Pensieri di un lunatico minore
There is a war brewing in the world—-but not a war like we have been familiar with of late. It is brewing over the future of society, and the place of any religion as a dominant manipulator of public opinion. This war is most visible in the United States, where Christianity is slipping as the most popular religion, and being replaced by Hindu, Budhism and Islam in growing percentages. The melting pot is finally becoming multi-flavored on the religious front.
When the United States was founded, the western world, from which the country sprung, was, by all measures, unfamiliar with religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. The overarching fight at the time was between Catholics and Protestants, Reformation and Puritanism—-or put more succinctly, a battle between differing interpretations of the same God. As people fled oppression for the New World, hoping to find tolerance and acceptance of their specific “nutty ideas,” a new country was built by those who followed paths that were different than what their home countries had built.
As the Nation began to coalesce, something began to take shape which would, in the future, differentiate the burgeoning Colonies from the rest of the known world. That something was the already growing diversity of Protestants, Catholics, Quakers, Shakers, Jews, and dozens of other sects which aligned themselves with substantially different interpretations of religious scriptures. Where the nations they had come from had State-sponsored and endorsed religions, sometimes to the exclusion of all others, the developing nation had a new experience—-freedom to worship.
When Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and others finally began to draft the foundations of this new United States of America, they carried with them two key worries that would come to shape what would be known as the Constitution. The first was a fear of Monarchy, most especially as it had been perpetrated in 17th and 18th century England. There was no desire to establish, as some had argued, an American monarchy—-a foil to the British, but something that was likely to be little different after any measure of time.
The second concern was the ability of the populace to worship freely, with no interference from the State. Religious freedom was still foremost in their minds, and the enshrinement of religious dogma into a document establishing this new experiment in democracy was feared as much as the ennoblement of a King. While the final version of the Bill of Rights contained a watered down constraint on Congress, it still outlined the fears of the Framers:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This has come to be known as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. There is a reason that freedom of religion and speech are proscribed in the First Amendment and not later. Its positioning alone is significant, and it’s clarity should ring true in everyone’s ears.
In this day and age, as we listen to our leaders demagoguery, and their demonization of theocracies, we must look deeper into our own psyche and understand that we are drifting ever so slowly towards our own unique American blend of theocracy and plutocracy. This should be ringing alarms across society, but it merits no concern because it is a subtle creep of theology into the secular space of governance.
How then, you might wonder, shall we resolve the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The danger is in framing the concept of “Creator” in too formal a context. It must be remembered that an overwhelming majority of the Framers, including Madison and Jefferson whose hands most shaped the wording of the Constitution, were Deists and not what today we would call Christian. They believed in a Creator, but they did not believe that such a spiritual being was more involved in the life and destiny of an individual than the simple creation of Free Will. One might even argue that the belief in Deism is the foundation of the concept of “personal responsibility” that is so central to the sound-bite driven pontifications of Republicans and Democrats alike in this nation.
Fast forward a few hundred years and you find a nation polarized by dogmatic arguments, whether they be the new rage of gay “marriage,” or the old stand-by of abortion. These kind of arguments to me are easily resolved. The instant someone pulls out some sacred scripture to support their position, they have stepped from the secular to the sacred and undermined their own argument. It is akin to the insertion of an ad hominem attack in debate.
Because of the very nature of the sacred—-its unswerving, unquestionable and absolute correctness in the mind of its adherents—-it is a divisive tool in public discourse, meant to rend a nation apart, not bind it together. Only by stepping away from the sacred into the secular can we begin to draw a discussion forth that might resolve an issue on its merits as opposed to the writings of a single religion.
How then do we resolve this hyper-secular approach to democracy with the need for spirituality in our lives? For a Quaker, the Light permeates all life, and illuminates all crevices. It can not be contained to a specific room or closet for use on occasions of spiritual discussion. The key is to understand that we are not a nation of Quakers, nor a nation of Christians, Jews, Hindus or any other religion, and therefore the proscription of law based on a single theological scripture is likely to cleave one group from another.
What is necessary then is ultimately a spiritual quest for secular understanding; the use of our relationship with whatever we believe in—-whether it be a God, multiple Gods, society as a whole, or a blue frog sitting on a tree—-to guide us to the answer that will unite a nation. Only by beginning to understand that religion is a human creation, structured in its origin based on the society of its creation, to attempt to understand something which is, in the end, beyond comprehension.
Each religion, as well as each denomination/sect/arm/strand of a religion, contains within it the flavor and texture of the society from which it was created. It was once stated that “God does not make us in His image,” but instead “we make God in our image.” If such a thing as a God exists, then that entity is, by its very nature, incomprehensible. Religion is simply an abstract framework to begin to understand within, and a church/etc. its concrete instantiation.
To say this is to invite attack, and perhaps even a violent retribution from those who cling to the concrete human creation as infallible. No human creation can, by its very nature, achieve perfection. We are created, each of us, as flawed individuals and the amalgamation of our flaws does not instantly achieve perfection. The search for perfection in the sacred is admirable, but ultimately it will always be tinged with our own psyche, and therefore the enthronement of absolute understanding becomes a dangerous precedent.
So how do we know if a law is good? How do we know if a Constitutional amendment is necessary? The tests are both simple and difficult. We must try to remove the abstract and concentrate on the concrete. Does an activity we are attempting to regular pose some risk or negative effect to anyone outside the circle of consent? If not, does it pose a true risk to society’s fabric as a whole?
