Avdat

Goodbye

It's time to put this blog to bed. There are many reasons, not the least of which is that I am in the dissertation phase of my program, and I really ought to devote as much time as possible to that, not this.

Another reason is the "neither fish nor fowl" nature of this blog. I post sporadically on a wide variety of topics, which makes for neither quality writing nor a large readership. Eclecticism can make for a unique online voice, but I haven't worked hard enough to pull that off.

But there's a deeper reason, namely, dissatisfaction with the type of writing I've been doing here. This blog and its predecessor The Ivy Bush has been a place for me to vent. In fact, when I become a community columnist for The Charlotte Observer ten years ago, and they wanted to know which topics I would address, I replied, "Things that make me angry." I've needed an outlet for anger for a long time now, and the past decade has not failed to deliver occasions for anger!

But I realized this weekend that I need to quit venting. After composing the previous post, an admittedly bitter reflection on what's become of our country in the past ten years, I went to church Sunday, and our minister, in her understated and highly effective way, challenged us to let go of bitterness--whether it's directed at the hijackers or at anyone else.

And then I read Josh Marshall's post-9/11 reflections, which made me realize that I went for bitterness because it was the easy option. But the more appropriate option was probably silence. As Marshall notes, what is frustrating beyond measure is that so few people with such simple tools unleashed such a tidal wave of evil. And they died in the act! No opportunity for us to serve out justice. And rooting out a few terrorists from their caves did not render a satisfaction commensurate with our rage. So there was Iraq. Or, little Iraqs--people like me banging away at their keyboards at the other people banging away at the Iraqis.

 But no more of that. For the indefinite future, I am only going to write what is either worthy of publication, i.e. higher quality stuff than blog posts, or what is worthy of being preached in congregational worship, i.e. free of snark and irony--the academic journal and the pulpit being the two places where I am most likely to address the public.

And if I do get angry, I will try to see whether my anger is justified or not, and put it to bed with truthful, loving words and focused, purposeful action.

Just what am I not supposed to forget this week?

It's going to be a long week of 9/11 retrospectives. Some will be thoughtful, moving and/or eloquent. Others will be sentimental and/or jingoistic.

I'm puzzled by how many remembrances admonish us to "Never forget," as if that terrible day weren't seared into our brains forever. Absent a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, how could any of us who are old enough to remember 9/11 ever forget it?

I suspect that some of the calls to "Never forget" are more about justifying everything that's happened since 9/11. Well, I don't buy that.

9/11 doesn't justify torture. 9/11 didn't justify the invasion of Iraq. 9/11 didn't justify the orgy of consumption in the 2000s which we are paying for now. 9/11 didn't justify the maligning of Islam, a noble religion practiced by a billion people. 9/11 doesn't justify continuing to fight in Afghanistan, propping up a corrupt government long after the architect of 9/11 has gone onto his eternal reward--such as it is.

What I will remember about 9/11, aside from the sheer horror of the day, is how badly we handled it. When we looked to our leaders to rally us in the face of evil, all they could come up with was, "Go shopping." Living well is the best revenge, they say, so living large must be so much the sweeter!

Like sheep we obeyed. The 2000s were the decade of the McMansion and the Hummer, conspicuous consumption on a truly baroque scale. Why, we made the Greed Is Good 80s look like an era of Puritan restraint.

And that's partly why we're in the mess we're in. Take away easy credit and cheap energy, and McMansions and Hummers will put you in the poor house. People have talked about bin Laden's goal of bankrupting America. He's come close, but indirectly, not by miring us in a land war in Asia, but by miring us in second homes in Vegas that we could never afford.

I'll also remember this decade's unique cast of incompetent and immoral public servants. The boomers have MacNamara and Nixon and Kissinger; the Gulf of Tonkin and My Lai. Gen Xers have Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld; WMDs in Iraq and Abu Ghraib.

Young men join the military for a variety of reasons--love of country, hatred of the enemy, a scholarship, a paycheck, to see the world or test oneself in extremis. Some of these reasons are valid, others less so. But what we must never forget is that old men start wars for a variety of reasons--national security, fears real or imagined, vanity, ignorance, vengeance, meanness, lies. This seems to hold whether the cause is just or unjust. And every young man or woman needs to consider that before joining the military. I will not forget to tell my sons that unpleasant truth once they come of age.

