take a moment to ponder that: you and I and everybody we know, young and old, mean and kind, stranger and friend, are all cancer cells with a mission to consume our host before our host's own immune system kills us off.

I admit I'm in over my head.  To ponder this possibility, one has to understand what cancer is – not cancer the metaphor but cancer the disease that kills people, and I'm not sure I really know what it is.  I do know that cancer is identified as a condition in one's body in which certain cells, probably acting on bad information, start growing faster than all the others and consuming more resources doing so.  They also tend to multiply quickly, and either kill off or transform other cells in the host's body with which, if all information was good, they should be more or less harmoniously interacting in a way that benefits all – cells and host.  Given that basic knowledge, it is rather easy to see the metaphor relating to the way we humans in the industrial world treat this world that could be thought of, in this metaphor, as being like a living host.

But what is cancer, really?  These rouge cells are acting on information that apparently is not entirely random.  The information that they are getting from their DNA is surprisingly common, tends to be passed from one generation to the next, and exhibits many somewhat predictable patterns.  This suggests to me that cancer is not any type of substance or chemical or anything like that – cancer is information.  It is information that has made it way into, or developed within, the human genome (among other genomes.)  It is information that instructs cells to act in a particular way, just as other information contained in DNA does.

So, if the Earth actually is a living organism, perhaps we humans simply have bad information in our genes that predispose us to rape and plunder, extract and pollute, grow and consume, and gobble up countless other species on our own road to ruin.  Perhaps we do all this not so much because we don't think we have any other choice – perhaps we don't really have any other choice.  Perhaps our consciousness or our intellect gives us reason to pause and reflect, and try to do better.  But at the end of the day, we can't seem to stop extracting and consuming, etc. – we just find different ways to do so.  If we understand this precept, the most relevant question is whether we'll kill our host before our host kills us.  The secondary question is the one I started out with: are we capable of accepting this as our destiny?  Perhaps part of our “cancerous information” instructs us to believe that this couldn't be possible – we are divine creatures on a divine mission and we simply can't believe that the human race, in all its supposed grandeur and glory, is simply a disease that is best killed off as quickly as possible.

I don't like being dark or negative (though I admit cynicsm is often fun,) but I'm not sure I can find an easy way out of this one.  Do I believe what I wrote above to be true?  I don't think so, because if I did I'd probably be filled with much deeper despair than I seem to be.  But as the rational arguments against this proposition seem to crumble more every day, I wonder whether my more optimistic belief is just a symptom of this bad information I've been given.  I can't dismiss this possibility.

To any who have read this far: thank you.  I don't like being alone here.  I'm well aware that when people write or talk about things as “negative” as this, they usually try to conclude on a positive note, try to instill a little hope in the face of despair.  I want to resist the temptation to do so, for I fear it might diminish the chances that readers will be capable of fully accepting the possibility of this proposition (I don't expect readers to accept it, just accept that it is possible.)  But at the same time, I feel compelled to offer one hopeful thought in the context of this possible reality.  That thought is that if we are indeed cancer, and can accept it as an ontological truth, then we also might have the capacity to transcend our programmed mission.  We might have it within us to choose to live differently than we feel accustomed to living, and to intentionally work to balance our relationships with all other species and our host organism with the goal of a harmonious and stable relationships among all.

We might.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: what are they for?

The story on NPR yesterday was probably typical.  In it, we heard about campaigns for Congress this coming November (still four months away, but it's always more interesting to talk about what is going to happen than what is happening.)  The reporter's impression?  To win in November, you (politicians) must talk about jobs, jobs, jobs.  That is the mantra, the winning formula, the simplistic bumper-sticker dumbing down of complex issues for a bubble-gum culture of political discourse.  The story, of course, featured real people with real problems, like the woman in Missouri who has been unemployed for well over a year now.  Even though she's been getting by with contract work and other assistance, things are looking grim -- her unemployment benefits are set to expire next month.  Listening to this story, my thoughts go to profound tragedy -- is this woman going to survive?  Is she going to wind up homeless?  Being "unemployed" myself, I think of these things; having known homeless people and heard many stories of unfortunates dying on the streets while others pass by, I realize how close we all are to the sharp edge of death.  Every day, thousands of children die around the world for lack of basic clean sustenance.  Will she be next?  Will I?

The story went on, her story, to report that if something didn't change for her soon, there'd be no "big ticket" purchases in her future.  Her problem?  Her car has 180,000 miles on it, and she's going to have to get a new one.  But without a job, she can't.

I have no desire to make light of this woman's situation.  But two thoughts came to mind.  The first: is this the depth of tragedy that awaits those who are negatively affected by the bad economy?  No big ticket purchases?  What about food and shelter?  Does anybody in this crazy economy ever have to worry about those things?  Do we ever wonder whether we'll survive?  (We should.)  I think the answer is yes, many of us do worry about those things, but apparently NPR caters its programming for listeners who don't -- they are more interested in how economic anxiety might play out in the grandest of all sporting events that happens every year in this sports-obsessed culture: the big game between Democrats and Republicans.  The other thought was that this was a perfect illustration of how addicted we've all become to something over which we have no control.  No wonder we have to rely on politicians to constantly try to "fix" the economy -- because it's irrevocably broken.  We have to get jobs, keep jobs, and always get more jobs just so we can do things like buy new cars so we can get to our jobs every day.  Many have been saying it, but few are listening: WE'RE A NATION OF ADDICTS!