Often, the risk to society is not the action, but the caustic, demeaning and destructive method by which some, who trumpeting their piousness, demean others, and create a climate of intolerance, from which no good agreement can spring. Only by internal reflection of the impact of a decision on those unlike ourselves can we hope to understand whether something is truly good or bad. Men must understand their views on abortion and their impact on women, straight people on their fear of “gay marriage,” and whether its truly real, or just simply discomfort at the unknown.
We will never be free until we can park our individual beliefs to tackle the greater challenge of what is good for society and others, and supplant our own self-interest with understanding. Then, we will truly have become a nation of free people.
2 thoughts
Sitting in his besoiled tower, John Paul II has found his new Crusade—-to oppose and undermine the expanding concept of gay rights in the world. Beginning with the simple statement “Marriage exists solely between a man and woman … Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law,” the Pope has single-handedly displayed why a secular society must extricate itself from the morass of duplicitous religious dogma and step into a secular definition of unions. By clearly articulating the tie between “marriage” and religion, the Pope has demonstrated why the definition of marriage is most distinctly not a matter of the state, at least here in the US.
We must ask ourselves, as a nation founded by those fleeing religious persecution, whether the codification of religious views into law is necessarily the “right direction” for the United States to be taking. This, exactly as the fourth estate is trumpeting the decline of support for gay rights in the United States. What could all this mean?
I believe we stand at a cross-roads between generations, with the eroding support coming mainly from older people, and a combination of other factors. One of the factors, I believe, that plays into the psychology of the American. We, as a nation, want to be perceived as tolerant. We want to be perceived as accepting. But we are not. We are issolationist, and affraid of change as much as anyone else, and so when the people are asked about their support of a controversial issue, much of their response is dictated by how likely that issue is to come to pass.
For example, when people believed that “gay marriage,” or more accurately a civil union with equal rights under the State, was a pipe-dream and unlikely to ever come to pass, it was a “no cost” vote to say they supported such a creation, knowing deep down inside that they would never be asked to accept such a thing. However, when the Supreme Court rules that “separate but equal” is not acceptable in treatment of people based on sexuality, the tables have flipped and there are now strong leanings that such a creation could come to pass. Now, fear of change sweeps the nation, fueled by the war-drums of fundamentalist religious “scholars” hell-bent on enshrining their singular interpretation of God into law.
The primary “fear” that is being propagated is that somehow allowing two men, or two women, to join in a union is going to undermine the “sacrement” of marriage. This is complete bullshit, and everyone knows it, but is affraid to say it. There is nothing left to be done to destroy marriage that men and women haven’t managed to inflict. Marriages are collapsing left and right, not because of gays and lesbians, but because people are shallow, short-sighted, self-centered and more interested in personal gain than the construction of the family unit. That has nothing to do with homosexuality, and everything to do with the debasing of society by greed.
As the war-drums beat away, and “conservatives,” hell bent on the hypocricy of governmental involvement in private affairs, latch onto yet another way to avoid the actual pressing issues of education, the environment, true security and civil reform—-something which requires no more intellegence than a 6 second sound bite, and is built for the polarization of the electorate, we see where the world is headed: further isolation of the electorate by irrational behavior in civic and social leaders.
There is an irony in our nation that can not be escaped. We proclaim our Christian virtue with bombs and layoffs; we stress our humanitarianism by avoiding involvement in regions for “strategic reasons”; we go to church so that we might be forgiven for beating our wives; we pray so that we might be forgiven for incarcerating a terrifying percentage of our young people; we kneel so that we might gain God’s graces in supporting our Jim Crowe judicial system.
Several centuries ago, some men of portent wrote some simple words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
We are still, today, searching for our Independence.
2 thoughts
The Village Voice has an article by Chisun Lee discussing the Bush Administration’s full scale assault on the Constitution and our civil rights, under the aegis of a war for political gain. As the darkness of war envelopes the globe, those in the Administration skulks and slithers in the halls of power, wrapping their slimey psyche around every debasement of freedom they can imagine. Especially grotesque is the linked report from the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights.
What we are facing now is an unbridled passion for the destruction and annihilation of civil rights by an Administration bent on complete control of Americans at any cost. This is not democracy, this is an autocratic regime that will stop at no point in its death-march towards a total authoritarian wet-dream. As the rich get richer, the poor sink further into poverty and the electorate is disenfranchised and demotivated more and more, we are witnessing the ultimate coupe de tat by men who want nothing but their own power, their own egos, their own auto-erotic masturbation with the dismembered shreads of the Bill of Rights
Can you tell I’m running low on indignation, anger, frustration and fear? George Bush is a bigger danger to my future than Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined. Even my mom warned me to “watch what I say,” for fear the government would come after me. That about sums it up.
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Jason Flanagan and Debra Kahn at the University of Maryland were arrested apparantly for “failing to obey” commands given by the police at the IMF/WorldBank protests in DC last week. Oddly, they claim they never got any such commands, and were simply arrested. They write about it in The Diamondback campus newspaper.
While they are a tiny bit whiney about food (24 hours is hardly time to starve, especially given the size of most Americans), I believe the overall behavior of the police was totalitarian in the least, and the comments by the police chief that they would like to arrest them before rather than after any crime was commited speaks of a scary notion of “freedom” in this country any more.
Freedom of speech does not exist at the convenience of the government. Freedom of speech may not be quarantined into an area that is far away from those targeted. So long as it is a public area, then speech may be given, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. The streets of Washington, DC are the most public in this country, and to argue that protestors—-because they oppose large and powerful trans-governmental organizations—-should be moved somewhere more convenient sets a frightening tone for the Republic.
