Fundamentalism is a Sign of the Death of Meaning

In the West, regardless of the religion, fundamentalists respond to the increasing marginality of their world view through a frenetic, self-absorbed reaffirmation of the very beliefs that have been marginalized. Whether that religion is Islam, Christianity or Judaism (and the fact that they all share this characteristic is due to the geography and culture that spawned them) fundamentalists take offense at modernity because modernity is the realm of an expanding knowledge of the universe and our place in it that isn't dependent on really old books that have been mistranslated over the centuries into who knows how many languages. This expansion of knowledge isn't just in the physical sciences with the fundamentalist backlashes against Galileo and Darwin, but also in the primary way in which human beings of the modern age view understand themselves.

Fundamentalists believe that the Truth was defined once and for all back in some time long ago and that meaning in this life consists of believing that Once and for All Truth. It just so happens that they also believe that they are the current holders and disseminators of that very Truth. How convenient. This belief at its core is false. It's false because it doesn't know what Truth is.

This ignorance of Truth is not of the character of not knowing, for example, that "Jesus is the Christ," or that "There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Prophet." This core ignorance is ignorance of the essence of Truth: it is ignorance

Hate-filled Christians DisHonor Jesus

Storiesinamerica has a diary with some news stories, mostly from the Midwest, that deal with reproductive rights. A common theme in those stories are the thuggish actions of so-called "pro life" Christians including picketing the homes of health care workers. I envisioned them singing the hymn about "my god is an awesome god." It makes me mutter under my breath, oh just go fuck off.
Even though Jim Wallis doesn't get it, Jesus is the best spokesperson the Left ever had. He spoke out against Roman imperial political and theological domination and against the Judaean collaborationist upper classes (called by Mark "the high priests, elders, and scribes"). He trashed the temple calling it a den of thieves, not because of the legitimate money changing going on there so that people could make the appropriate sacrifices but because the thieves, the high priests, elders, and scribes, etc., were hiding out in the temple, hiding behind their forms of worship rather than following their God and bringing about justice and righteousness. We have our contemporary den of thieves: Falwell, Dobson, Robertson, Bush, the good, honorable Christians who bash gays and terrorize health care workers and assassinate doctors. Jesus speaks to them as well. He calls them hypocrites, thieves and chases them from the temple all the while quoting a bunch of old Israelite prophets who proclaimed that God hated the worship of the unjust and the posers, of those who take on the form of religion and can't fathom the greatest commandment. It goes something like this: "Love God with all your heart, your mind, your soul and your strength. And Love Other Human Beings As Yourself." It seems that our honrable American evangelical Christians always get the second part wrong, and therefore don't have a fucking chance getting the first part right.

Since I didn't qualify the word Christians in the last sentence, c'mon, let me have it. But remember that Christianity is about how we act in the world, not about how fervently we believe or worship or tell God how cool It is. Christians like to blather about how we shall be known by our fruits. And then continue that blather about fruits being other people they successfully proselytize. The hubris displayed by this is dizzying to me. But then they can avoid the necessity proclaimed by Jesus that we do justice to the least of us, that we embrace the unembracable, and love the unlovable. And one doesn't do that by asking them if they're saved. That arrogant, self-serving BS doesn't measure up to God's criteria of justice and righteousness.

More Criminality at WH, and Republican Party

George Bush is an incredible combination of deluded messianic ambition and pure political slimeballery.
During the trial of Bush political operative James Tobin who was convicted of a phone jamming scheme on election day 2002 in New Hampshire that was directed at the get out the vote phone efforts of the New Hampshire Democratic Pary, Tobin made as many as two dozen calls to the same number at the White House on and before election day. From the AP story in the Minneapolis Tribune.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 -- as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

Even though the prosecutors in the case didn't use these calls to gain the conviction, Democrats plan to ask the judge to issue a court order forcing GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the scheme and White House involvement in it.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.
The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.
A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.
A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls -- mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office -- between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.
There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.
Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.

