In the "The Ba-Da-Boom Crew," Eugene Robinson (Tuesday, January 30,
2007; Page A17; http://tinyurl.com/38hnwt )
He writes: "If you've been following the Lewis "Scooter" Libby
perjury trial, I can understand how you might confuse Dick Cheney
with Tony Soprano." ( http://tinyurl.com/3bmd8 )
But of course that is insulting the Sopranos. They have more class
than this bunch;
"Cheney's office is beginning to sound a lot like the Bada Bing,
minus the dancers."
http://tinyurl.com/ytubx9
He notes: "Court has been in session for only a week, and already
we've heard about characters being set up (Libby, allegedly, to save
political wizard Karl Rove)"
Libby's defense against charges against perjury is that his memory
was faulty because a; he was too busy to pay such a little thing any
mind, b; was set up by others; and c; others were worse than he. But
so far all both defense and prosecution are proving is that this cast
of characters are wanna be Tony Soprano's. A bunch of mafioso. Not
surprising to me, but if I were a Republican I'd be in revolt.
"strung along (media bigwigs, who were to be played like patsies)",
http://tinyurl.com/2s48t9
"buried in mud (former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who questioned the
raison d'etre of the Iraq war)"
http://tinyurl.com/2s48t9
"and ratted out (the famously leak-averse Cheney, revealed to be
willing to leak like a washerless faucet when it suits his purposes)."
But of course these comparisons are between professional thugs, and
obviously unprofessional thugs. These people are to the Sopranos the
way the Three Stooges are to Hitler. He goes on:
"Cheney's no Tony, though. For one thing, Tony would never let one of
his top henchmen go by a preppy-sounding handle such as "Scooter."
For another, this kind of all-in-the-family mess would send Tony
moping to his long-suffering shrink, whereas Cheney shows no
inclination to deal with uncomfortable issues or face harsh
realities."
No they just hit at each other, at Democrats, and shout out "wise
guy!!"
"Increasingly, the vice president is sounding as if he lives in a la-
la land of his own imagining, a place beyond truth."
At least Tony actually visits a shrink. These guys could use a
resident Shrink alongside the Surgeon General.
"In Cheney's world, the Iraq war is an enormous success. The idea
that anyone would think otherwise is hogwash. The midterm election
doesn't seem to have happened yet -- some sort of time warp may be
involved. Polls that show overwhelming public opposition to the war
do not even merit a nod of acknowledgment."
Speaking of which the other news item which really hit me hard today
was the coupled reports of more Reservists being mobilized, along
with reports that the US has run out of Armor and proper equipment to
equip them for duty in Iraq. In other words, the Bala Bing Set, are
sending more people to be offed by the opposition. This is the third
world generaliship. And really makes the Hitler comparisons unfair to
his general staff. More like the idiots who prosecuted the Argentine
Side of the Falklands war. Men who knowingly sent young men to death
because they were too drunk, too corrupt, and too cheap to equip them
for battle.
The one time Cheney almost sounds like a human being, he tries to
shoot down his friends:
"And it's "out of line," as Wolf Blitzer learned, to ask Cheney about
a glaring personal contradiction -- the administration he serves
wants to ban gay marriage, and meanwhile his lesbian daughter and her
life partner are having a baby. Cheney acts as if he's willing to go
to any lengths to keep people from learning that on the subject of
homosexuality, he's probably pretty enlightened."
But of course this is third world stuff too. Have to play to the
base, to the ignorant, to the angry, to the mob.
"Let's hope that Cheney isn't really out to lunch, that he's just
playing politics. A conservative friend reminded me the other day
that all the White House has left, in terms of public support, is the
hard-line Republican right. Let's hope Cheney is just tossing out red
meat to keep these stalwarts on the team."
What makes these things mutually exclusive?
"But, yes, he is coming across as a little crazy. I'm glad he's not
the Decider -- excuse me, now it's the Decision Maker."
Those who ride the wild wind get spun by their spin.
"Cheney's weirdness is almost enough to summon nostalgia for the days
being revisited in the Libby trial, a time when Cheney and his
minions at least were rational in their machinations. Forget the
byzantine, eye-glazing details of the case and look instead at how
the vice president's office operated."
No nostalgia for me. But I catch the "almost" irony. I just wish
these truths had come out in October 2004 instead of in 2005 and 2006.
