Words, You, And A Pink Elephant

If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, have I determined your thoughts? It seems undeniable that I have. In fact, it appears self-evident that words not only influence thought; they determine it. If I step onto a commercial airline, seize control of the cockpit mid-flight and say over the PA-system, "We have some bombs!", do you think I mean to affect behavior? What if I walk up to a bank teller and hand him a note which says, "Give me all the cash in your cash drawer or I will shoot you in the head"– am I not predetermining an outcome? What if I walk up to a policeman, blood on my hands, and tell him that I've just killed my step-father? Will my confession influence the officer a certain way, and predetermine my fate and his responsibility according to the law? What if I walked up and said that the blood was from my attempts to stop a gang from murdering the mayor down the street? Again, will my words determine a set of responses that must follow my directions?

Why the barrage of questions? Because I am still struggling with the remarks of The Language Guy, whose essay, Language and the Abortion Controversy, is fully stuck in my craw.

Let me quote Mr. Language:

Implicit in the linguistic effort to force upon doctors the language "living human being" or even a less outrageous term like "baby" is a belief in the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, according to which language determines thought. There is no question that what something is called can influence thought (how could it not?) but it is a huge, easily falsifiable step to move to the strong form of this hypothesis that what something is called will determine thought about this thing.

I know this all seems senselessly academic. But it is important that we examine this kind of argument carefully. Mr. Language Guy, after all, is trying to determine thought–our thoughts– when he tells us that the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in its strong form is "easily falsifiable." (And note that Mr. Language Guy, a self-appointed thought-policeman, offers no documentation that anyone is trying to "force upon doctors" anything, or how "easily falsifiable" the strong form is.)

If our schools were to refer to "gays" as "perverts", will certain behaviors be determined? If I walk up to a group of African-American inner-city gangmembers knotted together in a lonely place and tell them "You're all a bunch of lazy n-words," might my fate be sealed? And if I were to stand in Mecca and declare "Muhammad is NOT a prophet!" or in the Vatican and remonstrate against the Pope and his alleged Christ–well, you get the point.

But one last thing: Do LIES determine thought? For if lying does not determine thought in those to whom we lie, then we would all pretty much stop lying instantly, don't you agree?

And if a lie determines thought; if a lie surely influences behavior in those who believe it, then how about just one word, two words, three? "Gay" is meant to determine a certain outcome; "Homophobe" is spoken in order to strike a different outcome. Surely the language of Hitler's Nazi Germany led to certain behaviors affecting Jews, no? In fact, was not Hitler trying to pre-determine behaviors in his co-patriots with the repeated use of certain words?

A Dizzying Read

I am currently reading the wonderful book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell cites numerous clinical studies that pretty much destroy The Language Guy's cavalier dismissal of the "strong form" of the aforementioned hypothesis. A few examples will suffice.

1. One study shows that if you take a group of people and have them consider what it means to be a professor, and then give them a test, they will do ridiculously better on the test than a group which first considered what it means to be a soccer hooligan.
2. One study shows that when African-Americans were asked BEFORE taking a standardized test to what race they belonged, they fared worse than African-Americans who were not asked that question. Apparently, reflecting on their own race–with all the unjust associations with it–adversely affected performance.
3. Another study shows that if, during an experiment, you are exposed to images of aging and mortality, you will leave the experiment at a slower walking pace than when you walked in.
   
4. One study shows that if you are treated rudely before entering a clinical study (being treated rudely is part of the overall experiment, but the test subject does not know that), the subject is much more likely to be rude AFTER the experiment (again, part of the test) than those who were treated politely beforehand.

Of course, none of this PROVES that thought determines behavior. But it surely proves that thought influences behavior–dramatically. In fact, Blink's author is so impressed by the clinical data that he writes:

They [the clinical studies] suggest that what we call free will is largely an illusion: much of the time we are operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act–and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment–are a lot more susceptible to outside influence than we realize. [Blink, Malcolm Gladwell: New York; Little, Brown and Co., 2005. Page 58]

In other words, if you are what you eat, you are also what you read, hear, and think.

Propaganda, politically-correct speech, The Power of Positive Thinking–each of these attempts to determine behavior, even if those behaviors are vaguely understood or inaccurately predicted. Stern warnings to a child determine behavior; as stories of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny determine that a child will be excited on Christmas Eve or Easter morning. And abusive speech surely determines behavior: abused children are more likely to perform poorly in school, commit crimes, and abuse their own children.