I think it's interesting to note who was in the White House office that received these calls: none other than Ken Mehlman who was rewarded for this illegal voter tampering with the Chair of the National Republican Party. Ah yes, the Party of personal responsiblility and the rule of law.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.
Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.
Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.

Let's let this be the last word.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera said Monday: "With every development in this case, there are new questions about the extent to which key national Republicans had knowledge of or were involved in a criminal scheme to keep New Hampshire voters from getting to the polls. The American people have a right to know whether the White House political director, who today sits as chairman of the national Republican Party, had any hand in it."

OK, so this will be the last word. Mehlman, Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rove, (I know I'm forgetting a multitude), apparently in order to be a Republican Party luminary, you have to be a criminal. Puh-lease, let's get blow jobs back in the Oval Office.

Ivins on Delay and the Corruption at the Heart of Republicans

Here's Molly Ivins on Tom Delay and the corruption at the soul of the Republicans.

In general, I'm against kicking 'em when they're down ... unless really awful people are involved. I figured Tom DeLay is so awful, plenty of people would gang up on him and I could pass.

Referring to Matthews on Softball:

Imagine my surprise when the toughest question one famous TV tough guy could come up with was, "Do you think you invested too much in the Republican Party?" Another inquired whether DeLay could think of any mistakes he'd made. I waited with bated breath for the immortal, "I wish I could learn not to work so hard," but no, he couldn't think of a single one.

Republican corruption is at the center of Republican control of Congress. One could almost say that the reason they gained control of the Congress was to turn it into a payoff machine.

Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay first came to power promising to restore democracy to the House of Representatives, supposedly suffering from then-Speaker Jim Wright's tyrannical regime. Even after the Rs drove Wright from office, however, bipartisanship was out of the question for DeLay. In the budget fight and government shutdown of 1995, for instance, DeLay rejected compromise and famously said, "It's time for all-out war."
I never minded DeLay being a tough guy -- it was his syrupy claims to carry the banner for Christianity that I found offensive, as he frog-marched the House toward being a cash- operated special-interest machine. The idea of putting pressure on lobbyists to give only to Republicans, pressuring lobbying firms into hiring only Republicans and then letting lobbyists sit at the table during committee meetings where legislation was written -- it was just screaming overt corruption.
Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich turned the U.S. House of Representatives, "the people's House," into a pay- for-play machine for corporations. Put in enough money, get your special tax exemption, get your earmarked government contract, get your trade legislation and your environmental exemption, get rid of safety regulation.
I'd like to address the idea that what DeLay did was only "payback" for the alleged sins of Jim Wright and then-House Majority Whip Tony Coelho, that it's "our turn" at the trough, so why not act like Dan Rostenkowski? It's a great way to rationalize misbehavior, even if the misbehavior is as disproportionate as Wright's ethical peccadillo compared to the open corruption of DeLay's "K Street Project," selling Congress to the lobby.
I've watched enough switches of political power and use of the "payback" excuse to realize that what the new Ins call "payback" has little to do with whatever the new Outs used to do. It is, instead, a direct reflection -- "projection," the shrinks call it -- of the ethical values of the Ins onto the Outs. Every time you hear a misdeed justified by, "Well, they used to do it," you can generally mark off a 50 percent to 75 percent exaggeration.
To get a real sense of DeLay's cynicism and recklessness, forget the stuff the press loves, like the "free golfing trip" to St. Andrew's. Instead, take note of the following example. The Northern Marianas Islands are a U.S. protectorate (so it can label goods "Made in the USA") in the Pacific being used as a sort of labor gulag, with workers imported from China and elsewhere and paid pitiful wages. Jack Abramoff had a contract with the government of the Marianas to lobby against stopping the flow of immigrant labor to the islands and to prevent a minimum wage bill (mandating a level higher than the island's standard $3.05 per hour) from getting to the floor of the House. The islands are home to classic sweatshops.
In 1996 and 1997, Abramoff billed the Marianas for 187 contacts with DeLay's office, including 16 meetings with DeLay. In December 1997, DeLay, his wife and their daughter went on an Abramoff-arranged jaunt to the Marianas. DeLay brunched with the Marianas' largest private employer, textile magnate Willie Tan. Tan had to settle a U.S. Labor Department lawsuit alleging workplace violations. According to the book "The Hammer" by Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, among the violations common on the islands is forbidding women to work when they are pregnant, thus leading to a high abortion rate.
Evidently, DeLay didn't have time to look into such allegations, since he was busy playing golf and attending a dinner in his honor, sponsored by Tan's holding company. According to The Washington Post, it was at this dinner that DeLay called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." He also reminded those present of his promise that no minimum wage or immigration legislation affecting the Marianas would be passed.
"Stand firm," he added. "Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator." He then went with Tan to see a cockfight. This is why DeLay's professions of Christianity make me sick. He was there. He could have talked to the workers. Instead, he chose to walk with the powerful and do real harm to the very people Jesus mandated we especially care for.