There are those who would say because some protestors (perhaps .01% of the total) were behaving in truly illegal fashion, that it was acceptable to arrest the rest, and they would be severely mistaken. To hold a loose-knit group responsible for the actions of a single person is a further extension of the lack of responsibility people feel. Those who commit the crime are responsible, and should be arrested. Those who simply happen to be in the same place at the same time, but are not inciting others to commit crimes, are innocent of any involvement. To indict, or even imply, that they are involved, is to commit a logical fallicy that unfortunately is prevalent in our legal system in this day and age. If someone breaks the law, arrest them, but to arrest others with no real cause, or even worse, with some trumped up cause, such as “parading without a permit” (when this is clearly a Free Speech issue, not a “parade”) is offensive to democracy and shows the true feelings of those in power.
The government plays on the inconvenience of illegal arrest, knowing that most people will not fight it, but rather will pay whatever fine is imposed ($50 in this case) and go on with their lives. This allows the government to slowly build up fear in the people so that they will avoid the situation, and eventually the popular belief will be that what is being done must be legal because they keep doing it.
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N.B.: To those reading, this is a rant, and I make all appropriate apologies to reason and the English language, however, this needs to be said, and said now more than ever.
| pop⋅u⋅list |
| Pronunciation | ‘p&aum;-py&-list |
| Function | noun |
| Etymology | Latin populus, the people |
| Date | 1892 |
| |
1 : a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people |
From Merrian-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
Populist.
Populist.
It seems so obvious a term that one would think that the definition would be understood across time and ideology in the United States. A reasonable man might think that populism would be a wide-held belief in a country whose foundations so greatly extol the virtues of the average man, and their attempt to explore life to its fullest measure. They would be wrong.
If populism is an attempt to support the rights and powers of the “common people,” then there must necessarily be an adversary against which that support is leaned. That adversary in this modern age is often named the “privileged elite.” However, in order to accurately understand populism we must understand what it is not.
Populism is not the party of those who feel they “deserve power,” or feel that they are somehow subject to different mores and laws than others in their country. Populism is not about class warfare, nor is it about communism or any other red herring thrown forth to muddy the waters of debate.
Populism is about the innate fairness that Americans claim to love so much, and hope will spread around the world in time. Populism is about democracy, so much as demos is greek for “people” as populus is latin for “people”. They are two words, inseparable in their meaning because they are intertwined in their roots. Where democracy is a system of government where the supreme power is retained by the people, populism is a political doctrine reinforcing that system.
So what of our Republic? Where has it been lost? When did it become an autocracy, ruled by a tiny cabal of political elite who, from my skewed perspective, are more interested in enriching themselves than in anything that might, upon closer examination, benefit the “average American.”
The average american works harder and more hours now than in recent memory, takes home money that has less purchasing power, and has watched as the wealthiest 1% of the country have lined their pockets with the blood, sweat and toil of the average worker. No longer does the political process serve those it claims to represent, nor even those who vote, and that is a terrifying concept.
Why then, have democracy failed? How can I possibly argue that those who vote are not represented by those who are elected? It seems, on its surface, a truism, that those who are elected must by definition represent those who elect, and yet when examined more closely, it is clearly the case in today’s society that those elected are not representatives of the people, but of the ruling class. The ruling class, however, is not just some aristocratic elite, but those who move money, build instruments of war and shape the opinions of others.
Perhaps it is fantasy to say that things have changed. Perhaps it is only that they have come to the surface so clearly lately that one would have to have their head in the sand to not see what changes have taken place. I would like to believe that once, some large percentage of those elected attempted with due diligence to represent those who had placed their trust within their office. I would like to believe that people are generally good, and would, given the opportunity, do that which furthers the “great good.” And yet they do not.
Time and time again, power is taken, power is entrusted and power is abused, wielded to enrich the few who fund the system, further widening the already sizable abyss that separates the normal person and the privileged elite. While the common man aspires to wealth, they believe that when they get there, they will be different. Perhaps they will be, or perhaps it is that delta, that difference between the “haves” and “have nots” that brings with it a feeling superiority, and pours forth as a pseudo-religious manifest destiny.
It is long past time for those who wield the true power in a democracy, the people, to take up arms, and pull the levers, punch the cards, and remove from power those who serve no master but their own Greed. To serve an elected office is an honor, a privilege and a weighty moral obligation that should never be taken lightly, nor given without due thought and process. To those who would rob us of that power, who would manipulate the system to ensure outcomes that are favorable to the continuation of corruption we must say goodbye and ask that they take their shameful behavior home, for without the turn-over democracy is surely doomed to collapse into an autocratic and authoritarian state where the populace is afraid of the government and the government fears nothing, not even it’s “peers” in the world.
In such a state, wielding such power with blind abandon, surely there is destiny at stake, but not the destiny of greatness, but the destiny of Rome, with our own Nero sitting playing the fiddle as democracy burns itself out, fueled by the fatalistic futility that has become our electoral process. When a nation reaches such a point, and the flames burn and wisp closely to its citizens it will by all natural forces either explode in a revolution unlike one ever witnessed before, or implode in a further debasing of the ideals that it so hypocritically preaches to the world.
For much of my adult life, I have been told that I should enter politics, and I rebelled, commenting on the petty corruption and bickering that so symbolises public discourse in this republic. There are others like me, frustrated with the system, but at a loss as to where to begin its resuscitation, perhaps thousands. I do not want the power that is the true representative of the people, and I fear it for what it has done to so many people who once may have been good men and women.
It’s time to re-instill fear in those elected and bring about the revolution in thought that is 40 years overdue. Those who would seek power deserve none, and only those who truly fear what it might do to them might survive it’s blinding glare.
