Rabbi, Run

In Portland visiting my mom again, I picked up a copy of "The Jewish Review," a paper with which I'd not been familiar. In it, there's an article that sheds much light on the non-mosque at non-ground-zero question. Based on a speech in Portland by a Rabbi Michael Paley (referred to in the article as "one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America") it revealed several things I'd not known; and, living in NYC and a friend of Faisal Rauf, the rabbi ought to be a reliable source.



There was also this:

Assuming the rabbi isn't a liar (after all, I've been told that all Jews are America-hating collaboraters with our enemies) it sheds some light that I, for one, had not seen in other media: the origin of the idea, the fact that there'd been a prayer center there that pre-dated 9/11 by twenty years.

It sort of puts the lie to the Newtonian "triumphalism" meme, doesn't it? Or so you'd think, in a fact-based world. A world that doesn't exist in the penumbra of Fox "news" and the teabagging RWS™. A world in which there'd be half a chance of surviving. A world long-since lost to the most crazed among us, and their chosen leaders.

Optimists

What's the word for such charitable views as these? Some might call it.... Christian.

Irony

Everywhere you look there are ironies, and it's hard to say which are the greater.

We're about to throw out of office the people who tried to fix the problems caused by those we're sending back in.

(For even more irony, read the "Mood ring" post by the author of the above cartoon [right below it], the inimitable Tom Toles.)

We've "liberated" (or whatever it's been) millions of Muslims; yet the people in armchairs who claim the action as their own, who puff up and scream that those who opposed it are unAmerican, would deny freedom at home to all of Islam. Thousands are dead, tens of thousands wounded, trillions spent in the name of planting democracy thence, only to uproot it hence.

We've asked our warriors to die for people over there that we (and by "we" I mean teabaggers and RWS™) don't want to live with here.

Over the seas, we hope -- we need -- that people in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq and Iran rise up against those who preach fear and hate and violence. At home, we rally at the feet of demagogues whose cynical manipulations of fear and hate (and undisguised calls for violence) are amplified in unprecedented synchrony by non-stop right-wing media who claim the mantle of country-love while disparaging and ignoring the most essential tenets of it. Like respect.

I'd call that ironic, all right.

Well, perhaps these people traditionalists. After all, demagoguery and fomenting of hate for minorities has a long -- if largely, until now, unsuccessful -- history in this country. In a recent column, Nicholas Kristoff described it this way:

Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days. But we should also recognize that historically this distrust has led us to burn witches, intern Japanese-Americans, and turn away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

Perhaps the closest parallel to today’s hysteria about Islam is the 19th-century fear spread by the Know Nothing movement about “the Catholic menace.” One book warned that Catholicism was “the primary source” of all of America’s misfortunes, and there were whispering campaigns that presidents including Martin Van Buren and William McKinley were secretly working with the pope. Does that sound familiar? [Yes, it does.]

It may be a fine tradition -- perhaps even evolutionarily sound -- but it doesn't make me feel any better. Back then, it was the occasional pamphleteer. Now, it's pervasive and coordinated right-wing screaming.

And, in perhaps the greatest irony of all, the triumphalists are complaining that, in his low-point end-of-combat speech on Iraq, Obama didn't praise Bush enough; when, in fact, he gave them more than they deserved-- just as he did in not pursuing war crimes -- in pretending that everything was fine. So fast is history being rewritten that the ink is smearing. While, in a perfect circle of ironies, the screamers count on the shamefully short memories of Americans, we've already forgotten how the war began, was carried out, and descended into horrifying debacle. "The surge worked," we are being told, now as before, and for that we should haul George Bush upon our shoulders and march him into the history books, his greatness pristine as cleared brush.

The fact is, Obama effectively concluded "enough is enough." Couch it any way you want: it was time to end the endless horror to whatever extent possible, declare stalemate, and (sort of) leave. After all the blood, money, and time, with no actual endpoint, it's finally up to Iraqis to solve Iraq. Frank Rich, in one of his better columns, quoting Andrew Basevich, a West Point grad whose son died in Iraq, captures the irony far better than I:

“The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget....

“...common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment.... the whitewashing of our recent history is well under way. The price will be to keep repeating it.”

He's plenty hard on President Obama for abetting the whitewash. And the RWS™ have the temerity to complain that not enough praise was lavished.

Now there's irony, of the first order.

Random Signs Of Something

Orrin Hatch, perhaps the last Congressional R with half a brain (or maybe it's that he uses the good half or the other one randomly), is in favor of (or not really against) the non-mosque at non-ground-zero.

