Great Caesar's Ghost!

So I read this review of the religious theme in "Man of Steel" before I saw the movie, and I thought it was thoughtful, if a little middle-brow, and insightful to a degree; and that it had a curious hole in its center.  Then, as is usual when I read movie reviews, I saw the movie, and thought:  "What movie did he see?"*  (and yes, I do know this idea of a religious theme is something being promoted by the studio.  Of the making of marketing pitches there is no end.  The sermon points in that article may well play a role here before we are through.)


Let me just start with that review, and yes, this is a spoiler, so stop if you don't want to know something about the movie.  Here's a curious point in the review:

My issue with it occurs when we start equating the Superman story with the story of Jesus. As we hear the marvel in Lois Lane's voice saying, "He saved us," we can't help but begin to connect the two. The problem is, despite the similarities of circumstance, they are so very different.

Okay, minor quibble:  Lois Lane doesn't say that, a minor character (her intern, we find out), says it.  But context is all (spoiler alert!).  The premise of the movie is that nobody on Earth knows who Superman is (including Superman!) until General Zod shows up.  He comes with a team of Kryptonians, and between their super powers and their technology they are frightening proof indeed that "We Are Not Alone."  (Dealers in conspiracies and black oil these guys are not.)  Superman is an alien, too; Zod announces that when he announces his arrival, and when Superman is finally revealed as Superman (I know, I'm not making this clearer, but in the movie this story works), humanity is more than a bit leery that he's not as dangerous as the guys in the space ship.  Sure, he's been on Earth for 30+ years, but who's to say he wasn't the scouting party?  So, come to the end of the movie, and Superman has dispatched the bad guys in typical Hollywood cataclysmic fashion (trust me, they blow up real good!). It falls to the intern to look on in awe and wonder, and say what everyone else has realized:  "He saved us."  Meaning, he didn't ignore us, or attack us, or leave us to the un-tender mercies of the bad guys.  He fought his own people to save the people of earth.

Otherwise, he is right; Jesus and Superman are so very different; and most of the discussion about this "religious" angle in the movie, is missing that point.

For example, unless you want to invoke an early heresy and put a twist on it, that Jesus fought God, who was really a demi-urge and therefore imperfect, in order to restore Paradise, it's really hard to find a Christ figure archetype in the plot of this movie.  Because just saying "He saved us" is not, really, to invoke Christianity at all.

Sandlin insists the allusions to Jesus are intentional:

There should be little doubt that serious efforts were made to make connections between Superman and Jesus. In one scene, what is essentially a spirit form of Superman's father, Jor-El, stands with his son looking over the Earth and tells him, "You can save her, son. You can save them all." Then, Superman steps out into space, arms outstretched, his body in the perfect shape of a cross, and he does not rush off to save Lois Lane (and the rest of us) until the camera captures a full shot of that image. He is our savior.  

But I'm not so sure.  I was even looking for this scene, and even when I saw it, I thought:  it's just a dramatic pose.  It's Superman showing he is supremely confident, even in orbit around the earth, leaving a hole in the side of a damaged space ship, about to plunge into the atmosphere to save Lois Lane in a falling capsule:  he's got it all under control.  No hurries, no worries.  If it was meant to echo the Crucifixion, then it did it about as well as the statue of Christ the Redeemer on Sugar Loaf mountain.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, ya know?

And what does it mean to say "[Superman] is our savior"?  Does the sentence mean the same thing if we substitute "Christ" for "Superman"?  There is a muddle here, because even the move's studio is happily pushing the notion that "Superman saves!":

 -- "Although fully aware of the bloody cost, Jesus decided to willingly submit himself to Roman soldiers. Jesus is arrested and tried as a common criminal, sentenced to death for crimes he did not commit. He pays the price for our individual and collective sin. The One genuinely innocent man takes on the burden of a gravely fallen people. The Man of Steel is faced with a similar test. Should he lay down his life for humanity? Do we deserve such sacrificial justice from Superman? The words of his father, Jor-El, resonate, 'You can save them...you can save them all." He places Superman's life in context. 'You will give people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonder [sic].'"