4 thoughts
Everywhere you look, on billboards, advertisements, television, print, the Internet, music and the back of cereal boxes, there are labels. Not labels to indicate price or some unique identifier so that a machine can more easily tally your purchases, but rather a label so that others might more easily categorize you for analysis. These labels are applied by the government, industry, your friends, family and co-workers, journalists too lazy to dive into the complexity of humanity and CEOs looking for the next big “market.”
What is it that makes us as humans want to categorize each-other in neat little boxes? Are we afraid of the individual? Are we afraid that our prejudices will not survive a more rigorous examination? Why do we insist on labeling someone as white, when their actual skin tone is certainly olive-tinged?
One area where people most often use these convenient labels is in the discussion of race. Webster’s defines race as follows:
- a breeding stock of animals
- a: a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock
b: a class or kind of people unified by community of interests,
habits, or characteristics (the English race)
- a: an actually or potentially inter-breeding group within a species; also : a taxonomic category (as a subspecies) representing such a group
b: BREED
c: a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type
- (obsolete) inherited temperament or disposition
- distinctive flavor, taste, or strength
What bothers me most is that we somehow think that “white” or “black,” which are clearly colors are somehow indicative of “a class or kind of people unified by community of interests, habits, or characteristics.” This is a fallacy of the highest order. There are perhaps some commonality shared because of skin color, whatever color it may be, but the truth is that someone of dark skin tone from Ethiopia is more likely to have something in common with someone from England in many ways than they are to have something in common with someone of a similar skin tone from a Carribean nation. People are bound more strongly by their past experiences, shared and defining, than they are by the simple color of their eyes.
Why then are we so eager to categorize people so quickly? Perhaps there was a time in our not-so-proud past that we might have quickly lumped people together for purposes of disenfranchisement, but today, why must we continue to do so? The 2000 US Census asked a question (PDF) on race, phrased thusly:
What is Person 1’s race?
The person answering the questionnaire was then allowed to respond with multiple affirmatives to one of the following possible answers:
- White
- Black, African Am., or Negro
- American Indian or Alaskan Native
- Asian Indian
- Chinese
- Filipino
- Japanese
- Korean
- Vietnamese
- Native Hawaiian
- Guamanian or Chamorro
- Samoan
- Other Asian
- Other Pacific Islander
- Some other race
With some of these (specifically numbers 3, 13, 14), additional “write in” spaces are allowed. Oddly, however, there was an additional question targeted at one specific group:
Is Person 1 Spanish/Hispanic/Latino
And the respondent was given the following possible answers:
- No, not Spanish/Hispanic/Latino
- Yes, Puerto Rican
- Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano
- Yes, Cuban
- Yes, other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino
With the last possible response, additional information could be provided to further flesh out the definition.
What strikes me most unusual about this is that some of these might be considered ethnicities, some are skin color, some are potentially race and others are nationalities. All are lumped together as if they provide some insight into someone based on some arbitrary equalization of people.
How could one separate those who are from Iran and those from Iraq? How does one differentiate between those of Japanese Hawaiian decent and those of other backgrounds? In a world where we are all mutts, and most Americans have mixed blood backgrounds, what insight is gained by this centuries old conceptualization of “race?”
Why do we differentiate between Mexican and Cuban, but lump all people of dark skin tone together as simply “black?” Does this provide some insight, or is it simply a further use of language to arbitrarily define others so that they might more easily be treated as a group as opposed to individuals?
I propose it is likely that a “white” woman and a “black” woman from Alabama have more in common than a “white” woman from Alabama does with a “white” woman from Idaho. If we are defined by are shared histories, then we are more defined by where we grow up and the community around us than we are by the color of our skin.
To understand the human race, we must move beyond color to understand our common concepts and background, our history and futures. We should make a conscious effort to judge people based on who they are, what they have accomplished with an eye to what they have endured, but not to make generalizations based simply on their skin color or heritage.
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I am not one to normally partake of nihilistic fantasies of armageddon, but the current environment has unfortunately brought that fear one step closer to a reality. With each passing day, the United States Government takes one more step towards war with Iraq over something that may in fact be nothing more than a complete fabrication of political convenience.
When we got involved in the Gulf War (more a conflict, but let’s use the common word for argument’s sake), we said it was to liberate Kuwait. This was a ruse, of course, because Kuwait is an autocratic regime and freedom didn’t exist. It was a convenient sham to hide the real reason—-that we were protecting American economic interests, and most specifically the oil reserves under Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. How else could you explain the support of such heinous regimes as these?
After the short war, the UN authorized weapon’s inspectors to survey the Iraqi infrastructure and destroy any weapons of mass destruction. This team was led by Scott Ritter (who is quoted in the article above). While the team was unable to verify 100% destruction, they believe it exceeded 93-95%, and that the rest would likely be unverifiable due to damage during the conflict. While admitting the Sadam Hussein is evil—-something anyone of any moral standing would be hard pressed to disagree with—-he is convinced that he is unable to launch an attack of any magnitude against any of his neighbors. In short, containment has succeeded.
Then September 11th happened, and the Administration was quick to blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks, as well as the attacks by Osama bin Laden’s followers. Unfortunately, as time went by, no actually evidence could be shown, and in fact, evidence came out that the anthrax attack didn’t originate in Iraq, but the source was a US weapons facility in Maryland and a US research scientist. Oddly, the Administration never apologized for the unfounded accusations, nor have they made any arrests, which is either implies complete incompetence, or an intentional disregard for finding out, or wanting to reveal who in-fact was involved.