Let's be honest about it, in the First Amendment, religious freedom, religious expression, that really express matters to the Constitution. So, if the Muslims own that property, that private property, and they want to build a mosque there, they should have the right to do so. The only question is are they being insensitive to those who suffered the loss of loved ones? We know there are Muslims killed on 9/11 too and we know it's a great religion. I know a lot of Muslim people who I have a very great regard for, not the least of which is Muhammad Ali. He's a great friend of mine. But as far as their right to build that mosque, they have that right.
The question is, should they? Is it insensitive not to, in the eyes of the majorityof New Yorkers? It's going to come down to New York and what New York decides to do....

...There's a question of whether it's too close to the 9/11 area, but it's a few blocks away, it isn't right there. Frankly, there are a lot of people who feel, including the mayor of New York, that they should have every right to do it, and that New Yorkers should support them...

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Wanna know how the site for the non-mosque and non-ground-zero was actually chosen? Read this:

“Listen,” said El-Gamal, “do you have any clue how the Manhattan real-estate market works, what is involved? People seem to think that we picked that building to make some kind of point. But that is simply insane. This is New York; no matter who you are, you just don’t choose a building, move in, and take over. Do you know how many places I looked at? I looked at Chambers Street. I looked at Vesey Street, Broadway, Greenwich Street, Warren Street, Murray Street. Maybe half a dozen more, I can’t even remember now. It was only after all that that Park Place came up. Even then, it was the most grueling negotiation of my life. So many times I told myself, Wow, this just isn’t worth it. One minute the deal was on, eight months later it was off. The whole thing almost drove me nuts.”

"Triumphalism," indeed.

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One of the, until now, loudest scientific voices against anthropogenic climate change has become a believer.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.

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Watch this. The man is the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Talk about balls, and deafening silence:

Tell me the gay rights thing isn't 100% about religion-based bigotry. Voices like his are drowned like witches.

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And Paul Krugman, at least as grumpy as me when he looks around, recently had this to say. Hardly anything new to me, since I've been saying it, too, ad nauseum mio. But these days you can never feed bad enough:

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents.... — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

Now it’s happening again — except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

...Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly...

...What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage...

...And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits... ...Now, as we’ve just seen, [Limbaugh's] doing his best to insinuate that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there’s an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

To take a prime example: the hysteria over the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan almost makes one long for the days when former President George W. Bush tried to soothe religious hatred, declaring Islam a religion of peace...

...But here’s the thing: Mr. Bush is still around, as are many of his former officials. Where are the statements, from the former president or those in his inner circle, preaching tolerance and denouncing anti-Islam hysteria? On this issue, as on many others, the G.O.P. establishment is offering a nearly uniform profile in cowardice.

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: ... a “wave of committee investigations” — several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.

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I wish my bank accepted this: 87,000 = 500,000. Maybe they do, the other way around.

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Here and there, a flicker of reason. Extinguished before it can take hold, by the shouts of the RWS™ et al. If only they'd commit the energy to pitching in that they do to tearing down, we'd have a chance.

It'll never happen.

Wonder how they'll take down their Danish climate traitor.

Between Darkness And Light

The best I can say about those that oppose the so-called mosque at so-called ground zero is that they've been played like Glen Hansard's guitar. "I'm not prejudiced," they claim. Right here, even, in comments. Okay. Like Mitch McConnell, who takes President Obama "at his word" that he's not a Muslim, I'll do likewise toward their claim. Although it's hard to say which ought to be more shameful: bearing prejudice and hatred towards those of differing religions, or the dullish credulity that allows them to be manipulated so easily by people with cynical agendæ. Either way. Take your pick. You're bringing us down.

But the real issue here, as I've tried to say many ways, is the shallowness and self-centered hatred that underlies the movement (and not just the anti-mosquers. Teabaggers, too, and their golden calves.) Manipulated or just dumb, these are not nice people, these mosquovites, these mosquitoes. These are NOT people who believe in one of the most foundational principles of the country they claim to love. Love. Right.

And it's not trivial, as some would suggest. It's fundamental.

Opponents of the Park51 Islamic community center held a rally yesterday in Lower Manhattan, and a 4-minute video, posted below, reveals the true sentiments behind this campaign. It has little to do with The Hallowed Ground of the World Trade Center -- that's just the pretext -- and everything to do with animosity toward Muslims. I dislike the tactic of singling out one or two objectionable people or signs at a march or rally in order to disparage the event itself. That's not what this video is. Rather, it shows the collective sentiment of those gathered, as well as what's driving the broader national backlash against mosques and Muslims far beyond Ground Zero.