It isn't really hard to recognize that the "salvation" offered by Superman in the movie has nothing to do with fundamentalist/evangelical Christian soteriology; but the distinction is intentionally blurred in those sermon notes.  The muddle is in the idea of salvation, and that salvation is, and must be, a religious concept.  But it isn't, and even in Jesus' day, it wasn't.

The Roman Empire was based on the common principle of peace through victory, or, more fully, on a faith in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace.

 Paul was a Jewish visionary following in Jesus' footsteps, and they both claimed that the Kingdom of God was already present and operative in this world. He opposed the mantras of Roman normalcy with a vision of peace through justice, or, more fully, with a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace. In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed  (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. xi.

We need to consider that rather carefully.  "Save" is an English word with several meanings.  We save money by buying something for less than we thought it would cost.  We save money by putting it in a bank account.  We save time, but we can't save time the same way we save money.  We used to say a girl was "saving herself" for the right man by remaining a virgin until her wedding night.  We save bottle caps or postcards or food from one meal for another, later meal.  We save a cat from a tree, save a seat in a theater, save ourselves from an embarrassing or tedious situation.  We save face, save our breath, save our place in a book, take a stitch in time to save nine (okay, does anybody do that anymore?  Or even know what it means?).  We save water, we save electricity, we save gasoline or energy, all by not wasting them foolishly.

And none of those touch on the meaning of "saved" as used in "Man of Steel" or in the phrase "Jesus saves!"

At no point in "Man of Steel" does Superman proclaim the Kingdom of God is already present and operative in this world.  Which is the real problem here:  not that Superman is or isn't meant to be a Christ figure, but just what a "Christ figure" is.  We use the term too loosely.  Northrop Frye, the man who taught us to think in terms of archetypes like Christ figures, said that even Jesus of Nazareth was a Christ figure.  He's not the origin of the archetype, in other words; he's an example of it.  But that only means the archetype has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus.  So getting the archetype close to the religious figure is already to misunderstand the use of the archetype.  And, as Crossan and Reed say, the preaching of Paul, in the footsteps of the preaching of Jesus, proclaims "a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace."  Not much there to build a comic book on, or a comic book movie.  Better, for comic books, is the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace.  Which, despite the complaints of some about how this movie ends, is precisely what this movie engages in.  (Spoiler alert!  again!).  The movie ends, as that linked review complains, by violating the once inviolable principle of Superman.  But that inviolable principle is really an act of piety:  just because Superman has superpowers doesn't mean he can't kill, unless you mean that those with the greatest power must exercise the greatest restraint.  And if Superman actually did that consistently, he'd be a pretty dull superhero.  So it's a matter of how he exercises restraint, which is supposed to mean he cannot possibly kill.  But why not?  Because he is "holier" if he doesn't?  Because he is worthier of our admiration if he proves himself more restrained than us?  I'm not arguing Superman should ever kill; but that it's a measure of our piety toward the idea of Superman that we would be offended if he ever did; offended to the point we think he's no longer Superman, if he takes a life.

The reviewer arguing Superman can never kill brings the point down to this:

The way the movie bends over backward to get to that moment is an embarrassment of plot illogic. The fact that nobody involved in the making of the movie could come up with a clever way for Superman to not kill Zod — like maybe use any of his superpowers besides his incredible ability to punch real hard — says more about the filmmakers than about Superman.

His only real "superpowers" are his ability to punch real hard; that and fly, burn things, and see through stuff.  Which of these powers gives him the ability to keep an equally superpowered and malevolent being from destroying all human life, without killing that being?  It's not like, at that point, Superman has any alien technology left capable of rendering Zod powerless, or imprisoning him for all time.  Zod has made it quite clear annihilation of all non-Kryptonians is his only purpose now, that he is reacting out of nothing but hatred because Superman has destroyed the one purpose Zod was born for:  to protect Kryptonians.  Superman has made it clear his loyalties lie with humans, so Zod has no purpose left but to, in effect (and he makes this explicit) commit suicide by...well, not cop, so by Superman.  And Superman has no choice but to oblige him; that, or render all his actions so far in the movie completely irrelevant.  It is, actually, a rather neat dilemma; and Superman's reaction is, in part, the reaction of a man who has just killed the last member of his own species.

