Shower Us With Love

I can't figure out why Jesus and Mary speak only in oil slicks, pancakes, ill-kept showers, potato chips, and the occasional slice of toast, any more than I understand why the dead communicate solely through paid psychics, as if they're getting kickbacks, and only by dropping obscure hints using numbers and letters and colors, like aphasic kindergartners. What happened to burning bushes and parting seas? And the internet would seem to be a perfect medium, as it were, for the unrisen dead, it being cyberspace and all. Why not just send an email? Or set up a blog?

Wanna really convince me? Jesus himself shows up (in the shower, if that's how he likes it; or rises up out of a toaster, why not?) with my dead mom, and she speaks in complete sentences.

Boo Hoo

[click to enlarge]

As they have for, like, ever, Republicans are pushing the idea that the media are being unfair to The Rominee, and overly favorable to Obama. It's gotten more heated lately, after a self-serving and multi-erroneous article in Politico.

The above charts, based on -- what's it called, again? -- actual data, suggest otherwise. It's worth going to the source (The Project For Excellence in Journalism), where the lower graph is entertainingly interactive.

Having taken over The Washington Post, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and having their 24/7/365 propaganda arms know as Fox "news" and RWS™ radio, Rs are engaging in their usual strategy of falsely accusing others of doing what they really do, all the time. It's really quite amazing; especially to the extent that their willing fodder buy into it all.

Random Assortment Of Good Ones

Biblical Proportions

This is why things will only get worse:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.

Why care? Well, the problem is these are the same people voting for teabaggRs. And what's the problem with that? Well, only that to hold such beliefs one has to reject obvious fact, believe science is either corrupt or inherently fallacious (while selectively welcoming its manifold benefits into their lives), and have no curiosity or willingness to seek knowledge. Which makes for a pretty piss-poor electorate: the sort that accepts the propaganda of Fox "news" and the RWS™, and the lies of Mitt Romney with neither the desire nor the ability to question them. It's no coincidence that religious fundamentalism and today's Republican party are joined in the midline, just posterior to the hips.

Nearly half. Far more than any other developed country (it's fewer than Turkey, though). So much for the daydream of the founding fathers, the one involving a well-informed electorate.

I've said it a million times: I really wouldn't care what people believe if it hadn't come so negatively to affect our politics; and I accept the value of religious belief for most people. It's evident that some people can have religious faith and still be open minded to the world around them. But since by definition that kind of thinking describes people of varying points of view, it's being overwhelmed by the solidarity of astronomically narrow minds, people who wear their ignorance like a talisman. As the world gets increasingly complicated, the 46% seek increasingly to gather together to hide in not-knowing, while striking out at otherness with increasing fury. And, given the frailties of the human mind in the face of such difficulty, their numbers will only increase. (The 46%, according to the study, is statistically unchanged from last measure, two years ago. But it's up from 44%.)

It's a form of thought, if that's what it's called, that's so foreign to me that I can barely process the fact that nearly half of our country "thinks" that way. It makes me feel like I'm living in another universe. I'd sure as hell rather live in one where the numbers are the other way around. But, since we're in this one, and assuming there's a desire to hang around awhile, I'm working on not caring. If the election goes the way I think it will, it'll be a matter of self-preservation.

Cosmic Thoughts

I particularly like the thoughts at the very end.

Bumper Wisdom

Saw the above the other day while driving; hadn't seen it before. Pretty good.

Down

I have to admit I'm starting to feel pessimistic, and it's not just the latest jobs report. It's the unrelenting lying, and the torrential flow of billionaire money into deceptive ads, the nastiness of which is just beginning. And, of course, it's the constant and undisguised propagandizing by the right wing's favorite "news" source.

But it's more than that. Many liberals are disappointed with Barack Obama -- because of policies that ought to have made the RWS™ deliriously happy and because of which their claims of terrorist-loving America-hating on the part of the president ought to have disappeared in a flashboom, like the leadership of al Queda: kill lists, citizen targeting, Gitmo, detentions. The list goes on.

And that's the point: Obama is the centrist he always was, and he's doing -- legally or otherwise -- what he thinks he needs to do to protect against terrorism; and he's done what he thinks he had to do, by way of compromising on important issues like health care and taxes and the stimulus, to get done what little the Rs have allowed. And yet, the RWS™ keep pushing the idea that he's a radical socialist, a weak-kneed terrorist appeaser; and the sheep lick it up like corn sugar.