Instead of pursuing a logical course of justice, the Administration has beat the drum of war to a deafening level, attempting to convince the American people that we must expend any resources necessary to topple Saddam Hussein. And yet the Administration refuses to lay out any evidence, citing “national security” concerns—-and yet it is for national security that we are argued to undertake this massive war, one that will potentially cost thousands of lives on both sides. Never trust someone whose only “answer” is “trust me.”
What then will be the result of toppling this evil tyrant? We might hope for peace in the middle east, but Saddam is the least of the worries for that, with the degrading situation in Israel-Palestine spiraling out of control fueled by irrational hatred and mistrust on both sides. Perhaps a friendly government in Iraq? We know how well that worked in Iran. Saddam has been exceptionally effective and eliminating any potentially strong leaders, by assassination if necessary. That means that anyone who was put into power would be of questionable leadership qualities, and largely would be seen as a puppet.
An American puppet? Isn’t that what Osama bin Ladden said he was pissed off at? American meddling in mid-east politics? The propping up of some governments and topping of others? The end result of a war in Iraq will not be limited to tens of thousands of casualties—-mostly civilians. It will be an escalation of the terrorist activities against the United States. It only adds more fuel to the raging fires, and that’s not what the Administration wants.
Or is it?
More war means more money for the military contractors. More terrorist threats means more fear and the ability to pass more Orwellian laws like the US PATRIOT act. More fear means people will more easily roll over during an unprecedented power grab the likes of which has not been seen since Adolf Hitler. Hitler came to power fueled by the fear of those who had fallen on hard times. He exploited the most basic of fears—-the fear of those who are not like us, more often called xenophobia.
It is something that tears at my very belief of the general morality of people. That when left, in a neutral situation, they will make the right choice, but there is a flaw in this belief. Those who would pursue power are the least deserving of that power. They have demonstrated Greed and Envy, Gluttony and Pride, Lust and Anger, and most of all Sloth.
My greatest fear is that the coming war is nothing more than a political exercise to further consolidate power in those least deserving of it. The path to peace is not through war, but through peace. If we spent 1/2 of what we do on our military on reaching out to truly help those who most need it, in our country, and elsewhere, then we would find that the hatred of the United States would ebb, and the risks that we are so in need of a “defense department” for would slide away, replaced by just the wackos and random people, and not entire nations, entire organizations. The problem is of course that this behavior, while both conservative (in a traditional sense) and compassionate (in every sense) is not to the benefit of those in power, and therefore will never be pursued.
Sad. For a country so bent on defining itself as Christian that we should be so distinctly non-Christian in our treatment of others.
1 thought
Over the past two centuries, a new religion has been developing in the United States, one that bares no resemblance to anything that has been seen in thousands of years. Rather than worshiping a new deity, these people worship the Dollar, placing it upon an alter, illuminated by the glaring light of greed. During the quiet development of this new religion, Dollaranity we will call it, its worshipers, best reffered to Dollarites, have taken over the public debate and reshaped even the concepts that people use to define morality.
Many people might wonder how I feel I can define what is generally called capitalism to be a religion. First, it is important to understand what capitalism really is. The dictionary defines capitalism as:
An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit.
One its surface this is not necessarily a religion, but an economic system, which is often opposed to others such as communal ownership, or communism. There is nothing wrong directly with private ownership of the means of distribution and production, nor with competitive markets, however, this is not the kind of system of religious worship that I am referring to.
The dictionary defines religion as:
- People’s beliefs and opinions concerning the existence, nature, and worship of a deity or deities, and divine involvement in the universe and human life.
- A particular institutionalized or personal system of beliefs and practices relating to the divine
- A set of strongly-held beliefs, values, and attitudes that somebody lives by
- An object, practice, cause, or activity that somebody is completely devoted to or obsessed by
Certainly one would not begin to argue that definition #1 would fit Dollaranity, however, if you presume that the Dollar is what is worshiped, then numbers 2-4 are certainly accurate. In fact, one could argue that there are new modes of piety and worship developed. People accumulate wealth as others might good deeds, believing that at the End of Days, there will be some Judgement, and they will be found deserving because of their money, while their actions to achieve that wealth will be forgiven.
Evidence of this creeping religion can be found all around you, in your day to day life, and probably in your own life, as the Dollar has replaced everything else as the center of ones life, and the way one measures personal value. No longer is ones worth attached to their family, their friends, the deeds they do, the good they perform and the lives they affect in some positive fashion. Now it is measured by gold, Mercedes, BMWs, Caddillacs, Picassos, private jets, 40,000 square foot homes. Today people aspire to homes that once would hold entire villages, filled with things whose sole purpose in life is to accumulate dust and impress friends. This is not to say that everyone who is wealthy is a follower of this 20th century religion, but you can see it everywhere, and it permeates even those who try to avoid it.
I first noticed the creeping nature of this new following when I moved from Austin, TX to Washington, DC in 1994. The first thing that I noticed about people in DC is they always wanted to know what you did for a living, before they really cared to know what your name was. To me, my job is just that—-something I do because I must pay bills, not because it defines who I am. Success in my life is not tied to the number of digits in my paycheck. For me, the definition of someone lies in things more deep than the little letters engraved on their business cards. To try and reduce someone to a title, or apply value to it is akin to defining someone on race, gender, sexual orientation or place of birth. What each of those things tell you is some small shred of the whole, and nothing that tells you whether they are a good person.
Returning to Austin a few years ago, during the height of the dot.com boom in the city of my birth, I noticed that this religion had set up gleaming temples of glass all along the beautiful creeks and valleys of the city I loved. No longer could your view cross the valley of roaming deer, across scraggy juniper trees to majestic oaks. Now it was interrupted by buildings emblazoned with words constructed to make no sense, but only to invoke importance. A declaration of Pride.