That could be something to build an interesting sequel on.  But it's certainly not Christ-like; not even for the archetype.  It does, however, create an even stronger sense of piety, because Superman loved humans so much he killed the last Kryptonian who could be an unmitigated threat to them.  It starts the cycle, in other words, over again.  War, victory, peace; back to piety.  He is much closer to a god at the end of the film than he has ever been in the comics.   A Greek god, though; not a Christian one.

Superman saves the same way Caesar does.  He does it by eliminating our enemies.

And that's the problem:  there is no Christ figure here, because there is nothing vaguely Christ-like about Superman.  The "crucifixion" scene in the movie might be compared to the Christ Triumphant, the fully robed (as opposed to nearly naked form on the crucifix) Christ with arms outstretched, and wearing a crown:  the Christ who has triumphed over death, with the cross now not wood he is hanging from, but the backdrop symbolizing his victory over death (thus the stance of Christ the Redeemer on Sugar Loaf Mountain, just without a giant cross).  But that Christ comes after death and three days in the tomb; Superman's moment of outstretched arms comes after a few minutes in Kryptonian atmosphere, which serves to drain his powers as effectively as green rocks do in other Superman stories.  It's a problem for him, but it's not death, and it's not three days in the grave.

The other part of the problem is the one of reducing Christianity to soteriology, and soteriology to a simple affirmation of faith in Jesus as the Son of God.  The "sermon notes" promoted by the movie studio are the most egregious example of this ("How might the story of Superman awaken our passion for the greatest hero who ever lived and died and rose again. Let's consider how Superman's humble origins, his high calling and his transforming sacrifice point us towards Jesus, the original superhero."  I would submit how we are treating others is far more important a Christian issue, than how we are treating ourselves.).  But the very question of salvation is the issue here: are we saved by Caesar disguised (by us) as Christ?  Or are we saved by being disciples of Christ?  And what does that mean, and what does that salvation mean?  Superman makes no claim on the people of earth; he establishes no new method of behavior, he proclaims no basilia tou theou.  He's supposed to be a shining example, but that seems to be more a contrast between the expectations of his real father and the fears of his adopted father (who dies so his son won't expose his alien nature.  Now that's a sacrificial figure!).  But the nature of salvation:  what is that?  All this discussion of Superman as the Anointed One doesn't just blur that issue; it obliterates it as surely as the black hole created in the movie destroys the Kryptonians.

And that's the real problem with all this discussion of Superman as savior.

Where is that sock?

Greenwald keeps promising more revelations; Snowden keeps saying he's not revealing damaging information.

Again, not really his call to make:

Since then, two more stories have brought to light how the U.S. government collects information on other countries, each revealed ahead of a major summit with said countries. Two weeks ago, Snowden — revealed as the leaker of the documents — told the South China Morning Press that the United States was most certainly spying on China, leaving Obama in the awkward position of decrying Chinese cyber-espionage during an informal meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

On Sunday, the Guardian has brought to light cooperation between the NSA and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — its British counterpart — to spy on its allies during summit meetings, intercepting large amounts of information from its allies in the Group of 20 meeting in 2009. The report also detailed how Dmitry Medvedev, then President and now Prime Minister of Russia, was targeted specifically during that meeting.

The problem with all of these revelations is not that they’re happening at all or that they’re being released at inopportune moments. Instead, the issue is that rather than exposing potential harm, they are now instead bringing to light clandestine activities the NSA is tasked under law to do. Spying on other countries may be morally questionable to some, including Snowden as he made clear in a question and answer session on Monday. But these actions are neither illegal nor counter to the Constitution. It’s entirely within the mission of the National Security Agency to do these things, and revealing them actually takes away from the focus on the agency’s more questionable practices.

This may come as a shock to Mr. Snowden, but just because it bothers him, doesn't mean it's illegal, immoral, or unconstitutional; nor even that it shocks the conscience of the nation. 

