Seek ye first...

I was teaching this speech the other day, trying to explain how it functioned, how it was put together, when I realized just how radical it's premise is. It's radical in a way we easily overlook.

King starts with the premise we all accept (which is its real genius; King begins with what we know, and moves us toward what we should know): law creates order, and the two together, given world enough and time, produce justice.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

The first half of the speech is built on that premise. For King, it is the Emancipation Proclamation that is the law, which comes imposing a new order, and in imposing that order, promises justice, finally, for slaves, for African Americans, for those who came to this country not illegally, but wholly unwillingly. That promise of justice, however, is unfulfilled: "...one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free."

The Proclamation was issued 100 years ago, but the root is in the Constitution:

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

The promissory note was that law and order would lead inevitably and finally to justice; justice for once, and justice for all. But it didn't happen; and so King describes the frustration of 100 years of history, and the understanding that justice has been promised, and justice is still available, and that justice must be done:

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

But King is not Malcolm X; he is not placing before the nation the either/or of peace or violence, of justice or anarchy.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

He makes a slow turn here, as he must, but the turn is quite clear,a nd it isn't just the turn of pacifism, of "turn the other cheek" and "bless those who curse you." It is a more radical turn than that. And it comes in the contrast between the opening of the speech, which we usually ignore, and the closing of the speech, which we usually praise and even bathe our memories in. It comes in the most radical call of all: justice first, and order and law will follow. It is, in the purest sense, the most democratic of sentiments.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

King does not bring them to Washington, D.C. to seize power, or enact more laws, or esatablish a new and improved legal order. He brings them to D.C. to teach them about justice. He brings them to D.C. to upend the American order, the one we are sure "tamed the West" and "forged a new country." He comes, not to praise Caesar, but to bury him. And bury him is exactly what King does.

Caesar represents law and order, the rule of the state, the control of the mass in what we know call (wrongly) a Hobbesian vision of imposing upon "the rule of nature, red in tooth and claw" the civilizing power of authority. Law first, taught Augustus Caesar, creates order. Piety, then (and Augustus was a master of promoting filial piety; James Dobson and Jerry Falwell could learn a thing or two from him; Peter Marshall and Rocbert Schuller didn't have a patch on Augustus in promoting the status quo based on the famliy and piety) seals the family into the social pact, and insures order at the most basic social unit, because the family follows the law. And from that does justice come? Well, certainly not the justice the Hebrew prophets would recognize. But with law establishing order, and order creating peace, is justice far behind? Perhaps we should ask the citizens of Omelas.

King turns those assumptions on their head, and does it so beautifully, so masterfully, we don't realize we've been had. We assume, even, that one day American law and American order will finally create King's vision of American justice; but King doesn't say that day will come through Congress:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

That day will come through people enacting justice. Not demanding justice; that is still to play the game of law and order, of the belief tha only power matters, and only the power of the state enacted through law can impose the proper order that allows fragile, feeble, weak, and tremulous justice to begin to see the light of day, and even then only if justice creates the greatest good for the greatest number. But that is not justice at all: that is simply more law, and more imposition of order. And more force is not just; it is simply a greater effort at control over someone else. It is the conviction that there are circumstances under which we need not treat each other with love; but no such circumstances exist.

Which King understands; and so King's dream is a vision of justice first, which will give rise to a new and better order, and then, if necessary, laws for what is left over, for those who still reject justice.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

King started talking about law, and about the order it was supposed to create, and about the justice it failed to provide. It is time to set aside that model, is King's proclamation, and seek first the kingdom of God, where the first are last, and the last first, and all are seen as equals. It is time to seek first justice; and all the rest will follow.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

But freedom without law and order is precisely what we fear. Freedom without law and order is anarchy, is barbarism, is the antithesis of civilization. To establish freedom is precisely why we brought civilization to the "savages" of the American West; it is why we fought in the jungles of Vietnam; it is why we invaded Iraq. Because freedom is not possible without first establishing law and order. But King has another vision:

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

And there it is, but covered in such a sweet coating we don't even recognize what we have swallowed: law and order do not produce justice. If they did, the promissory note written to the African Americans would long ago have been paid in full. Justice is not a byproduct of law, and law is not necessary in order to impose order. The nature of humanity is not bestial, only held in check by power and reason. And the nature of the universe is to do justice, and love mercy. Freedom is rooted, not in power or in order, but in justice. Seek justice, and you will have freedom; seek justice, and you will establish order; seek justice, and you will not need to concern yourself with law.

That struggle is going on again. That struggle continues.

Fools tell themselves,
"There is no God."
Their actions are corrupt,
none of them does good.

The Lord looks down
to see if anyone is wise,
if anyone seeks God.

But all have turned away,
all are depraved.
No one does good,
not even one.

Are these evil-doers mad?
They eat up my people
like so much bread;
they never pray.

They should cringe in fear,
for God sits with the just.
You may mock the poor,
but the Lord keeps them safe.

If only a saviour would come from Zion
to restore the people's fortunes!
Then Jacob would sing,
and Israel rejoice.--Psalm 14

Just sayin....

Okay, there's a complex trail here. Attytood links this claim, not to Vanity Fair, but to Drudge. [Update: Boreas, in comments, provides the Vanity Fair link] So take it for what it's worth. Still, here's the story:

[Todd] Purdum [author of a profile of V.P. Cheney in latest issue of Vanity Fair] reports that Cheney travels with a chemical-biological suit at all times. When he gave his friend Robin West and his twin children a ride to the White House a couple of years ago, West commented on the fact that Cheney’s motorcade varied its daily path. “And he said, ‘Yeah, we take different routes so that “The Jackal” can’t get me,’” West tells Purdum. “And then there was this big duffel bag in the middle of the backseat, and I said, ‘What’s that? It’s not very roomy in here.’ And [Cheney] said, ‘No, because it’s a chemical-biological suit,’ and he looked at it and said, ‘Robin, there’s only one. You lose.’”

Isonically (or satirically?), a friend had loaned me the DVD of Jarhead and I got around to watching it last night. Shortly after the Marines arrive in the desert they are setting up their tent and their Staff Sergeant walks in with a stopwatch in his hand. He almost immediately announces a gas attack drill and the Marines frantically struggle with their NBC suits. 60 seconds of Keystone Kops struggles later, the Staff Sgt. pronounces them all "dead." No one has managed to get more than the mask or part of the full suit on.

Jarhead is a memoir of the Gulf War, so I have no doubt that scene is accurately portrayed. The suits are bulky, cumbersome, and not easily put on without great familiarity and practice. Now think about it: 20 year old well-trained Marines in an open space (a tent) cannot, in 60 seconds, get into their anti-gas gear. How likely is it Dick Cheney, a senior overweight man who has had multiple heart attacks and wears a pacemaker, is going to get that "chemical suit" out of the duffle bag in the back seat of a limo and get into it quickly enough?

The baseline of paranoia, at least as the term is commonly defined, is an irrational belief both that you are subject to constant threats, and that you can do something about them. Isn't this kind of attitude of a piece with the idea that tactical nuclear weapons are a viable part of the U.S. arsenal, and can be used in a "first strike" capacity?

The Wrong Thing

After seeing Madeleine Albright on "The Daily Show":

According to almost every Iraqi, the Americans "came as liberators and now they are occupiers." For Americans occupation conjures images of postwar Germany or Japan, and the repair of damaged societies. In Arabin, tahrir, or liberation, and ihtilal, or occupation, have greater moral and emotional significance. Ihtilal means the Crusaders who slaughtered Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians, it means the Mongols who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth century, it means the British imperialists who divided the spoils of the Ottoman Empire with the French, and it means the Israelis in southern Lebanon and Palestine. It is hard for Americans to understand just how deeply they are hated by ordinary Iraqis.

Nir Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird (New York: Simon & Schuster 2006), p. 3.

Americans long to liberate the world from history, as they feel they have been liberated. That is our fundamental problem. We mistake our ignorance of history for purity of heart, and then we will one thing.

Addendum: no surprise, then, that we are led into war by people like Kenneth Pollsck.

The Concept of Irony

Colbert's irony is making me re-read Kierkegaard:

Political Washington is accustomed to more direct attacks that follow the rules. We tend to like the bland buffoonery of Jay Leno or insider jokes that drop lots of names and enforce everyone's clubby self-satisfaction. (Did you hear the one about John Boehner at the tanning salon or Duke Cunningham playing poker at the Watergate?) Similarly, White House spinmeisters are used to frontal assaults on their policies, which can be rebutted with a similar set of talking points. But there is no easy answer for the ironist. "Irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function," wrote David Foster Wallace, in his seminal 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram." "It's critical and destructive, a ground clearing." So it's no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy in their seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with the president. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and "American Idol's" Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak for levity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalists are all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talking points and consultant speak. We too often depend on empty language for our daily bread, and -- worse -- we sometimes mistake it for reality. Colbert was attacking us as well.

