Sins of the Fathers

Prob'ly wasn't so bad; I'm sure it built character!

Bill Cosby ends his latest concert film with a very funny story about his dropping his kids off at school.  His kids are obviously uncomfortable and ask him to let them out well before the school grounds.  The story winds on for a bit, but he finally finds out his kids are uncomfortable because the other students tease them about being rich.  Cosby sets them straight.

"You are not rich," he tells his children.  "You're mother and I are rich.  You don't have anything!"  Everything they have, he explains, he and his wife give them:  clothes, shelter, food, even money.  So they can tell their friends they aren't rich:  problem solved!

It's funny, but it also struck me as kind of odd.  Only later did I really it was actually quite wise:

That's one big ill we can clean up - if we allowed our children to be able to work at an earlier age, part time, be taught by their parents, be taught by their relatives, and if you would allow schools to have a broader curriculum. We have a system in Maine where every child is going to go to college - boohey! I have seventeen brothers and sisters; I'm the only one that graduated high school. Only one. That doesn't mean that they all failed. Some failed, some didn't. The point is, not everyone is going to learn through books. Some learn through hands. Some learn through seeing. Some learn by hearing. Others learn by all of the above. I think it's just sad that we sit there and we allow adults that have never been there to tell us how they're going to improve things.

This is right alongside the idea that kids should pay for school lunches because there is no free lunch.  Because especially if someone else has to buy it for you, you should be marked as someone living off the kindness of strangers, but you shouldn't expect them to be too kind.  St. Nicholas paid those dowries anonymously, but in America today we don't want to encourage such behavior.  We've got an economy to run here, it doesn't do any good to encourage true gifting behavior!  Gov. LePage there is not really saying anything differently than Newt Gingrich did, when Gingrich said children should do janitorial work at public schools.  Can't let 'em grow up thinking people give 'em stuff just for bein' alive; at least, not unless the stuff comes from parents who can afford it, or even better, who are rich.

Rich kids don't need to learn the value of money; poor kids need to learn the burdens of poverty.  It may not be their fault they're poor, but they should pay for it anyway.  Indeed, it is their fault; that's what they get for being born to impoverished parents.  We've moved from helping families and recognizing children are not responsible for their parents, to being sure the problems of the mothers and fathers rest firmly on their sons and daughters.  In fact, we want to secure them there.

At which point you should be asking:  what the hell is wrong with this country?  Mitt Romney says going after children is crossing the line; but only when those children are identifiable, and are the scions of wealthy white people.  Poor kids are fair game, especially if they are only known anonymously as "poor," or, better yet, "underprivileged" (because we really don't have "poor" people in America, we just have people who don't take advantage of all that is available to them; or just haven't had a chance to take advantage of it yet.  But our wealth never rests on their poverty; why, such thoughts would be disturbing!  It might mean there's a child in the basement of our Omelas!  Perish the thought!).

Going after children is not crossing a line anymore; in fact, it's a political necessity.  An Illinois Gubernatorial candidate Congressman apologized for saying the minimum wage should be lowered.  How many politicians have apologized for arguing we should return to the days before child labor laws?

I'm so old I can remember when child labor was sacrosanct, when any mention of making children earn their own money would have been akin to advocating white supremacy.

Now we do both, quite openly.   This isn't even a pro-capitalist, pro-free enterprise argument.  It's savagery, pure and simple.

Cosby was right, in the technical, legal sense as well as in the comedic sense:  children don't have anything.  By law, they aren't allowed any ownership rights, any possessory interests:  they're children.  He's wise, also, because he means for us to understand our children are our responsibility; we protect them by law and by custom and by social convention, from the burdens of adult responsibilities; and we should do so.  We should also give them what they need, whether we are parents or society; and that includes food and shelter and medical care and a proper education; and when they are old enough to work, a decent minimum wage so they know their work, even if it is just dropping potatoes into a fryer, makes them worthy of their hire.  Because they don't have anything; which means we are responsible for providing what all of them need.

Time is but the stream we go a-racing in....

"Well, so that is that...."

I'm not sure why we are so anxious for Christmas to arrive, and then equally anxious to dispose of it as soon as it does.

I remember one year when I was in college, and home for Thanksgiving.  My father told me he wasn't going to buy a Christmas tree that year, unless I went out and got it.  Worried all the trees would be gone by the time I got back home (in about 2 weeks; and it was an unreasonable fear anyway, as I only went to school about an hour's drive away), I gathered up my friends (did we do anything then without an accompaniment of friends?) and went to the Xmas tree lot.

I still remember them razzing me about buying a tree so early.  Now I see people putting up trees before Thanksgiving, and yanking down the broomstraw counterfeit before nightfall on Xmas day, they are already so tired of it.

Christmas decorations went up in public places this year at Hallowe'en, and everyone clamors for Santa and Christmas to come and make us merry and light and by the time it is the 25th day of the 12th month, we can't wait for it to be over with.  No one wants to hear another Christmas song or hear another greeting involving "Merry" or "Happy" or even "Season's."

Why do we do this?

I like the Twelve Days better, and more and more I'm learning to keep them.  I don't leave the lights and decorations up much past Epiphany, but I don't put them up too much early than a week before Xmas Eve, either.  Outside decorations, in fact, are more subject to the weather than the calendar.  I don't want to be caught stringing lights in an early cold-snap (that never lasts long, but I don't have all day every day to put up lights outside).  If I had greens in the house, I'd try to leave them up 'til Candlemas.

It's a pity we're so anxious now to race on to the next holiday (Valentine's Day cards were out before New Year's Day), and again so anxious to discard it when it gets here (discard Valentine's Day!  Get it?!  Okay, sorry...).  Why can't we wait until December 25th and then extend the festive season until Ash Wednesday?  Is it just because there is no commerce in it?

Oh, I really hope not.

The Premature Burial

This raises interesting questions to which I do not have easy answers:

Jahi McMath is dead. The 13 year-old was declared brain dead on December 12, three days after a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy to treat her sleep apnea resulted in “heavy bleeding, cardiac arrest and whole brain death.” The Alameda County coroner’s office issued a death certificate for her. And the New Beginnings Community Center says she “has been defined as a deceased person.” Yet there is no funeral planned for the girl, no memorials in her name. Instead, she has been moved to a facility where she receives “nutritional support, hormones and antibiotics to combat infections,” a place family attorney Christopher Dolan says she “going to be treated like the innocent little girl that she is, and not like a deceased body.” But while the recent battle over what to do with what remains of the once vibrant teen has for now been settled, the ethical questions over her case – and of what constitutes life and death – remain.