Some say this is a distraction from the "serious" issues of how the NSA is using its power.  But more and more, this is the story.   The story is more and more all about what outrages Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden.  They've both made clear that their purpose in publicizing Snowden's secrets is to get a public reaction akin to the one they have.  That's neither heroic nor brave; it's a child's view of the world.*  I'm no longer sure what conversation we're supposed to be having, although a discussion of government power and how we should limit it, or how much we should be bothered by it, would be an interesting discussion.  But that's not what's going on.

What's going on is a monologue led by Greenwald and Snowden (Greenwald even opened the on-line chat with the Guardian by trying to be sure the discussion touched on themes near and dear to his heart) about what they think is wrong with the world.  And, frankly, just because they have the megaphone, doesn't mean what they want to talk about is the right topic of conversation.

Funny how much more complicated these things are than they seem to realize.


*Much was made, early on, about the comparison of Snowden to Ellsberg.  The lesson of the Pentagon Papers, aside from a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment, is that Ellsberg's efforts didn't change history.  The war didn't end with the revelations of those papers, and Nixon didn't fail to get re-elected.  In essence, as Bush proved with Iraq 30 years later, nothing really changed.  Which is not to say Ellsberg shouldn't have released the papers; but Greenwald and Snowden should be better students of history, and not expect revelations to change the world, or make everyone suddenly agree with them.  That they still don't understand this does not redound to their credit.

Journamalism!

Comes now again, Edward Snowden, and once again makes this story about him and not about the U.S. Government, and when he doesn't do that sufficiently, Glenn Greenwald does it for him:

The second question, from The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, read as follows: "How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?"

And even that fat, wet, right-over-the-plate slow pitch was too much for the batter:

Snowden stopped short of answering the question directly.

"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," he wrote. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped." 

Which is pretty much what Greenwald has been promising since this story first broke and the republic did not fall upon the revelation that the government is spying on people, maybe even its own people.   As Josh Marshall said:

the one interesting and significant thing to come out of this Snowden live chat is his focus on what is technically possible within the NSA vs whatever policy restrictions are in place to protect privacy, constitutional protections for US citizens and so forth. It’s not even totally clear, reading these answers, how much Snowden and his nemeses within the Intel Community are even disagreeing about how things work.

This, I think, is what JMM is talking about:

 "US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the 'widest allowable aperture,' and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with… More fundamentally, the 'US Persons' protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.'"

or this:

"More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want," Snowden wrote. "Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed."

 I've no doubt there's a lot of "power and danger" in this system.  The question is:  how do you eradicate that, without eradicating the system?  Google, Yahoo, Bing, Apple, all have this information, too; not to mention Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc. As I said before, the idea that The Phone Company knows more about us than anyone else goes back at least to 1967, which, if I'm doing my math right, is about 17 years before Our Heroic Snitch was born.  It's certainly a few decades earlier than the Revolution of the Intertubes.  Everything old really is new again.

So, yes, the government can hoover up this information.  The salient question is:  do they?  We can't take away their power to get the information; we can only seek to limit their desire to get that information, or at least limit their willingness to do so.  Of course the limitations are policy based; that technological genie ain't goin' back in that bottle.  We are back where we started:  do we trust the government not to violate our privacy?

Because if we don't, what the hell are we gonna do about it?  Except go off the grid and disconnect from all the communications conveniences of this modern world which most of us seem to think are so essential to our well-being.  Certainly Mr. Snowden imagines these communications devices are the thing that's keeping him alive.

In other words, given the state of the world, limited policy protections are the best we can ever hope for.  Maybe that explains why Glenn Greenwald is still fanning the flames for more revelations to come out that will finally persuade the world to think like Glenn Greenwald.

Or like a cheap spy novel; there doesn't seem to be much difference.

And where the hell are the rest of those documents?  Are you going to tell us again how a government spied on foreign dignitaries at an international meeting within its borders?  O, the humanities!

By the way, that line from the "Founding Fathers" is in the Declaration of Independence, not the U.S. Constitution.  We have a long-standing legal and civil tradition of not treating non-citizens quite the same way we we treat U.S. citizens.  And yes, we spy on both of them, but from different justifications and with different policy and legal limitations.  And frankly:

  Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.