Anyone not in a coma has already seen it, but below is what the writer is referring to.

What an ugly people we are becoming. Americans, constitutional scholars.

Time was -- so I'm told -- when hard times brought people together. We are so far asunder now we'll never make it back. And, far be it from me to pick a side here, but the ugliness is pretty much entirely on the right of late. The upcoming elections are, quite literally in my view, about choosing dark versus light. About selfish hatred and fear, about ignoring the needs of a country in favor only of oneself, succumbing to lies and deliberate deceptions so that the powerful will keep more of their money; or about looking above and beyond and being willing to reach out to people in need, to buttress ourselves by claiming higher ground ("we won't build a mosque here until they can build a synagogue in Saudi Arabia" -- what high standards they have!), to take the harder path required of us to save ourselves. Not to mention the earth.

Hyperbole? Maybe. But I'm serious. I don't think it's ever been more clear what the two major parties stand for, and how they intend to get there. One: facing facts, trying to do the hard stuff, aiming to provide for the needs of the people and the planet on which they live (and, no, they haven't been perfect, or free of pandering or lilliness of liver); the other: desperate to protect narrow interests (meaning, of course, their ability to keep riding the escalator to ever greater gaps between their wealth and everyone else's) and willing to lie and deceive to get there. Theirs. To use whatever hateful means necessary, appealing (successfully) to the basest in us, to create an electorate foolish enough to do their bidding while thinking they're doing something else entirely. It could not be more clear.

It's one thing to disagree or to be disappointed in Obama's programs. In many ways, that describes me. But he's trying to deal with enormous problems, born of the very failures to which the right wing wants us to return. Why? Because they've made out like bandits every time Republicans were in charge. It's not in their interest to help; the things that the country needs might make them go from unimaginably rich to merely filthy rich. It's not by accident that the teabaggers are created and funded by billionaires, and run by a Republican hack pretending to be a grass roots guy. Unbelievable that they've pulled the pashmina over so many eyes; but hardly accidental.

I lost more money in the market crash than I'll ever pay in taxes. I don't love taxes, I don't like regulations that encumber me. I like to drive fast. But I'd rather see some regulations, and even pay more in taxes, if it would stabilize our economy and make another crash -- and personal loss -- less likely. I don't blame immigrants for our problems. I think our economy will be better off if Americans aren't going bankrupt over health care; the worse off "they" are, the more at risk I am. So I'm willing to pay taxes for that. And roads. On which I wish I could drive faster.

I think Muslims like Osama and the Taliban are lower than scum, but I don't hate all Muslims. I don't hate all Christians, either, for that matter. But I don't think much of the ones who were at that rally, shouting about Sharia while wanting their own form of theocracy.

The division in this country is between people who think like me and who think like those at the rally. And whereas I realize not everyone who disagrees with me is like those people, they are remaining deathly silent, because they're convinced those who think like me, ie willing to sacrifice to a higher good, are more dangerous than those haters. Or, to put it another way, they don't want to face the fact that they've been fed a load since Ronald Reagan told them what they want to hear: government is the problem; people in need are lazy and undeserving, you can think only of yourselves, and have it all. For yourself. For free.

Things are bad; but not, evidently, bad enough for people to abandon discredited rationales for selfishness. I don't doubt that we'll be moving to the dark come November. The time is coming when the realization will be unavoidable; but by then, it'll be too late.

Facts

Anathema to the RWS™ and to all of those who sup at their untidy table, there follow some facts about the Cordoba Initiative. As I mentioned recently, the leader is Sufi. To those who, at the urging of the demonstrably mendacious and venal Newt Gingrich, mindlessly repeat the notion that the center would be a symbol of terrorist triumphalism, I say (recognizing it'll make no difference, as facts are like rubber bullets on a mylar vest to these people) read this informative piece:

The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

It's just another example of how our mindless and simplistic approach to our problems is leading us to self-destruction. As Sarah Palin continues to laugh at thinkers, and as Newt presents his non-thinking as the Republican version of intellect, teabaggers and people like them empower their own destruction.

How sad. For letting it happen, in the case of most of our media, and for making it happen, in the case of the rest, and for our unwillingness to speak up, we deserve what we're about to get. Long since, we've abdicated our place in the world as a voice of reason, innovation, and education. It's assisted suicide.

And Rauf helped the FBI in its fight against terrorists.

And he said this.