"The primary stated reason for the war -- Saddam Hussein's supposed
nuclear weapons program -- had already been discredited, and now this
guy Wilson was claiming that the White House knew beforehand that
some of the most damning evidence of a nuclear program was bogus.
Cheney convened a war council, organized an effort to counter
Wilson's claims and then sent Libby out to leak anything that would
make Wilson look less credible. In other words, they went after the
messenger rather than the message.
Kill the messenger! It's an ancient greek practice.
"One problem was that Cheney's office had been so taciturn that
reporters rarely bothered to call, knowing that all they were likely
to get was a cold shoulder. Cheney's former press aide testified that
at one point there was a frantic search for a phone number for
someone, anyone, at Newsweek. That leak finally had to be attempted
via voice mail."
This was reported during various testimonies. The facts are showing
that not only did Cheney's office emit the ooze, they had to go out
of the way to get anyone to accept it.
"Flash forward to the point when it became clear that someone in this
supposedly tight-lipped administration had leaked the fact that
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. Amid much finger-
pointing, the White House issued a statement that categorically
absolved Rove of this potentially criminal leak -- but that didn't
mention Libby."
Gosh I hope this prosecution leads to others. So far the testimony is
revealing he was part of a pack of liars.
"You get the sense of Cheney and his crew as a semi-independent power
center, a family within the larger family. You see them hunkered down
in their office suite, much like Tony and crew in the back room of
the Bada Bing, plotting ways to cover their behinds and do in their
rivals -- whether those rivals are found in Baghdad, Tehran or the
West Wing."
We just have to thank god that so far it hasn't occured to them (yet)
to start offing people literally.
"Scooter worried he was being thrown to the wolves, according to his
attorney. A note scribbled by Cheney, the lawyer says, revealed that
he had smelled a plan to "sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick
his neck in the meat grinder."
Kind of like Nixon's comments about leaving people "twisting in the
wind."
"Now that really sounds like something you'd expect to happen in
Tony's world."
Welcome to the Robo-cop present.
http://tinyurl.com/38hnwt
further reading:
http://www.psywar.org/falklands.php
better:
http://www.falklands.info/history/hist82article13.html
Chris
To Dinesh:
You write a book and title it "The Enemy At Home" and are surprised at the reaction you got? Are you kidding? What is this with "The Left" and "The Right" anyway. You obviously seem an intelligent person so why be surprised at the reaction when the title of your book demonizes people and your book does more than arbue that the "American left" bears "some" responbility. It basically makes the one sided case that the left is entirely responsible for 9/11. Which doesn't push forward either the debate or a rational appraisal of what the issues are really about. If you didn't intend to divide the country why write the book? There is more than enough "blame" to go around for 9/11 and there have been enough books demonizing the left for America's woes to justify some fear. Just read anything by that lightweight Ann Coulter.
If the left and center of these debates didn't argue back they'd be fools. The right in this country tends to follow demonization with laws and regulations, and with extra-legal police actions. The left is afraid of you because you provide the kinds of arguments that provide a pretext for official repression. One reason that you could write theoretically is that for several years the police were restricting the freedom of assembly rights and actually targetting people who spoke out against the war or who expressed their opinions too loudly -- unless they came from your camp. This is documented.
Both the "left and the right" bears a measure of responsibility for the volcano of anger from the Muslim world that produced the 9/11 attacks." If "President Jimmy Carter's withdrawal of support for the shah of Iran," was responsible for the volcano erupting, it was support for the Shah of Iraq that created much of that bottled up anger in the first place. The Shah was a brutal dictator whose SAVAK was modeled on the SS, KGB, and other secret polices and whose policies only drove Islamicists and their ideas underground while repressing the sorts of expression that might have provided some moderating conceptual alternatives to violence. Ayatollah Khomeini was able to betray the democraticizing instincts of the Iranian intelligencia because the Shah had provided no credible alternative to Islamicists as "reformers" of the previous corrupt regime. When the only choices are "far right" and "far left" everyone in the middle becomes forced to chose between unpallatable alternatives. If Jimmy Carter had tried to support the Shah, all he'd have done was to put off the day of recogning for his regime. He enjoyed neither majority support nor legitimacy outside the military and the wealthy classes of Iran.