Kierkegaard on Socrates:

He belonged to that species of human beings with whom one is not content to reamin with the external as such. The external always suggested an 'other', an opposite. He was not like a philosopher lecturing upon his views, wherein the very lecture itself constitutes the presence of the Idea; on the contrary, what Socrates said meant something 'other'. The outer and inner did not form a harmonious unity, for the outer was in opposition to the inner, and only through this refracted angle is he to be apprehended. Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, tr. Lee M. Capel (Bloomington, Indiana; Indiana University Press 1968, 50).

The Concept of Irony was Kierkegaard's dissertation (or the equivalent thereof in the American system; the degree was granted by a Lutheran seminary). It's an interesting text because in the pseudonymous authorship S.K.'s personae praise Socrates as the most important thinker in human history. His analysis of Socrates in Irony, however, reveals just how much irony there is in that praise. For S.K. (not the pseudonyms), Socrates is not the greatest thinker, but rather the most dangerous, in human history. It is through Socrates, S.K. writes, that irony entered the world.

Here is an instructive comparison made early in the argument, a comparison of the Gospel of John and Plato's writings:

On the other hand, the observation concerning the relationship of Plaot to John is also correct if one maintains that John found and immediately saw in Christ all that he, by imposing silence upon himself, has depicted with complete objectivity, for his eyes were open to the immediate divinity in Christ; whereas Plato creates his Socrates through a poetic activity, since Socrates in his immediate existence was wholly negative. (52-53)

This is the key to irony in S.K.'s conception: it is wholly negative, and as such, wholly destructive of everything, including itself. But before we get there, consider the aptness of this observation. S.K. proceeds by considering Socrates from the point of view of three contemporaries other than Plato. One of them is the playwright Aristophanes (who mocked Socrates in his comedy Clouds). S.K. notes:

Indeed it would be a great loss if we lacked the Aristophanic evaluation of Socrates. As every development usually ends by parodying itself, and such a parody is a guarantee that this development has outlived itself, so the comic conception is also a moment when, in many ways an infinitely correcting moment, in the total illustration of a personality or tendency. (158)

Unfortunately for the world (or left blogistan), such a moment is precisely "an infinitely correcting moment," which means it never ends, never comes to a conclustion: the emperor is never revealed as stark naked and the scales never fall from the eyes of the deluded or the ignorant or the willfully blind or the just plain apathetic. We are in that moment of parody now. Stephen Colbert has portrayed it for us all, in the "real world," not safely inside a TV studio in front of a TV lens, with all the distancing that setting implies and applies. He has carried it out into the arena of the "grown ups," and shown them what they really are.

But no one recognized themselves in the mirror. No one accepted the parody as the final representation of reality, as the guarantee that this development has outlived itself," because it is an "infinitely correcting moment," and that means it never has to come to a conclusion. Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends/We're so glad you could attend, step inside, step inside.... But it is also in that infinitely correcting moment that irony strikes, and becayuse it is negative, irony is infinitely dangerous:

As irony conquers everything by seeing its disproportion to the Idea, so it also succumbs to itself, since it consistently goes beyond itself while remaining in itself.

Think of the worm Ouroboros, eating its tail. But in this conception, the worm manages to take the last swallow, and the world disappears.

Irony is always negative, and can sound no positive. Consider Swift. In all of Gullivers' Travels, the most rational and peaceful creatures he meets, are the Hounhyms, the intelligent horses, and Gulliver's despair is absolute when they reject him from their society. In "A Modest Proposal," Swift is clearly as disdainful of the Irish who suffer under the British system of absentee landlords, as he is of the British who literally feed on the flesh of the Irish. One has to remind oneself Swift was the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Still, here is S.K.'s description of what Swift may well have intended:

Irony may exhibit itself through a relation of opposition in a still more indirect fashion when it chooses the simplest and most limited human beings, not in order to mock them, but in order to mock the wise.

In all these instances irony exhibits itself most nearly as conceiving the world, as attempting to mystify the surrounding world not so much in order to conceal itself as to induce others to reveal themselves. But irony may also manifest itself when the ironist seeks to lead the outside world astray respecting himself. (268)

Swift in "A Modest Proposal." Colbert, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And here is the problem:

Irony...has no purpose, it's purpose is immanent in itself, a metaphysical purpose. The purpose is none other than irony itself. When an ironist exhibits himself as other than he actually is, it might seem that his purpose were to induce others to believe this. His actual purpose, however, is merely to feel free, and he is through irony.(273)

But is irony then, merely doubt? If I doubt, am I not free? No:

With doubt the subject constantly seeks to penetrate the object, and his misfortune consists in the fact that the object constantly eludes him. With irony, on the other hand, the subject is always seeking to get outside the object and this he attains by becoming conscious at every moment that the object has no reality. With doubt the subject is witness to a war of conquest in which every phenomenon is destroyed, because the essence always resides behind the phenomenon. But with irony the subject constantly retires from the field and proceeds to talk every phenomenon out of its reality in order to save himself, that is, in order to preserve himself in his negative independence of everything.
....
For irony everything becomes nothingness, but nothingness may be taken in several ways. The speculative nothingness is that which at every moment is vanishing for concretion, since it is itself the demand for the concrete...The mystical nothingness is a nothingness for representation, a nothingness which yet is as full of content as the silence of the night is eloquent for one who has ears to hear. Finally, the ironic nothingness is that deathly stillness in which irony returns to 'haunt and jest' (this last word taken wholly ambiguously.)(274-75)

This is not what the reporters object to, but it is what they should object to. Colbert was attacking "official Washington," which has come to include the White Houst Correspondents as much as it does the employees of the Federal Government. But was the attack fair? Or was it ultimately dangerous? No doubt it was necesary. But David Foster Wallace is wrong: Irony is not a "ground clearing." It is a clearing of the ground. It is a clearing of everything.

Although perhaps that is what our political discourse, at this point, needs.

Why Stephen Colbert is "Not Funny"

Froomkin

So let me tell you a bit about my night [at the White House Correspondents' Dinner]. After exchanging brief pointless smalltalk with Tony Snow, Dan Bartlett and even George Clooney at the Newsweek pre-dinner party, I repaired to the ballroom where I found myself sitting next to -- of all people -- Kristen Silverberg.

Now you may not know who Kristen Silverberg is, but I've been following her movement through Bush's inner circle for quite a while now. First she was a campaign worker, then a young aide in the chief of staff's office, then a high-level policy adviser.

....

In pretty much any other circumstance, if I had a chance to talk to Kristen Silverberg, I would grill her about Bush's plans for Iran, or about her mentor Karl Rove, or on the inner workings of the White House.

But here she was sitting next to me as the guest of a Washington Post White House correspondent, and it wouldn't have been appropriate. Not to mention, she's sweet as pie. Heck, I was pushing the limits of propriety by introducing her to everyone at the table this way: "She's John Bolton's boss!!!"

We ended up talking about Karl Rove, but only in the most general terms. I noted that she might be Rove's protege, but that -- according to my wife, at least -- Rove is my greatest muse. (He does seem to inspire some of my finer columns .)

As a result, Silverberg very kindly offered to introduce me to my muse. I said I couldn't possibly. She insisted. And next thing I knew we were over at table 54, chatting with Rove himself.

In person, Rove was charming. He looked genuinely confused when I told him that the headline of my Friday's column had been " Rove Worrier ," a reference to his possibly imminent indictment in the CIA leak investigation.

And in fact, he didn't look the least bit worried.

The conversation quickly turned to the fact that he adores Silverberg and thoroughly grills every one of her potential suitors.Of course, what I wanted to do was ask him: Why did he lie to journalists about not having been one of the people who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Robert Novak? What exactly did he tell the grand jury last week? How does he feel about getting kicked across the hall into a windowless office? (He's moving into Michael Gerson's old digs.) Is there any serious chance of a detente with the press?

But this was not the time. Instead, I went back to my table with Silverberg, still not talking about Iran.

And not only had I gotten nothing useful out of Rove -- but now I was beholden to Silverberg.

As luck would have it, I was able to wipe that particular slate clean in short order. Silverberg kept eyeing actor James Denton, the hunky plumber from "Desperate Housewives," who was sitting a few tables away. I went over and persuaded him to come say hello. Silverberg was thrilled. And I was off the hook.