I will also tell my sons that patriotism cannot be reduced to military service, for that would call into question the patriotism of the overwhelming majority of Americans who've never donned a military uniform--a strange proposition. I will tell them what the World War II vet John F. Kennedy said, "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."

We owe members of the military love and respect as human beings created in God's image and capable of extraordinary courage. We also owe it to them that we do not send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. We owe them adequate health care to heal their injured bodies and minds. We owe to ourselves and to them the work of making the society they've pledged to defend more just and equitable. On all these counts, we failed them over the past ten years. We shouldn't forget that.

We shouldn't forget that the evil of the terrorists rubbed off on us. There's no consensus on torture in our society today, thanks to the illegal acts and fearmongering of our elected leaders, aided and abetted by the media. The Viet Cong water-boarded our POWs. If we'd won that war, we'd have convicted their leaders and generals for war crimes that ex-Bush administration officials brag about in their memoirs.

History won't forget. History will judge them harshly, and judge us all the more because we failed to hold them accountable. After all, it's not as if America at the turn of the 21st century is a feudal state, lacking the institutions and mentalities to protect human rights and due process. We're without excuse.

I also will remember how inadequate "our" religion has been in the face of "their" evil. We Christians seem to have had three choices this past decade:

1. The crusader mentality of the religious right.
2. The shrill hectoring of liberal Protestantism.
3. The "I'm so over politics" pose of the communitarians.

Roman Catholics have been on the sidelines, first paying lawyers to strong-arm victims of abuse and their families and then paying out to the same.

The religious right is quite wrong about bin Laden representing Islam. They're quite wrong to want to dish out in the name of Christ the same type of treatment Christ received in their favorite snuff film The Passion. Liberals are right about consumerism and militarism, but no one's listening. Blame it on the low Christology, I suppose.

Communitarians are right that that church needs to re-group before it re-engages, lest it lose its soul, but they never get around to engagement. In fact they poo-poo it. It's no accident that thoughtful young Evangelicals flock to Hauerwas. Evangelicalism careens between Theocracy and Quietism. Hauerwas's ouvre is really a "thick Quietism" that gives young Evangelicals a way to choose the path not taken by  their Moral Majority parents without succumbing to a "Just Me and Jesus" sentimentality. But it doesn't give them a way to tell obvious truths like, "Election results matter."

Christians are ill-equipped to humanize politics these days.

Finally, we should remember the dead and their loved ones and friends. Remembering the dead is one thing that makes us human. And as the scripture says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep." But that should go without saying, shouldn't it?

If I sound bitter it's because I am. And yet, what right have I to be bitter? As Matt Yglesias is fond of pointing out, ours are the best times in human history. Is bitterness a conceit of the privileged?

I don't think so. Lamenting mistakes, missed opportunities and unnecessary death is appropriate, even given our relative comfort and affluence.

But despite all the stupidity and nefariousness of the past decade, some good things have happened. Americans put aside their age-old prejudices and elected a black man President. Quite apart from our bombs, Arabs are demanding democracy and reshaping their societies. Who knows how it will turn out? For the best, I pray.

Providence has its own tale to tell apart from the depressingly familiar narratives in the headlines and history books. We shouldn't forget that, either.

The GOP jobs market

For you, is Labor Day 2011 a well-deserved day off from work? Or is it another tedious day of puttering about the house, sending out resumes and hoping that one day you'll rejoin the workforce? Either way, it's a good day to look back at how we got in this mess and take stock of what may get us out of it.

To make things easy we can compare two very different approaches to job creation, lying almost side by side in time and place. There's the liberal approach, which would have the government prop up the labor market with deficit spending, either by hiring people directly or by letting bids for all sorts of government-funded projects. We tried that in 2009.

And then there's the conservative approach, which favors cutting taxes, regulations and government spending in order to create a friendly environment for private sector job creation. Conservatives distrust fiscal stimulus because they believe that deficits and bureaucracies crowd out private investment. This is the approach we're trying right now.