So then, it is not without either clinical or psychological support–not to mention social and philosophical–that pro-life supporters refer to the fetus as a human being rather than so much tissue.

The Language Guy and the mass of blind propagandists to which he unwittingly belongs are wrong.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes – All Rights Reserved.

Tomorrow: Bill Bennett in hot water for using words a certain way.

Photo: Grasshopper on milkweed. Camera: Canon A2. Lens: Sigma APO 300/4 Macro with EX 1.4 extender. Film: Kodak E100VS Exposure: unrecorded. Tripod and cable release. Click on image for larger view.

Bob Dylan And My Own Conformity

I have never been a Bob Dylan fan. I don't think I've even listened to an entire one of his songs–at least when he was singing it–without losing track of what he was saying or wandering off toward other music. And I've completely resisted deifying the guy to some sort of anti-war or anti-establishment messiah; or even some sort of prophet whose answers blow in the wind. He is a songwriter-poet, undoubtedly. I will go at least that far.

But last night, while watching Martin Scorcese's new documentary, No Direction Home, aired this week on PBS, I found myself deeply moved. This Dylan retrospective on the singer's early years, from 1963-66, is truly revealing, troubling, and completely inspiring. Such inspiration of course will not make me a fan of Dylan's music; nor shall I run out to purchase his complete works. And I will not turn anti-war activist or some such protester, not because I am pro-war but because I am already a protester. I just protest different things. But what it will do is make me hold more firmly to my convictions.

What inspired me is that Dylan simply wanted to be an artist, and not in the self-absorbed, self-promoting way so common among the rotters who pose so deftly in the galleries of pop-culture. Yes, Dylan was clearly a pop-icon, but it never was his intent to be popular let alone an icon. Things just happened, as he said. It was never anything he sought, he just wanted to write and sing. But this alone was not enough to inspire me. It was Dylan's resistance to conformity that set my heart afire. Whether it was his reluctance to answer absurd questions, or to be confined by Pete Seeger's constricted sense of folk music, or his refusal to conform to Joan Baez' expectations of what a protest artist should look, sound and act like; Dylan's commitment to his own artistic convictions has led me to respect the man immeasurably. That respect would stand even if I were to discover that he and I disagree on just about everything.

I have felt the pressure of conformity, and that from all sides. You have too. In my case, I've had Christians, whether liberal or conservative, Catholic or Protestant, expect certain things from me. And I have non-Christian friends, friends thoroughly un-religious, who likewise expect a certain allegiance and conformity, even, in fact, claiming that they even know my prejudices, prejudices to which I am blind and that they apparently see. This past weekend I saw a dear friend on the steps to the local town hall, flanked by fellow war-protesters, and I felt the battle between us in a mere glance: she wondering if I damn her for conforming to something other than my own worldview (I do not); I, certain she damns me for not conforming to hers. To many, I am too partisan. Some suggest that I am too religious, while others find that I am not religious enough. One minute I am too partisan; another minute, I am too intellectual, or too argumentative, or too apologetic.

Of course, conformity, or at least the desire of it, is driven almost entirely by the fear of being lonely. Of being isolated. And I have to say that Dylan, standing on stage in Newport and London, and being booed for daring to use an electric guitar and a backup band, represents the absolute isolation of integrity: You WILL be alone if you hold on to your convictions. Seeing Dylan surrounded by fans and his entourage, and yet looking thoroughly desolate, is a striking even haunting image. And I love him for it.

There was a "Christian phase" in Dylan's life, and he wrote a song called "Gotta Serve Somebody" (I think I have that right). It was the early 1980s when he penned that song, and, to me, it represents the epitome of Dylan's view of life. Each of us indeed has to serve somebody. Dylan's work from beginning to end clearly asks, "Who is it going to be?"

***

A Clarification: In You Cannot Make This Stuff Up, I took to task a fellow blogger, The Language Guy, for committing the very errors he set out to detect in others. I mentioned one particular fallacy which I called–facetiously–the Inverse-Vegetarian Fallacy, and the Coffee-Hour Fallacy:

... please note The Language Guy's fallacious comparison in the second sentence about "Pro-Lifers" being "Pro-Death" when it comes to capital punishment. The writer equates abortion with capital punishment, which no reasoned person, particularly no reasoned pro-lifer, would do. He commits what might as well be called the The Inverse-Vegetarian Fallacy, which we've all heard before: I see you won't eat meat because you disapprove of killing, but I notice you don't mind killing apples, prunes and pine nuts. Or maybe it's the Coffee-Hour Fallacy: You don't do drugs, or so you say, but I see that you are drinking caffeine.