We can grant that, absent some compelling social burden,  “If the patient does not suffer, and private funding is available, people should have the right to make this decision for their loved ones."  But I'll grant that only from a purely legal point of view; i.e., perhaps society has no compelling interest in legally denying  “nutritional support, hormones and antibiotics to combat infections" to even what is, in reality, a corpse.  My reference to Poe in the title is not accidental.  There is a difference between a corpse and a sleeping body; the latter will be animate again; the former won't.  But even 'animate' is a matter of definition, here.

But is this ethical?  Ethical is always a social question, a matter for society at large.  Alone on a desert island, I have no need of ethics.  Add one more person, you have a "society," and how we treat each other is a matter of ethics.  So, as one doctor says:  “I think it’s disrespectful to the dead in a fundamental way, and it opens the floodgates for other people to say, ‘Oh, you don’t really know when we’re dead, do you? So please make more efforts for my loved ones.’”  Two issues arise:  the respect the living owe the dead; the ability of the living to acknowledge the reality of death; and at what point even money and the desire to fight on, can impinge on society, even in the form of doctors, nurses, and health care facilities and supplies.

There is a parallel, of a sort, in the current concern over vaccines.  The conflict there is presented as an individual right (to refuse medical care you think is dangerous, or more dangerous than the ill it prevents) v. society's concern with contagion.  I had thought we had settled that issue in favor of public health:  certainly no one complained around me when we went to the public school to take our polio vaccine on sugar cubes.  My parents made sure I had all the vaccinations modern science made available.  My daughter doesn't have to have a smallpox vaccination, in some part because I did.  Neither of us has ever worried about whooping cough, or tetanus, or diptheria.  I don't think she's even had a polio vaccination, because she doesn't really need one.

Was it ethical to require whole generations to be vaccinated?  It worked out well.  I'm not sure the controversy there isn't a matter of ignorance, especially of historical ignorance.  Thanks to antibiotics, we have a whole generation now grown old having never known the spread of infectious diseases that were once commonplace.  I knew many adults crippled by polio; my daughter barely knows one.

But where is the compelling social burden when death is disputed?  On an individual level, that burden doesn't seem to exist.  Death is not contagious, especially when death is defined as a lack of brain activity.But is it only a decision for the immediate family and their pocketbook and whoever is willing to take their money? “Society should show sympathy for mothers who want their children to be kept alive.”   Sympathy, perhaps; empathy, even; but support?  Should we support mothers who want their children to be kept alive despite the circumstances?  What happens when other mothers see that example, and expect other doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, even, to do the same?  What should society do then?

Mustn't there be a social definition of "death"?  We are familiar with the arguments that just because we are capable of doing something, it doesn't mean we should do it.  Often that argument is used against a new technology, or a new use for an old technology; or for some scientific expansion into an old area of human experience.  We used to define death as no longer being animate but, as Poe made much of in the mid-19th century, that didn't take into account the state we now call "coma."  The difference between a corpse and a sleeping person is that we can expect the latter to rise up, to be fully animate; but the latter will simply decompose.  Do we have to wait for that, to be sure?  We define death by brain activity now, largely to be able to harvest organs.  A long dead corpse is no good for organ donation; a body devoid of brain activity (or below an agreed threshold) is far better for harvesting (and can already raise uncomfortable questions about respecting the dead; because a body where the autonomic systems are still working is best for donation purposes, but such a body might also seem to be alive, since it is still, on some level, animate; much like the sleeping body).

It is only because of respirators and nasogastric tubes and other devices that we can keep the flesh of Jahi McMath from decomposing.  It is that fact that allows the denial of death.  But are we denying death, or denying reality?  And can we, as a society, allow that denial to take place?  It seems intrusive to insist the family cannot provide medical care to Jahi McMath at this point.  But it is even more dangerous to encourage the situation of Jahi McMath to become the norm.

What kind of respect do the living owe the dead?  And what do we owe the living?  The family of the deceased have their concerns; but so do the doctors and nurses and hospitals, and all of us who pay for them, one way or the other.  No man is an island; but what claims does even the clod that washes off the shore have on the main?

There is a metaphysical struggle here, too.  If I am not my body, if I inhabit this flesh like a ghost in a machine, is it easier to let me go?  If I am my body, am I no longer me when my brain ceases to function?  Ceases wholly to function, not just malfunction, as with an Alzheimer's patient; ceases altogether to show any activity at all.   “A beating heart, warm skin, and minimal, if any, signs of bodily decay — are a sort of mask that hides from plain sight the fact that the biological organism has ceased to function as such.”   We are, in a sense, doing this to ourselves; is it a cruel charade to not insist on that reality?  The mother of Jahi just hopes to see her daughter smile again.  I understand that desire; but it is a lost hope, a damaging dream.

Maybe the problem is not just with our technology, or our laws, or our ability to pay for things; maybe the problem is with our understanding of life, and of death.  I understand the shock of sudden, unexpected death.  I understand the sense of unreality, even of seeing the person who is dead alive again; or at least thinking you saw them.  This is not a new problem:  the shock and horror of death, the denial of its reality.  It's why the women were returning to the tomb in the Gospels.  Some say (and said then) it is why the disciples thought they saw Jesus alive again; because they could not accept the reality of death.  But we have made a special practice of denying death.  Churches no longer surround themselves with reminders of the witnesses and family who came before.  Funeral homes are far removed from our daily life so we can diminish the reminders of death.  Loved ones don't rest at home until burial, surrounded by those they loved; they are whisked away and our access to them controlled by strangers; and we want it that way.  We want to control death; we plan an "easy death;" we imagine that, when the time comes, we want no "heroic measures" and that the decision to let us go will be easier if we leave directives; but when the time comes, perhaps we change our minds.  Perhaps it isn't so easy.  Perhaps we don't want to let go, because we never really believed we'd have to.

“It’s God’s will. But we’re not going to play God, we’re not going to let Children’s Hospital play God and pull the plug. If her heart stops beating, and if it stops beating while she’s on the respirator, we can accept that. She’s done fighting, and she can go home,” [Jahi's uncle Omari] Sealey said.  But is it "playing God" to turn off a machine?  Or to turn on a machine?  "At least three neurologists confirmed that Jahi was unable to breathe on her own, had no blood flow to her brain and had no sign of electrical activity."   It is the machines that are keeping her heart beating, her lungs pumping.    There is a parallel to the old "iron lung" from the days of polio; without it, the patient dies.  But the distinction is, the polio victim still has an active brain.

So when are we "dead"?

What we owe the dead, is a question for the living.  And even how we decide who is dead, is a question for the living.  Like most important questions, we cannot make it on an individual, independent basis.  What we decide for ourselves, we decide for all.

No person, after all, is an island.

On Being Here

Now what?