The notion that Bin Laden decided to attack the US based on perceptions of US weakness because of "President Bill Clinton's failure to respond to Islamic attacks" is itself an opinion that the facts can no more justify than the notion that "Bin Laden" was upset with US troops in the Holy land. Bin Laden based his calculations on his needs for fame and support at home. The best way to get that fame would be to attack the US. Calculations on US strength were only required to measure his probability of being able to pull it off. Bill Clinton did respond to Islamicist attacks. He hunted down attackers, and you'll remember his missiles drove Bin Laden from Africa to Afghanistan. We had a consensus on fighting terrorists that terrorism is a diplomatic and law enforcement issue unless there are states overtly involved. Clinton was attacked by the right for the measures he did take. It was during the "Monica Lewinsky" nonsense that he sought to retaliate against Bin Laden, and the right demonized him for trying to "wag the dog." Apparantly on the right can do this particular trick.
Now as to your next point, well you have a point. "I also argue that the policies that U.S. "progressives" promote around the world -- including abortion rights, contraception for teenagers and gay rights -- are viewed as an assault on traditional values by many cultures, and have contributed to the blowback of Islamic rage." But this issue is also why you've stirred up a hornets next at home. The fact is that the Islamicists are right-wingers like you. And that means that if you argue that the Islamicists are right on this issue you are arguing on their side.
We've had terrorism at home from right wingers enraged by the same issues. We've also had minority governments seeking to ram their own concept of morality down the throats of people in other regions of the country or majorities who don't share those views. That doesn't make it the fault of "legitimate progressives" that people take violence against them. Nor is it the fault of the "legitimate right" that some progressives result to violence. On the contrary, it is the duty of all civilized people to resist violence no matter what the professed motive of the professors is. A civilized people use the rule of law, consensus, persuasion, debate, and the democratic process to advance moral and legal concept.
Finally there is a broader viewpoint to all this. You argue "Contrary to President Bush's view, they don't hate us for our freedom, either. Rather, they hate us for how we use our freedom." But the truth is that some of the leaders of all these movements do indeed hate "us" for our freedom. At the root of most of the conflicts going on in this world is narrow self-interest coupled to demogoguery and manipulation. Bin Laden may believe some of what he says, but mostly it is part of his power-game. He argues what he thinks will be incendiary and will get him donations, fame and supporters. For people such as him, and many who oppose him, this is all a big game in which ideas are part of the chess-pieces available to them.
To defeat Islamicists and Islamicism requires a shift in the power elements involved so that those seeking power can no longer rely on the methods of division, inflamation, sophist arguments, or simplistic arguments. If we are going to "beat" Bin Laden, we need to shift the terms of the game. It seems to me you are playing the same game. If you want to make a positive influence you'll play a different one.
Chris to: dineshjdsouza@aol.com
Reference: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601624_2.html
Michigan just upheld its legislature's definition of adultery as a felony punish-able with jail time. They did so despite criticism as to whether the legislature intended the results it has legislated. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070118/lf_afp/usjusticesexoffbeat_070118055859. Some of my friends will probably respond to this law by saying "that is unconstitutional" but it has been on the books so long that constitutionality isn't the issue. Common sense is. Some people claim that their opinions are backed by their constitutional beliefs, but a fair assessment of constitutional principles will show that those opinions don't hold water.
A law can be immoral, unjust and effectively "unconstitutional" as most people might think of the subject, while being perfectly constitutional. And we need to remember this while framing debates about social justice, responsibility and politics. States have been criminalizing personal and private behavior since before there was a constitution and there is nothing in the constitution that prevents them from doing so now.
The better questions are, "should they be making adultery a felony?" What are the principles that should guide us in framing just laws and a just society? and how do we derive just laws from general principles?
Making the clear distinction between what our rights are, and what we have to do to achieve them is something we have to make both in our minds, and as bodies of humans (collective aggregations) or we risk endangering the privelages and ennabling rights we need in order to achieve the theoretical rights set out in our Declaration of Independence and the pre-amble to the constitution by letting others decide those questions in their own convenient manner.
I believe that if people can be more thorough and logical in the adoption of general principle and its application they can more successfully settle disagreements over application of principle. If we can get people to agree on general principles, and to be rigorous in their application then we have a better chance of fashioning a workable society.