Alas, I noticed in housekeeping at Contratimes that I committed the very same fallacy in this essay, which I wrote in August. Then I wrote:

I would say that pro-choicers are as passionate about living as the most strident pro-lifer. Such passions are not without their contradictions, as most pro-lifers support the death penalty for serious crimes, whereas most pro-choicers do not. It is hard to be consistent; it is hard to be balanced.

What to do? First, I should apologize to the Language Guy, though in doing so I would merely be pointing out the obvious, that we all make mistakes. Thus, I apologize for my fallibility.

But I would also point out I had not earlier noticed that the equating of death-penalty support with abortion is in fact fallacious. In short, I was blind to it. The only way the thing makes sense is if I build a case from "Thou shall not kill." With that premise, I can make the connection: Killing a baby and a criminal is "killing", and thus forbidden. But using "killing" in this way leads us blindly nowhere, particularly if we reduce a fetus to a "tiny cellular mass", as the thought-policeman The Language Guy did. For if to be consistently pro-life means NOT to kill anything, as the fallacy suggests, then we are doomed to accept that to be consistently pro-life we must not "kill" cancer cells and sundry viruses and infections, as these are living "tiny cellular masses."

All this to say that I promise to be more careful.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

Last night I stumbled upon a website, a blog really, called The Language Guy. According to the site, the mission statement for The Language Guy is the following, and I quote:

The Language Guy

Commentary on how language is used and abused in advertising, politics, the law, and other areas of public life. You can think of it as a linguistic self defense course in which you and I prepare ourselves to do battle with the forces of linguistic evil.

In The Language Guy's profile, he lists the following credentials (again, I quote):

After receiving a B. A. in Philosophy from Rice University, I moved on to M.I.T., where I got my Ph. D. in Theoretical Linguistics. I worked at the University of Illinois for five years and then left to teach and do research at The Ohio State University until I retired in 1995.

Taking the mission statement and credentials together, I couldn't help but be enthusiastic. We're talking serious stuff here, and I can never refrain from the serious. And then this, the very first post I read (pay careful attention to the first sentence):

Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Language and the Abortion Controversy

Language plays a very important role in the abortion controversy with the key battle being how the tiny cellular mass inside a pregnant woman is to be described. Pro-Life advocates (who typically are Pro-Death when it comes to the Death Penalty and often when it comes to doctors who perform abortions) want this tiny cellular mass to be called a "living human being." In the state of South Dakota, legislators want to require doctors to refer to this tiny cellular mass this way. I wonder if a legislature somewhere might want to force astrophysicists to cease to refer to "black holes" using that term since it, along with a lot of other terms employing this word "black" ("black sheep" or "blackball" or "black cloud" (that has a silver lining), etc.) evoke negative associations that attach to Black Americans. Why not?

This is the first paragraph of a long essay exploring language and its influence on thought. Do words and lingustic structures merely influence thought, or do they at times actually determine thought? Do certain ideas cause other ideas; do ideas even cause/determine certain behaviors? This is what the author wants to explore. And it is a great thing to explore, but ...

Do you see the problem? The author has already tried to manipulate the reader with the reductionstic "tiny cellular mass". He has immediately used language to manipulate an outcome. He has not used embryo or zygote or fetus: he's used the diminutive "tiny cellular mass" descriptor in order to lead the reader to a preconceived idea of what is being discussed. A tiny cellular mass? How helpful is that? Is a twenty-week-old fetus really a tiny mass, even when it consists of millions and millions of dividing cells? Tiny to whom? An amoeba? God? Jupiter? A quark? And are not adults merely just slightly larger cellular masses? Does size really matter, with the prize of life going to the largest? And what is the definitive mass that must be achieved to determine whether a mass is, well, viable?

But these questions are not really germane to the critical problems with The Language Guy's essay. The central problem is that the writer, proclaiming himself something of a linguistic detective sniffing out thought-crimes, commits a thought-crime in his very detective work. Do I dare say that he has been hoisted by his own petard, as the old expression goes? Should I speculate that there is a political motive in his rhetoric? Should I conclude that his own language is a form of intellectual and political abuse, and is a "force of linguistic evil"?