Molly always says it so well.

Newt: You're 5 Years Late and You're Still An Asshole

Jane Hamsher, who blogs at firedoglake, wrote this on The Huffington Post where Ariana Huffington is getting all gooey about Gingrich's alleged change of heart on the Iraq war. I like that Hamsher wants to wait to see genuine actions from Newty Newtsterton.

I am intrinsically, temperamentally and constitutionally opposed to allowing Newt Gingrich and other architects of war to evade responsibility for their actions and give themselves political cover by handing them a "free pass" for their zealous efforts to land us in the middle of this quagmire.

Hamsher reminds us of all the times Gingrich was slandering anyone who spoke out against the war as a traitor and as giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
Here's a link to a Glenn Greewald piece in AlterNet that outlines Gingrich's water carrying for the Liars who got us into this quagmire.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/34878/
Gingrich must be held accountable for his words. In America, thank god still and hopefully for a long time, we can all say what we think. But we must all take ownership and accountability for what we say. Speech, in politics, is also action. So, as Hamsher puts it.....

Compare the criticisms made by Gingrich of the President's illegal eavesdropping and his Iraq policies to this truly disgusting declaration made by him just a few months ago on Hannity & Colmes:
"I think it's quite clear as you point out, Sean, that from this tape, that bin Laden and his lieutenants are monitoring the American news media, they're monitoring public opinion polling, and I suspect they take a great deal of comfort when they see people attacking United States policies."

This next quote is the whole point.

There is clearly a sea change going on. The self-interested rats who propped up this Administration with blind loyalty for the last five years are now jumping ship as it sinks, desperately trying to save themselves by showing some extremely belated autonomy and independence. But where were Gingrich, Conway and Sensenbrenner for the last five years while "the most politically and substantively inept (administration) that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century" inflicted unquantifiable, arguably irreversible damage on our nation? They were accusing Administration critics of lacking patriotism and being on the side of terrorists, and they cannot be allowed to distance themselves now from the Administration to which they tied themselves.
Newt didn't just support the war. In addition to sitting on the Defense Policy Board and being one of its more enthusiastic cheerleaders, he created a climate where it became impossible to question the war, the rationales given for it or any of the disastrous decisions made by George W. Bush by branding people who did so as anti-American turncoats.

This is from the Greenwald piece on AlterNet and it's exactly to the point.

The greatest evil of the last five years isn't that our government pursued disastrous and illegal policies, it's that the administration and its supporters attempted to immunize themselves from criticism for those actions, thus depriving our democracy of its greatest strength. To watch the people responsible for that dissent-quashing now stand up and voice the very criticisms they've long equated with treason is far too infuriating to celebrate. It is important to ensure that the people responsible for the indescribable mess our country is in on so many levels not be allowed to extricate themselves from responsibility. There has been one political faction which has run every part of our country for the last five years and they are responsible for everything that has happened. We know who they are and it is critically important that they not be permitted to play-act as a legitimate opposition.