An abstract right such as justice is "inalienable" because it exists as an abstract principle. An abstraction is a generalization drawn from observations that can be formed into assumptions that can later be used to guide behavior. Rights such as "justice" are something we assume we should have, and because all people are assumed to have similar needs, we can pretty much agree that all people should share those rights.
But rights are abstractions. People, like President Bush, can mouth abstractions like "freedom is on the march" while promoting the opposite because the words themselves are abstractions. We can find disagreements on the weights to be given to these principles. The principle is "inalienable" because it remains a principle even as it is attacked and undermined. Indeed, as we found out from the behavior of the founding fathers, no one more values his "liberty" than the owner of slaves or the former slave. Indeed the act of acting against principles such as freedom or liberty only reinforces just how important those principles are.
I value freedom, equal opportunity, and justice. Some put more weight on freedom and see no value to equal opportunity. Still others have an emphasis on justice that may emphasize peculiar values of what that is. It is this difference in assumptions and their derived principles that drives much of human conflict. A man like Jefferson could establish "inalienable" principles and see their obvious application to white males, but fail completely to see their application to blacks, or women. Principles are inalienable, but humans regularly are alienated against their wise application. This is something to be wary of, even the smartest of people can so mix garbage assumptions and lies with his efforts that he can undermine his own efforts from within -- all the while convinced that outside enemies are out to get them. It is why i read most pundits and SIPs with a container of salt handy.
Most of our conflicts come, not in the principles themselves, but in the application of those principles. But the first thing we have to realize is that all "general" principles, in their application interpolate and are derived from assumptions that in turn flow from observation of reality. Since no individual human being stands in the same "time/space" none of us observe that reality exactly the same way. This seems to present an obstacle to deriving shared principles, but it isn't.
One general assumption we can all share, is that ultimately we dwell in a field of related "time/space" and that therefor we share that reality. Moreover, from that reality we have a need to derive and share common "principles" or shared assumptions in order to function as communities who have to interact with each others. Therefore, to get shared principles, we have to find a way to share the basis of the assumptions which are behind those principles. The way to do that is by writing them down, along with the scenarios and examples on which they are based. This use of logic, example, reason, is a reasonable way to debate and draw out workable policy ideas from general principle. Once one gets the strategy right and the policy right, one has a better chance of producing workable solutions.
On the other hand, poorly derived principles do nothing but cause problems. For example the simplistic anarcho-libertarian premise that government "is the problem" does nothing but cause problems in developing societies. For a simple example, in a developing society one needs to pay for infrastructure as part of the income stream of that society, yet most libertarians will push for development first, infrastructure second, and then scream about the tax costs and infrastructure inflation that follows the effort to retrofit urban societies after they've arisen pell mel. Systematic (systems) thinking can help us construct societies that will actually be functional -- but to do that we have to find ways of communicating the issues.
Now we get to some real world logical applications of constitutional principles and other sound "construction" principles needed to create a constructive society. There are some really smart people working on these ideas. I think if we can tap into their ideas (and critique those that are unworkable) we can make some progress as a society.
further reading:
Explaining the liberal principle
The Tangle of Growth: A Dynamic Analysis
Commentary on: Why We Left the Episcopal Church, published By The Rev. John Yates and Os Guinness Monday, January 8, 2007; Page A15 (Washington Post)
"When even President Gerald Ford's funeral at Washington National Cathedral is not exempt from comment about the crisis in the Episcopal Church, we believe it is time to set the record straight as to why our church and so many others around the country have severed ties with the Episcopal Church. Fundamental to a liberal view of freedom is the right of a person or group to define themselves, to speak for themselves and to not be dehumanized by the definitions and distortions of others. This right we request even of those who differ from us."Definition: "Revisionism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionism
"Historical revisionism is the critical reexamination of historical facts, with an eye towards rewriting histories with newly discovered information. A particular form of historical revisionism, named negationism, is concerned with the denial of facts accepted by mainstream history."
I'd say that the question of who and what is distorted is definately at the center of They say:
"The core issue in why we left is not women's leadership. It is not "Episcopalians against equality," as the headline on a recent Post op-ed by Harold Meyerson put it. It is not a "leftward" drift in the church. It is not even primarily ethical -- though the ordination of a practicing homosexual as bishop was the flash point that showed how far the repudiation of Christian orthodoxy had gone."