Alright, I won't go that far. Perhaps the writer has merely made a mistake.

And please note The Language Guy's fallacious comparison in the second sentence about "Pro-Lifers" being "Pro-Death" when it comes to capital punishment. The writer equates abortion with capital punishment, which no reasoned person, particularly no reasoned pro-lifer, would do. He commits what might as well be called the The Inverse-Vegetarian Fallacy, which we've all heard before: I see you won't eat meat because you disapprove of killing, but I notice you don't mind killing apples, prunes and pine nuts. Or maybe it's the Coffee-Hour Fallacy: You don't do drugs, or so you say, but I see that you are drinking caffeine.

In all candor, I believe the writer's aim is a noble one. And the writer reaches a decent conclusion by the end of the essay. But his fallacy is glaring and dangerous, concealing a larger fact that people, many people, believe that such analysis has real meaning. Of course it does have meaning. It's just that the meaning is so much emptiness masquerading as abundance.

So why do I care? So what if someone commits an Orwellian-esque abuse of language? OK. Fair enough. But I discovered the blog because it was listed as a blog of note. And the essay in question has received over 55 comments, most of which are wide-eyed marvel. Hence, the influence is not to be understated. Shouldn't that alarm me?

Peace to you,

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All rights reserved.

Broken News

As I wrote in Victim Overload, the news wake caused by Hurricane Katrina leaves me highly suspicious of claims made by victims. It is not that I lack compassion, as I said. It is because of the political climate in this country, and around the world, that I am suspicious.

Now, nearly a month later, we learn three things. First, we learn that the dead in the Superdome did not amount to hundreds, even dozens. Only six people died there (out of tens of thousands), and not one of the six was murdered (as had been widely rumored).

Second, we learn that teary, maudlin appeals made by a Louisiana official on Meet The Press, in which a story was related of a mother abandoned by federal officials whose failure to come to her rescue led to her drowning in a nursing home, also was so much exploitation. It simply did not happen.

Not to be excluded from the long list of journalistic sins committed in the storm's wake, the New York Times has had to deal with a columnist's fabrication of events surrounding Fox News' Geraldo Rivera allegedly shoving a rescuer out of his way so that he, Geraldo, could appear heroic in assisting a victim. Again, such a thing did not happen.

In response to my last post, reader Luke urged me to seek the counsel of the beautiful and lovely instead of wallowing in the cesspool of news and political debate that is my wont. His letter is indeed one of the lovely things, and his heart is indeed in the right place. Perhaps we should all turn our backs on what is offered to us as truth from the media. Perhaps we should all take a break and go sit on a tire swing for a few days; or skip stones along the seashore.

I don't know. To Luke I offer this from G. K. Chesterton:

A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended
But you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order
Their crippled vices came—
Lust that had lost its laughter,
Fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler,
That lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather
As proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin
To shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour;
But we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish,
Not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens
He had no hymns from us
Children we were—our forts of sand
Were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up
To break that bitter sea.

Chesterton's poem (and this is only part of it), written as a gift for his dear friend E. C. Bentley, is nearly 100 years old. Indeed the struggles we face today are the struggles of old. Chesterton and Pascal and More and Aquinas and Joan of Arc and Augustine and Solomon; each of these built forts of sand, forts as strong as stone.

The tide is coming. Quick! Grab your buckets and shovels, your stones and seashells and water-logged sticks! An adventure draweth nigh!

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Finding My Bearings With George Orwell

I have been silenced. Well, not exactly silenced. You see, I've been reading several essays by George Orwell. And I've got to say that I've been rendered mute for the past few days.

It's not that I am afflicted with an overpowering case of self-doubt, unless one considers my normal state of affairs overpowering, living, as I do, with self-doubt every second of my life. What I am re-realizing, if you will, is that there are many commonalities between the Orwellian political landscape of the 1940s and our current landscape. And such a realization makes me wonder if I am playing into the hand of something loathsome and abominable by engaging in overt political gamesmanship. Is it at all helpful to fight the way I am fighting?