So, Newt, Screw You for jumping on what you think is now a bandwagon for whatever political benefit you think you'll get out it. If you want to be a part of the anti war movement, as my favorite Cuban would say, "Newtsie, you've gotta lot of 'splainin' to do."
Until you publicly acknowledge your assholitude for slandering good Americans, Fuck You Newt, Bite Me Newt, Hey Newt....Go Hunting with Dick Cheney.

More Bush Delusions

Sy Hersh has written another incredible article for The New Yorker outlining the Administration's planning for military action against Iran including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. That's frightening enough coming from the twinkle toes crowd that gave us the "they'll welcome us as liberators in Iraq" rational for invasion. But even more frightening is how Bush's self-understanding comes through in this article.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

This is so fucked on so many levels. First we have the quintessential draft dodger, dilletante, born-on-third-base-claims-he-hit-a-triple coward talking about courage. When did Dubya ever display courage in his pathetic life? When Daddy got him all his jobs? When he illegally insider traded his shares in his own failing company? When he avoided the draft? When he chicken hawked all over the country in Air Force One instead of heading to the sounds of the guns like Rudy Giuliani on Sept. 11 2001? This fucking guy and courage have never met, not one fucking time. I'm sure the Iraqis will appreciate that Bush is going to "save" someone else the way he has "saved" them. Misery loves company, ya know.

It gets worse.

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, `What are they smoking?' "

Well, at least with Bush that last question is the right one. This is the same lunacy that Bush thought about Iraq.

Here's more

"This is much more than a nuclear issue," one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. "That's just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years."
A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. "This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war," he said. The danger, he said, was that "it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability."

So of course, Bush has going for him the great job he's done dealing with the North Koreans on their "nookuler" issue.

But the even more frightening thing is that it's the same bunch of fucking idiots that got us involved in Iraq that are sitting around in a circle jerk thnking about Iran.

In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been "no formal briefings," because "they're reluctant to brief the minority. They're doing the Senate, somewhat selectively."
The House member said that no one in the meetings "is really objecting" to the talk of war. "The people they're briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?" (Iran is building facilities underground.) "There's no pressure from Congress" not to take military action, the House member added. "The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it." Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, "The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision."

We all know who the Democrat is: "Fightin' Joe Lieberman, the fascist's favorite Democrat finger puppet.

This does it for me. Bush and his messianic vision and his lunatic lusting after his legacy must be impeached for the safety of not only the United States but of the human race.

Is Lunacy an Impeachable Offense? God I hope so.