There is a problem here, and again, it's one of generalization:

It was this doubt and uncertainty that the evangelicals of [Molly] Worthen’s history tried to exorcise, and of course they might as well have tried to recreate the social conditions of New Testament Galilee. What philosophers call the “background,” [Charles] Taylor writes, has shifted from one in which a naive theistic construal was almost ubiquitous to one “in which everyone’s construal shows up as such; and in which moreover, unbelief has become for many the major default option.” This transformation cannot be undone but by another, equally earthshaking transformation, and such events cannot be brought about deliberately.

Context is important for quotes, I'm always telling my students; so let's put this quote in context.  The subject is the rise of the evangelical movement, and, in the case of the reference to Molly Worthen's book, the effort by evangelicals in the 20th century to respond (to make it brief) to Modernism.  I mean by that the movement, similar to, say, Romanticism, of literature, arts, philosophy, that came out of both the 19th century sense they had attended God's Funeral (Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Hardy's "God's Funeral" being mile markers for the discussion), and the collapse of faith in both God and civilization (who were, after all, one and the same thing) in and after World War I (e.g, why the "Lost Generation" was "lost"). Taylor's effort is aimed at explaining the change that has occurred in (at least) the 20th century.  Robbins quotes him this way:  “It’s a commonplace that something that deserves” the title of secularization “has taken place in our civilization,” Taylor writes. “The problem is defining exactly what it is that has happened.” 

So now we have the context, let's look at the assertions.  Taylor argues our "background" has shifted from that "almost ubiquitous...naive theistic construal" to one "in which everyone's construal shows up as such; and in which moreover, unbelief has become for many the major default option."  Which is true, only if you reduce all of human history down to the 20th century as the province of cartoon characters with about as complex a weltanschaaung as a Chick tract. (Read the article at Slate; it's worth it.)  I mean:  really?  People were simple before we got here, but they're complex now?

I don't even have to bring up examples from the Roman Empire of the 1st century C.E. to challenge that notion.  It's completely idiotic.

I find Worthen's argument, at least as Robbins presents it, to be far more insightful.  No doubt the evangelicals she writes of "tried to recreate the social conditions of New Testament Galilee."  But are the stories of wandering faith healers (Jesus was hardly unique in that assertion) that different from the stories of wandering faith healers today?  Except today they tend to be on TeeVee (yes, in rather regular pendulum swings of popularity and obscurity, but still, the more things change....).  And yes, this has always fascinated me:

What’s interesting is that the proposed solutions often rested upon the methodologies of secularism itself. Worthen recounts evangelical attempts to reinforce premodern dogma using the tools of modern empiricism, sociology, and anthropology—the very regimes of knowledge they often condemned for displacing Christ.

I've always been interested in the willingness of evangelicals to embrace the "world," especially as they could turn it to their own purposes.  Usually they are quite forthright about this, if not entirely intellectually consistent:  basically any piece of technology or social construct that can serve their purposes is "from God," and any technology or social construct they don't find useful in evangelism, is a tool of Satan.

But Taylor just kind of goes all stupid on me with assertions like this:

Taylor uses the example of a person possessed by evil spirits in first-century Palestine: It simply wasn’t open to those around such a person “to entertain the idea that this was an interesting explanation for a psychological condition, identifiable purely in intra-psychic terms, but that there were other, possibly more reliable aetiologies for this condition.” We, on the other hand, “cannot help but be aware that there are a number of different construals, views which intelligent, reasonably undeluded people, of good will, can and do disagree on.” We can’t help “living our faith also in a condition of doubt and uncertainty.”

In one sense, perhaps there were "more reliable aetiologies for this condition," but that's rather like saying life in the past would have been simpler with cell phones.  You don't get there without radically shifting not only the technological/physical world, but the cultural/social world as well.  As to the "condition of doubt and uncertainty," consider, from the Gospel of John, early in the 2nd century C.E  The speaker is Jesus.:

"Father, glorify your name!"  Then a voice spoke out of the sky, "I've glorified it and I'll glorify it further."  The crowd there heard this, and some people remarked that it had thundered, others than an angel had spoken to him....Although he performed ever so many miracles before their eyes, they did not believe in him...."  John 12: 28-29, 37 (SV).

And there is also the famous statement from Paul to the Thessalonians: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." The very idea that faith is a unitary thing without any "condition of doubt [or] uncertainty" is belied by the scriptures which supposedly form that faith.  There are the complaints of Isaiah and Jeremiah; the insistence by Israel that Moses talk to God on Sinai, and leave them out of it; the demand of Israel for a king to rule them, because everybody else has one (despite God's insistence they'll be sorry).  I could go on, because the idea that faith makes life simple and easy, is a ludicrous one.  I should note, in the context of the passage from John, it is clear the audience there are all Jews who have "followed the Law."

And I haven't even touched on the Jewish tradition of midrash.  Interpretation alone introduces it's own degree of "doubt and uncertainty."

Perhaps doubt and uncertainty is meant to describe a condition in which faith is difficult, or even impossible.  In which case, I would point to the Psalms ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") or Ecclesiastes, or the Book of Job (which never explains anything to Job), or the Book of Jonah (more a book of wisdom than of prophecy).   And that's just a bit of what I know from the Christian canon.  Aware that there are different construals?  How many languages and cultures do you imagine were present in the Roman Empire, even in Jerusalem itself?  What does Tayler imagine the Exile was like, or the destruction of the Temple by Roman soldiers?  And that had happened before the Gospel of Mark was written.

Robbins is more sensible, though he doesn't critique Taylor.  In fact he ends praising Taylor, and it may be Taylor thinks he does a service to modern readers by appealing to their historical prejudice (or just sheer ignorance).  I find the complexity of history allows me to associate myself with the clouds of witness who come before me, but I can set aside the discussion of Taylor's thesis because Robbins provides this wonderful quote from Marilynn Robinson, whom I really need to get around to reading:

People who insist that the sacredness of Scripture depends on belief in creation in a literal six days seem never to insist on a literal reading of “to him who asks, give,” or “sell what you have and give the money to the poor.” In fact, their politics and economics align themselves quite precisely with those of their adversaries, who yearn to disburden themselves of the weak, and to unshackle the great creative forces of competition. The defenders of “religion” have made religion seem foolish while rendering it mute in the face of a prolonged and highly effective assault on the poor.

Because that's really where the issue is, for Christians at least:  not to rescue the concept of "faith" or "belief" (like Robbins, "I often think the notion of 'belief' is more trouble than it’s worth," but I would add the notion of "faith" to that; at least outside a theological context), but to recover the true basis of the sacredness of Scripture:  an address to the question "How should we then live?", and to focus us on the importance, not of self, but of Other.

In Re: Trestin Meacham

Trestin Meacham @TrestinMeacham1 

I've been disappointed with the lack of pizza people have sent (only 1) Please feel free to send more today.

about 2 hours ago 

NTodd put me on notice of this. This is what Mr. Meacham said about his protest: 

He says he’ll continue starving himself until state officials refuse to obey the federal judge and cease issuing marriage licenses to lesbians and gays.