Maybe not, but nobody put you, a private contractor hired to perform a specific task, in charge of U.S. foreign, legal, or national security policy.  That decision, in other words, is slightly above your pay grade.  And if you don't like it and you want to expose it, come back to America and face the consequences of your crime; make your stand in a court of law, present your defense to a jury of your peers, and persuade them, your fellow citizens, that you are right and the government is wrong.

Until then, you're just a coward; and a putz.

Harry Potter to the white courtesy telephone, please!

As I've said, the real issue with the NSA revelations is not that the government is spying on the whole world (surprise!), but the theory all that spying is based on:

Supporters of the sweeping U.S. surveillance effort say it's needed to build a haystack of information in which to find a needle that will stop a terrorist. In Headley's case, however, it appears the U.S. was handed the needle first — and then deployed surveillance that led to the arrest and prosecution of Headley and other plotters.

Honestly, even one case, if it could be proven to have all the necessary causal links, wouldn't prove the validity of the theory.  The whole idea of this massive data gathering is still just magical thinking:  if we amass enough data and run it through enough algorithms, the computer will do the work for us and, voila!, captured terrorists!

Except, not, for a whole host of easily identifiable reasons.  This flawed premise is the basis of national security policy; at least, a very expensive, very clandestine (or it was, anyway) policy.  And the fact that it hasn't worked yet just means, as usual, that we just haven't tried hard enough; or amassed enough data; or run it all through enough algorithms.

But we never escape the basic issue of epistemology (where is a philosopher when you need one?):  you only find what you are looking for.  Computers only make that process faster; they don't make it magically different.

I've seen this movie....

I agree we shouldn't be involved in Syria.  It's a bit like Rwanda, in that slaughter is happening, it's a humanitarian crisis, and we shouldn't ignore it.  It's a bit like Bosnia; no matter what we do, the result will be a mess.  And it could be like Iraq or Afghanistan, except I don't think we'll get that involved.

So there is not a good answer.  And none of these are good answers, either:

“It was a matter of time — the White House may not have wanted intervention but intervention itself was chasing the administration,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East-based analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The White House underestimated the potency of this struggle and its profound implications for the region and its own interests, and then found itself lacking space, strategic clarity and momentum to do anything meaningful.”

 That presumes we ever had space, strategic clarity, and momentum to do anything meaningful.  It's nice to think we did, but that strikes me as the same reasoning leading the NSA to get its hands on all the information in the world; even Faustus didn't understand everything after his deal with Mepistopheles.  And intervention was chasing us? Why?  Because we have a standing army?  Should we, perhaps, start to reconsider that 50 year old commitment?

While an aide said Mr. Obama’s decision was made even before Mr. Clinton’s comments this week endorsing more robust intervention, the president ended up satisfying neither side in the Syrian debate. For those who have pressed the White House to do more, the belated agreement to send small arms after nearly 93,000 deaths seems too little, too late. For those who warn that Syria could become another Iraq or Libya, the latest move comes across as another step down a slippery slope toward a messy outcome.

Clinton wants to rewrite the history of Rwanda.  And the question not being answered here, but being worried about by the critics, is:  what do we do if the regime falls?  Libya is not exactly a Western democracy, nor is it likely to be one anytime soon.  Do we expect Syria to stabilize within six months, and recover all it's refugees, and bring prosperity to the region?

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in Mr. Obama’s State Department, said her onetime boss so clearly wanted to be a domestic president and yet could not remain at a distance from the Syria conflict because it could set the Middle East in flames. Already, she noted, it has helped destabilize Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey and flooded refugees into Jordan.

“I really worry this is going to be remembered as the United States standing by and watching a Middle East war ignite,” said Ms. Slaughter, who will become president of the New America Foundation in Washington in September. “I fear the president thinks he can stand apart. He’s the one who always says with power comes responsibility. That’s his line.”

 Responsibility to whom, though?  The people of Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey?  Or the people of America, which includes all U.S. soldiers?

