Since I've seen the link posted all over the lefty blogosphere, figured I might as well find out what my Unitarian Jihad Name is, too
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Plasma Rifle of Compassionate Mindfulness. What's yours?
Okay, I officially Do. Not. Get it.
So the Pope died today. I'm not a Catholic, and I've got my own issues about religion, but I certainly recognize he was a major figure and his passing represents the passing of an era.
However.
All this drama and people wailing and carrying on about it? I don't get it.
Had this happened when the guy was younger (before his time, whatever the hell that means) and maybe died unexpectedly, or if it had been violent or something, then okay, I could see it being "tragic" or whatever, and deserving (possibly) of the wailing and carrying on. But he was blessed with a full life, did some great things with it, and is finally at peace and no longer suffering. To my mind, what more could a person want, either for themselves or those they love (or even those they don't)? We've got a totally effed up relationship with death, IMO, and spend so much time and effort lamenting and/or trying to prevent what is a natural part of life.
And another thing, since I'm on a rant anyway: the reaction by Christians, especially in this particular case for the religious leader of a large portion of a worldwide religion, particularly baffles me because hello, isn't that, like the underlying tenet of the Christian faith, i.e. that death is not the end, that salvation awaits once we've left this mortal coil? Were these people not just celebrating the Easter holiday, which commemorates the resurrection of their savior who brought to them the hope of a life everlasting? Why this aversion to embracing the eventuality of death? Hell, I don't subscribe to a Christian worldview and even I know the Scripture:
"In the way of righteousness [is] life; and [in] the pathway [thereof there is] no death." -- Proverbs 12:28I just don't get it. Honor the guy, his memory, and his legacy. Acknowledge the passing of a man worthy of respect and admiration. Be glad he found comfort and serenity in his faith and that it may have eased the pain of his last days and that he's now in the better place he believed in.
"The fear of the LORD [is] a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death." -- Proverbs 14:27
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Psalms 23:4
Via Mathew Gross comes this interesting, informative, and depressing article about the coming energy crisis and its possible implications in the coming decades. Short answer: it ain't gonna be pretty. The Pacific Northwest would probably fare well in comparison to the rest of the country as the author says -- Portland, in particular, has had the foresight to restrict the city's slow gobble of outlying farmland, and we benefit from excellent growing conditions that would allow regular people like us to grow some or all of our own food.
But as a former Wyoming native, I think the speculation about the Mountain West is at least somewhat incorrect*, if only because states like Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho are still largely rural and despite recent technological and economic advances, they lag far behind the rest of the country in terms of that kind of "progress". There's something to be said for being left behind (no, not in the fundie apocalypse sense) the march toward change and that advantage comes when the march toward changes comes crashing down around your ears.
During the whole Y2K extravaganza, most of the people in these states barely paused to concern themselves with what would happen if all the computers in the world suddenly went on a bender and started flinging airplanes into the ocean or turning ATMs into toaster ovens, or whatever the hell experts thought might happen. Not because they're a bunch of ignorant hicks or that they wouldn't be affected by it, but their daily life isn't tethered so tightly to technology. That can make life less convenient, sure, when you're talking about internet access or debit cards, but when internet access and debit cards suddenly go the way of the dodo, it's the people who depended on them overmuch that suffer far more than those who're still governed by a pioneer ethic of self-sufficiency.
(* the Western water crisis, on the other hand, is a very real and looming problem)
Scientific American responds to the Intelligent Design movement and the rest of the ig'nant mofos on the Religious Right. And I laugh my ass off. (Warning: drinking beverages while reading may be hazardous to your monitor's health.)
Scientific American April 2005 Letter from the Editor
Amanda over at Pandagon posts exactly the thoughts I've been having ever since I was watching the news last night (ABC -- no, I don't know why) and they said about 10 minutes in that they had breaking news and announced the school shooting in Minnesota. This wasn't local news breaking in, this was part of the regular newscast. I guess my first clue should've been that it wasn't the lede at the top of the newscast, even though it would've happened in time for them to cover it at the beginning, if only in brief.
Call it innate suspicion, but I immediately flipped through all the 24/7 networks to see what coverage it was getting. Every single one had Terry Schiavo coverage or some talking head bloviating about Terry Schiavo. That brief snippet I'd seen was the only thing I saw all night about it until the 11 o'clock local news.
Now, I'm not saying that school shootings should get the kind of sensational coverage they got back in the day. The glamorizing effect of that kind of coverage, to my mind, only made the problem worse. But. We were living in Laramie when Columbine happened and because we were about 12 miles from the Colorado border (and 120 from Denver), all but one of our "local" stations was broadcast out of Denver. I happened to be at home sick the day of the Columbine shootings and the coverage was wall-to-wall for HOURS. Local news, of course, but as soon as the national networks and cable news channels could get their units on-site, it was all Columbine, all the time. And then the two weeks of coverage, where Columbine was the lede every night and after it'd dropped off the national radar, the local news was still obsessing over it for weeks after that.
This is the first school shooting with a high body count in almost 6 years, the kind of event the media seems to crave. So the fact that it's not really getting much coverage -- let alone the wall-to-wall coverage of Columbine -- speaks volumes...about the racial disparities still so deeply ingrained in our society and the death grip the Rethugs have on the media.