Meacham is an advocate of the principle of “nullification,” which contends that state and county officials can ignore federal laws and court rulings they consider unconstitutional.

In an interview posted today on the Cultural Hall website, Meacham said it’s “completely pointless” for state officials to go through the courts because they are “packed full of activist judges that don’t listen to the constitution.” He has urged state officials and county clerks to defy the order. He told an interviewer he is emulating Gandhi, and said he is willing to sacrifice his life to prevent same-sex marriages in Utah.

Of course, the state courts and officials of Utah have gone on complying with federal court orders, including the latest stay which they requested, and won, from the U.S. Supreme Court.  To Mr. Meacham, that's good enough!  Now he wants people to know he's entitled to pizza!

I'm not quite sure why this doesn't make him a moocher, but it probably has something do with emulating Gandhi.

Ephiphany 2014

So part of the modern argument about religious belief is that it's simply a function of the brain; that we can study people in prayer of meditation and find certain portions of the brain are active, and that indicates religious belief is simply a brain function some people are capable of.

Of course, no similar studies are ever cited to show that reasoning, say working in higher mathematics or considering a scientific principle, is also simply a function of the brain, so it is no more a mirror of nature or reality than prayer is proof of the existence (or even presence) of God.  But that is beside the point:  the point is, this is new, this is revolutionary, this has never been done before, and it proves something that could not otherwise have ever been shown about religion.  It stands outside religion and reveals truths that could not otherwise have been revealed.

Enter the Magi.

Matthew calls them astrologers, actually.  The word he uses is μάγοι, which Bauer tells me refers to a "wise man and priest, who was expert in astrology, interpretation of dreams and various other secret arts."  They read the stars, took lessons from them, discerned meanings, and from their knowledge, learned the truth of the significance of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.  Does this mean it happened that way?  No.  The story clearly serves Matthew's purposes, as it can't be reconciled with Luke's nativity in any way, and besides involves a miracle (the star "led them forward until it came to a standstill above where the child lay") which we can in no way verify from the historical record.

But it is Matthew telling us that other means than the Hebrew prophets were used to learn the nature of the child born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph.  It is Matthew telling us that the knowledge of the world (astrology then; neurology now) was employed to discern a great truth.

Is it true the Magi read the stars and found the Christchild through a miracle?  Is it true prayer is only brain activity and nothing more, just like reasoning?  Is it possible that reasoning is more than simply firing neurons?  Is is possible prayer is more than simply active portions of certain cells?  Is it possible to know truths from knowledge that is not itself religious, or from a field of human knowledge other than a specific religion and religious tradition?

The Epiphany story tells us it is.  The Epiphany story tells us that it has happened.  It doesn't prove that is has happened; but it accepts, even incorporates into religion, the possibility.  It stands in the future, looking backwards, waiting for us to catch up.

Which is a revelation in itself.

For the Time Being

Christmas lights really transform the old homestead

Took down the Christmas lights today, and the interior decorations. Always a bit sad when that happens, especially as night falls and lights don't come on outside. Even though the days are actually getting longer and lighter, they suddenly seem a little shorter and darker.

Ah, well....

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

--W.H. Auden

This is your brain on the science of belief

Yes, I've been here before.  Why does this nonsense never wear out?

The "science of belief" apparently rests on these generalizations:

There are around 10,000 different religions, each of which is convinced that there’s only one Truth and that they alone possess it.

I didn't know this, but it's a part of the "science of belief," so it must be true!

Around 95 percent of Americans say that they believe in God, 90 percent pray, 82 percent believe that God can perform miracles, and over 70 percent believe in life after death. It’s striking that only 50 percent believe in hell, which shows a certain lack of consistency.

I don't understand how that is inconsistent, but I"m only a theologian, not a scientist of belief, so what do I know?

 meta-analysis has shown a correlation among atheism, education, and IQ. So there are striking differences within populations, and it’s clear that degree of atheism is linked to intelligence, education, academic achievement, and a positive interest in natural science.

I'll alert Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaitre.  Again.  And since we've stopped educating students into religion (where did the universities come from?), what does this prove?  Oh, that's right, we shouldn't do that:

Dawkins rightly points out that society wouldn’t tolerate the notion of atheist, humanist, or agnostic four-year-olds and that you shouldn’t teach children what to think but how to think.

Huh?  We force our kids to believe in God?  Who knew?  I'll alert my atheist and agnostic friends that they are no longer allowed to raise children.

(1)First, religion binds groups

Granted.  It's fundamental to human psychology and sociology.  There are whole fields of study on this topic.  Perhaps I could interest you in some information, since you seem to have so little.

(2) Traditionally, the commandments and prohibitions imposed by religions had a number of advantages.

Why else agree to them?  To be further disadvantaged?

(3) Having a religious faith is a source of comfort and help at difficult times, whereas atheists have to solve their difficulties without divine aid. 

Vulture theology.  Best discard that right now.  Believe me, when you're facing people in crisis, religion is not a pill that makes the pain go away.

(4) God has the answer to everything that we don’t know or understand, and belief makes you optimistic (“Yes, I’m singin’ a happy song/With a Friend like Jesus I’ll stand strong”).

This is why Mother Teresa was so happy during her long life after she never again had an experience of the presence of God.  And why so many people in churches are happy, and never worry about anything.  Ever. At All.

(5) Another advantage of religion, it would seem, is that it takes away the fear of death — all religions promise life after death. 

Never conducted a funeral service, have you?  Never faced a mother mourning her child, wondering why God took such a young being?  Never faced a grieving spouse wondering why God let their beloved suffer from cancer for so long before death?  Never dealt with the sudden death of teenagers, or any unexpected grief?  Never struggled to provide comfort to the dying, and the survivors?

Go away, you are a stupid little man.

(6) A very important element of religion has always been that it sanctions killing other groups in the name of one’s own god.

The Quakers are especially big on this one.  And since nationalism took that excuse over, I haven't seen much improvement in matters.  I know I learned in seminary many techniques for killing non-believers.  Or am I not supposed to say that out loud?

As I said, there are scholars, sociologists, psychologists, theologians, ministers, priests, monks, nuns, doing yeoman's work on these issues, and taking them seriously rather than as a grab bag of suppositions and groundless generalizations.  And they don't sprinkle bits of statistics before them to dazzle the crowds, or misunderstand the issues altogether.  For example:

Paul Verspeek, hosting a local Dutch radio show on Boxing Day 2005, asked psychiatrists how they would recognize Jesus Christ if he returned to Earth. How would they distinguish between him and mentally ill patients who claimed to be Christ? The psychiatrists were stumped for an answer. 