On Community and Humanity

Important, emotional stories on BooMan during the last few weeks and a diary about, in part, how we treat one another during our silicon based conversations, all led to this rather long diary. Also in the mix leading to this meditation were several diaries and comment threads that touched on the existence of evil in the world. I hope you read these thoughts. Get some coffee first. A lot more after the fold.
The philosopher Eric Voegelin, psychiatrist R.D. Laing and sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman have all had an impact on my thinking about these matters. Even though I've mentioned these guys I don't want this to be a boring scholarly droning, but more conversational. Let's hope I'm good enough at it. Maybe get more coffee, or a beer, ....???
Consider this: Are all religions some form of idolatry through which the worshippers worship themselves because the God they believe in is so awesome, all-knowing and omnipotent? It always seems to me when Christians, for example, sing "our God is an awesome God," they are actually engaging in a mass masturbatory celebration about themselves. Perhaps it's because, to my more noetic rather than pneumatic mind, God is more transcendent than that. Would the Creator of the Universe really give all that much of a shit, if the people He fashioned out of wet dirt thought he was awesome? Don't think so.
This doesn't mean that I'm an atheist, far from it. But we can only say some very precise things about God because once we go beyond that, we're making shit up and worshipping the shit and thinking it's Shinola. (You have to be real old to get that one).The reason we can only say so much about God is because we can only authentically say so much about our selves. And what we say has to be grounded in experience to be truthful.
What can we say with absolute certitude about us? We live in a world that was here before we were and looks like it will be here long after we're not. We live in a society that was here before we were and looks like it will be here long after we're not, in spite of Dubya's attempts to destroy it. How do we comprehend such a world?
If we say we comprehend our world by studying the astronomical subfield of cosmology or by reading Genesis to learn about the beginning of our universe, or by reading history books to learn about the origins of our society, what we are saying is that the beginning of the world we live in is beyond our experience and we can only learn about it from someone else. However, no one alive has an experience of the beginning of the universe. We only know that it is, because we're in it. It's got to be something rather than nothing. If it was nothing, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't even be.
Where does that leave us? It leaves us with us: and with our experience of us as belonging to something with a beginning and a beyond. But anything we say about that Beginning and that Beyond is pure, unadulterated speculation no matter how fervently we may believe it. What does that experience lead us to? It leads us to something Dom Crossan, who writes about the historical Jesus, wrote in one of his books. Stories about the son of god were rampant in the first century BCE. Octavius claimed to be divi filii, the offspring of a divine father and human mother (virgin? nah, Roman) and claimed the title Augustus. His godhood stood at the top of an empire that conquered its neighbors through pre-emptive war, drove its subjects into the dust with tribute, and commercialized the ancient world for the sole betterment of the Roman investor classes. His god was the god of the empire, of conquest, of fertility human and vegetative. Those who made Jesus son of Joseph into the expected Anointed One (Christos in Greek) claimed that he too was the son of god, but this god was a god of justice and righteousness, a god for the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. Both son of god titles are speculations; but both are not equal. Choose. This choice is the human condition. To do or to suffer injustice, which god will you follow.
However, not everything we can say about ourselves is guesswork. Eric Voegelin put it this way. Our participation in being is and is not a "datum of experience." It is not a datum of experience in the sense of being an object of the external world that can be measured. It is a datum of experience only from the "perspective of participation in it." In other worlds, we cannot get outside ourselves or our society or our world to "objectively" look at it and then pronounce the truth about it. Those who claim this kind of knowledge are either deluded or lying. The passage below was written in the early fifties and contains, to our contemporary ear, a jolting, outdated use of "man" for human being. Don't let the conventions of the past get in the way of the spiritual insight.
"The perspective of participation must be understood in the fullness of its disturbing quality. It does not mean that man, more or less comfortably located in the landscape of being, can look around and take stock of what he sees as far as he can see it. Such a metaphor, or comparable variations on the theme of the limitations of human knowledge, would destroy the paradoxical character of the situation. It would suggest a self-contained spectator, in possession of and knowledge of his faculties, at the center of a horizon of being, even though the horizon were restricted. But man is not a self-contained spectator. He is an actor, playing a part in the drama of being and, through the brute fact of his existence, committed to play it without knowing what it is. It is disconcerting even when accidentally a man finds himself in the situation of feeling not quite sure what the game is and how he should conduct himself in order not to spoil it;"