People started asking me what I was doing in DC, who did I know, had I ever “met so and so”, and did I know any politicians. None of these things, regardless of their answer, hold any clues to my inner self, only illuminating the shallow surface of skin, the game we all play as we act out our roles in this grand play. Quickly I realized that this disease was spreading across the landscape, and no longer could I contemplate returning home, as home no longer existed. The house was still there, some of the people, but the environment that had shaped me into who I am today no longer existed anywhere but the ethereal memories of someone long gone.
There was a time in my life where money, success and “dust collectors” defined what mattered to me. Having grown up in a wealthy neighborhood in Austin, surrounded by kids whose parents were lawyers, doctors, politicians, bankers, and who were showered with gifts, Porsches, fancy clothes, all the while my parents work until their divorce to maintain middle-class status gave me a sense of inadequacy that I fought for much of my life. In this environment it was difficult to find self-worth and definition that was not tied to your paycheck. Once I had left for college, and moved out on my own, I found that my true friends filtered out and I was left with people who valued me. and I began to understand where truth lie—-not in a bank statement but in the heart of another.
Today I see still people whose value in themselves is tied up in their job, their money, their car, and I wonder if they can ever find happiness. Happiness can not be bought, no matter how much being poor sucks. We find it only when we stop searching. I see today still people who should they find out more details than I share about my professional life become somehow intimidated, or express some feeling on inadequacy that is inexplicable in this day and age. Friends are measured on their value as friends, their honesty, trustworthiness and compassion, not on their ability to drive a $50,000 car.
When we look back and try to understand the past few months, with the continuing implosion of the financial markets, the massive corporate fraud and the avarice that is nearly Biblical in nature, we must begin to probe where this comes from. It comes not from a lack of oversight by the government—-though I support more effective checks and balances—-but instead from a culture of avarice that encourages people to be sloppy with ethics and morals in order to “get ahead” financially. Keeping up with the Lays, Ebbers, and Bushes. Fraud and reprehensible moral behavior have become systemic and nothing less than a complete purge of the system can hope to penetrate the cloud of confusion that surrounds everyone involved.
However, blame lie not just with those at the top, but everyone in the system. From shareholders who focus only on short-term gains, profit, and not the place the company serves in its communities, to the lawmaker who covets and pursues with reckless abandon the money to fuel their purchase of power. From the housewife who looks at her 401(k) every day, calculating their gains like some modern day Miser, to the middle manager who places as his deity the star CEO. Nothing happens in this world without society’s permission, and we must begin to revoke this permission to rape and pillage the lives of workers, the environment, and most importantly the faint echo of democracy that is left inside the institutions founded hundreds of years ago.
No longer can be survive as Dollarites, but must instead pursue a path guided by some moral certainty, whether wrapped in the name of Allah, Jehovah, God, or simple humanism. There is within each of these belief structures the commonality of brotherhood, social justice and guidance that must illuminate our future more brightly than a Gucci flashlight.
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There’s this common misconception among Americans that the actions of the US Government since September 11th have had anything to do with the security of the common populace. This is a gross mistake. As someone who has been a practitioner of risk management and mitigation in physical, electronic and social mechanisms, much of what I see is nothing but a sham, largely created to distract people from the real problems.
Take airports. The security at airports continues to be abysmal at best, insulting in the worst, and misleading in all actuality. I know people who have boarded plans without photo ID through Dulles International Aiport (IAD) in Washington, DC, and people who are prototypical passengers that would not be suspicious (this is not race based, but behavioral) who are harassed to no end, repeatedly. Why? Not because they are suspicious, but because they were convenient. People are somehow “comforted” by seeing people searched, even if those people are not the ones who could potentially present a security risk.
This is typified by the either intentional or negligent avoidance of dealing with private jets (otherwise known as “political supports”), cargo transports, and other vectors for attacks that are substantially more effective. Why weren’t they dealt with? Because they’re not visible to the “average” person, yet they represent the actual targets that an intelligent terrorist would go after. We’ve been fortunate to not have been targeted by an overly intelligent and concerted effort, just a rather clumsy one so far.
This is also typified in the methodology of Federal agencies in Washington, DC that I work with on a daily basis. Many have erected all sorts of physical barriers, but ignore thousands of other vectors that are exposed. Again, lots of smoke, no fire. The effective reduction of risk is a difficult job, and requires enormous intellectual resources—-not necessarily monetary resources. Much of the current government approaches are focused on spending money—-often just to line pockets of supporters or constituents—-rather than the examination of risks strategies.
As I said, risks can not be eliminated, but can only be mitigated, reduced and managed. I have addressed too many people involved in the “war on terrorism” who feel that there is a 100% solution out there, when that is the fatal flaw. The assumption of perfection creates it’s own enormous risk. Only when we understands the risks can be manage them.
Today, we are no more safe than we were September 10th due to anything the government has done, but we have lost countless liberties that will be difficult to regain. Any increase in security is largely due to the attention of the American people, not the government.
2 thoughts
On the first Independence Day celebration following the horrific events of September 11, 2001, one can be expected to endure an enlarged role of jingoism masquerading as patriotism from the media outlets and various civic organizations who will compete with each other to determine who is the most “patriotic.” What one can not imagine is the absurd levels that are demonstrated by various people.