I grew up in the Episcopal Church, and left it mainly due to being forced to choose between views of orthodoxy similar to those expressed here or "revisionist" views that accepted reality and saw much of what is in the bible figuratively. Ironically I left the Church because I followed the revisionist views. I could not accept what was told to me was "the orthodox" view of Jesus Christ as Savior and the need to be "born again" to share in that salvation. I could understand being "born again" -- but I soon came to see this as a beginning not an eternally repeated end in itself.
They are claiming that their secession from the Episcopal Church is about a "liberal view of freedom", and protest the "distortions of others" yet their views do not rest in liberal views but in their own distorted views of what the church should be fundamentally about. Paradoxically, they are leaving because they would deny the rights of mainline Episcopalians to take the "mythic" elements of Christianity with a little salt.
Are we supposed to believe them? Okay I admit I don't. They are using the same sophisticated arguments the South used when it left the union. The South claimed they didn't revolt because of slavery? That they were leaving because of "states rights" and opposition to tarriffs. Sure, Okay. Their opponents didn't see it that way. Likewise this group is leaving because the majority of the American Church sees that there is a certain need for reinterpretation and revision in beliefs in the face of reality and revisions in our understanding of that reality.
"The core issue for us is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world. It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow. The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers. Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith -- saying that traditional theism is "dead," the incarnation is "nonsense," the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is "a barbarous idea," the Bible is "pure propaganda" and so on. Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed."
And the folks leading this attack take it all very literally, talking in tongues and sharing a charismatic approach more in line with other denominations:
I'm sure that both sides of this debate probably feel this way about the other side:
"It would be easy to parody the "Alice in Wonderland" surrealism of Episcopal leaders openly denying what their faith once believed, celebrating what Christians have gone to the stake to resist -- and still staying on as leaders. But this is a serious matter."
Shades of Martin Luther! Of course the founder of Episcopalianism is more to be found with Henry the VIII, who could have been characterized this way easily since he was once a supremely loyal Catholic and only revolted over the issue of divorce.
"First, Episcopal revisionism abandons the fidelity of faith. The Hebrew scriptures link matters of truth to a relationship with God. They speak of apostasy as adultery -- a form of betrayal as treacherous as a husband cheating on his wife."
The bible prophets compare both belief in idols, and triumphalism, arrogance and hubris in belief in God to "adultery." That is why there are extensive sections in Jeremiah about his relationship with Hannaniah and Hannaniah's belief in a triumphalist God who would save Israel from the Babylonians because he believed he would. Jeremiah himself would rather that Hannaniah would have been right but the "truth" from God is that God was going to do what he had decreed and no prayers were going to move Him until he was finished and the Hebrews had been scattered to the wind and realized the foolishness of their triumphalism and arrogance. Hannaniah, like so many religious preachers before and since had an arrogant faith that was supremely confident that it was the only correct faith and that he had the truth in his corner. "Fidelity to truth" is as important as blind faith. If the facts don't warrant a belief, then that belief needs to be reinterpreted or "revised" or it is simply a falsehood.
But is the issue really about the "repudiation" of Christian Orthodoxy, or the re-examination of it in the light of revealed facts and critical thinking? If orthodoxy can't adjust to facts, then it is a creature of dishonesty not a creature of truth. If there is no middle ground between faith and apostasy, no wonder there is so much confusion between these groups! There is no such thing as a half truth.
But there are many truths that are figurative in nature and that were told without ever having had the intention of being scientifically historical in nature. Even history up until present times is a matter of who is telling the story. Some historical accounts have proven to have been ancient spin, ancient legends, or even to have been lies. For people to claim half-truths and even pure lies as truth is cheating on God because God didn't make this world a place for us to create fantasies to play in, but a place for us to find our way through, and for Christians, to Him. Adultery is as much clinging to a false image of God as it is clinging to idols or abandoning faith entirely. The stories, if taken as conveying a real truth, are all true stories. The fiction in them is meant to convey that figurative truth with all the more clarity.
"Second, Episcopal revisionism negates the authority of faith. The "sola scriptura" ("by the scriptures alone") doctrine of the Reformation church has been abandoned for the "sola cultura" (by the culture alone) way of the modern church. No longer under authority, the Episcopal Church today is either its own authority or finds its authority in the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion -- which is to say it has no authority."