"Participation in being, however, is not a partial involvement of man; he is engaged with the whole of his existence, for participation is existence itself. There is no vantage point outside of existence from which meaning can be viewed and a course of action charted according to a plan, nor is there a blessed island to which man can withdraw in order to recapture his self. The role of existence must be played in uncertainty of its meaning, as an adventure of decision on the edge of freedom and necessity."
If we are actors in a play we don't know the play, the role or the author. But this does not mean that we are blind because our existence is illuminated by consciousness, and we experience ourselves as existing. But what is this We that experiences. There is no such thing as a "human being" who chooses to participate in being as if we had a choice. We exist. We're stuck with it. There is a "something", a part of being that experiences itself as such and is capable of using language to call itself human being. The simple act of naming ourselves as human being, as a separate part of existence is what Voegelin called a "fundamental act of evocation." We constitute a part of being separate from world, society and god. But simply calling ourselves a name doesn't constitute knowledge. "The Socratic irony of ignorance has become the paradigmatic instance of awareness for this blind spot at the center of all human knowledge about man. At the center of his existence man is unknown to himself and must remain so, for the part of being that calls itself man could be known fully only if the community of being and its drama in time were known as a whole. Man's partnership in being is the essence of his existence, and this essence depends on the whole, of which existence is a part. Knowledge of the whole, however, is precluded by the identity of the knower with the partner, and ignorance of the whole precludes essential knowledge of the part. This situation of ignorance with regard to the decisive core of existence is more than disconcerting; it is profoundly disturbing, for from the depth of this ultimate ignorance wells up the anxiety of existence."
All fundamentalisms which claim to know the whole and therefore all of the parts are lies based in existential terror. But we are not completely blind in our ignorance. We exist in the "In Between" and we illuminate our existence with the language of the "tension between life and death, immortality and mortality, perfection and imperfection, time and timelessness, between order and disorder, truth and untruth, sense and senselessness of existence; between amor Dei and amor sui, l'ame ouverte and l'ame close; between the virtues of openness toward the ground of being such as faith, love and hope, and the vices of infolding closure such as hubris and revolt; between the moods of joy and despair; and alienation in its double meaning of alienation from the world and alienation from God."
Abject, existential terror at this notion of our fundamental ignorance about the center of our existence (Why are we here? What does all this mean? What happens when I die? Do they play golf in heaven?) forms the core of the right wing politics and religious fundamentalism which provide absolute but specious answers to these questions. (Billy Graham says they do play golf in heaven. Some of my friends say that's a non sequitur.)
When ignorance is paraded as wisdom evil thrives. I present the Bush Administration as my first witness. (And all excellent Steven D. diaries as corroboration of said Bush ignorance). We would all agree that when we act we act with the purpose of bringing about some good result. We would also all agree that sometimes when people act really awful things happen. Why? Did those who bring about catastrophe intend evil results? No. They were trying to bring about what they thought was a good end. The evil consequences were a result of their ignorance with respect to the consequences of their action. This ignorance occurs because human beings are too often unwilling to accept that what is good for them will not be good for others. We too often equate what is good for us with Good in itself (and with the shorter version, God). Because human beings are not willing to transcend their own particularities of gender, class, race, etc. and make decisions and take actions based upon more inclusive criteria, evil runs riot in the world.
So where does all this rambling leave us? If we understand who we are as human beings we have a better chance to live together as we want human beings to do. If we understand that as actors in a play where role and author are unknown (no matter how many people claim to speak for that author), and that we are in this mess together, we have made great strides toward making it through.
The two greatest spirits in western civilization are Socrates and Jesus. Both have been appropriated in the service of various evils throughout history but this fact doesn't diminish their importance to us in the 21st century trying to find a way to live together in some kind of harmony. Socrates stated that there will be no end to the evils that beset people in society and the world until those that rule become philosophers. He did not mean a philosopher-king as he has been misinterpreted for centuries. Any rulers-- kings, oligarchs, or democrats--must become philosophers in order to find order and harmony and avoid chaos and injustice. Philosophers aren't the nit pickers of academia but are people who transcend themselves in how they choose to act and then execute that choice. Jesus talked about the kingdom of god as being present. His kingdom of god was the alternative to the Roman Empire. The kingdom of god is a place of transcendence and justice; the Roman Empire a place of domination and collaboration. Live in the kingdom of god not the empire of Bush.