Do you presume everyone in 1st century Palestine knew who "Jesus Christ" was?  That flies in the face of even the Gospel accounts.  The issues of epistemology, identity, existence, being, all are enfolded into that question, and the answer "I dunno!" does not indicate a failure of the claim.

There's also a claim that:  "Communism was the only permitted belief in China and religion was banned, being regarded, in the tradition of Karl Marx, as the opium of the masses."  Might I suggest you read Marx, and consider the words of Charles Kingsley, Canon of the Church of England, written four years after Marx's famous (and misinterpreted) words:  

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's hand book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order. 

I've always said there are far better critics of religion within it than without it.  Especially those who study "belief " "scientifically," and base their conclusions on such enormous ignorance.

The Abdication of Responsibility

I grow weary of the arguments in favor of Edward Snowden's "freedom."

Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.

"Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight."  Most people do; but you dance to the music, you pay the piper.  If he didn't want to be an international pariah, he should have chosen a different method for violating national security laws than grabbing whole libraries of information and disseminating it to as many people as he could, with "kill switches" meant to guarantee his continued existence.

"He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service."  Would you make the same argument if someone had assassinated George W. Bush? (Yes, Snowden's  crimes may be just as serious.)  And if he did commit such a service to his nation, let him come home and face a jury of his peers.  Jury nullification is still alive and well in this country.  It is rarely employed, but this might be the rare case in which it should be.  Let Mr. Snowden's lawyers argue that, and let him take the consequences.
But what's worse is that we get this kind of thing from Charlie Pierce, who really needs to go back to writing about sports, or something:

[Snowden] has given no indication that he believes he's done anything wrong -- or, at least, to brutalize some Shakespeare, he's indicated that he did a little wrong to do a great right.

And, of course, he should be given clemency because George H.W. Bush pardoned a guy who blew up a plane full of Cuban athletes.  Or something.

Nobody tell Charlie we didn't exactly try to assassinate Qaddafi, either, even after Lockerbie.  I'm sure that means we have to quit picking on Syria; or something.

There's a guy who killed his son because he thought his son was a demon.  He gives no indication he believes he did anything wrong, either; and he did a wrong to do a great right.  Should we give him clemency because, hell, he was nuts?

And while Mr. Pierce excoriates Ruth Marcus for disagreeing with him, I actually agree with her:

Your assessment might be different. My scale weighs against Snowden. He launched an important, overdue debate and reassessment of collection practices. Perhaps that would not have happened otherwise. The intelligence community is reaping the bitter rewards of its combined aversion to transparency and its addiction to employing available technology to maximum potential.

Yet the existing oversight, while flawed, is not as feckless as Snowden portrays it, and the degree of intrusion on Americans’ privacy, while troubling, is not nearly as menacing as he sees it. In the government’s massive database is information about who I called and who they called in turn. Perhaps the government shouldn’t have it; surely, there should be more controls over when they can search it. But my metadata almost certainly hasn’t been scrutinized; even if it has, the content of the calls remains off-limits.

The metadata exists, whether the NSA gets it on their hard drives or not.  Am I supposed to feel better because Verizon and AT&T have this data, rather than James Clapper?  Am I supposed to trust that Ma Bell won't peruse my metadata, but believe the NSA has thousands of elves doing just that to all 300 million of us?
Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

As for Mr. Snowden, well, he's just an ass:

“That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model. They elected me. The overseers,” he said. “The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

You see, it's not his fault!  His bosses made him steal that information and run off to Hong Kong with it!

There's the best argument against clemency I can muster, right there.  Because he's an ass?  No; because he's not a Federal judge nor a member of the U.S. Congress, nor the President of the United States.  We have people in positions of authority and accountability for this very purpose.  If what the NSA is doing is illegal or unconstitutional, let the courts declare it so. If they are acting without any statutory authority whatsoever, let it be known.  But that they are doing what Edward Snowden doesn't like (and what he doesn't like doesn't exactly add up to reality), is not a basis, legal or moral, for him to be allowed to return to this country and face no consequences for his deeds.

And lest we forget, Mr. Snowden was not a government employee, but the employee of a private contractor.  Why the hell did he have access to this information in the first place?

Again, we've had this information of government spying before, without people running off to China and Russia after stealing what was a library (or two) worth of documents, and tossing it out willy-nilly all over the world.  Books were even published based on information that was undoubtedly classified.  The result was the FISA courts, but there were consequences (just not the best imaginable).  There were ways to do this that Mr. Snowden didn't contemplate.  He doesn't now get to declare a super-right to never face the judicial consequences of his actions.  Even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted that going to jail was needed to move the conscience of a nation.  Mr. Snowden just wants to scold young folks for carrying cell phones and posting on Facebook.  But he doesn't want to do it while enduring the Russian winter.

My heart bleeds for him.

Things I Honestly Do Not Understand

What are we doing here, again?

NPR tells me this morning the Little Sisters of the Poor are self-insured, that their insurance policy is provided by the church, and that, as such, it is exempt from the contraception provision requirements of the ACA.

In many cases, lower courts have granted religious charities temporary relief from the birth-control mandate while their cases are being heard. But this week, an appeals court in Colorado opted not to give that kind of break to the Little Sisters of the Poor. That's because their insurance provider is a self-insured church plan, exempt from government regulation.

In other words, Greenberger says, neither the nuns nor their insurance carrier will actually have to provide any birth control. "In truth, Little Sisters, because it is part of a church plan, is going to end up, no matter what, without its employees having contraceptive coverage."

So why are they in court?

I mean, simply as a matter of law; if they've suffered no injury, they shouldn't be in the courtroom.

There must be something I'm missing here....

Update:  NTodd enlightens me:  what I am missing is the willingness of the Court to dismiss this case for a lack of a justiciable issue.  Maybe Justice Sotomayor will read the Government's brief carefully:

Applicants have no legal basis to challenge the self- certification requirement or to complain that it involves them in the process of providing contraceptive coverage. As both of the lower courts recognized, this case involves a church plan that is exempt from regulation under [ERISA]...Employer-applicants’ third-party administrator therefore will be under no legal obligation to provide the coverage after applicants certify that they object to providing it.

In other words, once the Little Sisters of the Poor sign off on their objection to the plan providing contraceptive coverage, they're done.  They don't even have to make someone else sin.  No, seriously; that's the legal argument.  Justice Scalia would roll his eyes at this point.:

Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities.

If I were on the bench, I'd tell the Becket Fund to suck on it.  Further, this is why I can't withhold my taxes because I believe war is sinful:

If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax. The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.

So if my money goes to fund sin, why can't I refuse to pay income tax?  For the same reason the Little Sisters can't refuse to sign the form to comply with a law that already exempts them from the provision they object to.

