Avdat

Happy Independence Day!

A visual update to a post I put up on The Ivy Bush three years ago:

Three things that make me feel like a radical othodox apostate patriotic:

This piece of music:

This sports moment:

And this speech:

Scandal sheet

Tom Schaller has argued convincingly that, contra the DLC orthodoxy, Democrats should turn their backs on the God 'n' gun-lovin' South and build on their bi-coastal strongholds by fighting for the Midwest and Southwest.

Fine.  But isn't turning over your Teen Democrats organization to members of a Satanic torture cult going a bit too far?

There's so many jumping off points for commentary in this little scandal.  It's an embarrassment of riches for a quick-witted pundit.  Sadly, I'm not so quick-witted.  I just read the article over and over, slack-jawed.

It did prompt me to Google The Church of Satan.  Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing!  They have a Creed; they have ethics (which, according to the above linked-to news story, forbid sex abuse and law-breaking.  What?  Is Mark 3:26 about to be fulfilled?  This could be the biggest religious story since the Resurrection, and nobody's covering it!  Besides that, Why be a Satanist if you can't be evil?); a Prophet/Lawgiver/Messiah/Enlightenment leader figure, and, naturally, since the death of the revered leader, a struggle both for succession and to define orthodoxy.

The pictures and names are amazingly campy.  Surely there's gotta be a little irony in all this, a little "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Heh, we're Satanists, dude!" lack of seriousness in all this, right?  Maybe not.  I mean, people take Oprah seriously.  I'm forever being dumbfounded at what people take seriously.

Brother John, who emailed me the link to the Democratic-Satanic scandal in Durham, wants to know if this trumps our little Dentist Scandal in Salisbury.  It's a matter of opinion.  Our scandal does involve actual murder, and the "If I don't take an Oxycontin right now I'm going to scrape all the skin off me with my fingernails!" look in the dead eyes of all three suspects is certainly more haunting than Little Miss Devil's Food Cake's multiple chins.

The Dentist Scandal has it all: sex, drugs, violence, and money.  It's as addictive as hydrocodone.  The Democratic-Satanic Scandal is creepy, frightening and weird.  Fascinating, but in a totally different way. 

Søren Kierkegaard, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you

I'll admit, it is a novel argument:  Barack Obama is wrong for America because he doesn't hate America enough. 

But call me unconvinced.  Many and varied are the theological critiques of American empire:  William Stringfellow, John Dominic Crossan, Stanley Hauerwas and even N.T. Wright.  What these extremely different critiques have in common is sound and creative exegesis and theological reflection, sharp cultural criticism and, in Stringfellow's case, no small amount of righteous indignation. 

But what we get from Scott Stevens' post at Faith and Theology is a smug, broad-brushed anti-Americanism that's actually in the service of the various features of American life he purports to find so distatesful.  If Stevens were the Deuteronomic historian he'd save his most withering criticism for Hezekiah and Josiah, whose papering over the rot in Jerusalem merely delayed the inevitable.

It's theological Naderism.  I'm quite impatient at this point with people who still don't think there's a dime's bit of difference.

When I read the post, the first thing I wanted to do was gouge my eyes out.  Then I wanted to write a long, furious critique, but "Wilhelm" in the comment thread beat me to it.  Then I delved deeper into the comment thread and discovered a conspiracy theory:  the post is in fact a send-up of all forms of political theology.  Now my head hurts.

Kinda sorta shoulda seen it comin'

With his bête noire out of the Democratic primary, Andrew Sullivan goes wobbly on Obama.  Here and here.  More to come, I'm sure.

The audacity of careful pruning

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"I think it's time we had a national conversation about tackiness. We need to get past all the muffin tops and recognize that we are our own best hope for overcoming butchered forsythias. We need strawberry rhubarb pies, not Cowboy fans. Strawberry rhubarb pies are our simplicity. And we need to have change in tackiness."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

Change we can believe in:  forsythias allowed to attain to their God-given form of burning bushes not consumed; rather than light bulbs.  HT:  Brandon, who also reminds us that Chaucer's Parson wouldn't have liked muffin tops, either.

The voice of a man and not a god

Lee noteswith regret the hawkish tone of Barack Obama's recent speech to AIPAC. 

What caught my ear was Obama's endorsement of an undivided Jerusalem.  In fact, East Jerusalem is full of Arabs.  If one has an interest in maintaining the Jewish character of the state of Israel, much of it ought to be forfeited to the Palestinians for demographic reasons. 

It's a great example of how the facts on the ground butt up against the Israelis' historical and cultural attachment to the land between the Green Line and the Jordan River.  This in spite of Israeli attempts to establish facts on the ground with Jewish settlements smack dab in the middle of a sizable Palestinian population.  The conflict grinds on because you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Unless, as Gershom Gorenberg writes, Obama engaged in a little deception, meaning "physically undivided," while knowing that the AIPAC crowd would hear "politically undivided."Gorenberg calls this "disingenuous and damaging." 

I'm reminded of a scuffle over the confession of faith that we Presbyterians wrote to celebrate their reunion in 1983.  There were those on the committee who would walk away from any confession that did not call God "Father."  There were also those on the committee who would walk away from any confession that did call God "Father." 

The solution?  This mutually agreed upon phrase:  "We trust in God, whom Jesus called Abba, Father."  This language absolutized the metaphor for the former group, and relativized the metaphor for the latter.  So in the end, nobody walked away.