One of the best books I've ever read was a work called Idols for Destruction. In it, author Herbert Schlossberg analyzes the ideals political parties or factions rally around and demonstrates that much of what is fought for on this planet in political fisticuffs is in the end so many idols. There are idols on the left: the perfect state, usually an engineered welfare state; income distribution and the obliteration of poverty; historical idealism culminating in the emancipation of all alleged oppressed groups, and so on. And there are idols on the right: the unfettered, laissez-faire market economy; the perfected state without engineering; distribution of wealth according to merit and personal industriousness; legal fortitude based both on natural law and some sort of theism.

But what both left and right fail to consider is that all governments and all economic projects will come to dire ends (I don't think this is Schlossberg's view). There is no possible earthly model that is eternal, nor is there a heavenly one that can be wrestled to the ground and made to work on this planet. Without making any reference to a God at all, it can be readily argued that humanity is adrift on a spaceship, upon which no one knows how they embarked; a ship heading no one knows where. What is merely known is that there is a finite amount of resources available for the crew and that all computer models show that the very cosmos, the very medium through which we all move and have our being, will collapse or explode into some sort of oblivion. There is no doubting this. There is no levee to protect us from this reality; there is no president or king or Congress or Diet or synagogue or church or legislation or protest that can prevent the inevitable from occurring. The ship is lost in space, and there is nothing to be done about the exploding sun or the black hole that awaits the very photons leaping off this screen.

I share this not because I am waxing fatalistic. I share this to highlight a theme to which I constantly must return. That theme is that the earth is in dire need of a healthy, enlightened and brilliant humility. What is needed is a Socratic Revolution, whereby all of us come to a quivering and contrite moment of self-understanding, recognizing that we do not know what we think we know.

The other night I was paralyzed by an exchange I witnessed between the inexplicably legendary Phil Donahue and the pugnacious Bill O'Reilly (on O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor" aired on Fox). Neither of these men is what one might call "intellectual," though in Donahue's case one might show him the high courtesy of at least recognizing that he is intellectually pretentious. O'Reilly is a coffee break intellectual at the loading dock: hot-headed, righteous, and usually struggling toward something a bit bigger than he can handle, managing just enough mental agility to impress his buddies. Neither man is a genius.

But what I was paralyzed by is the elevation of mediocrity and the celebration of stupidity. Both of these men carry a big income, lead relatively privileged lives, and have hordes of fans who adore their contributions to the entertainment room on our marooned spacecraft. There are websites at which Donahue is applauded for his brilliance; there are others that celebrate O'Reilly's rousing defeat of Donahue.

What I saw was two men who are clear losers and a spacecraft filled with souls demeaned by such showmanship. Granted, on purely logical grounds, the scales tip in O'Reilly's favor, as he was able to refrain from the fallacy-riddled rhetoric oozing from every pore of Mr. Donahue. But that Mr. O'Reilly, who truly is a man of power and influence, could not stop Donahue without threatening to toss Donahue off the set, indicates that things are in a sorry state.

How, for instance, can an audience celebrate this sort of statement by Mr. Donahue:

We've already had two thou - almost thousand - (gestures for O'Reilly to hold off) - just let me have the last word. In the last year two things have doubled. The number of dead American troops in Iraq has doubled and you know what else doubled, Billy? The price of Halliburton stock. From $33 to $66. That doesn't shame you? That doesn't make you wonder whether this is an enterprise that is worth the support of the American people?

This statement is utterly mystifying for two reasons. First, it is completely fallacious. The comparison between the two variables–the American death toll and Halliburton stock prices–is meaningless. The only way it could be meaningful is if Donahue revealed the rest of the premisses of his argument, the ones he keeps hidden in his fallacy. As it stands, my retort to Donahue would be to simply observe that my dog's age has doubled since last year; my credit card debt has increased two-fold during the same time and my bench press has fallen 50 percent. In other words, I would observe that there is no correlation between the two variables insofar as Mr. Donahue presents them.

The statement is also mystifying because Mr. O'Reilly fails to deal with Donahue's fallacy at all.

What is most disconcerting is that there are people who think Mr. Donahue has said something important, brilliant and decisive. Donahue is also lauded (by bloggers abundant) for his allegedly incisive remarks regarding O'Reilly's conspicuous lack of personal involvement in Iraq combat, suggesting that O'Reilly should support a war only if he himself joins in the carnage. (This is logically akin to saying that I should not support football if I myself do not play it.) And then there's Donahue's deification of Ms. Cindy Sheehan's grief, elevating it beyond the realm of criticism, all in the fallacy argumentum ad misericordium, the appeal to pity, that is so often deployed when argument is sacrificed for the appearance of victory.