In the words of Will Ferrell, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

10 signs that somethin's happenin' here, what it is ain't exactly clear....

Okay, I get it:  atheists (well, at least the ones who write for Alternet) don't like right-wing religious fundamentalists.  Fine.  Neither do I.  Why is it we can't find common ground?  Maybe because atheists (at least the ones who write for Alternet) are so determined to be so triumphal on such shaky grounds?

1. Coming out atheist is up and coming.  

Um, unless you live in a really small town in the really deep South, you don't need to "come out" as an atheist.  Unless, of course, like tout le monde you want desperately to play the "victim card" and insist that you are the real persecuted-for-your-thoughts person, and that thoughts, like skin color and sexual preference, are inherent and unchangeable.

Is that really what you want?

2. The cutting edge of freethought is less cutting and edgy.

Um, this is the 21st century.  "Free thinkers" were no longer cutting edge when H.L. Mencken caricatured them in 1948.  And as for Hitchens, et al., yes, he was unnecessarily antagonistic.  Just to steal a line from Charlie Pierce:  ""It will be the belief of this blog that, as Christopher Hitchens once said, the only correct answer to the question, 'Is nothing sacred?' is 'No.' " That question, and its answer, were pretty much the status quo of my professors in seminary.  So when you look to the future, you'll already find me there, looking back at you. Oh, and this:

 Alain de Botton’s  TED talk and book, Atheism 2.0, simply posits the nonexistence of God and then goes on to discuss what humanity can glean from the rubble of religious traditions.

Might I suggest you read Sartre, Camus, even Hemingway?  T. S. Eliot, perhaps?  Why do you think the "Lost Generation" was lost?  Because they didn't have GPS?  Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, sold the franchise, retired on the proceeds.  Or maybe you want to read God's Funeral.  Cutting edge?  What do you think that term means?  So far you're on the cutting edge of the 19th century.  Mid-19th century, in fact.  And maybe you missed the "God is dead" theology.  It was in the '60's; even made the cover of Time Magazine.  But maybe that was a bit before your time.

3. Biblical sexuality is getting binned. Finally.  

Good.  Not sure what that has to do with religious beliefs, but:  good.  I'm not gonna quibble over the idea of "Biblical sexuality."

4. Recovering believers are reclaiming their lives. Most atheists and agnostics are former believers, which means that many carry old psychological baggage from childhood beliefs or some post-childhood cycle of conversion and deconversion. 

Again, good.  It's a tiny minority of people, so a patch of ice doth not a winter make, and all that.  But may they find healing.  BTW, that kind of healing has been going on, and necessary, since before I was born.  There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

And every turn of the wheel is not a revolution.  Well, not in one sense.

5. Communities are coming together. 

Seriously?

6. Secular giving is growing.

Which means, what, exactly?  Since most of the major charities in the US are already secular (the ones you hear about, anyway:  United Way, Komen, American Cancer Society, etc., etc., etc.)

7. The Religious Right is licking wounds. 

Well, of course they are.  They were mostly a reaction to the '60's anyway.  Good riddance to them.  BTW, a lot of that retrenchment is happening within denominations associated with the "Religious Right," and happening because of young people who are still believers.  This really has nothing to do with the rise of atheists, though it does reflect the decline of influence of Falwell's "Moral Majority."  Good riddance to it.

 Shining a light on cruelty, bigotry and ignorance works.

Somebody needs to tell Annie DiFranco.

8. Texas is evolving!  

Because: "Acceptance of evolution is  growing across the country."  Well, okay, that's a decline in the influence of the antedeluvian squad, I'll grant you.  Still don't like the metaphor of evolution=improvement/progress, but that's an underlying problem of the theory (and how easily it turns to "Social Darwinism," which is an unrelated rant.)

9. Millennials are taking up the torch.  

I got no problem with this.  As I like to point out, Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans for Separation of Church and State, is a UCC minister.

10. Rebuilding the wall of separation isn’t the only place Millennials are leading the way.

Young adults who grew up isolated in abusive homeschooling situations have created a network,  Homeschoolers Anonymous, so that they can lend each other support and fight for change.

Except home schooling is not synonymous with religious fundamentalism. I know children who have been home schooled.  Religious belief had nothing to do with it.

When a Catholic school in Bellevue, Washington fired a gay teacher, hundreds of students walked out chanting, “Change the church.” Their protest was picked up by students at other schools and Catholic alumni. A new documentary movie with a millennial production crew, The Unbelievers, has been described as a rock concert love-fest between biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Larry Krause and their young fan base of science lovers.

Interestingly, one of these things is not like the other:  chanting "Change the church" is not quite the same as declaring "unbelief."   And a "rock concert love-fest"?  Like, what, Woodstock for atheists?  Yeah, I remember how that changed the world, too.....

But my point is not to disparage the changes identified; it is to point out that I don't have that much disagreement with them (although "science love" is not necessarily exclusive of religious faith, but I'll leave that to Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaître.

We were quite triumphal in the '60's, convinced that we had remade music, culture, politics:  everything.  And then came 1972, and McGovern lost in one of the worst landslides in U.S. history, and while Nixon was forced to resign the Vietnam War ended under Gerald Ford; disco became music; and Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist peanut farmer, essentially paved the way for Ronald Reagan.

So tell me again these are 10 signs the culture has fundamentally changed and all persons religious have "lost" and the world is progressing toward the Millenium (a baffling Christian fundamentalist idea, by the way).  Because not only am I not seeing it, I'm still not seeing why anyone with religious faith has to be opposed to, or by, anyone without it.  And I haven't even touched on how truly revolutionary Pope Francis I has been, simply by returning (as Luther, and then Calvin, and then the Puritans, and every Protestant group since Zurich, has said they were doing) to basic, VERY basic, Christian teachings.

Maybe it's time for some Christians to "come out."

I just wanted to say....

Texas BBQ is beauty, and beauty is Texas BBQ.  That is all you know, and all you need to know

The redoubtable Lt. Col. Robert Bateman sez:

A. The distance should be somewhere between 20 and 50 miles. Any less and you look the fool for not knowing where you are, any more and the average Brit will be confounded. Remember, we think 200 years is a long time, and they think 200 miles is a long way.**

That footnote goes here:

 **I know Texans who will make that distance, round trip, for a good BBQ restaurant. True, on Texan roads it takes about 30 minutes each way, but that is beside the point.

He's right.  I will, and have done.

And will do again.  Good BBQ is damned good stuff!

And so this is the New Year....