But what value did any of this have to my readers? Not much.

Journalists covering the White House have a job, as Froomkin notes:

Ideally, every chance we get to talk to these people, we should be pumping them for information. And ideally we would be consistent in expressing our frustration with them -- not for personal reasons, not for partisan reasons, but because they're making it nearly impossible for us to do our job, which is to inform the public on what's going on in the White House and why.

The coziness of the dinner is a perfect example of what's gone wrong with access journalism. What's in it for the readers?

But it's not for the readers; it's for the journalists.

Which is why Stephen Colbert simply was not funny; but the President was.

May Day

According to Garrison Keillor:

Today is May Day, a celebration of the return of spring that goes back thousands of years in European traditions. Various May Day celebrations included the gathering of wildflowers and green branches, the weaving of floral garlands, and the setting up of a decorated May tree, or Maypole, around which people danced.

May Day never developed a Christian equivalent. In order to celebrate the holiday, workers had to stay home from work against their employers' wishes. It became known as a people's holiday, and in 1889, a congress of world Socialist parties held in Paris voted to choose May 1, 1890, as a day of demonstrations in favor of the eight-hour day.

While it is not an official holiday in America (as it is in many countries), the link between May Day and labor started in this country, with the Haymarket Riots.

And the reason for the riots? Workers were trying to establish an eight-hour work day. Most of those who rioted and were demanding this change in labor law were, by the way, immigrants. Not "illegal" immigrants, as that concept didn't exist in American law in the 19th century. But they were immigrants, and identified as such.

So when someone today worries that today's called boycott will do more harm than good, or erode some support for fair immigration laws, remember that people died to secure the concept of the 8 hour day.

And it started in Chicago; on May Day.

P.S. This is, if you didn't know, a recognized day by Congress. It is "Loyalty Day." I trust you are all being loyal Americans today. You can go here, to learn all you ever wanted to know about it. The irony is delicious.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall....

When Bush joked about WMD's in Iraq at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2004, the audience roared. Until the day after:

The audience at Wednesday's 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association obviously thought the quips hilarious - there were laughs all round - but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.

The "day after" started the night of the performance for Stephen Colbert:

Those seated near Bush told E&P's Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had quickly turned from an amused guest to an obviously offended target as Colbert’s comments brought up his low approval ratings and problems in Iraq.

Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.

“This was anti-Bush,” said one attendee. “Usually they go back and forth between us and him.” Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy. “You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert,” he reported.

After the gathering, Snow, while nursing a Heineken outside the Chicago Tribune reception, declined to comment on Colbert. “I’m not doing entertainment reviews,” he said. “I thought the president was great, though.”

Strupp, in the crowd during the Colbert routine, had observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting--or too much speaking "truthiness" (Colbert's made-up word) to power.

Lots of questions come to mind, such as: what were they expecting? Colbert was asked to speak because of "The Colbert Report," and that's exactly what he delivered:

Every night on my show, the Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.

Jesse Kornbluth got it right:

Colbert, God love him, goes much further. His is a high-wire act that could go down in flames at any moment. For he doesn't satirize our idiot government and gutless media, he becomes the biggest idiot of all. He's the true believer, the guy totally on message, the loyalist who would give his all for the Commander-in-Chief.

And he never breaks the character. Which is amazing. We're rolling on the floor, wetting our pants, weeping with laughter, and he's still hammering home views that make Hannity and O'Reilly sound like moderates.

"Speaking truth to power," though? Is that what Colbert is doing? About that, I am not so sure. His life is not endangered by what he said; his employment is not threatened; his social status is not challenged. Speaking truth to power involves risk, real risk. It involves undercutting the very ground you stand on, in order to see if that is true or not, if your own position is merely one of privilege or blank acceptance, or if it can be relied on. In that sense, Colbert was not speaking truth to power: Colbert was merely holding up a mirror.

Great artists do that: they hold up a mirror that lets us see reality for what it is. The war paintings of Goya; "Guernica," by Picasso (the copy of which Colin Powell famously had covered at the UN before he would speak to the press there, after his infamous speech promoting war, which was nothing but lies. "Guernica" spoke truth to power, so power covered it up.) Shakespeare's plays. In fact, Shakespeare is an interesting example, closer to Colbert than any I can think of just now. No, Colbert is not Shakespeare; but Shakespeare never challenged the monarchy, the power structure of Elizabethan and then Jacobean England. He was always careful never to deny validity to the power of the monarchy. But he did show how that power could be abused: Macbeth, HHamlet, especially King Lear. He was careful to remove his observations in space and time, but what he said was true, nonetheless. But Shakespeare never challenged war, or the necessity of violence, or a rigidly hierarchical society. He held a mirror up, nothing more.

Stephen Colbert, in parody, reflected the thinking of the people in power in Washington, D.C., and the press corps which sycophantically "respect" them. John McCain is such a maverick he eats his salad with a spoon. And how far is this from reality?

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction.

Not far enough. Over two decades ago I read a critique of White House correspondents. Their days were spent waiting in small offices in the White House for an apperance by the Press Secretary: hours of tedium punctuated by "gaggles" and the occasional "press conference." But these men and women were the "elite" of the press corps. The role of "White House Correspondent" (in the days before cable news and 24 hour talking heads) was prestigious, of only because you were the guy on TV asking a question of the President. But why, the article asked, didn't these reporters act like reporters? Why didn't they go out and gather news, walk out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and interview the tourists from around the country, from around the world, and find out what people thought? Why did they wait for the Press Secretary to come and hand out the day's story to them?

The answer was obvious: beats working. "Make, announce, type." That one was obviously too shiny a mirror for the audience. But for the public?

Interestingly, Bush's comments [in 2004] were hardly controversial to the Beltway press corps, which seemed to write it off as harmlessly "self-deprecating" humor. Many of the press accounts the next day did not raise questions about Bush's humorous reference to his administration's bogus rationale for a war that has cost thousands of lives-- American and Iraqi. For the media, such humor was expected. "Well, every night we hear people on TV telling jokes about President Bush, but last night it was the president's turn to tell jokes about the president," CBS anchor Julie Chen explained (3/25/04), adding that "at least someone's making jokes about it other than the late-night talk show hosts."

CNN's American Morning show on March 25 provided a glimpse at the gulf between the media reaction and the public response to Bush's sense of humor. After playing some clips from Bush's speech, CNN anchor Bill Hemmer mentioned that "there was a slideshow shown a little later. Maybe we'll get to that later in our broadcast. There were some good funny lines in that, too."

But once CNN aired Bush's weapons jokes, its audience saw what the anchors and correspondents missed. CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien announced that the program was getting a surprisingly negative stream of emails from viewers, and asked Hemmer what the reaction at the dinner had been. He explained:

"I think the reception was pretty receptive, for lack of a better phrase. I can understand what you're hearing. There was a little rumbling about whether or not it was sensitive enough to the reality that we all know two and a half years later, also with the situation in Iraq as well. But overall, I think it was a speech that was given a way where the president tried to show a sense of humor, and I think, for the most part, it was taken that way." As the morning wore on, CNN co-anchor Jack Cafferty read numerous messages from outraged viewers, and characterized the reaction as "overwhelmingly" negative.

Will the public get the chance to react to Colbert? Peter Daou doesn't think so:

The AP's first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert's performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media.

Interesting thing about the Snow White story: part of the evil Queen's evil, is her vanity. She preens in front of that mirror. She is infatuated with her image of herself, and she wants the mirror to confirm it.

There's a lot of truthiness in that fairy tale.

Why I won't be seeing "United 93"

I heard of a news story this week where Mark Felt apparently told a journalist he couldn't remember saying the line "Follow the money" to Bob Woodward.

So far as I know, this account is right, and Felt in fact didn't say it. I've even heard (but cannot verify via Google) that Goldman admitted creating the line for the screenplay.

It isn't in Woodward and Bernstein's book. But it is conventional wisdom that: "This was one of the great phrases uttered by ‘Deep Throat’ to Bob Woodward back in the early 70s when the Watergate scandal was in full swing." Even journalists interviewing Felt seem to think it must be true.

Why? Because Americans get their history from movies. It's why we don't think cowboys rollerskated (one of the alleged "historical crimes" of "Heaven's Gate," althought it was historically accurate) or enjoyed Shakespeare (they did), or that all of Texas looks like either the California desert of the Davis Mountains of the Trans-Pecos region.

And that's why I have no interest in "United 93." Because all you really have to do to understand that film, is to follow the money.

"Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?"--Alanis Morissette

NYT:

A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said.

Administration officials have said they hope eventually to transfer or release many of the roughly 490 suspects now held at Guantánamo. As of February, military officials said, the Pentagon was ready to repatriate more than 150 of the detainees once arrangements could be made with their home countries.

But those arrangements have been more difficult to broker than officials in Washington anticipated or have previously acknowledged, raising questions about how quickly the administration can meet its goal of scaling back detention operations at Guantánamo.

"The Pentagon has no plans to release any detainees in the immediate future," said a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon of the Navy. He said the negotiations with foreign governments "have proven to be a complex, time-consuming and difficult process."

The military has so far sent home 267 detainees from Guantánamo after finding that they had no further intelligence value and either posed no long-term security threat or would reliably be imprisoned or monitored by their own governments. Most of those who remain are considered more dangerous militants; many also come from nations with poor human rights records and ineffective justice systems.

But Washington's insistence on humane treatment for the detainees in their native countries comes after years in which Guantánamo has been assailed as a symbol of American abuse and hypocrisy — a fact not lost on the governments with which the United States is now negotiating.

"It is kind of ironic that the U.S. government is placing conditions on other countries that it would not follow itself in Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib," said a Middle Eastern diplomat from one of the countries involved in the talks. He asked not to be named to avoid criticizing the United States in the name of his government.

Yes, isn't it?

The Machine Stops

I can do things, here, that Forster never dreamt of. But then, Forster knew things that I've never dreamt of.

It is a dangerous thing to read. In E.M. Forster's one science fiction story, "The Machine Stops," he imagines a world much like Clifford Simak's "Huddling Place," where humans communicate via technology and, having lost almost all taste and expectation of human contact, come to abhor movement out of their comfortable, isolated "nest".* Communication, for Forster's imagined world, is through the Machine, by "visiplate," something that gives the image of the person, but not, of course, the person. We who are so used to TV and video cameras might even object to Forster's representation, but still there is something in it:

"...He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people--an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by manufacturers of
artificial fruit. Something 'good enough' had long since been accepted by our race."

Now you will say we have already avoided that fate; that we have turned from artificial food more and more to organic; but that misses the point, doesn't it? Isn't the Machine precisely how we know the world now? I am listening to an operatic singer I couldn't possibly hear live, certainly not at my convenience. But do I get the nuances of expression, of the music itself? No one who has heard a live performance would think so. The "imponderable bloom" of the live act (pace Glenn Gould) is undeniable. What the Machine gives me is only a general idea, really; and one that is good enough, for all practical purposes. (Not coincidentally, in the story Vashti shows all the signs of worshipping the Machine, even as she protests that "All fear and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed by the Machine." Echoes of the future are everywhere, it seems.)

The same is true for cell phones, for TV, for telephones; and we accept it. But the same is also true for blogs, for comments, for the Internet. This is only the general idea of who I am, what I have to say, what I think is worth sharing. And is that good enough, for all practical purposes? Is that enough to affect the world?

Jesus, it is often noted by skeptics, didn't write anything down. It is true; and it is a virtue. Jesus left nothing to the intermediate medium of writing (a redundancy, of course, but we have so far come to regard writing that we overlook the original meaning of the second term; pace Derrida). Jesus preferred the imponderable bloom that is the essence of social intercourse, of human intercourse, even of human existence. There is much to be said for the dry humor of Jesus; for the barbed wit, the twinkle in his eye (I imagine it especially as he looks at Simon the Pharisee and asks his first fateful question); the anger in his voice in the Temple. Such things are barely captured on paper by the best of writers, and even then are overlooked by subsequent generations, subsequent cultures. We who come so long after the premiere of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can't imagine the shock those rhythmic cords had in 19th century Vienna. How much less, then, can we capture through writing what one person said to another, what one person is saying to another now?

Especially writing as flat and soundless and disembodied as that which we find on the Internet? Even the good stuff is mostly shock and awe and pyrotechnics, and oddly reminiscent of the "cousins" and the "conversations" Montag's wife has with her video screens in Fahrenheit 451. It is meant to stir rather than inform, to incite rather than provide insight, to confirm rather than confront.

Is that because we've lost the "imponderable bloom," and are seeking a simulacrum? Is it because, as George Bush once famously said, "We don't do 'nuance' in Texas"? And now, thanks to the uniter (who is not a divider) of left blogistan, we are all Texans?

*Yes, I've already realized these ideas are not entirely original; Google and the Internet are great humblers.

It is good to teach poetry

I had forgotten just how insightful and relevant this poem still is:

September 1, 1939, by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame

What has changed since 9/11? Our blind skyscrapers used their full height to proclaim the strength of Economic Man. The fort assumed the furniture of home, until we were forced to see where we are: "Lost in a haunted wood,/Children afraid of the night/Who have never been happy or good." We didn't like that, so we struck out at Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and soon Iran. Our "accurate scholarship" was called on to unearth the "whole offence," but we carefully kept our part in the story away from our own eyes. We still clearly and so painfully crave what we cannot have: not universal love, but to be loved alone. There's the whole sum of the consumer culture we have created, which we pursue with all the energy we can muster, which we must pursue, or we will simply die.

Or so we tell ourselves; and never consider the lives of people who live by a different culture, a different standard, or that our economic model is only 4 centuries old, and is neither the pinnacle nor the purpose of human existence. We still prefer the lie of Authority. And we still have only a voice, to undo that folded lie.

And we can still only hope to show an affirming flame.

Unstoppable force?

I and the public know
What all school children learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.--W.H. Auden

Sec. Rumsfeld says:

``We need to put Iraq and Afghanistan in that context so that those people in our country who are deeply concerned about Iran, which is understandable, recognize that success in Afghanistan and success in Iraq is critical to containing the extreme impulses that we see emanating from Iran,'' Rumsfeld said according a transcript released by the Department of Defense.

And this:

In an interview on the Pentagon's internal television channel Rumsfeld said those who believe the cost of the war in Iraq is too high should consider how failure would ``advance'' the cause of the Iranian government, which the U.S. says is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

So, in the interest of providing context, I found this at Harpers.org. Bunker busters would be the weapon of choice in this battle, since we don't have the boots on the ground to invade Iran. But apparently "bunker busters" are another chimerical idea that keeps running into the immovable object of the physical universe:

The Defense Department’s Nuclear Posture Review for 2001 laments that the B61-11 “cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities are located.” This is a generous analysis: the “terrain” referred to is the hard rock under which valuable targets are almost always buried. When dropped from a height of 40,000 feet, the B61-11 was able to penetrate three meters at most into the Alaskan tundra, and not at all into hard rock (that is, without self-destructing).

The inadequacy of the B61-11 is due not to a particularly poor construction but rather to the basic limitations of bomb-making steel. In the test drops performed in Alaska, the B61-11 reached roughly 300 meters per second at impact. In order to penetrate reinforced concrete, it would need to be traveling at approximately 500 meters per second. At around 900 meters per second, the shock wave generated by the missile’s slamming into the ground will deform it severely; at 1,200 meters per second, the missile will in most cases break into pieces. To penetrate granite—ubiquitous in mountainous bunkers, and believed to be common above any truly valuable bunker—a penetrator would have to attain upward of 3,000 meters per second, at which speed it would certainly be crushed. Robert Nelson of Princeton University has demonstrated that because of the limitations imposed by the yield strength of the steel used in casings, no bunker buster can ever go fast enough to penetrate reinforced concrete deeper than five times its length without destroying itself in the process; and even this number is too high for any real-world scenario. What is more, the length of the bomb cannot be increased much, for two reasons: there are no aircraft capable of carrying a weapon much longer than the ones that are currently deployed; and as length increases, so does the tendency of the bomb to snap in two on impact.

I especially like the image of the bunker buster skipping across the ground like a rock skimmed over a pond. And then imagine it with a nuclear warhead:

The most stubborn part of the fantasy is that a “low-yield” bunker buster could be employed as a “clean” nuclear weapon, whose explosion and fallout would be contained underground. This aspiration is most explicitly laid out in a report from the Defense Department Science Board entitled “Future Strategic Strike Forces,” which imagines that “[p]enetration [by a nuclear bunker-buster] to a depth of 50 to 55 meters would enable disablement of 100-meter-deep underground facilities by contained 400-ton explosions.” Let us, for the moment, forget the fact that 50 meters is more than twice the depth it is physically possible for any penetrator, real or idealized, to burrow into rock. According to the government’s own guidelines, drawn up during the decades in which it tested nuclear weapons under the Nevada desert, a 400-ton explosion would have to occur a full 600 meters underground in order to be “contained.” These guidelines also stipulate a carefully sealed burial shaft to contain the blast, not a maw. Even the B61-11, at its current, inadequate impact speeds, does not burrow a clean rabbit-hole in the ground but rather kicks up a crater like a meteorite; any faster-moving penetrator would do so to a still greater degree.