I can't speak to this. I became first a Buddhist and later a Jew because Christian Orthodoxy had no authority of truth to me, the sort of authority that actually does come from God and doesn't merely assert a thing based on its own sotto voice. This argument sounds suspiciously like the "Either/Or" arguments of Kierkegaard carried to our own time. If either side of this debate were talking with the full authority of faith then I'd trust their arguments better. Faith is a powerful argument and tends to build bridges rather than tear people apart. Faith is also about things unseen. Blind faith is about things that never were and usually never can be. True Faith is about posibilities. Blind faith sweeps lemmings off of cliffs on the premise that "one can't prove its not true" -- that lemmings can swim to heaven.
"Third, Episcopal revisionism severs the continuity of faith. Cutting itself off from the universal faith that spans the centuries and the continents, it becomes culturally captive to one culture and one time. While professing tolerance and inclusiveness, certain Episcopal attitudes toward fellow believers around the world, who make up a majority of the Anglican family, have been arrogant and even racist."
It seems to me that those who sever ties on the basis of their own perception that they have the sole "correct" take on faith are the ones cutting themselves off from their fellows. The fallacy of theologians and Emperors alike has been the conceit that God is made in their image and that God will bend to their will. The continuity of faith will survive any sort of "revisionism." What it won't survive is falseness and duplicity, conflict and violence, because those things destroy faith.
"Fourth, Episcopal revisionism destroys the credibility of faith. There is so little that is distinctively Christian left in the theology of some Episcopal leaders, such as the former bishop of Newark, that a skeptic can say, as Oscar Wilde said to a cleric of his time, "I not only follow you, I precede you." It is no accident that orthodox churches are growing and that almost all the great converts to the Christian faith in the past century, such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, have been attracted to full-blooded orthodoxy, not to revisionism. The prospect for the Episcopal Church, already evident in many dioceses, is inevitable withering and decline."I think that rejecting history, science, and common sense on these grounds destroys the credibility of faith far more than trying to bend tradition to accept new realities, perceptions or understandings. Even if it is more temporally successful or attractive to people. This is literally a matter of interpretation. Orthodox generally cleave to human interpretations of the divine and clothe those interpretations in divine authority. Revisionists are willing to admit that even the most authoritative of teachers teach in a human voice with human foibles either in the original transmission or in its translation and mouth to mouth transmission. Revisionists are willing to admit that maybe they or others can (and did) make mistakes.
"Fifth, Episcopal revisionism obliterates the very identity of faith. When the great truths of the Bible and the creeds are abandoned and there is no limit to what can be believed in their place, then the point is reached when there is little identifiably Christian in Episcopal revisionism. Would that Episcopal leaders showed the same zeal for their faith that they do for their property. If the present decline continues, all that will remain of a once strong church will be empty buildings, kept going by the finances, though not the faith, of the fathers."
I always suspect scoundrels when i hear such absolutes. Surely a 2000 year old tradition can survive critical scrutiny and need not fear questions or truthful revisions. And what is this fear of revisionism? Is it better to pander to liberals and homosexuals, or to homophobes and people who choose the ugliest interpretations of their faith?
"These are the outrages we protest. These are the infidelities that drive us to separate. These are the real issues to be debated. We remain Anglicans but leave the Episcopal Church because the Episcopal Church first left the historic faith. Like our spiritual forebears in the Reformation, 'Here we stand. So help us God. We can do no other.'"
There is nothing so infidel as co-religionists who decide to accommodate reality, make friends with cherished enemies, or stand humble before God. I could consider revisiting the other "revisionist" Episcopal Church, but this orthodoxy seems repugnant, alien, distorted, and dishonest to me. And I can well imagine how Henry The Eighth must have felt when his effort to create a Church of England spawned hate filled "puritans" from both the Catholic and the Protestant side. But then again, maybe not. My mind is not of a 16th century zealot.
"The Rev. John Yates is rector and Os Guinness is a parishioner of The Falls Church, one of several Virginia churches that voted last month to sever ties with the Episcopal Church."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/01/07/AR2007010700982.html
Two Visions
There are two visions of the present
Two eternal visions of the future.
In both visions peace will come.
One is a field of peaceful green,
The other of peaceful brown.
A vision of Horror:
They gather round to try to bury the dead.