As always, the bottom-line issue remains choosing between fiscal priorities that will allow us to pay for such frivolities as education, infrastructure, health care, safety nets, environmental protection, research, alternative energy, predict the weather, etc, etc, versus ones that will preserve and increase tax cuts for the wealthy and for businesses, increase military spending, and drastically and irreversibly cut the aforementioned government functions to make the numbers work (although they don't). (It's also a choice between foreign policies in which war is a last or a first resort.) But the seriousness of that choice is lost in the din. Which is partly because the Ds, as usual, are unable to maintain a coherent and focused message, but mostly because the right-wing scream machine is so loud and well-funded, feeling no moral need to attach to reality; and because its target audience is so uninterested in and incapable of hearing truth through the noise.

I know it's too early to draw conclusions, and I know summertime polls are notoriously non-predictive; but based on what's really at stake -- as opposed to the false picture drawn and paid for by the only group that stands to benefit from a Rominee presidency, ie those that have theirs and will be fine no matter how badly the country stumbles -- it ought already to look like a landslide for Obama.

It doesn't. Deliberate blocking of Obama's jobs programs by teabaggRs, followed by decrying (barely containing their glee) the lack of jobs. Unaccounted money and unbridled lies. An easily deceived public, their prejudices and paranoia carefully (and brilliantly) stoked nonstop. Ruthless and concentrated messaging untethered by fact, opposing discohesive, disorganized and limp response.

Yes, I keep giving money, and every time I do I get asked for more. But it'd take millions of me's (does that apostrophe go there?) to counter just one of the Rovians, and I don't get the sense that it's gonna happen. Obama is the left-leaning centrist I always thought he was, a fact disappointing to the further left, and ignored by the right to advance their greedy goals. In the elation of his victory, I completely underestimated the kind of reaction, from day one, there'd be on the right, nor foresaw how far right the entire Republican party would go, how willing they'd be to wreck the recovery for their political ends, and how unthinkingly their sheep would follow.

For a realist, which I am, pessimism seems to be the only logical state of mind.

America-Hater

You can disagree with his policies, like rescuing the auto industry or stimulating the economy; you can have issues with trying to provide affordable health care, or with ending the war in Iraq, drawing down in Afghanistan. You can prefer budgets that cut spending on education and health and infrastructure and research and environmental protection in order to increase spending on aircraft carriers and to lower taxes on the very wealthy. And, sure, you can be irate over making birth control available, or supporting equality for gays. But you have to be frigging insane to see in President Obama some sort of evil anti-religion America-hater.

If you do, after watching the above video -- not to mention observing him over the past three-and-a-half years, you really need to lie down and take a nice long nap. And, if you don't mind the suggestion, keep on sleeping until the election is over.

Bold

The Rominee sticks his neck out and predicts 6% unemployment at the end of his first term. Which, as it happens, is the level already forecasted by the CBO, based on policies currently in place. Can't beat it, really: take office, do nothing, and it'll be fine.

It hasn't escaped me, nor, I'm sure, teabaggRs, that the trajectory of the economy is positive and if it continues if they take over, they'll be able to take credit for it. Which, sure as body odor in a locker room, they will.

In a similarly bold act of cervical out-sticking, Rominee promises the strongest military in the world. With a little more confidence in his abilities, I bet he'll commit to rotating the earth around the sun.

Heroes And Heavy-Breathers

This is a really difficult issue, rife with emotion, perfect for demagoguery.

Chris Hayes, a guy whose show I've never watched, got in hot water (to put it mildly) for saying, perhaps inartfully, something I've said here as recently as a few days ago: we love and idealize wars too much in this country, and too easily equate patriotism with fighting them. Calling the fallen soldiers heroic, while certainly true on many levels, also enables the overlooking of the horror of our own creation to which we send them; lets us ignore how terrible war is, how much we damage the people we send to fight them. And makes it too easy, I think, to shame people away from asking questions, which is probably the most dangerous aspect of all.

Whereas it's individually appropriate, and can't be overstated regarding those in the trenches (I served in Vietnam, in case you didn't know, was injured in a rocket attack, have run to tend to wounded as Cobra helicopters fired overhead: I've seen heroes, and I'm not one of them), promoting hero-worship is also an easy way for leaders to keep minds off what's going on. In some ways, weeping over heroism is a self-indulgent act of assuaging our own guilt. Worse, exploited cynically by those who benefit from war, politically and financially, it becomes an all-too-effortless substitute for the hard work of living in a democracy, an innoculation from criticism. Some pretty bad people know it all too well.