Even supposing that the missile’s point of entry were miraculously neat, a nuclear blast at the depths a real missile could attain would invariably breach the surface of the earth, expelling a hot fallout cloud in what is known as a “base surge.” Base surges are more dangerous than traditional fallout clouds because they are more toxic, containing irradiated particles of dirt and rock. They also spread more quickly, sweeping across the surface of the earth in every direction, outward rather than upward. Bunkers are usually built in urban areas, so many thousands of deaths would be a virtual certainty. Even a 1-kiloton bunker buster—a relative firecracker, with a tiny fraction of the explosive power of the high-yield RNEP—detonated at fifty feet underground could eject about 1,000,000 cubic meters of radioactive soil.

The article ends noting that, during the Cold War, it became apparent that nuclear weapons could never be used, and existed only as a deterrent. That was the grim logic of Mutually Assured Destruction. But now?

Deterrence remains the government’s public justification for building more nuclear weapons, but the term has undergone semantic drift. What today is passed off as deterrence by proponents of low-yield bunker busters and the RNEP is not, as it once was, the demonstrable ability of nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear war but the unproven power of unworkable weapons to bully other countries into abjuring any action at all deemed offensive by the United States.

And the easily anticipated result in international affairs?

If we are developing nuclear weapons that our government says we might use, there is no incentive for smaller countries not to go after their own weapons as quickly and quietly as possible—down in the very bunkers we are unable to destroy.

This article was published in December, 2004. Zbigniew Brzezinski published his thoughts on the invasion of Iran more recently (but, tellingly, in the International Herald Tribune, not a U.S. daily), and while the highlight would seem to be the unconstitutional nature of such an action, this is probably the more realistic brake:

3. Oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians cut their production and seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oil fields. The world economy would be severely impacted, with America blamed for it. Note that oil prices have already shot above $70 per barrel, in part because of fears of a U.S./Iran clash.

But here's the real issue:

2. Likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing U.S. difficulties in Iraq and in Afghanistan, perhaps precipitate new violence by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in all probability cause the United States to become bogged down in regional violence for a decade or more to come. Iran is a country of some 70 million people and a conflict with it would make the misadventure in Iraq look trivial.

And the solution is really quite simple:

The choice is either to be stampeded into a reckless adventure profoundly damaging to long-term U.S. national interests or to become serious about giving negotiations with Iran a genuine chance to be productive. The mullahs were on the skids several years ago but were given a new burst of life by the intensifying confrontation with the United States.

The U.S. strategic goal, pursued by real negotiations and not by posturing, should be to separate Iranian nationalism from religious fundamentalism. Treating Iran with respect and within a historical perspective would help to advance that objective.

Sadly, though, this White House doesn't seem to "do" history.

So we turn to the Congress. Can we have the discussion now about Sy Hersh's story? Please?

Why "the peace of God, it is no peace..."

Wendell Berry:

Here is the other question that I have been leading toward, one that the predicament of modern warfare forces upon us: How many deaths of other people’s children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question I answer: None. Please, no children. Don’t kill any children for my benefit.

If that is your answer too, then you must know that we have not come to rest, far from it. For surely we must feel ourselves swarmed about with more questions that are urgent, personal, and intimidating. But perhaps also we feel ourselves beginning to be free, facing at last in our own selves the greatest challenge ever laid before us, the most comprehensive vision of human progress, the best advice, and the least obeyed:

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

The Peace of God, it is no Peace

This started here, and traveled here, and now comes back here.

But first, I see I've been here before, and more than once. Isn't Google wonderful? I went looking for this old hymn, to be sure I had the words right, and I found instead two earlier posts with the same title; different subjects, and not the subject now, but the same title. Which means either I am in a rut, or that “I know nothing except what everyone knows—if there when grace dances, I should dance.”(Auden) Lying on the couch suffering a 24 hour bug yesterday (and the day AMC runs a Godfather marathon! I am surfeited with operatic American crime stories now, or nearly so) I got to see most of Anthony Quinn's turn as "Zorba the Greek." Like Zorba's "Boss," I wonder now how much good books are, and think maybe I should learn to dance.

But that, too, is another matter. Maybe the words of that hymn are worth thinking about first:

They cast their nets in Galilee just off the hills of brown;
such happy, simple fisherfolk before the Lord came down.

Contented, peaceful fishermen, before they ever knew
the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful and broke them too.

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net, headdown was crucified.

The peace of God it is not peace, but strife closed in the sod,
Yet let us pray for just one thing--the marvelous peace of God.

William Alexander Percy (alt.)

Not words welcome in Left Blogistan, or among most Christians. We all want peace; and we want it now; and we want it on our terms. We want it to be an economic transaction: we pay our dues, meet the price, and the reward is greater than our investment. That's what we expect from our stocks and bonds and bank accounts; why shouldn't we get the same arrangement from God?

The Archbishop said it best to Michael Corleone, in the Vatican. Standing by a fountain, he said "This rock has been in the water a long time. Yet the water has not penetrated it." He then bent down, retrieved the rock from the water, broke it open, and said: "You see. It is dry at the heart. Men in Europe have been surrounded by Christianity for centuries. And yet it has not penetrated." And shortly after that, Michael Corleone made his confession. But it is the truth: all of western culture has been surrounded by Christianity for centuries. But it has not penetrated. Perhaps because the peace of God we seek, is not the peace of God which is offered. Perhaps because Zorba is right: if books can't tell us why the good die young (he says this just after a young widow, having spent the night with the Englishman, the "Boss" of Zorba's acquaintance, has her throat slit in public for being an adultress and bringing shame on the village), then what good are they?

"Boss" doesn't have a good answer.

But I said this was a response to Phila: and here is that part; appropriately, from a book.

"In one of his Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History Jan Patocka relates secrecy, or more precisely the mystery of the sacred, to responsibility. He opposes one to the other; or rather underscores their heterogeneity. Somewhat in the manner of Levinas he warns against an experience of the sacred as an enthusiasm or fervor for fusion, cautioning in particular against a form of demonic rapture that has as its effect, and often as its first intention, the removal of responsibility, the loss of the sense or consciousness of responsibility. At the same time Patocka wants to distinguish religion from the demonic form of sacralization. What is a religion? Religion presumes access to the responsibility of a free self. It thus implies breaking with this type of secrecy (for it is not of course the only one), that associated with sacred mystery and with what Patoeka regularly calls the demonic. A distinction is to be made between the demonic on the one hand (that which confuses the limits among the animal, the human, and. the divine, and which retains an affinity with mystery, the initiatory, the esoteric, the secret or the sacred) and responsibility on the other. This therefore amounts to a thesis on the origin and essence of the religious.

"Under what conditions can one speak of a religion, in the proper sense of the term, if such a thing exists? Under what conditions can we speak of a history of religion, and first and foremost of the Christian religion? In noting that Patocka refers only to the example of his own religion I do not seek to denounce an omission or establish the guilt of a failure to develop a comparative analysis. On the contrary, it seems necessary to reinforce the coherence of a way of thinking that takes into account the event of Christian mystery as an absolute singularity, a religion par excellence and an irreducible condition for a joint history of the subject, responsibility, and Europe. That is so even if, here and there, the expression "history of religions" appears in the plural, and even if one can only infer from this plural a reference to Judaic, Islamic, and Christian religions alone, those known as religions of the Book.

"According to Patocka one can speak of religion only after the demonic secret, and the orgiastic sacred, have been surpassed. We should let that term retain its essential ambiguity. In the proper sense of the word, religion exists once the secret of the sacred, orgiastic, or demonic mystery has been, if not destroyed, at least integrated, and finally subjected to the sphere of responsibility. The subject of responsibility will be the subject that has managed to make orgiastic or demonic mystery subject to itself; and has done that in order to freely subject itself to the wholly and infinite other that sees without being seen. Religion is responsibility or it is nothing at all. Its history derives its sense entirely from the idea of a passage to responsibility. Such a passage involves traversing or enduring the test by means of which the ethical conscience will be delivered of the demonic, the mystagogic and the enthusiastic, of the initiatory and the esoteric. In the authentic sense of the word, religion comes into being the moment that the experience of responsibility extracts itself from that form of secrecy called demonic mystery.