Truly, I am at a loss. I am starting to think that St. Paul was right: there is an imminent delusion about to fall upon the eyes and hearts of men, whereby no one will "endure" sound reasoning. Alas, perhaps the end has already come. There is nothing left to do but sit on the ship patiently, remonstrate against fallacies, and pray that there is another ship, and another cosmos.

While it is undeniably true that George Orwell and I would not agree on what is the best thing to do while crammed uncomfortably on our spaceship, I am certain that he and I would agree on this: the first thing we all must do is destroy our idolatries. Actually, maybe that is the best thing.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

PS. If you need to harm your soul, if you really need to hurt yourself, then watch the exchange between O'Reilly and Donahue. Or you can read the transcript. But I would advise against either. Actually, what would really damage your soul is a perusal of the comments posted on myriad blogs. THAT might make you jump ship.

Born Of A Hurricane

My last post, Maureen Dowd on Parade, was offered largely to prove to Contratimes readers that the sort of writing in which Ms. Dowd indulges is easy to duplicate. Such writing is not polemical or argumentative. Rather, it is fallacious, composed almost entirely of innuendo, insinuation and abusive remarks. In fact, it could be summarized in total as a form of abuse: abuse of fact, of mind, and of the person or persons subjected to such abuse. To the religious such prose is thoroughly uncharitable; to the philosophical, intellectually meaningless; to the kind, thoroughly sad; to the humble, so much sad conceit.

It is easy to be vicious, to mock. Uncharitableness is a violence of heart, and all violence is easier than kindness. It is easier to destroy a building than it is to erect one. It is easier to scoff at civility than to be civil. It is easier to vandalize one's wedding vows than it is to honor them. It is easier to tear down a president with one's laptop computer than it is to be a president so torn down.

Really, the easiest type of writing is the mean, the base, the crass. It is easy to insult; to get people to sneer. The man seated across from me at this café would be far more likely to wince if I were to strike him with my fist than he would be to laugh with joy if I told him a joke. Pain is easy to make, to give, to feel.

What is hard is joy.

The hardest type of writing, bar none, is that which attempts to make readers laugh, really truly laugh. And not that laughter which comes from watching someone fall off a curb or get beat up by a columnist. I am talking about the laughter filled with mirth and joy; the merriment of heart for which we all yearn. Writing which yields armloads of guileless giggling is the most elusive and the most difficult form of writing I know, which is, no doubt, a testament to the over-seriousness of my heart. It also proves the elusiveness of that great art.

So, all this to say that my essay ripping Ms. Dowd, and MSNBC's Howard Fineman and Don Imus, was mere homage to the easy art of denigration. Imus and Dowd at least have made careers out of pejoratives, while Fineman appears to have only indulged in the dark humor the snickering sets enjoy.

*****

September 21, 1961: A New Jersey hospital. Outside, Hurricane Esther, a storm that made a 350-mile complete circle south of Cape Cod. Inside, a brand new baby boy.

44 years later, I don't remember a thing. But my mother does.

Peace to you.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Maureen Dowd On Parade

During this morning's Imus in the Morning show, simulcast on radio and MSNBC America-wide, Mr. Imus and his guest, Newsweek editor Howard Fineman, celebrated columnist Maureen Dowd and her illustrious work at the New York Times. Both men gushed about Ms. Dowd's prowess at titillating her audience, though Mr. Imus did suggest that she was–to put it in Imus' delicate way–"a crazy woman". And both men marveled at Ms. Dowd's ability to so quickly get to the point of a matter, even if in reaching that point she is deliciously blunt.

Imus particularly commended Ms. Dowd's success at being the first to point out that President George W. Bush was "haunting New Orleans" in search of another "bullhorn moment." That Ms. Dowd's remarks surely trivialize President Bush's bullhorn moment atop the rubble at Ground Zero is conspicuous, though any reference to her offense is conspicuously absent from either Imus' or Fineman's adulations. Also conspicuous is Ms. Dowd's equating a natural disaster with a decidedly unnatural one: 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are somehow related in the incredible mind of Maureen Dowd.