Mothers bury their sons,
Fathers bury their daughters.
Grandparents bury both children and grandchildren,
and then bury each other.
Like Zombies they walk beneath a dying sun.
And reflect on the hate that brought them peace.
And try to gather the unburied, who litter the earth,
Their bodies picked by scavengers.
A vision of peace
They gather around to celebrate,
To welcome home sons and daughters.
Children dance on their grandparents knees.
And everyone dances beneath a warm spring sun.
A Vision of Horror
The wagons are circled around,
and there are enemies everywhere.
Zombies in armies fight one another.
And horror defines life after vengeful life.
The preachers strut their stuff on stage,
and arm their followers with hate and explosives
Zombified with faith in their preachers.
A million armed camps, a million ghastly fires,
As people prepare their isolation.
A million visions float upside down;
"We will bring peace by killing the evil enemy."
A Vision of peace
The wagons are circled around
and everyone is having a festival inside!
Young people of all sorts dance!
Defining their joy by getting to know each other
The preachers strut their stuff on stage,
comparing and contrasting, listening to each other,
sharing enlightenment and dumping nonsense
Arming their followers with faith, tolerance and understanding.
A million joyous camps, a million lovely fires,
As people prepare their joyous visions,
and construct lovely pavilons with clean water flowing down,
to a shared and joyous peaceful green sea.
A field of peaceful green
I see the green coming anyway.
Brown is only the result of people fearfully clinging upside down.
Come out of the ground!
Brilliant green, brilliant blue, life, chose life!
And humanity too!
Open the doors to your campfires,
and gather round,
to hear a million billion stories,
and a loving sound.
All punctuated by royal drums,
And flowers falling all around.
Chris
(with homage to Prufrock)
I was surprised today. Charles Krauthammer is finally starting to see reality. Somehow the Death of Saddam Hussein finally brought him around from the die-harder supporter of this imbecilic war-effort to a genuine critic. It took seeing what allies we have there to make him see the light. He writes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401347.html
"Of the 6 billion people on this Earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed but tortured and mutilated -- doing so often with his own hands and for pleasure. It is quite a distinction to be the preeminent monster on the planet. If the death penalty was ever deserved, no one was more richly deserving than Saddam Hussein."
As noted by Ed Shultz and others, nobody exactly cheered for this man. But Krauthammer notes that the only people who seem to think that they are "winning" this war are the Shiites, and that their concept of "winning" has devolved into a notion of humiliating and shaming Sunnis and seeking revenge for past insults and murders. He notes:
"...The only charge for which Hussein was executed was that 1982 killing of Shiites -- interestingly, his response to a failed assassination attempt by Maliki's Dawa Party."
"Maliki ultimately got his revenge, completing Dawa's mission a quarter-century later. However, Saddam Hussein will now never be tried for the Kurdish genocide, the decimation of the Marsh Arabs, the multiple war crimes and all the rest."
In other-words, Maliki wasn't really interested in justice, but revenge.
"Maliki's rush to execute short-circuited the judicial process that was at the time considering Hussein's crimes against the Kurds. He was hanged for the killing of 148 men and boys in the Shiite village of Dujail. This was a perfectly good starting point -- a specific incident as a prelude to an inquiry into the larger canvas of his crimes. The trial for his genocidal campaign against the Kurds was just beginning."
Charles Krauthammer concludes as many of us are starting to conclude:
Victory for us does not mean supporting the Shiite "militia" in their effort to crush Sunni rivals, and while we have an interest in protecting Kurds and Shiites from Sunnis, we also have an interest in peace, stability, and protecting Sunnis from Shias. If we can't do that there is no point in continuing to stand between these people and their desire to cut each other throats.
"We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us."
My own life is up and down, down and up. Right now I'm working very hard to simply stay in the same place I was at last year at this time. I don't know what it means to have an easy time of it all the time.
I have faith, with enough effort, study, tolerance from those I love, and perseverence we'll slog it out. Sometimes just being here at the end of the day, the end of the year, ought to be enough. Like with Hannukah or Purim, we celebrate the fact that "they tried to harm us, they failed. That may have been because of our efforts, or it may be just our dumb luck. Let's eat dinner."
Somehow I'd like to see more than mere survival. But right now, survival is enough. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to slog it out again this year.
Carpe Diem!!