"Since the concept of the daimon crosses the boundaries separat-ing the human, the animal, and the divine, one will not be surprised to see Patocka recognizing in it a dimension that is essentially that of sexual desire. In what respect does this demonic mystery of desire involve us in a history of responsibility, more precisely in history as responsibility?

" 'The demonic is to be related to responsibility; in the beginning such a relation did not exist.' In other words, the demonic is originally defined as irresponsibility, or, if one wishes, as nonresponsibility. It belongs to a space in which there has not yet resounded the injunction to respond; a space in which one does not yet hear the call to explain onself, one's actions or one's thoughts, to respond to the other and answer for oneself before the other. The genesis of responsibility that Patocka proposes will not simply describe a history of religion or religiousness. It will be combined with a genealogy of the subject who says "myself," the subject's relation to itself as an instance of liberty, singularity, and responsibility, the relation to self as being before the other: the other in its relation to infinite alterity, one who regards without being seen but also whose infinite goodness gives in an experience that amounts to a gift of death. Let us for the moment leave that expression in all its ambiguity.

"Since this genealogy is also a history of sexuality, it follows the traces of a genius of Christianity that is the history of Europe. For at the center of Patocka's essay the stakes are clearly defined as follows: how to interpret "the birth of Europe in the modern sense of the term"? How to conceive of "the expansion of Europe" before and after the Crusades? More radically still, what is it that ails "modern civilization" inasmuch as it is European? Not that it suffers from a particular fault or from a particular form of blindness. Rather, why does it suffer from ignorance of its history, from a failure to assume its responsibility, that is, the memory of its history as history of responsibility?"

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995), pp. 1-4.

Let me first say you will search the work of Daniel Dennett in vain for any reference to Derrida, Petocka, or any other serious reflection on the philosophy of religion. Certainly his idea of the 'demonic' would be as mythological and superstitious (and so useless) as that of anyone sitting in a pew, or anyone who refuses to sit in a pew. So let this passage stand as the final flicking away of the uselessness of thoughts like Dennet's in any discussion of religion, for believers and non-believers alike.

So, Zorba and the Boss represent religion; if you will. Zorba is the wild, the irresponsible, in some ways (to the "Boss") the demonic. Certainly he almost refuses to be responsible for his actions; he curses the "Boss" at the end, when the old French woman in the village comes to Zorba and insists they be married. "What have you done to me?", he asks the Englishman. Bu that is just the beginning of the struggle; and the story ends with Zorba teaching the Englishman to dance. "In the proper sense of the word, religion exists once the secret of the sacred, orgiastic, or demonic mystery has been, if not destroyed, at least integrated, and finally subjected to the sphere of responsibility."

It is equally worth noting that America has its ahistorical perspective, but, says Derrida, so does Europe. The two conditions do not at all appear alike, but they stem from the same root. Twain would never use the language of Derrida, but his critique of 19th century American imperialism is grounded in the same understanding of the importance of responsibility, and of taking responsiblity.

With any luck Blogger will publish this much today, and we can continue to mine this vein further.

The Fish Continues to Rot from the Head

Or, why I am not terribly excited by what Harry Reid said. As the topic was discussed on Democracy Now!:

"The Issue is Not Whether the Military Option Would Be Used But Who Approved the Start of Operations Already"

Amy Goodman interviewed retired Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner.

COL. SAM GARDINER: Well, the evidence is beginning to accumulate that a decision has already been made to use military force in Iran. Now, let me do a historical thing, and then I'll tell you what the current evidence is. We now know that the decision and the actual actions to bomb Iraq occurred in July of 2002, before we ever had a U.N. resolution or before the Congress ever authorized it. It was an operation called Southern Focus, and the only guidance that the military -- or the guidance that the military had from Rumsfeld was keep it below the CNN line. His specific words. The evidence that we've already --

AMY GOODMAN: Keep it below what?

COL. SAM GARDINER: The CNN line. In other words, I don't want this to appear on CNN, okay? That was his guidance to the military, you can begin to bomb Iraq, but don't let it appear on CNN. You're catching your breath.

AMY GOODMAN: Yeah.

And then he lays it out, very simply, very neatly: we are at war, again.

COL. SAM GARDINER: I think the same thing has happened, and the evidence -- let me give you two or three evidences. First of all, the Iranians in their press have been writing now for almost a year that the United States is involved inside Iran conducting and supporting those who conduct military operations, attacks on military convoys. They've even accused the United States of shooting down a couple airplanes inside Iran. Okay, so there's that evidence from their side.

I was in Berlin three weeks ago, sat next to the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and I asked him a question. I read these stories about Americans being involved in there, and how do you react to that? And he said, oh, we know they are. We've captured people who are working with them, and they've confessed. So, another piece of evidence.

Let me give you a couple more. Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker article, said that there are Americans in three locations operating inside Iran. Another point. We know that there is a group in Iraq, a Kurdish group called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, that crosses the border from Iraq into Iran, and they have taken credit for killing numbers of revolutionary guard military people. And the interesting part about that is, you know, we tell the Syrians, ‘Don't let that happen. Don't let people come across the border and stir things up in Iraq,’ but we don't seem to be putting any brakes on on this unit. So, you know, the evidence is pretty strong that the pattern is being followed.

Now, the question that really follows from that is “Who authorized that?” See, there is no congressional authorization to conduct combat operations against Iran. There are a couple of possibilities. One of them is that it's being justified under the terrorism authorization that occurred in 2001. The problem with that is that you would have to prove a connection to 9/11. I don't think you can do that with Iran. The second possibility is that it's being done under the War Powers Act. I don't want to get too technical, but the War Powers Act would require the President to notify the Congress 60 days after the use of military force or invasion or putting military forces in a new country under that legislation, and the President hasn't notified the Congress that American troops are operating inside Iran. So it's a very serious question about the constitutional framework under which we are now conducting military operations in Iran.

So, to Sen. Reid, I want to ask: have we taken the military option away from this Administration? And do we have any choice but to do so?

Why I don't read Texas Monthly

For some reason I can't resist comment on this profile of Tom DeLay in Texas Monthly. It is typical of the mendacity of Texas Monthly, which never bites the hand in power: even as it critiques DeLay for his excesses, it attempts to "analyze" the politics of the race for the 22nd Congressional district by getting all the facts wrong, or simply ignoring them.

For example:

A special election to fill the rest of DeLay’s term, which expires in January, would have helped Lampson. The Republican vote would have split among several candidates, allowing Lampson to win—which is why Governor Perry chose to leave the seat vacant for now. The GOP nominee on the November ballot will be chosen by the method Eric Thode explained to DeLay’s staffer: The county chairs of the district’s four counties, along with one precinct chair from each county, will choose the nominee. If this were an ordinary Republican primary, the front-runners would be David Wallace, the mayor of Sugar Land, and Robert Eckels, a former state legislator who is now county judge of Harris County. But only eight votes matter, so anything could happen. For example, there has already been some discussion of the three non-Houston counties ganging up on the big city. Thode told me on the night DeLay quit that he expected the county chairs to meet fairly soon so that the chosen candidate could start campaigning.

Start at the top of that paragraph, and work your way down. A special election is required under Art. I, sec. 2, of the U.S. Constitution. Whether Perry can refuse to call one is an open question. It depends, just now, on when DeLay actually resigns. Which he hasn't done yet.

He's only announced that he will resign. Soon.

I don't know how much of a vacuum the courts have permitted in such situations; i.e., how far away from a regular election will the courts decide a special election is unnecessary? This is a key issue, because many factors, as I said before, are in play just now:

1) DeLay needs to resign in order to get his name off the ballot and to allow the GOP in Texas to replace him on the ballot. As the Texas Monthly article indicates, DeLay is no lawyer and apparently doesn't keep one on his staff. The article opens with a DeLay staff member calling the Fort Bend County GOP Chairman to ask about the procedure for replacing Delay on the ballot three months before he announced his resignation. Or rather, his intention to resign. As I say, he hasn't resigned yet.

2) If he doesn't resign within the right time frame, there could be a legal battle to keep his name on the ballot, something the Texas Monthly analysis never even considers.

3) There could also be a legal battle to force a special election. If DeLay leaves office close enough to November to obviate a special election (which Lampson, the Democrat, would probably win), is it too close under Texas law to get him off the ballot? And if he isn't off the ballot soon, how does another GOP member campaign for DeLay's seat?