But White House aides on Friday again ruled out sending United States troops and dismissed calls for a no-fly zone over Syria, calling it “dramatically more difficult and dangerous and costly” than it had been in Libya in 2011, as Mr. Rhodes put it. And there is little domestic constituency for another American adventure abroad.

 Yup.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, said he was “baffled” by Mr. Obama’s decision to become more deeply involved. “What exactly is our objective?” he asked. “It’s not clear to me that every nondemocratic government in the world has to be removed by force.” 

The Syria war is a struggle for power, not democracy, he said. “Is that something we should be engaged in?”

 Again:  yup.  The struggle between Communism and democracy which was the "Cold War" (or was supposed to be) is long over.  The peoples of the world are not struggling to decide to fall under the sphere of influence of the U.S. or the U.S.S.R., and we really don't have a dog in this fight.  Saudi Arabia is a very repressive regime.  Should we be working to destabilize them, or at least support opponents of the kingdom?  Obviously not, but why, then, do we have an interest in Syria?  Because the regime is falling already?  Because people have died?  Because of refugees?  Because our support of rebels in Afghanistan at the end of the Cold War worked out so well for peace, stability, and humanitarian interests? 

Oh, good grief!

Trial bait, is all this is:

During an announcement of the signing of the so-called “Merry Christmas Bill,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry and state Senator Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville) said Thursday that freedom from religion was not included in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“I’m proud we are standing up for religious freedom in our state,” Perry said. “Freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion.”

The new law states that students and school officials have the right to use religious greetings like “Merry Christmas” and display various religious holiday symbols on school grounds.

And here's the thing about it:  the State of Texas is never going to be forced to defend this law in Federal (or even state) court.

Local school districts will have to foot that bill.

In Texas, school districts are independent government entities.  They are controlled by the Legislature and the Texas Education Agency, but they raise their own taxes, elect their own school boards, and are responsible in court for whatever is done in their classrooms.  So, if some school insists a Christmas tree must go up in a classroom, and some parent objects, that school district is going to pay the legal fees to defend that lawsuit in court.

Conversely, if some school district refuses to allow Christmas trees in the classroom, that school district is going to pay the legal fees to defend that position in court, when some parent uses this law to sue the school.

Texas schools are woefully underfunded.  The state system for funding schools is a joke, and like subject to further court challenges as it is neither "efficient" nor, I would argue, compliant with equal protection (the formula for deciding which school district gets how much money is incomprehensible).  So now, in addition to struggling to find funds to pay teachers, they get to look forward to being caught between people who don't want "Christmas" mentioned at all in the classroom, and people who will demand their right not to be free "from" religion.

And do you think anybody is gonna send Rick Perry the bill for this?

Ye shall know the truth, and yet probably know not that you know....

Trying to put recent posts in perspective, I wanted to say something about how telling people what you know won't necessarily make them think the way you think.  This is what Edward Snowden says he feared:  that his NSA revelations wouldn't lead to a reaction against the NSA similar to the one he had, the one that led him to spend a month or two preparing to breach his oath of secrecy.

And then the universe, or God, or happenstance, or just blind simple doo-dah luck, landed this in my lap:

Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.

These are the conclusions to which my study of John's Gospel has led me, and they are the conclusions that I explore and document in this book "The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic."

That's Shelby Spong at the end of a blog post describing his new book.  He's rather boldly claiming that once you read it, you'll never go back, and in fact you'll be a Spong disciple and with him recreate Christianity in the way Shelby Spong thinks best!

Which, really, ain't gonna happen.

I have no problem with Spong's assertions about the Gospel of John.  I would make more of the importance of the semeia (signs) John's gospel uses.  That gospel calls the miracles not dunamis, as the synoptics do (usually translated as "miracle" but implying an act of power) and refers to them as "signs."

Yeah, kinda like the Mel Gibson movie.

There's a lot of subtlety going on in John's gospel, in other words; and yet it is often used as a club, because "whosoever believeth in him (things always sound more holy and authoritative in the King James' English)," donchaknow?  I mean, those who don't, will perish!  It's right there in black & white, waddyawantmetodoaboudit?

But I digress....