Now is that disingenuous, or is that the creative use of language that greases the wheels of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence?  Is Obama pandering, like any politician we love to hate, or is he clever, clever, clever, like any politician must be to succeed?

I swear sometimes that man is out to get me

The other day I heard some reporters on NPR speculating on why Hillary Rodham Clinton hung in this campaign long after it became almost mathematically impossible to win.  One spoke of the visceral attactment that older white women (OWWs) have toward the former first lady.  Apparently, they play the theme song to the movie Nine to Five at Clinton rallies.  For these OWWs, Clinton reminds them of themselves crashing against the glass ceiling in the 70s, getting bypassed by the young, new, flashy man whom they had to train.  Clinton hung in there for the sake of these ardent supporters.

All very powerful stuff.  And gosh knows I'm against gender discrimination. 

But we have a word for this kind of behavior.  It's called Transference, "the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object."  It's a psychopathology.

The point being, Barack Obama is not that guy who left footprints on your head in the office scramble, and the Rules Committee that struck the Florida and Michigan compromise wasn't stacked with Dabney Colemans.  It's really quite unfair to hold Obama responsible for something someone else did to you in 1981.  It would be far more fair to hold him responsible for his record and his proposals. 

Which is what most voters did.  Hello?  The war?  Who was for it, and who was against it?  Maybe that's why Obama is the nominee today.  Why don't you ask your therapist about it?

Old age is tough

Thinking back to family reunions at Christmas and Easter, there were two names that if mentioned could stir feelings of disapprobation and even enmity amongst my populist southern relations:  Jane Fonda and Ted Kennedy.  I didn't know where Chappaquiddick was or what happened there, but I could pick up enough from context to know that it was an abyss of moral and political filth and shame.

These days Senator Kennedy's voting record is pretty much where I am politically.  But his name, voice and/or image still casts a cloud in my mind.  It's hard to shake those childhood impressions.

No one deserves a brain tumor, and I hate it for him.  Just like I hate it for Jesse Helms that he's confined to a nursing home.  I've visited plenty of old men in nursing homes whose politics are the same as Senator Helms, and there's no wishing that on anyone.

Prognostication

I still think that the likeliest scenario is that John McCain will win the White House, and Democrats will increase their majorities in both houses of Congress.  McCain is the most popular politician in the country, and his reputation for independence will help him distance himself from the extremely unpopular regime in the White House. 

The second likeliest scenario is that the Democrats sweep the federal level.  Their ability to do this depends on hanging Bush's record around the neck of John McCain.

It's very hard to see how the Republicans can make gains in Congress.  If they were going to separate themselves from the Bush administration, the time to do that was years ago.  Throwing Bush under the bus today looks cowardly, like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

I emote

In a post titled The Cult of Obama, Craig Carter frets that a politician short on experience and long on rhetorical gifts will lead a sheep-like electorate to the slaughter. 

(And please note, Indecisive, how Carter goes directly to Godwin's Law.  He does not pass Go!  He does not collect $200.00!)

This is unfair for a number of reasons.  First, when times are bad, it is rational for voters to choose someone with a vision of change and the shorter resume.  The latter often means that the candidate is not implicated in the policy failures that voters would like to change.  Otherwise incumbents would always win re-election.  This is why Hillary Clinton has failed to lock down the nomination despite her superior experience.  Along the way of accumulating experience in government, she voted for the Iraq War.

Carter complains that he doesn't know what kind of change Obama would bring.  Well, how about letting a black guy run the government?  That's not enough change for you? 

Carter teaches in Canada.  I don't know what his citizenship is, but perhaps from north of the border, it's harder to appreciate what a stunning change in both attitude and behavior electing a bi-racial candidate to America's highest office would represent. 

Carter may disdain the role of biography in politicking, but not all voters are wonks.  Some will vote for Obama because he's a symbol of racial reconciliation.  Others will vote for McCain because he's a war hero, and Americans love their war heroes (Ike, TR, Grant, Jackson, and of course George Washington, to name a few).

In fact, Carter does know what kind of changes Obama proposes, because he ticks them off when he mocks Obama supporters' teary-eyed hopes:

It is all glitz, glammor and emotive slogans and images. Everyone projects his or her own concerns and hopes onto him and is convinced he really cares about his or her particular issue. Will he end poverty? Certainly. Is his top priority fighting AIDS in Africa? Undoubtedly. Will he bring in universal heathcare. Of course. Will he end the war in Iraq without leaving Iraq in shambles? Without question. Is he really down deep most concerned about jobs and the economy? Yes, naturally. Is he patriotic? Of course. Is he committed to personal freedom? Is the Pope Catholic?

Withdrawal from Iraq, universal health care, better stewardship of the economy, no trampling on civil liberties in the War on Terror.  Yup, you've got it Dr. Carter.  That's not glitz.  Those are actually substantive differences with the current administration. 

Now whether he will enact them depends on whether he can govern as well as he can campaign, whether he's gobbled up by unforeseen events, or whether he's telling the truth.  But we won't know for sure until we give him the chance. 

Carter sounds like a lot of people on the political right who can no longer defend the indefensible record of the Bush administration, but can't follow where logic inevitably leads them--giving the other team a chance with their program.  Knowing that Bush's malevolent incompetence has rehabilitated the "liberalism" they disdain, they're reduced to mocking the other team's supporters rather than engaging in a rational debate about policy.

And that's what's all glitz and emotive slogans.

UPDATE (MAY 21):  Craig Carter replies here.