The award for most egregious grand-standing and jingoism must go to ABC for its repeated airing of a 30 second segment of dozens of people reciting the pledge of allegiance. Quite honestly, this is a bit of pandering to the people who somehow believe that we are a “Christian Nation”, and therefore “one nation under God” should be in some pledge. This, of course, ignores the fact that there are millions of people in this country who do not believe in the Judeo-Christian conceptualization of God, whether it be another deity, or the lack of one entirely
The second self-serving example would be LeAnn Rimes and her heinous flag dress (isn’t this nearly as offensive as burning it?), singing various drippingly jingoistic songs while pumping her fist in the air with all the enthusiasm of a goth-kid proclaiming their individuality. The addition of forced emphasis on phrases that are not the focus of the song only added to the absurdity of the performance.
Last, but not least, third place goes to Peter Jennings and his homey broadcast from Mount Vernon, just down the road from where I live. From this location, we got to see various patriotic festivities around the country, but never much more than a 15 second snippet before they had to cut to the next very special moment in another locale.
What binds all these episodes together is not patriotism, but the hollow jingoism that has fueled the past 9 months. Rather than examine what it truly means to be American, and where the nation found it’s calling, people have much preferred to wrap themselves in the flag and ignore the true meaning of Independence.
This country was not founded as a Christian nation, and various of the Founding Fathers fought hard to avoid the endorsement of any specific religion, to the point of Jefferson using the term “Creator” rather than God. Jefferson, as a Deist, believed that mankind had to pursue its greatness on its own, rather than having some divine influence. By not allowing a state-sponsored religion to flourish, we have allowed all religions to flourish.
What makes the United States of America a “great nation” is not that we are all alike and that we all spout the same slogans and pledges. It is, rather, that we are all so different, and that on the whole, we can coexist peacefully with each other on a daily basis. Being an American is not about where you were born, or what deity you worship, but it is about the constant struggle to better one’s self, and the respect for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” When we forget that, we forget what it means to be American.
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This morning, over my Quaker oats, I was reading the latest FGC Connections which tackles one of the thorniest issues, and that is racism, white-privilege, and how it has played out in the Religious Society of Friends. This is especially thorny for the Friends because of their history of involvement in equality and freedom movements, most notably the Underground Railroad and woman’s suffrage. As the articles notes, however, some of those Friends were almost read out of their Meeting, and in fact many Friends of the pre-emancipation era held slaves. Regardless of the level of treatment for those individuals, it is still an abhorant institution.
What struck me most about this, in the current climate of religious scandal, most specifically the Catholic Church, and the attempt to find excuses for why behavior occurred, it is refreshing to see self-evaluation and examination of the past, and an attempt to understand why something transpired, but also how we might avoid it in the future. Within the writing, much by Friends of Color, there is an attempt to help others understand the issues and how small things can add up to be major issues. This is presented in a non-confrontational and educational way. Rather than wrap the issues in hyperbole, they attempt to bring them down to the most personal level, one which any Friend can understand and empathize with. By taking this markedly different tract, we endevour to grow, rather than simply posture.
It is difficult, but necessary, for self-evaluation to look at the past, for fear that we will make the same mistakes again, even when that past is less than flattering in some respects. We are, all of us, imperfect creatures, and it is our pursuit of perfection, the striving to be better than we were yesterday, that differentiates us. This core belief, that all people are equal, not because of law, but because they are created that way, is that which separates those who truly believe and those who simply espouse faith as a convenient replacement for the actual burden of it.
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With a recent revalation that the National Security Agency had intercepted a cell phone call on September 10th that might have given us a forewarning about the events of September 11th, there will no doubt be a large number of people wondering how this could have happened. Given the translation didn’t occur until September 12th, and the vague nature of the information, I can’t imagine it would have done much.
At one point in my career, I supported the NSA as a customer, where they bought very large amounts of our networking gear—-first because it was TEMPEST certified, and also because we were pushing the envelope of ATM networking. During that time, I had the honor of working with some very talented people, and getting to know some of them reasonably well. The one thing that all of them shared was regardless of what you might think of the overall mission of the organization, they were all dedicated to doing the best they possibly could to help the country.
That is not to say the NSA hasn’t stepped on plenty of toes, and gone outside its bounds on many occasions. However, I believe those are rogue examples, as with the FBI, and that in general the people are focused on doing the right thing. This however begs many questions.
First, why did it take two days to translate a small bit of conversation. This is relatively easy once you understand that it is “normal operating proceedure” for the NSA to intercept nearly every communication in the world. It would not be exaduration to say they have this capability, or that the exercise it on a regular basis. To contemplate the amount of data that this represents is mind-boggling. This is finding the needle in the hay-stack… the size of Alaska.
Second, the information was vague, and non-commital in details, and provided no “key words” that could have been used to single it out automatically. Even had it been classified and sent to the right people, it’s unlikely the pieces could have been pieced together in time.
Third, the US is drastically understaffed in translators and experts in foreign cultures that can understand the nuance of a communique between two people, neither of whom is American. This is especially true at the CIA, but I’m quite sure the NSA is lacking as well.
While I believe the glaring errors are troubling, I will say that there are numerous occasions when the various intellegence organizations did perform well and prevented various attacks. The trick, in a nation with no real borders, is to balance the desire to avoid harm with the freedoms that you are trying to protect by doing so.
I believe we’ve started to swing too far to the other side, forgoing our liberties in the name of some perception of safety—-where in fact none exists. This is the worst of both words, and is in fact exactly what terrorism is about. Keep people scared, get them to give up what is precious to them, and you really don’t have to conquer a country—-it has conquered itself.
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The US Government is considering requiring the retention of web browsing and email information. I just don’t think they understand how absurd this idea is. First the mathematical issue of data storage. I believe the current number of Internet users in the US is 100M. If the average person receives 5 pieces of mail a day (with spam this is likely to be low, that’s):
100M * 5 * 365 = 182,500,000,000
Or 182.5 billion records a year, which at an average size of let’s say 1k would require 182.5Tb. This does not include any form of indexing (usually a 50-80% boost in size), or redundancy (again, 20-30% overhead with RAID). Since the US is likely to demand they be held for 7 years, that turns into 1.3 petabytes (a million gigabytes).