Shelby Spong, despite his claims of spending several years on this, is not a scholar.  He doesn't write for scholars, he doesn't write as a scholar, he doesn't even pretend to be a scholar.  He's a polemicist, really.  So he takes a bit of scholarship and spins a tale with it and comes up with an idea he's sure everyone would agree upon, if they just understood what he understands!

But it doesn't work that way.  It never does.

Scholars don't try to persuade a vast group of others of the truth of their position.  They try to defend it among other scholars; and very narrow ground that can be, too.  But if they imagine that what they know will enlighten and enlist others to their scholarly cause if it is just well enough understood; then they have gone astray from scholarship.

Mind, I have nothing against Biblical scholarship.  I think its incredibly valuable.  But I don't think it's going to change the world anytime soon.  The  very idea that the Gospel of John is not the work of John Zebedee, for example, is probably 150 years old; or older.  Among scholars, that is.  Spong cites it as if he just discovered fire, and is bringing the burning coal back to the cave for the first time.  The people who already know that, in other words, haven't had their paradigm shifted all that much by the knowledge.  Some of them accept it, and move on; some don't even accept it at all.

There's even a story in the Gospel of John about this, oddly enough.  Jesus is not baptized in that gospel, but like the baptisms in the Synoptics, there is a scene meant to show Jesus speaks for God.  Jesus says, "Father, glorify your name!"

Then a voice spoke out of the sky:  "I have glorified it and I'll glorify it further."

The crowd there heard this, and some people remarked that it had thundered, others that an angel had spoken to him.

"That voice did not come for me but for you," Jesus replied.

 So some hear thunder; some hear an angel.  It's not clear anyone heard what was said, or knew who it was, or that any paradigms that day were shifted.

Maybe it's better not to expect them to be; and just to be happily surprised, whenever they are.

Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

Comes now Edward Snowden, who never met a reporter he didn't want to tell his life story (because it's not about him!) to, and tells the Chinese he trusts their system of law more than the system of laws in the U.S.  Because, while it was a great act of conscience on his part to violate his oath of secrecy and breach criminal laws by telling tales out of school (some of which may or may not have any validity), what he doesn't want, is to face any system of justice whatsoever.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking HK as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality."

Which is cute, because he knows he won't face any charges in a court in Hong Kong, as he hasn't violated Chinese law.

All he wants is to get out of jail, free.

Is he a hero?

Martin Luther King believed in this system of laws, and of the people who backed it, even as those laws declared him a second-class citizen.  He suffered the jails of the U.S., and he died on a hotel balcony because he believed that system was fundamentally just, and would finally see justice done.

Medgar Evers believed in this system of laws, and even though his life was constantly threatened and finally taken by a racist madman, he believed the system would change and justice would finally be done.

The Berrigan brothers believed in this system of laws, and went to jail over and over again, trying to make it change.

Even Daniel Ellsberg turned himself in for leaking the Pentagon Papers, and stood trial.

Edward Snowden runs to Hong Kong and declares himself a hunted man, wanted by the CIA and the Triad and Lord knows what other shadowy organization, and throws himself on the mercy of the Chinese because the Americans can't be trusted. He even tries to buy his asylum by telling them what anybody with internet access or a TeeVee already knows or could reasonably expect:  that the U.S. is hacking the Chinese. (and, of course, the Chinese are hacking the U.S.  Is there no one who can be trusted?)

But, more importanly,  Mr. Snowden lives in fear and trembling:

"I will never feel safe," he said. "Things are very difficult for me in all terms, but speaking truth to power is never without risk."

My heart bleeds for you.  No, really, it does.  After all, if China doesn't want him, he can go to Russia:

My only comment is that I am glad there are governments that refuse to be intimidated by great power," he said.

Yeah; the government that was so intimidated by 20 seconds of public behavior by four women, it sent two of them to Siberia.

He's not a hero; he's a putz.

He's a coward.

For my next prediction....