I do wonder how we'll survive.  How will we find ways to feed and shelter our families?  How will we keep ourselves reasonably healthy?  How will we protect ourselves?  The answers to these questions are complex, I'm sure, but I can tell you what they ain't: no amount of "jobs" is going to save us.  In fact, as long as we continue to rely on "jobs" we're doomed.  I know this -- I'm looking for a job right now, and am worried how I'll survive if I don't find one.  But I'm hoping to find a part-time job, so I can have enough time left over to do things that really matter, like learning how to wildcraft and preserve food and make clothes and all those other things that everybody did just a few generations ago before we became addicted to jobs.  In fact, jobs exist and are so omnipresent precisely because they keep us dependent upon them.  Remember back in the pre-welfare reform days when welfare was routinely derided because it would create a culture of dependency?  How is welfare any different than jobs?  Jobs drive the economy?  Well, no, we have to implore politicians to create them for us.  Jobs provide for the public welfare?  Well, no, most of the truly important jobs are done by illegal immigrants or in foreign factories or by poor people who seldom get interviewed by NPR.  Jobs less addictive?  Doubt it.  Why is it so important to tie health insurance to employment?  That's right: to keep us addicted.

We all have work to do.  If we wake up and truly pay attention, we'll see that the vast majority of it has nothing to do with our "job."

"Eyes on the Prize"

First I read this article by Christine Ahn about the just-finished US Social Forum in Detroit.  In it, she contemplates the uneasy alliance between those working for economic justice and the peace community.  Ms. Ahn's perception is that the peace community is primarily a white, middle-class presence, while the economic justice people tend to be a broader cross section of racial and ethnic groups working to achieve some sense of fairness as they have not benefited from several decades of prosperity.  Yet she found that when these two groups came together, they did indeed find common ground in their shared opposition to the militaristic aspects of the US economy.  The common ground could very well be summed up by the old phrase "butter, not guns."  If we de-fund all our illegal wars, occupations, and reckless military escapades, and cut the "defense" budget down to a fraction of its present size, we could invest even a small portion of all that money into local communities, in things like health care, education, renewable energy, etc.  This is all well and good, and indeed is critically important at this time.  That is the beauty of bringing together disparate groups with similar values yet differing agendas -- larger and more fundamental truths emerge.

Then I thought about the chair I might sit at in such a gathering.  I am a peacenik and have been involved in a number of peace-oriented groups over the years; and yes, I am a white, educated, middle-class American male, and I know that the perception that the peace community is mostly white has truth in it.  I've also long been an advocate of economic justice, though in a less public way, mostly in my own personal opinions and not so much by my direct actions and involvement in community organizations.  To make matters worse, more recently I've become, somewhat reluctantly, known as an "environmentalist."  Shudder the thought.  As I look at my own writings on this blog, and the way I've chosen to live my life, this label certainly might fit (thought I totally agree with Wendell Berry in rejecting that label; he prefers "conservationist" and I lean toward "ecologist.")   Nevertheless, as I live off-grid in a rural intentional  community, work part-time at a number of odd jobs, and spend much time and energy doing things like working in the garden and making solar ovens, labels like "green" certainly are applicable.  As if to confirm all remaining stereotypes, I live and interact with mostly other white, educated, English-speaking people and tend to be wary of massive "investment" projects in job creation and urban infrastructure.  I even wince a little when well established lefties I support like Michael Moore or Jim Hightower lament the disappearance of the old "middle class" and the exportation of all our good manufacturing jobs.  Sure, it is a tragedy that these jobs are no longer here, but the last thing in the world we need is to bring them back!  Good Lord, I can't help but listen to myself and think "am I just one of those elitist liberal environmentalists who wants to protect my precious green world by keeping a third of the world's people living in abject poverty?"

Fish, Oil, and Trees: The Productivity Ratio

Here in the Pacific Northwest, there is, like in most communities, a dichotomy between “jobs” and “the environment.” Ours in particular revolves around forests, demonstrated by the decades-old debate between loggers and tree-huggers. I've lived in the most liberal, most urbane parts of the Puget Sound's big cities, wearing sandals with socks and all. I've also lived in rural Washington communities (still do) just a hop skip and a jump away from some of our finest lumber mills. In fact, the community in which I live now is economically dominated by two major lumber mills, and so I'm used to seeing the bumper sticker that reads “Are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living?”

Where to Begin -- Cereal Boxes?

I try hard to be "green" as the popular phrase puts it.  I live off-grid, grow vegetables and raise chickens, and try very hard to avoid driving unnecessarily and especially flying.  It seems like a natural way of life for me, but I know its not for all people.  It's hard, I know, to unlearn all that we have been taught and to live differently.  I was thinking back on it this morning, and I realized that it all began with cereal boxes.