To bring that subject up is, as I see it, neither unpatriotic nor disrespectful. In an open and democratic society, it is, in fact, the opposite. Which, of course, is exactly why the RWS™, who have less love for democracy than they have for the black guy in the white house, have jumped on Chris Hayes (and, of course, on all liberals) like a Medal of Honor winner on a grenade. (Except none of them have ever served nor would have had the instincts to do it.) From their armchairs and sound studios, they loves them some war. Mitt Romney, looks like, loves him some war even more. In service of that proposition, they equate questioning with lack of patriotism, hating the troops, treason (a word tossed around by teabaggRs like frisbees by the hirsute). And, with far too many people, they've succeeded in over-eye-pulling the wool.

That it's nearly impossible to have such a discussion rationally doesn't mean Mr. Hayes shouldn't have tried. His apology was honest and heartfelt, I think; but his original words were meaningful. It's something we should be talking about. With our volunteer army and unpaid-for wars, it is too easy for us; saluting the flag with tears in our eyes as soldiers and veterans march by seems to fill the bill for many of us, and is a hell of a lot less difficult than paying for their care; or than setting aside selfishness and prejudice for the common good, sacrificing something real, compromising, as real patriots should do. If heroes are people who are sent (unprepared in the case of Iraq) to an unnecessary or unwinnable war and are killed or maimed fighting it, so, in these polarized and hateful times, are those willing to question it or try to prevent it in the first place. It should be harder to send kids to fight and die than it seems to be, less easy to ignore the realities by calling it heroism. And it should be easier to debate the wisdom of it all.

I think that's all Chris Hayes was trying to say.

[Thanks, Margy, for the link to the cartoon.]

I Was Wrong

Yep, I was. I've been saying that Romney's experience with Bain provided no experience that applies to being president; that he doesn't understand the economy. Turns out he does:

Halperin: You have a plan, as you said, over a number of years, to reduce spending dramatically. Why not in the first year, if you’re elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you’d like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?

Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course.

Of course. Deficit spending has been necessary therapy for the economy devastated by his party's wrongheadedness, and he recognizes it. In fact, he knows that now's not the time to be cutting spending the way his party is calling for. He's a goddam closet Keynesian. (I added that sentence for you, PT.)

So, yeah, he evidently understands the need for what Obama has done. Which, because it's his nature, hasn't stopped him from lying about it and campaigning against it.

Manifest Destiny

This article by Andrew Sullivan is worth a read. In an ideal world a candidate's religion ought have no relevance whatever. In fact, I think absence of religion, in these times which call for clear thinking, would be an enormous asset. But, given the undeniable trend in this country, pretty much exclusively in one party, toward substituting one's version of gospel for common law and common sense, religious leanings may be more relevant than ever.

... For Mormons, the Constitution was a necessary great prologue for the real endeavor: the restoration of the Gospel, i.e. the triumph of Mormonism over other forms of Christianity. The same president of the LDS church confirmed the Mormon belief that the Founding Fathers appeared as spirits in Utah's Saint George Temple to a previous president, Wilford Woodruff in 1877, and stayed for two days and nights in order to be properly saved by a Mormon baptism. Woodruff wrote of this experience:

The spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, "You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God." These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them ... I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister [sic] to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others...

George Washington was posthumously named a high priest in the LDS church, alongside John Wesley, Benjamin Franklin, and Christopher Columbus. Yes: Ben Franklin is a Mormon High Priest now, according to Romney's faith. More significant to me is that all these figures in American history were asking to be baptized since they now knew that Mormonism was true and they needed saving.

[...]

I raise this because such an understanding of America's unique and divine status among nations has profound foreign policy implications. It means that America alone has divine permission to do what it wants in the wider world, that America is subject to different standards than everyone else (because we alone are divinely blessed),

So, assuming this is a fair analysis, we have, in Mitt Romney, not only a constant and deliberate liar and a man of no political morality, but one who'd see foreign policy as a means to a particular end: namely, the supremacy of the Mormon church via aggressive action against all perceived enemies, borne on the shield of righteousness.

I suppose some might see this as an appropriate counterpoint to Barack Obama's obvious attempts to make Sharia the law of the land. Me, I consider it a tad worrisome. Because President Obama's record is there for the looking, and it's nothing like the one RWS™ and The Rominee would have us believe. Mitt, on the other hand, has shown countless times he has no public values at all. Now, there may be reason to worry about his private ones.

And if not, well, then his lying and pandering and lack of core political convictions are more than enough to run away from, fast and far.

Foxified Again

This study is hardly news any more. Closed minds want to stay closed. Open minds like the breeze. (And, no, I don't watch MSNBC. But I do listen to NPR and watch The Daily Show.)