And to make things even easier we have charts! From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here's the unemployment rate from January, 2008 to June of this year:

From the Lehman Brothers collapse in September, 2008 to President Obama's inauguration the next  January, the unemployment rate jumped nearly two percentage points. Remember, unemployment was already an intolerably high 8% the day he set foot in the White House.

Then came a series of typically liberal moves: the stimulus bill in February, Cash for Clunkers and the GM takeover in the spring. Allowing a bit of time for the pig to move through the python, when the full force of Obama's plan hit, the unemployment rate was flirting with 10%. And there it leveled off and began to dip a bit.

Then the Republicans won control of the House, and forced a more conservative approach. In late 2010 Congress extended the Bush tax cuts and cut the payroll tax. This year Republicans have forced budget cuts at the federal level. And what has the unemployment rate done? It's edging back up again.

Here's another chart that's useful for evaluating conservative economic policy. It compares private and public sector job creation so far this year:

As the stimulus money petered out, state and local governments began laying off people. But the private sector has failed to add enough jobs to keep up with population expansion, much less reduce unemployment . Not to put too fine a point on it, but the lousy job market is a job market designed by conservatives. Shrinking the bureaucracy hasn't kicked off a surge in private sector hiring. 

But we knew that, didn't we? This is what John Maynard Keynes taught us: markets are not self-correcting. At times they need government intervention to get them back on track.

On the other hand, the best we can say about the liberal approach was that it was a kind of triage for an critically wounded economy, but by no means a cure. This is because the stimulus was not big enough. We now know that in late 2008 the economy contracted far more than economists or politicians were aware of at the time.

We don't need more tax cuts, because people will just save the extra money or pay off their debts. Indeed this is what they ought to do, but that won't put people back to work. Since neither consumption nor private investment is resulting in new hiring, the government needs to put people to work. In a big way.

And there's a big need. Our nation's roads and bridges are in terrible shape. Our schools are crumbling. We need a new electrical grid that will transport clean energy to homes and workplaces.

And we can afford it. On Friday, the real interest rate on the ten year bond fell to 0%. Bond purchasers are basically giving the U.S. an interest free loan. We've heard Republicans say so often, If the nation's households have to tighten their belts, so should the government. Well, if the nation's households were offered interest free loans they'd take them, wouldn't they? So should the gubmunt. Spend. Put people back to work.

And that's exactly what President Obama needs to tell Congress this week. Normally, he would have benefited from this clear contrast between two very different plans, but since he's acquiesced to GOP demands, he's on the hook for the economy, without the option of running against a do-nothing Congress. That can change, if he wants it to.

Art, baseball and health insurance

My younger son loves to draw. And my minister has a great eye for talent. So she's commissioned him to create artwork for this fall's Sunday School class.

Well fall is just about here, but he hasn't delivered his promised creations yet. So yesterday Mrs. Avdat and I had to crack the whip.

Our son got rather upset. I reminded him that he'd made a promise, and he needed to keep it. This just made him more upset.

I said, "Son. You love to draw. Drawing is fun. Why are you so upset about completing this assignment?" He tearfully replied, "It's no fun when I have to do it!"

I remember this attitude. I've never been shy about public speaking, but in 8th grade Miss Mansfield dragooned me onto the speech and debate team. Simply because I was forced to do it, I hated it, and I was stubborn enough that I quit the team for two years until Mr. Earnest tracked me down two years later and said, "Now you will be on the forensics team." For some reason I couldn't say no to the man. And I wound up having a lot of fun and getting better as a public speaker.

Now bear with me. In some strange way, this reminds me of the ongoing resentment about the health care reform law. Specifically, the mandate to buy health insurance.

Having health insurance is great thing. And remember, if you can't afford it, the government will even help you buy it!

Yet there's this massive resentment out there that the government is going to force you to do something great, namely, get yourself some health insurance. Most of the people complaining, such as the editorial writers at the Times-Dispatch, are people who have health insurance and like having it. But being forced to do something you already love--why that's tyranny! Like making a young artist make art. Or making a young public speaker speak in public.