Simple, obvious questions the article never even considers in its rush to declare the seat safely GOP. The article does a fairly good job of explaining DeLay's activities in the House, which were all and solely about accruing power. There is no law on the books with Tom DeLay's name on it (although there are many with his fingerprints deeply impressed into them). There is also no evidence that DeLay ever understood the law, except as a means of power. There is ample evidence DeLay still thinks that his will is law, or should be. As he said to Rush Limbaugh:

“No, there won’t be a special election,” .... “Texas has a law that there’s only two dates that you can have a special election, November and May, and this weekend the deadline for the May special election will have passed.”

I really don't know where he got that information, because he's just flat wrong. And the requirement for a special election is in the U.S. Constitution, which would overrule Texas law on this point, anyway. As Reuters reported:

An election could be held between May 13 and the November 7 vote if the governor, a Republican, wants it, but Perry's comment appeared to rule that out and raise the possibility the congressional seat could be empty for a while.

If the regular and special election are held on the same day, and there are two different winners, the winner of the special election would serve only until the winner of the regular election is sworn in January 2007.

Again, no mention of this in the Texas Monthly article.

And note, finally, that this e-mail from Fort Bend GOP chairman Thode was quoted by Fort Bend Now on April 5:

DeLay’s resignation “will lead the governor to declare the seat vacant and either set a special election or leave the seat vacant for the remainder of the term ending December 31,” Fort Bend County Republican Party Chairman Eric Thode said in an email to party faithful on Wednesday. “If one is called, the special election should have NO impact on how the place on the ballot gets filled. In fact, I would argue that it could impair the Republican Party in November.”

Somehow, though, that very partisan information didn't make it into the Texas Monthly article.

Gee, wonder why not?

Addendum: Burka writes:

But DeLay’s fall is not a tragedy, for he was not a victim of fate. He has no one to blame but himself.

This, of course, has nothing to do with tragedy. In fact, the great tragic heroes, like Oedipus, Creon in Antigone, or Lear, all fall from self-inflicted wounds. No, the reason DeLay is not a tragic figure is that he is not in the least sympathetic. No one bemoans his fall; most rational people cheer it.

DeLay has all the required elements of a tragic hero: a man of great power and influence, matched (and attained by )great hubris, which of course is his hamartia. He suffers not only a reversal of fortune, but a reversal of intention as well. And why? As Burka points out, the wounds are all self-inflicted. Even Burka can't quite see that DeLay's sins more than outweigh DeLay being "one of the ablest politicians of our time and an essential benefactor to his region and his state."

Burka inadvertently sums up DeLay's tenure in the midst of trying to point out that "everybody does it": "He didn’t care how blatant he came across, as long as he got the money." And that's precisely why DeLay is not a tragic figure. Not because his wounds were self-inflicted (they were); not because "everybody does it" (they do, but practice does not make illegal acts legal, or ethical); and not because DeLay is being attacked by a Democrat District Attorney.

It's because Tom DeLay generates about as much sympathy as the bugs he used to exterminate. And he seems to like it that way. It's because DeLay has absolutely no interest in the common good, and is only interested in what serves Tom DeLay, which is why he still hasn't resigned. Tragic heroes like Oedipus and Lear and Creon suffered because their hubris blinded them to the effects of their actions on the common good, and their punishment was just because of their selfishness. What is missing from politics today is precisely what DeLay lacked and Burka derides: a sense of the common good, of the public interest, that corrects and controls excesses. DeLay still doesn't understand that; and Paul Burka still doesn't understand that.

But if politics is to be redeemed, it will have to find that sense of common purpose, and place it at the center of political action again. Otherwise there is no hope, and no reason to hope; not for politics, at least.

"My death; is it possible?"--Jacques Derrida

I recognize some who come here regularly have a more personal relationship with death than they might like, but I still found this article significant for what it says now about our very human reactions to what Wittgenstein called "the one experience of life that is not lived through."

"The mausoleum says, 'I'm really significant in this world, I think I'm really significant to my family,' and this is one way to communicate that to the community," said Nancy Lohman, an owner along with her husband, Lowell, of this and several dozen other Florida cemeteries and funeral homes.

Mr. Peck, 87, an Atlanta native with a sonorous voice and a laconic manner, framed a similar thought more modestly. "It began to occur to me that I did not want to be in the ground covered with weeds and whatnot and totally forgotten," he said. "I don't like the idea of dirt being dumped on me."

Six feet up and not six feet under is increasingly the direction in which people want their remains stored when they die, representatives of the funeral industry say. In addition to custom single-family mausoleums, community mausoleums for both coffins and cremated remains are also gaining popularity; in classical or contemporary styles, these often have room to hold hundreds of niches for coffins or urns.

The Cold Spring Granite Company, among the country's largest makers of cemetery monuments, sold 2,000 private mausoleums last year, up from about 65 during a good year in the 1980's. Prices range from $250,000 to "well into the millions," said Michael T. Baklarz, a vice president of the company.

The development is perhaps logically to be expected of those at the leading edge of the baby boom generation, which forms the bulk of the market. The progression seems natural for the folks who gave the world blocklong, gas-hogging sport utility vehicles and lot-hogging 40,000-square-foot suburban homes.

"It's in keeping with the McMansion mentality of boomers," said Thomas Lynch, an author and funeral director in Michigan. "Real estate is an extension of personhood."

The market for the custom structures is greatest on the coasts, although exclusive estate sections have recently been set aside for private mausoleums at cemeteries in Atlanta, Cleveland and Minneapolis.

Some mausoleums echo the temple of the goddess Fortuna Virilis in Rome. Some are hefty, rusticated stone barns. Some have more square footage than a good-size Manhattan studio apartment, their interiors fitted out with hand-knotted carpets, upholstered benches and nooks for the display of memorabilia. In late 2004, a Southern California family ordered a mausoleum with room for 12 coffins, 20 cremation niches and a patterned marble vestibule.

Several observations can be made at this point, but perhaps the most poignant is: of all the places no one in modern society wants to go except under duress or extreme need, my observation is that the hospital ranks second; the graveyard ranks first.

At one time graveyards were next to, if not surrounding, churches. The graveyard was the churchyard. And the church, of course, was the center of the community. But even the church I served that had a family graveyard which had been open for over a century, ignored it. Some years before I became pastor of the church, the Boy Scout Troop the church sponsored cleaned up the graveyard as one boy's Eagle Scout project. Years later, people still told me how overgrown it had been. But nobody in the church had cared, despite the fact their families were buried there (albeit relatives, for the most part, not mothers, fathers, siblings). And even elderly children grow tired of tending private cemeteries (I know of at least one here in Houston, in a parking lot that was a family farm only 50 years ago; within my lifetime, in other words). The sad truth is that when the dead are gone, the living soon stop remembering them.

It wasn't always that way, and it doesn't have to be that way. Memorial Day was once "Decoration Day." People went to the graveyards for picnics, to dine among the dead, family and friends and relatives. Death then occurred in the front room, and burial was a quick matter. Now I know people who don't even want the funeral of their loved ones in their church; they want the idea of death to be kept carefully circumscribed from their life. Which, given our longer lives, may be a good thing. But death, like illness, is something we try to keep away from our daily lives as much as possible. We go to cemeteries for graveside services, and even then only if it is close family, and even then are glad the service is brief. And we hardly ever go back. So who is going to tend a mausoleum with carpets and displays and comfortable benches?

The denial of death is not peculiarly American; and it isn't a unique property of baby-boomers to want to leave something to posterity. But it is a function of money, and of the illusion that money and power can be used to work our will irrevocably on the world.

But who can say how we will face the end? I have tried to recognize that I won't go underground, that the premature burial that so plagued Poe and 19th century America (and was a reality, as the comatose were mistaken for corpses) won't be a reality, and what is buried won't be aware of its burial. I would prefer to be cremated, and my ashed kept in a shoebox in my daughter's desk. But when the time comes, might I prefer a mausoleum to my accomplishments? Might I wonder, to the end, if my death is really possible?

Who Watches the Watchers?

Just to disagree with Atrios, I suppose: aside from the obvious point, which is that active duty generals will soon find themselves retired if they complain about the civilian leadership, there is an important and fundamental question here:

Should the retired generals criticize the civilian government?

Richard Holbrooke considers the question, and concludes with this rather ominous forecast:

That first White House reaction will not be the end of the story. If more angry generals emerge -- and they will -- if some of them are on active duty, as seems probable; if the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan does not turn around (and there is little reason to think it will, alas), then this storm will continue until finally it consumes not only Donald Rumsfeld. The only question is: Will it come so late that there is no longer any hope of salvaging something in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I think it may actually be worse than that.