Democracy

I saw a wonderful post "A Wake for Democracy" on Booman. It started this meditation

How can we toast something that has never existed?How can we mourn something that is still not yet?
Democracy is an ideal. When it was first created in Athens some 2500 plus years ago it meant rule by the "demos" which meant the many poor, not simply the people. The demos were those who had to work for a living, who didn't live off of an aristocratic title to land or unearned wealth and income. Compared to the U.S. Athens was miniscule; there was a sense that friendship was important, that an individual citizen might know all other individual citizens or at least their families or clans. For us today, the idea of harmony would be a good sense of "philia" or friendship. Harmony is the acceptance that other individual's experience of America are as genuine as our own. In the most stark terms, owning slaves and being owned as a slave are both quintessential American experience. One is not true and the other false; one is not the real America and the other not. Both are real and both are at the core of a harmonius understanding of America.
What would a democracy in 21sty century America look like? The Athenian democracy selected legislators by lottery from among the different clans. While I think this is the most democratic way to elect people, it may not be practical for us. By themselves, voting, having elected representatives and majority rule do not constitute democracy. With our political process bought and paid for elected representatives don't represent us they represent those who bought them. Our Bill of Rights exist in order to meliorate the tyranny of majority rule. The fanatic right wing wants to tyrannize the rest of us through majority rule. This is not democracy; it is tyranny.
What, then, could our democracy look like?
Educated citizens who can reason.
Public education with a purpose to create citizens, not a work force of consumers.
Harmony; the acceptance as equally genuine the multiplicity of experiences of America.
The rule of law; even our current President who thinks he is an emperor is not above the law.
Natural equality; none of us are equal in terms of physical or mental abilities, inherited or earned wealth or the lack of it, etc. There are zillions of ways that were are not equal through accident or intent. Natural equality means that all those particularities that make us different are completely meaningless when it comes to making decisions about criteria for judging and acting. When it comes to making decisions about the direction of the country, we are all equal.
Freedom from tyranny, whether of one person or the majority. This is the greatest area of threat from the right wing in America which now controls all three branches of our government. They want the tyranny of the majority and the constitutional mechanism to oppose that tyranny (the Supreme Court) has been highjacked.
Will we be a democracy? Will we have something to toast? There will need to be a serious turning around for that to happen. So do we mourn what never was and leave it at that? Or do we steel ourselves for the turning?

2006 Democratic Party Resolutions

1. This year I will actually be a Democratic Party that represents the demos. In crusty times, the Greek word demos didn't mean "the people" it meant the many poor.

From this one resolution, it follows that a Democratic Party will be a party that:

1. Calls for and creates conditions for full employment (in America, not China or India). If the private sector can't create the jobs, the public sector will.

2. Calls for and creates a system of universal health care for every American. Why don't we recognized that the rich will always take care of themselves, or they will buy someone else to take care of them. The government "of the people, by the people and for the people" needs to insure that all the rest of us can help take care of one another.

3. Calls for and creates a sustainable social security system. The rich will always take care of themselves or buy someone else to take care of them. Social Secutiry is for the rest of us. That said however, Social Security taxes should be colected on all income from the first to the last penny. Those who benefit the most from the American Way should pay the most to support it.

4. Calls for and creates a well-regulated infrastructure in order to maintain a diverse political and social community; namely, utilities of phone and electricity, and transportation. In other words, it's time to recover from making the market a fetish, and worshipping it as the cure all for everything. The market only performs a limited task for a limited purpose.

5. Calls for and restores the legitimacy of our government as one that operates under the Constitution not in spite of it. The Democratic Party is the party of limited government intrusion into the private lives of Americans.

6. Call for and creates a strong military; this means a military with well trained and supplied troops, not a well-greased and corrupt "military industrial complex" warned against by outgoing President and Supreme Allied Commander during WWII Dwight Eisenhower.

It's time for the Democratic Party to remember that is was and should become once again the Party of the New Deal. If the Robber Barons want to scream socialism, let them and gently remind them that if this was real socialism, the "demos' would take all their stuff. This isn't socialism, it's the only way for capitalism to survive. The Democratic Party is the party of small business, of working people, of the middle class; it's time for the party to remember that Wall Street is not Main Street, that money is not speech, and that politicians who lie down with the moneyed interest are whores. Whores may be good for some things, but do we really want the diseases they bring along with their supposed good times.