The former, because the shooting happened at a Reservation high school, the shooter was a Native American (or, in wingnut parlance, "brown people"), as were his victims, presumably. Compare that with the shooting in an upper middle class suburban high school where the vast majority of the students were white, the shooters were white, and most of their victims were white. I guess that old news adage of "if it bleeds, it leads" only applies if the blood is blue and the skin is white.
I also suspect the Terry Schiavo case remains at the top because Tom Delay et al want it to remain at the top and the media are nothing if not trained circus monkeys. Delay started this whole brouhaha to get the attention off him and his ethical and legal troubles and he's not about to let some Indian kid bump off the story that's keeping his nuts out of a vice.
Up til now, I've remained silent on the whole Terry Shiavo rig-goddamn-diculousness. And I'm not going to say a whole lot about it here because frankly, I'm not sure either my keyboard or my forehead would survive the attempt. But Hunter over at Daily Kos has done a nice job of encapsulating my sentiments, complete with rampant expletives.
Because honestly, that's all that's really left to describe this freakshow. People who want to fucking worship this corpse that doesn't know it's dead, it's creepy and it's evil and it's fucking psychotic. These people are fucking psychotic.
And they run our country. You think about that.
So last night we were watching the news on ABC. One of the first stories was about Bush nominating Bolton as the UN Ambassador (he of the "there is no UN" fame, not of the "bad music and even worse mullet" fame). They showed a clipe of Senator Reid condemning the choice and talked about how even moderate Republicans are concerned about Bush's choice and that many of them are troubled by his continued willingness to piss off the international community. But that they (the moderate Repubs) were sure that once Bolton got into office, he would change his mind about the role and importance of the UN.
Which of course prompted me to shout at the television my observation that moderate Republicans are like teenage girls who date a guy thinking they can change him. If they just love him enough, he'll turn into the man of their dreams. Jeebus, are we ever hosed.
So last night, the FAN Founders attended the foreign policy debate between Howard Dean and Richard Perle at the Schnitz. We'd gotten our tickets a couple of weeks ago as a kind of a pre-celebratory thing in anticipation of Dean's win of the Chairmanship.
Anyway, as you've no doubt seen/heard, it was quite the barn burner. And not just because of the shoe-throwing thing. (A few minutes into Perle's opening speech, some guy came down the to the stage and threw his shoes at Perle's head. The first one hit the curtain behind panel, the second hit podium and bounced off, then a couple of people/security guards wrestled the guy to the ground before he could try a third attempt.) Honestly, the shoe-throwing thing startled and disappointed me -- very not cool -- though I have to say I sympathized with the guy being so angry that he just wanted to throw things at Perle. I mean, this is one of the chief architects of the entire Iraq debacle, for the love Eru. Until I saw him in person, I'd scream at my television whenever he came on the screen so I can understand the urge. And I wouldn't be surprised if that guy's got a friend or loved one in Iraq, that's the kind of vibe I got from it. He was vocal, too -- shouted "motherfucking liar" so loud that we could still hear him long after they'd moved him out to the foyer and beyond.
Still, it doesn't help our cause when stuff like this happens. I don't think there's a lot of handwringing needed -- what's done is done -- but it certainly plays into "liberal wacko" stereotype the VRWC has built for us. Not that I give two shits about what the freepers think, but when you're playing to win, this kind of thing doesn't help.
Anyway, the debate moved apace. Howard was in fine form and didn't concede an inch to Perle. I have to give Perle his due -- he must've known the kind of hostile territory he was headed into (George the Elder once famously dubbed Portland "Little Beirut" because of the demonstrations that always happened during his visits...you can imagine what happens when anyone even remotely related to Junior shows their face in town). Doesn't make him any less of a nut-flavored whackjob, but still.
One of his various "points" that really got to me: that going into Iraq was like buying fire insurance for your house and that complaining about there being no WMD a year later is like complaining that your house didn't catch fire. I know. I know. This is the kind of insane clown logic we're dealing with here, people.
I've been thinking this over since last night. The thing is, this guy has totally drunk the Kool-Aid. He completely believes this shit, he's totally earnest and sincere about it. And he's a smart guy. Evil, but smart. So the work we've got ahead of us, the changes we have to make and the thinking we have to reverse...it's a really big job, folks. Not telling you anything you don't already know, of course, but there it is.
Which can be really disheartening at times. But the other part of last night is one of Dean's responses to something else Perle said last night. Perle had tried to slip in a little reframing by burning down a strawman argument about the Democrats that he'd constructed. And Dean totally called him out and busted his chops about it. He even said, this is the kind of thing we can't let the Republicans get away with and then he proceeded to kick his ass. I would've kissed that man if I'd had the opportunity.
Anyway, the night was great. Invigorating and enlightening, made us all ready to get back in the trenches and get back to work. There's a lot of work to be done, but we've got the right guy leading us. So be glad -- we'll persevere.
There's an article in The Nation today titled "Our Godless Constitution" making the very salient point that not only did the framers intend for there to be a separation between church and state, they -- and the rest of the country -- they emphatically affirmed this concept later on:
In 1797 our government concluded a 'Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary,' now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of the treaty contains these words:
"As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today.