When I was a kid, one of the few rituals I truly enjoyed was breakfast.  I would choose my daily dose of nutrient-blast, fortified with 10 essential vitamins and minerals, from the few that my Mom would deem acceptable amongst all the fare offered by the likes of the Kellog or General Mills corporations.  And I would sit at the table, quietly chewing my precious meal, splashed with some of that wonderful pasteurized, homogenized, Vitamin D milk, and I would read the cereal box.  Sometimes there were special prizes inside, or even on the outside like the time I got a 45 rpm record of the Jackson Five singing A-B-C on the back of the box.  I would read all parts of the box on different days, often taking in the latest sales-pitch propaganda from the aforementioned cereal companies, and sometimes even getting desperate enough to actually read the ingredients and nutritional information, provided according to the prescription of the US Food and Drug Administration.  To this day, I wonder if these cereals more aptly apply to the "food" part of this agency's purpose or the "drug" part. 

But somewhere along the line, it hit me:  what are these cereal boxes for?  To hold the cereal?  Well, no, the cereal is actually contained in a plastic bag within the box.  And now that I've been eating bulk and non-boxed cereals for a number of years, I know that my suspicions about the integrity of the packaging having nothing to do with the cereal box were well-founded.  Bagged cereals don't crumble to dust just because they are not boxed.  No, I realized some time ago that the only true purpose of these boxes is to advertise, to help brainwash the kids and adults who buy the cereal how important and nutritious and, well, fun it is to buy and eat cereal as a way of life.   That may not be a terrible thing, or at least one we can ignore just like those awful commercials that interrupted my favorite TV programs as a kid like The Brady Bunch or Emergency!  But these boxes are not just inconveniences we can ignore: they are made from trees.  Trees killed so that those who sell cereal can sell more cereal.  So even though I loved my cereal, and I confess that I still do, I swore off cereals that came packaged in individual boxes some fifteen or twenty years ago.  It didn't happen all at once, but I gradually came to not buy boxed cereals at all, and in the process discovered that bagged and bulk cereals are generally much healthier than those that come in boxes, and, further still, that pre-made cereals themselves are not very healthy at all.  What I read on the boxes as a child were all lies. 

That was probably my first step, the first time I made a conscious decision to do something different for reasons that were not directly related to my personal self-interest.  And it was, as such, perhaps tone of the smartest things I've ever done.  When I talk to people now about making a shift away from self-centered consumerism, I suggest that they find one thing, one relatively simple thing, to do differently.  Today.  Then we'll see what happens tomorrow.   

Glimpses of the Future?

I wrote the other day about conservation -- how we industrialized peoples, people living in developed countries like the US -- need to cut our resource use in half and then in half again before we can begin to imagine creating a sustainable economy.  This is a challenge that quite possibly dwarfs all other challenges we've had before.  You can make comparisons to the Apollo mission, World War Two, or the Great Depression, but I doubt if any of that compares to what we would need to do.  And this challenge requires both individual and collective action.  We must all learn to live differently, and we must also restructure our economy and society.  Half-hearted "reforms" simply will not do -- we need to change our foundations.

So I am a student in this regard -- learning what I can learn about how to live differently, for living differently is something that will be required of all of us and something that will be necessary when our economy breaks down as we try to build a new one.  The main thing I've been learning for the past two years living "off the grid" and without full-time employment is how much I need to learn.  Today I want to share a few random thoughts about things I've been learning, particularly things that seem to contribute to the developed world's disproportionate exploitation of nature.

1. Showers are over-rated.  I realize now that I can live quite comfortably more like the majority of people in this world by not taking a shower every day.  I'm quite comfortable with two of three a week.  I often hear people talk about installing low-flow shower heads and taking shorter showers and the like, and these are indeed good ideas.  But not enough.  In fact, I think we should stop automatically including showers or bathtubs in every new house we build, and instead build bath houses that could be shared by every five or ten households.  One thing I've learned by not having a shower available to me whenever I want is that a good shower is an amazingly welcome thing.  So maybe I should re-phrase my earlier sentence to say showers are under rated!
2. Mechanical refrigeration is largely unnecessary.  One of the most insane things we do in the modern world is heat our big houses all winter long and in the middle of our warm house put a metal box that we then cool to a temperature that might naturally be occurring outside or in the basement or in some other close proximity.  I only use mechanical refrigeration during the hottest summer months, and have found that most food keeps quite well even outside the very narrow temperature range that all the food safety experts say we must follow.  Sometimes food does go bad more quickly, but the chickens don't seem to mind!
3. There is, I have to say, beauty in the quiet beauty of a less mechanical existence.  To not always hear the constant din of the refrigerator, the buzz of electric lights, and the frequent interruptions of nature's quiet bliss by various electrical appliances makes for a very good life.  Many everyday chores are much more difficult and time-consuming when we use less power, such as cooking or laundry, but devoting more time to these simple tasks (simple when you begin to get used to them) prohibits excessive time utilizing electric appliances such as computers or TV, or engaging in any number of other things we do when we get "bored."  It's a new way of life -- or perhaps a very old one.  And it might well turn out to be, at the same time, the life of the future.  At least I hope so.