Devolution

It seems clear we're reaching, or have already reached, the breaking point of the human mind. The world has outpaced our ability to keep up. Designed or evolved, humans aren't built for this.

People are cracking up right and right, and I'm trying to figure it out. It'd be pretty interesting if we were, in fact, creations of some sort of intelligence, in which case, you'd have to wonder WTF he/she/it/they had in mind. By the time the rapture rolls around we'll have killed each other off. If the sky-guy put us together with this in mind, what does it say? Well, among other things, it'd say there's no point in considering it: the plan is in place, it's playing out piteously, we're pre-programmed pitiful pawns.

But I'm trying to understand what's happening based on reality. Observing the steady decline, at least in the US, I've taken some solace in believing that a society needs only a small number of brilliant people in order to keep itself moving forward; and I've noted that -- at least until teabaggers get their way -- we have a steady stream of smart and motivated immigrants who still believe in the American dream, winning contests, scholarships, pushing boundaries of knowledge. But it's not enough: we need a quantity of intelligent voters, too; forward-thinking ones, unselfish ones, ones who see change and embrace it, enough of them to elect sane politicians. In that, we seem increasingly bereft.

In study after study we've learned there are innate differences between liberals and conservatives; in how they think, in how they react to certain stimuli, in the very wiring of their brains. We seem to have evolved in two separate strains, two subspecies as it were, brains and guts, and there must be a reason. The gut-thinkers must have come first; primal, the trait remains more deeply embedded than reasoning. The question is whether it's become a liability in these metastable times. Having developed ways to band together, tribal instincts in the face of dangers great and small must be a big part of what got us here. Tigers. Crocodiles. Neighboring tribes. Volcanos. (Okay, sure, you wanna throw in T. Rex, Sarah? Why not?) But did this evolution prepare us for modernity, or has it left us unable to cope? I'm thinking the latter. The instincts we've developed -- half of us, anyway -- are causing us to implode. We're just not made for it.

Tribalism must have had great survival benefits as humanity emerged: developing a sense of community based on likeness, shared rituals, banding together for protection. Finding "otherness" threatening; not venturing too far from what's known and safe: these things must have kept the species intact. And these traits, I'd guess, were more select-worthy early on than those of dreamers and seekers. But -- speculating -- at some point, as societies became safer and more stable, more able to defend themselves, needing to spend less than full-time on survival, other human needs became important, too, allowing striving to appear; wonder, curiosity, invention.

Gut-thinkers, tribalists, suspicion and paranoia got us past the dangers of a few hundred thousand years ago, and continued to do so as long as scattered tribalism was the dominant form of society. In an increasingly borderless world, though, one in which assimilation is becoming the norm, one in which science is taking us places we never could have imagined at speeds impossible to comprehend, change is far outpacing the rate of evolution. We need more mental horsepower, more facility of thought, and we just don't have them; we're stuck in the savannas as the world whizzes by. Tribalism runs deep, and we should be thankful for where it once took us. Maybe we still need it: maybe if the speed of cultural and scientific evolution had been slower, gut-thinkers would have been able to keep up and remain useful.

Keeping guard, maybe, outside the gates.

In fight or flight situations, you only need to assess a couple of facts: that moving object looks different from me, smells different, makes un-me-like sounds. The slow gathering of information, careful making sense of things, planning ahead, considering pros and cons -- none of that applies. But as the world has become complex, threats less immediate and far less clear, that fight-or-flight thinking becomes the danger. It's a new world: science is calling your magic into question; people are increasingly moving past your tightly-held prejudices; your stone-age need to maintain a sense of superiority is threatened all around. Tribalist genes are screaming for action, convincing you you're right, calling you to react with force, and you neither can nor feel the need to resist. Your notions of order are falling apart: you see conspiracies, threats, you make up imaginary enemies (wait past the first moments of the video); you can't help it, you can't withstand the force of your nature.

There's a name for prehistoric tribalists, genetically driven, searching for touchstones in the modern world: teabaggers. We see it's not their fault that they are who they are. Let's say thanks for all they've done through all those eons, but we can't re-cork the bottle for them. The question is whether we can find a way forward together before their kind of thinking blocks all the roads. When they think it's life or death, gut-thinkers have the advantage over cerebrators. It's that evolution thing they don't believe in.

And suddenly it all make sense. Teabaggers are doing what they were programmed to do, calling up fears through millennia long past. Blacks, gays, yellows, browns, immigrants, people who don't believe in the things that they do. Science. Free-thinking. Equality: all of them ringing primordial alarm bells, so much a part of them that they can't see it for what it is.