Justice Sotomayor issued a temporary injunction and, as NTodd notes, a lot of people freaked out (going so far as to blame this all on a Catholic conspiracy, since all Catholics swear fealty to the Pope and must do his bidding!  The Anti-Papist strain in American culture is alive and well.).  As usual, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing:

To understand the context of Justice Sotomayor’s decision, it helps to look at the details of the Affordable Care Act. The law distinguishes among three kinds of organizations: religious employers, for-profit corporations and nonprofit groups affiliated with religious organizations but not owned or controlled by them.

Under the law, religious employers like churches are exempt from the contraceptive requirement. For-profit corporations fall on the other end of the spectrum and are not exempt. Nonprofit groups affiliated with, but not owned or controlled by religious organizations, like the Little Sisters of the Poor, fall in the middle. Although such groups need not provide coverage themselves, they must sign a certification allowing insurance companies to do so.

The dispute in the new case is whether that certification itself amounts to conduct that violates the groups’ religious faith. 

A little further context:  temporary injunctions are issued to prevent "irreparable harm."  That's a legal term of art, but it pretty much fits a case like this:

In its petition, the company said it expects fines of $1.1 million on January 1 alone.

Granted, there is another standard, and that is the likelihood the party asking for the injunction will prevail at trial.  On that basis, one judge on the D. C. panel that also issued an injunction disagreed with the issuance:

 “Simply put,” he wrote, “far from imposing a ‘substantial burden’ on appellants’ religious freedom, the challenged provision allows appellants to avoid having to do something that would substantially burden their religious freedom.”

And so:

"Because I believe that appellants are unlikely to prevail on their claim that the challenged provision imposes a 'substantial burden' under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, I would deny their application for an injunction pending appeal," Tatel said.

It is the "substantial burden" clause of RFRA that creates a basis for the harm the injunction is meant to prevent; well, that and the $1 million fine.  But faced with a group of nuns about to pay that kind of money for standing on religious principles, it's not entirely unreasonable for the court to ask the government to explain their position by Friday at noon.

Unless that Catholic conspiracy reaches further than I realize.....

(I'm not convinced this is a religious issue, btw.  The Obama Administration crafted a compromise, but the religious groups insist spending their money this way violates their religious principles.*  I cannot agree.  It is one thing to force clergy to pay for something their religious values says they shouldn't support; although clergy have to pay income tax (unless they've taken a vow of poverty), and if you have a religious conviction against war you have two choices: jail, or pay for war.  Should religious groups be allowed to refuse to provide contraceptive care in health insurance for their employees, especially if those employees are not of the same faith, or even of the same conviction?  I find the argument that this imposes a "substantial burden" on the practice of their religion a very dubious one.  But I think I would grant the temporary injunction, too, just to be as fair as possible.)

*I have to correct myself here:  the nuns aren't objecting to spending money; they are objecting to signing a form:

"Without an emergency injunction, Mother Provincial Loraine Marie Maguire has to decide between two courses of action: (a) sign and submit a self-certification form, thereby violating her religious beliefs; or (b) refuse to sign the form and pay ruinous fines," [their lawyer, Mark L. Rienzi] said.

And if that isn't plain enough:

“The Sisters would also be required to sign a form that triggers the start of that [contraceptive] coverage,” said the Becket Fund, the conservative law firm representing the nuns’ group in the lawsuit. “In good conscience, they cannot do that. So the ‘accommodation’ still violates their religious beliefs.”

I agree with the dissenting member of the 10th Circuit panel:  there's no likelihood they'll prevail on this issue.  Or at least, there shouldn't be.  I mean, as Justice Scalia said: 

 Precisely because "we are a cosmopolitan nation made up of people of almost every conceivable religious preference," Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. at 606, and precisely because we value and protect that religious divergence, we cannot afford the luxury of deeming presumptively invalid, as applied to the religious objector, every regulation of conduct that does not protect an interest of the highest order. The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.

 Granted, that was a First Amendment case, but I really don't see how the nuns' legal position here is tenable. 

He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake....

And besides, he has read 1984!

In the movie "The President's Analyst" the chief villain at the end of the movie is revealed to be:  the phone company.  Because the phone company knows everything about everybody; after all, everybody uses the phone company; and they keep records, don't they?

That film came out in 1967.  In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Maryland that the data collected by the phone company was theirs, not the customers, and the customer had no legitimate expectation of privacy in data he/she didn't control and which, basically, was accepted as the cost of having telephonic communications.

Which means Snowden's concern about cell phones in our pockets telling someone somewhere exactly where we are at any given moment, is not exactly a new concern, and not exactly a risk we take without understanding it (or at least being capable of being aware of it).  If you think that information violates your privacy, cancel your cell phone.  Go ahead, I'll wait while you do it.

I've said before this is a curious argument because the fact is, someone somewhere has this information. (I've also pointed out that Mr. Snowden's credibility in these matters is still an unresolved issue. As Lawrence O'Donnell points out, the claim that goverments are "watching everything we do" is patently false.*  And it ain't exactly secret, not in London where (even in Harry Potter movies!) cameras publicly record public movement.)  Frankly, I'd rather it be controlled exclusively by the government than the corporations.  I ostensibly have more effect on governments than I do on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc.  But that small bit of history also supports the point Joy Reid makes:  we know this has been going on for a long time.  In fact, we've known it longer than we did when she found out about it, and it set her hair on fire.  Funny thing is, as she goes on to note:  nobody else got that upset about it.

Snowden also claims young people will grow up without knowing privacy, because every moment of their lives will be recorded.  Funny thing, the kids seem to be the ones doing the recording.  If there's a loss of privacy, it seems to be self-inflicted via modern technology.  Is Snowden warning us against government?  Or against ourselves?

We've known our privacy was largely a fiction, a tissue of lies, a convenient falsehood.  We've known for decades that somebody is collecting a lot of information on us, on who we call and what we do, and we've accepted that as the price we pay for convenience, just as we accept the death toll on the highways as the price we pay for having our own cars.

So is Snowden's biggest revelation, then, what we don't know what power is, and we don't care?  Well, maybe; as Ames points out, the last revelation of NSA spying led to the FISA courts.

Now, don't you feel better?

Ames goes on to chronicle just what Ms. Reid said:  we have a rather complete history of spying revelations.  Snowden is not the first to confirm that Fort Meade actually exists and actually tracks our communications; and this isn't the first time the general public reaction has been a shrug.

We don't even note the number of highway deaths over the holidays anymore.  It's not that people stopped dying on the roadways; we just got tired of hearing about it.

Ames blames power politics; but what does he think convinced the railroads to extend lines across the continent?  The invisible hand of the free market?  Now he worries:

Meanwhile, the really important power-politics are taking place right in front of us, but we don’t seem to give a damn. For example, what the hell were those tech heads from Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech giants doing in the White House the day before Obama’s NSA report was released?