Christmas

I have just recently moved from Louisiana to Mississippi; it's funny how Mississippi can seem like an upgrade.

I live in the Jackson area, which is inundated with religous radio programs at the low end of the fm dial and virtually all over the am dial. They take Jesus seriously here.

On one of those programs, some talking heads wh0 were obviously not biblical scholars but rather those people who pour over the bible looking for a verse to match every one of live's possible events, were ridiculing some un-named scholars on the issue of the story of the virgin birth in Luke, and on the issue of who Matthew wrote his gospel for.

They sneered about the statement by this un-named scholar that Luke's story of the virgin birth was one of many in the Roman Empire of the first century, most notably the story that Augustus was born of the union of a mortal mother and a god. The scholar was most likely John Dominic Crossan, an Irish priest who has written extensively on first century Gallilee and the Middle East. Caesar was divii filius, the son of god. Crossan's point was if we are going to believe one first century story about a conjugal visit of a god with a mortal then we should give credence to them all, and then try to determine which god is more authentic. As Crossan put it: which god would be your god? the god of the Roman Empire, of the rich, of the conquerors, of the haves against the have-nots? or the god of justice and righteousness even for the poor and the destitute. You decide. Perhaps this was the problem since our radio experts had already chosen their god..the American Jesus whom they believe existed before he was born...in other words was god before he was human and then became god again and bears an uncanny resemblance to Augustus. I was impressed by the utter arrogance of ignorant people.

They also derided the idea that Matthew wrote for a Jewish audience and that he included a lot of references to the Tanakh to justify his opinions. Of course, for our radio Pharisees this couldn't be because for them, the Tanakh doesn't exist, it is now the Old Testament and it's not history but prophecy.

The twentieth century philosopher Eric Voegelin had the notion that when the old ways of trying to gain meaning in the world become obsolete, some individual or individuals will journey deep into their soul, to that point in between the human and the divine and pull up a new understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the divine. Now is the time. Socrates said over 2400 years ago that when the gods become unseemly, it's time to find new gods. He was referring to the Olympian gods who fornicated with humans prodigiously. Socrates didn't think that was the way God acted. So the Athenian democracy killed him. Don't fuck with god, they said. Well, other than Zeus and Aphrodite and Apollo, remember any of the rest of those musty crusty gods. The current understanding of Jesus needs to end up in the same dustbin.

Why? Because the Jesus that is worshipped by right wing Christians in America isn't the actual living breathing Jesus who was killed by the Roman Empire. Their Jesus triumpans is a creation of the Roman emporer Constantine who, on the eve of a battle, had a dream about a cross leading his legions into the victorious fight. Until then, the cross was not an important religious symbol. It was simply the weapon of choice of the Roman empire to kill insurgents. Constantine's wife sealed the symbolic deal by going to the holy land and discovering the actual cross upon which Jesus was killed. Convenient, eh?

And another thing. Give up with this end of the world shit already. If Jesus was God when he said that he would return during the lifetime of his apostles, then he was sure a dumb one. My guess is he was more like us than Christians really want him to be and he was wrong. Jesus wasn't coming back 2000 years ago, and he's not coming back now. This kind of apocalyptic thinking is based upon an idea that the world is too evil to contain the new truth of existence. Well, truth and evil have a long history of coexistence. That, my friends, is the dynamic of life.

We can recover our spirits only by recovering the real Jesus. It will require a lot of strife. The search will be opposed by a lot of gnashing of teeth, and accusations of who knows what. But they'll get over it. God always finds a way to correct our fucked up notions of God. Sometimes God speaks Lakota, or God forbid Arabic.

As the old understanding dies a death not unlike that of a fish flopping around in the bottom of the boat, a new one will rise from that in between place where the human and divine converse.