It's times like these when we need Crash Davis to remind us to chill out:

Baseball is fun. Making art is fun. Avoiding health care bankrupcy is fun!

Most but not all people complaining have health insurance. The other day I had a conversation with the man who lives under the bridge over Bellevue Avenue going into Bryan Park. He let it be known that the government has no authority to compel ctizens to buy a product. If the homeless doubt the constitutionality of Obamacare, then Houston, we've got a problem!

But he's mistaken. The courts have traditonally interpreted the interstate commerce clause extremely broadly. And there's no doubt that modern medicine is a form of interstate commerce. So if the government is going to force hospitals to treat all-comers (and any decent society wouldn't turn away the critically ill or injured because they can't pay), why can't it require its citizens not to be health care freeloaders?

Despite all that I imagine that the Supreme Court will strike down the individual mandate. Not because it's unconstitutional. Did you hear any conervatives bemoaning the constitutionality of the mandate when Mitt Romney was making it the law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

No, it's because conservatives are in no mood to compromise. When Democrats go so far as to endorse Republican proposals, like an individual mandate or cap-and-trade legislation to reduce CO2 emissions, Republicans simply repudiate their own positions and move farther to the right.

In the DSM there's a condition called Oppositional Defiant Disorder. We used to call it "Being a Teenager." I think the conservative movement in general suffers from this condition. Whatever Dad says is wrong, even if Dad agrees with us. Resenting being forced to do something you like is a classic symptom.

Today's treatment for ODD involves medication and family therapy, but in the old days parents treated their teenagers with reverse psychology. Like so.

So maybe the only way for Obama to enact his program is to get so far to the right of the Republicans that they'll start moving to the left. He could start by ditching Biden and tapping Ron Paul as his running mate.

The Fighter as model for mutual accountability

There's a lot of great scenes in The Fighter, but this is my favorite. Dicky, just released from prison, approaches his brother Micky's girlfriend Charlene, seeking permission to coach Micky again, a role he'd lost due to bad behavior (language is rough, BTW):

 

Dicky of course is a knucklehead and a crackhead. Having a conversation with Dicky means being treated to a steady stream of one-liners, stale jokes and out-and-out BS. Like the prophet Amos, Dicky lacks the proper history or credentials for telling the truth.

But tell the truth he does! And it's not a self-serving truth. A lot of people try to excuse their sins by appealing to the ubiquity of sin, but that's not what Dicky's up to when he reminds Charlene of her checkered past. Dicky realizes that Charlene's absolute moral superiority in this situation is getting in the way of Micky's success in the ring. It's Micky that Dicky cares about. If before he had wanted to be in Micky's corner to overshadow him, now he wants to be there to help Micky shine. But not by edging out Charlene.

And give credit to Charlene for accepting the truth. Because she really does enjoy an absolute moral superiority over Dicky. She's in Dicky's world, but no longer of his world. Her "balcony view" of Micky and Dicky's dysfunctional family has been invaluable to Micky in terms of his making the right decisions about his career. And yet she acknowledges that this crackhead is speaking the truth. She acknowledges that she can't give Micky everything he needs.

We know that Dicky is clean and sober because in the previous scene he'd given his birthday cake to his erstwhile supplier while declining his invitation to "go upstairs." Charlene doesn't know that. But she is able to recognize the truth when she hears it, and that leads her to trust Dicky.

Which is an extraordinary leap of faith. Addicts are notorious liars.

Legitimate truth-telling is always disinterested, and good listeners recognize and assent to the truth wherever they hear it. I think that this scene is a model for Christian conversation. Minus the F-bombs, of course.

Jobs speech kabuki

I know I'm late to this game, but about that jobs speech kerfuffle: so the President wanted to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. And the speaker says, No you can't because you'd upstage my party's presidential debate. And they go back and forth about it. And then the President says, Fine. I'll address the Congress on Thursday night. And that's that.

So the Speaker gets to diss the President, which plays well with his caucus. And the President gets to look accommodating, which is how he perceives himself and wants to be perceived. Everybody wins!

Now that's some bipartisanship for ya.