Which, to me, is not a hopeful realization. It's too deep, it can't be changed. Humankind's creations have outpaced its abilities to keep up with them, and are at cross-purposes with deeply ingrained (in half of us, anyway) ancient instincts for self preservation. In the end, rocks thrown by cave men still break heads.

War Memorial

[Re-posted from a couple of years ago.]

For me the significance of Memorial Day is the recurring reminder that the story of war is -- or should be -- the story of the people who fight them and not of those that start them or support them from the safety of their homes. Wars begin because of the failures of leaders: their stupidity, their selfishness, their blindness, their need for power. For them, it's at a level far removed from those called upon to respond to their failures; with little if any personal pain, they make decisions for which people will die. Money will be spent. People will be mobilized with thoughts of patriotism, will find themselves chanting the name of their country, convinced that theirs is the just cause, that their survival depends on following those leaders who, by definition, have let them down. I think, particularly, of our succession of undeclared wars, most of which were for questionable or overtly phony purposes. Vietnam, Grenada (what a sick joke), Iraq, even Afghanistan, a message pitch, high and tight, abandoned early for a grand illusion.

My view of the Vietnam war was, comparatively, from the balcony, but I was there. I cared for the injured, I was (mildly) injured myself. I came to understand how easy it is to dehumanize the enemy, and, more importantly, how quickly the fight becomes about one's fellows and has little if anything to do with the supposed reasons for being there -- assuming the real reasons were ever stated, much less known.

It'll never change, of course. Because of issues about which soldiers likely won't know, and with a sense of patriotism so easily manipulated that both sides will feel it equally, off they will go, to the pain of their families and to the safe and comfortable pronouncements of heart-felt support of their nations, so easily conjured by the men in charge.

The almost unmentionable fact is that it seems we humans like war. For soldiers there's an intensity of relationships and of purpose, annealed by danger and the need for rising above oneself, that exists nowhere else. When I served, I believed the friendships I formed were the most profound I'd ever had. I was sure they'd last forever; and yet, after I was home, they disappeared nearly as quickly as they formed, and I'm not sure what that says about me. I'd like to think it's because I found something in my life more based in more durable things: family, being a good surgeon, the training for which immersed me so deeply that the rest of the world nearly disappeared; but I don't know. I do know that, rightly or wrongly, because of transcendence or giving in, for many there's nothing like those relationships ever again. To those that have gone through it, I give recognition; to those who died for it, and to their families, I owe much.

But to those who haven't, yet wave the flags, profess their love of country, especially whether "right or wrong," who get all teary-eyed at the passing parade and all hateful-eyed at those who don't, who define patriotism as saluting their flag and not much else, and who think "support our troops" is a bumper sticker -- about those people I'm not so sure. On Memorial Day we hear it said how wars have been our finest hours. For the soldiers, fighting to save themselves and to protect their buddies, with or without a sense of duty and honor, it may well have been. For many, it most certainly was. Called upon to perform heroic acts, to live in unimaginably horrifying conditions, they did. But was that the finest of what they might have been capable? Is that really our best? Shouldn't we hope to hell that it's not? Is life really so meaningless that in war we find our highest purpose?

As much as I honor and respect those who have fought in our wars, and as much as I am aware of the loss of those who died or whose lives were permanently damaged, that much and more am I disgusted by the smirking and secure, the rich and righteous hypocrites who foment the hatred, who prey upon human weakness and misery, who use the unspoken sense of purposelessness that so many people have and turn it, cynically, into faux patriotic pride. Over war. Over the threat of war. Manipulating the mistaken but nearly ubiquitous belief that war is good, that war is righteous, that war is who we are, they win elections, they revel in the spotlight, they spew untruths through the airwaves from their well-padded seats at the table of public opinion. It's shameful.

In having gone to war, dutifully, voluntarily or not, with high ideals or not, mistakenly or not, there's no shame. But at the thought of having been led there with deceit there's great sadness. For those leaders whose cynical recognition and manipulation of our over-arching human frailties, our desperate need for meaning; for those who, generation after generation, translate so easily our weaknesses into willingness to see war as greatness, and to define patriotism in terms of how we respond to that idea; for them I have mostly contempt.

In wars there are countless acts of individual greatness. In some wars nations have responded to need and risen to greatness. But wars are not great; only the people who fight them. And the people who fight them, I remember this Memorial Day, are, mostly, doing so at the behest and consequence of people who are wrong more often than right, who have their own unspoken purposes, who have run out of ideas, and who are decidedly not great.