Somewhere on the interwebs is the article which I cannot now find about the NSA revelations (B.S., Before Snowden, IIRC) which ended with a particularly pungent quote about how nothing was likely to change because people would complain on Twitter, but that wasn't the same as voting their suddenly awakened consciences (and besides, all of Congress knows how to handle this:  either declare Snowden a traitor, or be shocked, shocked! to learn the government has a secret program to gather all your electronical traded stuff.  Something the NSA has been doing since it was No Such Agency, and the building in D.C. didn't officially house anything and wasn't really there.  My memory is long, indeed; almost as long as my sentences.  Suck on that, Marcel!).


Yup.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled collection of data.

Helping the fairies

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a charming little tale in the 1950’s that took the premise that a human brain was just a certain number of cells interconnected at enough points that it produced consciousness as a result of the cells and the connections between them. His story imagined this same thing happening when enough telephones around the world were connected to each other, rather like brain cells.  With enough such connections (the phones as "cells," the wires as the connections), a consciousness would "wake up"; and then what?

It wasn’t a prediction of inevitability; it was just a pleasant bit of imagination which, we are now sure, might as well have been a fantasy by Dunsany.

Because intelligence doesn’t work like that.  We aren’t yet sure how it works, but we are quite sure it doesn’t work like that.

In a similar vein, we are assured by those who know that the many programs of the NSA will soon, if they haven’t already, gather up enough data and process that data through powerful enough algorithms that the government will know who the terrorists are and how to stop them, somewhat a la Tom Cruise in “Minority Report,” only without the psychics floating in briny water.  In other words, make enough connections and the system itself will "wake up" and do the work you couldn't do.

And that seems to me to be as ludicrous as Clarke’s “Dial ‘F’ for Frankenstein.”  The only difference between them is that nobody ever spent any money trying to make Clarke’s story so much as a short film; but we are spending billions on this ludicrous and baseless vision.

Already we know that, while the Boston police were looking for suspects in the crowd during the Boston marathon, they had no idea to look for the Tsarnaev brothers, whom it is safe to assume used telephones and the internet and didn’t even try to hide themselves from security cameras on the day of the bombing.  There is an old, old problem of discovery, known to anyone who pursues knowledge by looking for it:  you don’t find what you aren’t looking for.

As I understand the underlying idea of PRISM or Blarney or just using the FISA court to continuously get phone records, that principle is not being considered.  In fact, what is being considered is that the computer, rising above human tendency to error, will “see” with greater insight, and find in data sifted by properly written algorithms, what is “really” there rather than whatever NSA employees or programmers are looking for.

When you put it that way, it sounds almost reasonable, right?  When it doesn’t sound exactly like magical thinking.

The magic of Harry Potter was, for the most part, a simple expression of will.  Learning to express one’s will clearly and accurately, was the purpose of magical education.  Once you had that down, you could turn a cup into an animal, whisk yourself across the globe, or defeat your enemy with a word.  The only possible error was in inexact expression of the will.  Garbage in, garbage out ruled only over those insufficiently trained in how to wave their wands.

GIGO, of course, still rules in computer programming.  “Bugs” in the system still exist, because programming is always an imperfect expression of will, just as engineering or art or science, is.  But the premise of data-mining is that GIGO has no place, because the patterns will make all things clear and will tell us, once and for all, who is menacing and who isn’t.  Basically, it will do the work for us; all we have to do is feed it.

Or, as some people think it used to work, make a sacrifice to the right deities.

Magical thinking.  If we just feed the algorithm the right data, sufficient data, all the data, we will learn, if not the meaning of life, then at least who our enemies are.  Why?  Because the data and the patterns the computer looks for will make all things clear.  It sounds more like the mad dream of James Jesus Angleton, a man so famously paranoid he suspected everyone but himself of being duplicitous, or at least never above suspicion.  He saw patterns everywhere, and was quite sure he knew what they meant.

So does Alex Jones.  Except he thinks he doesn’t need any more data; everything just proves his conspiracy theories, no matter what information it is.

So there’s the formula:  the right algorithm and information equal to not less than the entireworld, will yield:  magic.

If technology won't save us, perhaps magical thinking will.

I am less and less worried about the collection of this data, or about the nature of the person of Edward Snowden; and more and more worried about the idea that all of this makes sense.  We might as well be hoping for Hellboy.