Generals both retired and active duty have been concerned that criticism is even being raised, because the American tradition is that the military should not question the civilians.

But neither should the civilians be allowed to wrap themslves in the flag of "Support our Troops" while doing precisely the opposite. The problem here is partly an issue of who runs the military, but more profoundly an issue of: why do we have a standing army?

The standing army is the legacy of WWII, and the reason Eisenhower spoke about the "military-industrial complex." It is, IOW, a new thing in American history. We had military forces, but even some of the the forces in WWI were the "Expeditionary Force" (sounds almost romantic, doesn't it? Like the "Foreign Legion.")(was that even the whole army?). We geared up an entirely civilian force in WWII in record time, and outproduced the war machines of Germany and Japan to win that war. It was an amazing feat.

And today, we are a muscle-bound giant, helpless in our power, still beset by the conviction that with the right attitude ("Support our Troops!") we could win any conflict. "Win," of course, meaning end it like WWII ended.

And this is all related to the issue of Iraq and, as Holbrooke notes, to who is higher in the chain of command than SOD. Iraq is precisely what happens when you have a standing army (and nuclear weapons). Sooner or later, somebody just has to use it. And yet, if we are also invested in protecting it, well...what then? Who rules?

Easter Sermon Watch

The Archbishop said he knew that conspiracies have their appeal. "We have become so suspicious ... the first assumption we make is that ... we're faced with spin of some kind. So that the modern response to the proclamation 'Christ is Risen!' is likely to be, 'Ah, but you would say that, wouldn't you? Now what's the real agenda?'"

But the New Testament does not fit this model, Dr Williams says. In fact, he argues, it was revolutionary for its time. "It was written by people who, by writing what they did made themselves less powerful, not more ... it was written by people who were trying to find a language that would catch up with a reality bigger than they had expected."

The world is now full of Christians following the same risky and radical traditions - such as Abdul Rahman, the Christian convert threatened with death in Afghanistan, he adds. "If we want to know what it is about today, we need to turn to the people who are taking the same risks, struggling with the same mystery. We need to look at the martyrs and the mystics.

"There are places in our world where conversion to Christianity is literally a matter of putting your life on the line. We have all been following the story of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan and we know that his story is not unique. We can say with absolute certainty that whatever the gospel means in circumstances like that, it isn't a cover-up for the sake of the powerful."

I am less disturbed by these things than the Archbishop may be (I'd have to read his text first, to be sure), but he makes a good point, regardless.

Mark 16:1-8 (SV)

And when the sabbath day was over, Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so they could go and embalm him. And very early on the first day of the week they got to the tomb just as the sun was coming up. And they had been asking themselves, "Who will help us roll the stone away from the opening of the tomb?" Then they look up and discover that the stone has been rolled away! (For in fact the stone was very large.)

And when they went into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right, wearing a white robe, and they grew apprehensive.

He says to them, "Don't be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He was raised, he is not here! Look at the spot where they put him! But go and tell his disciples, including 'Rock,' he is going ahead of you to Galilee! There you will see him, just as he told you."

And once they got outside, they ran away from the tomb, because great fear and excitement got the better of them. And they didn't breathe a word of it to anyone: talk about terrified. . .

LACHRIMAE AMANTIS, Geoffrey Hill

What is there in my heart
that you should sue so fiercely for its love?
What kind of care brings you
as though a stranger to my door
through the long night and in the icy dew

seeking the heart that will not harbor you,
that keeps itself religiously secure?
At this dark solstice filled with frost and fire
your passion's ancient wounds must bleed anew.

So many nights the angel of my house
has fed such urgent comfort through a dream,
whispered "your lord is coming, he is close"

that I have drowsed half-faithful for a time
bathed in pure tones of promise and remorse:
"tomorrow I shall wake to welcome him."

Paul Tillich

"The stories of the crucifixion the agony and the death of Jesus are connected with a group of events in nature: Darkness covers the land; the curtain of the temple is torn in two; the earth is shaken and the bodies of the saints rise out of their graves. Nature, with trembling, participates in the decisive event of history.

"The sun veils its head; the temple makes the gesture of mourning; the foundations of the earth are moved; the tombs are opened. Nature is in an uproar because something is happening which concerns the universe.

"Since the time of the evangelists, wherever the story of Golgotha has been told as the turning event in the world-drama of salvation, the role nature played in this drama has also been told. Painters of the crucifixion have used all their artistic power to express the darkness over the land in almost unnatural colors. I remember my own earliest impression of Good Friday - the feeling of the mystery of the divine suffering, first of all, through the compassion of nature. And so did the centurion, the first pagan who witnessed for the Crucified. Filled with awe, with numinous dread, he understood in a naive-profound way that something more had hap-pened than the death of a holy and innocent man.

"The sun veiled its face because of the depth of evil and shame it saw under the Cross. But the sun also veiled its face because its power over the world had ceased once and forever in these hours of its darkness.

"The great shining and burning god of everything that lives on earth, the sun who was praised and feared and adored by innumerable human beings during thousands and thousands of years, had been deprived of its divine power when one human being, in ultimate agony, maintained His unity with that which is greater than the sun. Since those hours of darkness it is manifest that not the sun, but a suffering and struggling soul which cannot be broken by all the powers of the universe is the image of the Highest, and that the sun can only be praised in the way of St. Francis, who called it our brother, but not our god.

" 'The curtain of the temple was torn in two.' The temple tore its gown as the mourners did because He, to whom the temple belonged more than to anybody else, was thrown out and killed by the servants of the temple. But the temple - and with it, all temples on earth - also complained of its own destiny. The curtain which made the temple a holy place, separated from other places, lost its separating power. He who was expelled as blaspheming the temple, had cleft the curtain and opened the temple for everybody, for every moment. This curtain cannot be mended anymore, although there are priests and ministers and pious people who try to mend it. They will not succeed because He, for whom every place was a sacred place, a place where God is present, has been hung upon the cross in the name of the holy place.

"When the curtain of the temple was tom in two, God judged religion and rejected temples. After this moment temples and churches can only mean places of concentration on the holy which is the ground and meaning of every place. And like the temple, the earth was judged at Golgotha. Trembling and shaking, the earth participated in the agony of the man on the cross and in the despair of all those who had seen in him the beginning of the new eon. Trembling and shaking, the earth proved that it is not the motherly ground on which we can safely build our houses and cities, our cultures and religious systems. Trembling and shaking, the earth pointed to another ground on which the earth itself rests: the self,surrendering love on which all earthly powers and values concentrate their hostility and which they cannot conquer. Since the hour when Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last and the rocks were split, the earth ceased to be the foundation of what we build on her. Only insofar as it has a deeper ground can it stand; only insofar as it is rooted in the same foundation in which the cross is rooted can it last.

"And the earth not only ceases to be the solid ground of life; she also ceases to be the lasting cave of death. Resurrection is not something added to the death of him who is the Christ; but it is implied in his death, as the story of the resurrection before the resurrection, indicates. No longer is the universe subjected to the law of death out of birth. It is subjected to a higher law, to the law of life out of death by the death of him who represented etemal life. The tombs were opened and bodies were raised when one man in whom God was present without limit committed his spirit into his Father's hands. Since this moment the universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be anymore, what we were before."

Matthew 27:45-61

Beginning at noon darkness blanketed the entire land until mid-afternoon. And about 3 o'clock in the afternoon Jesus shouted at the top of his voice, "Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani" (which means "My God, my God, why did you abandon me?")

When some of those standing there heard, they would say, "This fellow's calling Elijah!" And immediately one of them ran and took a sponge filled with sour wine and fixed it on a a pole and offered him a drink.

But the rest would say, "Wait! Let's see if Elijah comes to rescue him."

Jesus again shouted at the top of his voice and stopped breathing.

And suddenly the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth quaked, rocks were split apart, and the tombs were opened and mahy bodies of sleeping saints came back to life. And they came out of the tomb after his resurrection and went into the holy city, where they appeared to many. The Roman officer and those keeping watch over Jesus with him witnessed the sign and what had happened, and were terrified, and said, "This man really was God's son."

Many women were there observing this from a distance--those who had followed Jesus from Galilee to assist him, among whom were Mary of Magdala, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

When it had grown dark, a rich man from Armimathea, by the name of Joseph, who himself was a follower of Jesus, appeared, and went to Pilate and requested the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be turned over . And taking the body, Joseph wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and put it in his new tomb, which had been cut in the rock. He rolled a huge stone in the opening of the tomb and went away. But Mary of Magdala and the other Mary stayed there, sitting opposite the tomb.