Note that this is just email records. We haven’t addressed the number of web surfing hits. Let’s assume that the average user visits just 20 URLs per day, then we have:
100M * 20* 385 = 730,000,000,000
Or 730 billion records a year. This at an average record size of 1k would be 730Tb, which projected out 7 years would be 5.11Pb.
Now let’s understand how much this would cost. The current average price of tape storage is roughly $1/gigabyte on large scale tape systems. This means that it would require somewhere around $6.4M in tape media alone to store this. Of course doesn’t take into account the hundereds of millions, if not billions in infrastructure to support it.
This doesn’t even begin to enter into the intrusion on unreasonable search and seizure, wire tapping authorization (how can you record data BEFORE you have authorization), freedom of speech implications, and the myriad of abuses that the FBA and CIA are no doubt likely to find for it. I mean, it is called the J. Edgar Hoover building because that is their idol—-a man who abused his power mercilously for his own advancement and the destruction of his enemies. We don’t have any reason to fear, do we?
Remember, if you’re innocent you have nothing to worry about. Unless you mind being locked up in a cell for 8 months while they decide if you’re innocent yet.
Hi, we’re from the government and we’re here to bankrupt you.
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Today, the President gave a commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy (more commonly just called West Point). It’s unfortunate, but it continues to show a juvenile understanding of foreign policy that depends on the absurd notion of “moral clarity,” something which is, of course, flexible to the polls of politicians—-one day we support Iraq against Iran, then we’re bombing it.
The President seems to be under the mistaken impression that this “moral clarity” brought about the end of the Cold War, when in fact, there is substantial evidence that the undermining of the Soviet Union was performed by out-spending them, and effectively building the largest debt in U.S. history. I quote:
Yet moral clarity was essential to our victory in the Cold War. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles, and rallied free nations to a great cause.
This is such a simplistic view, because at the same time that Ronald Reagan was “refusing the gloss over the brutality of tyrants” he in-fact and deed supported many regimes which tortured their own citizens with full backing from the United States. For example:
Systematically, the Contras have been assassinating religious workers, teachers, health workers, elected officials, government administrators. Remember the ‘Assassination Manual’ that surfaced in 1984? It caused such a stir that President Reagan had to address it himself in the presidential debates with Walter Mondale. They use terror to traumatize society so that it cannot function.
—- John Stockwell, 13 year CIA veteren, in Nicaragua
Reagan called these people “freedom fighters” (note this is the positive spin of the more common word terrorist, at least when we “support” them), and ”[...] the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” Somehow, I don’t believe Jefferson systimatically assasinated priests.
The difficulty is that the United States behavior does not represent moral clarity, at least as anyone who could be considered moral would define it. I believe that Thomas Jefferson best described freedom when he said:
When the people fear the government you have tyranny; when the government fears the people you have liberty.
How can a country claim moral authority when it executes more people than any other Western country, and when its incarceration rate is higher than any country in the world. Before we can claim the “moral authority” to lead the world, we must surrender our crown of hypocrisy.
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In further evidence that people who supposedly represent me in Congress don’t have the slightest clue what the Constitution has to say about much of anything, they have introduced H.J. Resolution 93, meekly entitled Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage, which seeks to try and define marriage as:
SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
I’m not sure what bothers me most about this, but it must be one of the following things:
- People in Congress have enough time with all the issues that need to be addressed to come up with hair-brained proposals like this
- That separation of Church and State is so poorly understood
- I live in the state that one of these idiots comes from
On the top of the separation of Church and State, people might wonder what I mean by this. The key is held within the question “What is marriage?” If marriage is defined as a legal contract between two people for recognition by the State as single entity for the purposes of taxes, adoption, etc., then there is no place for the Church’s input in the definition of marriage. People continually cite the Bible as a reason to define marriage this way, but yet I clearly remember a little piece of the Constitution that goes something like this:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is a bit of elegance that cuts both directions. Congress shall not work either for nor against the establishment of religions, some of which do not always hold to the dominant, in this country, Judeo-Christian theology. It is therefore the key to the Constitution not to impact the establishment of a religion in a positive, or negative way, but to maintain a neutral stance so that those who wish to worship in one way are not prohibited from doing so, while those who choose not to worship may also pursue their beliefs.
Now, some may argue that since this is an attempt to amend the Constitution, that it’s not relevant what is already written, however I believe it is indeed important to take into account what is written, and the history of the document, as well as the founding of the country. To begin with, the immigrants were leaving England in many cases to escape religious persecution that existing in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.
This led into a situation where the Founding Fathers were not necessarily Christian but many were in fact Deists who most certainly did not want any specific Church teaching to be shoved down the collective throats of the Citizens. It is in the writings of these, and others, that one can find that one of the things that sets the US apart from other countries is that there is no “state religion.” In fact, our “Leaders” have often made derisive comments about countries that have institutionalized religions, at least when those are not the same religion as their own. This illuminates the importance of this separation.
Do we really believe that the people who are “elected” truly are more wise than 250 years of understanding? It is our diversity that makes us strong, and this is but one example of the attempt to legislate out diversity and to legislate morality into the populace. That is simply not something that can ever be successful.
If you get a chance, contact the Congressional type person of your choice and politely ask them to vote no on this one. The Feminist Majority Foundation has a more detailed article available, which also includes a pre-fab e-mail you can shoot off to your representative.
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