No one seemed to think anything was weird about that picture, the picture of corporate power nakedly dictating to a democratically elected President on the eve of a report that directly concerns those tech titans’ bottom lines. We were too busy cheering on Twitter when Mark Pincus — the social gaming guy who once admitted, “I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues” — ineffectually sass-mouthed the President over pardoning Edward Snowden.

And I agree with him, but still there is the question:  what price do we pay?  The Texas Constitution was written specifically to curtail the power of bankers and railroad companies in 19th century America.  That didn't last 60 years, and now even the famed homestead exemption can be pierced to allow you to get the "equity" in your home, precisely the problem with bankers that the Texas Constitution wanted to end.  We like our luxuries, in other words.  We like our conveniences.  We like thinking we have the power, when we have ceded it all away.

Snowden's revelation?  There isn't one.  We've never known what power is, and we've never cared.  Not so absolutely as to protect anything as absolutely as privacy advocates like Glenn Greenwald think we should protect privacy.

Well, except for money.  We've always been clear the power resides with the money, and we've always cared that that remains true.
 
*Unless the government is Santa Claus, in which case we may be able to settle the question of his skin color!

Cafeteria Catholic?

It makes me feel better that I never shop at Home Depot:

A major Republican donor, Langone told CNBC in a story published online Monday that wealthy people such as himself might stop giving to charity if the Pope continues to make statements criticizing capitalism and income inequality.

Langone described the Pope's comments about a "culture of prosperity" as "exclusionary" statements that may make some of the rich "incapable of feeling compassion for the poor."

Langone, who is leading an effort to raise money for the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan said he relayed these concerns to Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York. Specifically, Langone said he told the church leader he spoke to a donor who could give millions of dollars to the cathedral project but was worried about the Pope's "exclusionary" remarks.

Exclusionary?  You want exclusionary?

Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good?  No one is good except God alone.  You know the commandments:  'You are not to commit adultery; you must nor murder, or steal; and you are not to give false testimony; you are to honor your father and mother.'"

And he said, "I have observed all these since I was a child."

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You are still short one thing.  Sell everything you have and distribute (the proceeds) among the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  And then come, follow me."

But when he heard this, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

When Jesus observed that he had become very said, he said, "How difficult is it for those with real money to enter God's domain!  It's easier for a camel to squeeze through a needle's eye than for a wealthy person to get into God's domain."  (Luke 18:13-25, SV)

That Jesus; always making the rich incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.  Or for Jesus, for that matter, who wasn't rich, either.  And, just to pile on:

What keeps you from giving now? Isn't the poor person there? Aren't your own warehouses full? Isn't the reward promised? The command is clear: the hungry person is dying now, the naked person is freezing now, the person in debt is beaten now-and you want to wait until tomorrow? "I'm not doing any harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying that what is there for everyone's use is your own. . . . If everyone took only what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't you return naked to the earth?

The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry person; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the person with no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help.

Basil
4th Century

The large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds--and also big enough to shut out the voices of the poor....There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.

Ambrose
4th Century

The crowds would ask him, "What should we do?"

And he would answer them, "Whoever has two shirts should share with someone who has none; whoever has food should do the same....I baptize you with water; but someone more powerful than I is coming, whose sandal straps I am not fit to untie.  He'll baptize you with [holy] spirit and fire.  His pitchfork is in his hand, to make a clean sweep of his threshing floor and to gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he'll burn in a fire that can't be put out." (Luke 3:10-11, 16b-17, SV)

And then back to Jesus again:
 

There was a rich man whose fields produced a bumper crop.  "What do I do now?" he asked himself, "since I don't have any place to store my crops. I know!  I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones, so I can store all my grain and my goods.  Then I'll say to myself, "You have plenty put away for years to come.  Take it easy, eat, drink, enjoy yourself."  But God said to him, "You fool!  This very night your life will be demanded back from you.  All this stuff you've collected--whose will it be now?"  That's the way it is for those who save up for themselves, but aren't rich where God is concerned.

He said to his disciples, "That's why I tell you:  don't fret about life-what you're going to eat--or bout your body--what you're going to wear.  Remember, there is more to living than food and clothing.  Think about the crows:  they don't plant or harvest, they don't have storerooms or barns.  Yet God feeds them.  You're worth a lot more than the birds!" (Luke 12: 16b-24, SV)

There was this rich man who wore clothing fit for a king and who dined lavishly every day.  This poor man, named Lazarus, languished at his gate, all covered with sores.  He longed to eat what fell from the rich man's table.  Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.  It so happened that the poor man died and was carried by the heavenly messengers to be with Abraham.  The rich man died too, and was buried.

From Hades, where he was being tortured, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off and Lazarus with him.  He called out, "Father Abraham, have pity on me!  Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, for I am in torment in these flames."

But Abraham said, "My child, remember that you had good fortune in your lifetime, while Lazraus had it bad.  Now he is being comforted here, and you are in torment.  And besides all this, a great chasm has been set between us and you, so that even those who want to cross over from here to you cannot, and no one can cross over from that side to ours."

But he said, "Father, I beg you then, send him to my father's house--after all, I have five brothers--so that he can warn them not to wind up in this place of torture."

But Abraham says, "They have Moses and the prophets; why don't they listen to them?"

"But they won't do that, father Abraham," he said.  "However, if someone appears to them from the dead, they'll have a change of heart."

Abraham said to him, "If they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead." (Luke 16:19-31, SV)

Damn you rich!
You already have your consolation!

Damn you who are well-fed now!
You will know hunger.

Damn you who laugh now!
You will learn to weep and grieve.

Damn you when everyone speaks well of you!  Recall that their ancestors treated the phony prophets the same way.  (Luke 6:24-26, SV)

Jesus was such a buzz kill on the rich.  How are they expected to feel compassion for the poor now?  Good thing the cathedral is St. Patrick's, or rich people might not give any money to it at all.

Of books and covers and judgment....

It's so lifelike!

Speaking of narratives:  Joan Walsh tells me that "Duck Dynasty" is a fake; that the Robertson clan is a bunch of yuppies dressing up as rednecks to make an extra buck.

I dunno.  Her evidence for that is pretty weak, actually.  Check the pictures here:  Are these guys rednecks?  I've known people who look like that, but have the most retrograde attitudes imaginable.  The people I've known would make Phil Robertson look positively open-minded and tolerant, as well as Christian and loving.

Then again, I've known people who look a lot like ZZ Top, who are as Christlike as you could ask; and some of those people were atheists.

Is it all just fake?  And what difference does that make, really?  Some people take the statements of the Robertson clan very seriously, especially if where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  Richard Kim points out our treasures are involved, too; especially narratives about rednecks and white trash and what is "reality" on television.

The point is, we don't really care about the reality on TeeVee; we care about the reality we want to see on TeeVee.  So, are the Robertson's fake rednecks, or fake yuppies?

Does it matter?