But what is important in that mind of Ms. Dowd's is important in our minds as well, though for entirely different reasons. For Ms. Dowd's perceptions are largely shared as a sort of prostitute's offering, giving her readers exactly what they seek and pay for. She is to literacy what phone sex is to oratory. She is a phone sex fantasy spelled out in lurid letters inked by New York presses. That Ms. Dowd earns her wages dispensing gratuitous favors, working her deft hands so effectively as she massages one giant fallacy after another, is perfectly in keeping with the times. But our minds must be vigilantly occupied with her professions, if for no other reason than to avoid the mentally-transmitted disease her intellectual promiscuity breeds. Ms. Dowd's columns are after all among the most emailed columns published at the New York Times, which even further illustrates the salaciousness of her material. Such material is best read, I am afraid, while wearing latex gloves.

HER CRIPPLING POWER

Please recall that the other night President Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans during TV's prime time. Those of us who watched any of his speech remember that the President spoke with two distinct objects serving as backdrop: the great St. Louis Cathedral and a statue of Andrew Jackson.

What none of us might have suspected was that Mr. Bush's speech was not merely critiqued on substance or style. It was criticized, particularly by Maureen Dowd, for its backdrop. Hear Ms. Dowd at her Martha Stewart-best:

"[The President's] gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.

In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?

The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting ..."

Ah, yes, how terribly gauche.

Let me state the obvious: Ms. Dowd has not spent five percent of her time, or one percent of her literary energy, writing or writhing in pained concern for people who have indeed died, or been severely depressed, in the wake of Katrina. Her energy is directed at aesthetics; about fastidious attention to details that matter to her own urban sensibilities. She's hot not about the dead and dying. She's hot about where the President stands; about how he walks gladiatorally. It's all a big fashion show to her, as she sits and jots down notes to help her winnow winners from losers.

Of course, Dowd and her likeminded colleagues point out the President's floundering attempts at symbolism, decrying his efforts with ease, since their facility at denigration comes as a result of misunderstanding the symbols in the first place. Bush's critics are ignorant of the fact that he stood against a symbolic backdrop of religious might through charitable service; and secular service through military might.

In the words of one historian celebrating the august St. Louis Cathedral, a Catholic beacon to the bone-weary and sin-laden in the heart of the French Quarter, the symbolic church resonates with grace:

"Every quarter-hour, the thin peal of bells at St. Louis Cathedral calls saints and sinners, mostly the latter. They clang out a slightly off-key sound, as if they well know the offbeat rhythms of the neighborhood below them. The pulse of a circus atmosphere around the church pounds from hour to hour, as if to compete with the timbre of the sounds from the tower. The church stands sentinel, neither judging nor joining." [emphasis added]

Neither judging nor joining. How apt. How lovely. And what a symbol. A propos.

The historian continues:

"Today the church contains the remains of eight New Orleans bishops. Their lives reflect the story of the Church and the city. Renovated, decorated and restored over and again, repainted inside and out, waterproofed, strengthened with steel, buttresses added, foundations fixed, the church stands. Today the St. Louis Cathedral is a symbol of New Orleans and a tribute to the people and clergy who have struggled to preserve it. Most of all it is a haven of serenity from the soul-splitting life of the world outside." [emphasis added with alacrity]

Thus the symbol of the Cathedral transcends the very presidency (or kingship) not only of America, but of any country, in any age. For the faithful, for those who seek greatness and goodness beyond themselves, the role of faith and the fury of God's love pushes man and woman to achieve more than any Pulitzer Prize can contain.

Couple that with the devotion of a man and his ideals, ideals inherent in his country's dreams, and the union of Andrew Jackson with St. Louis–the fusion of secular and sacred–reduces the prating of Ms. Dowd and others of her ilk to so much nothing. Their very pride blinds them to the humility that is rightly theirs. They are chatterers; gossips. They cannot see the symbols from the sleaze.

For the symbols of Bush's New Orleans moment point to one thing: the need is greater than what any president can meet. Where lies the fault in that? Does not the fault lie with those who choose to be blind to the symbols that speak so elegantly?

But they are not blind to the symbols. They ignore them in disdain. They despise them.

What would the blind have preferred? Bush standing in front of dying men? Bush stepping over rotting corpses, or standing before destruction and defeat? How about him slitting his throat at the altar of their gods? Or would all of these have been dismissed as gratuitous, empty, self-aggrandizing, or mere distractions?

President Bush is a plain man, immoral, mortal, broken. He is like every person I've ever met. One wonders then what people expect from a president, particularly one they've never supported. What do they expect from a man they revile as dense, out-of-touch, stupid and traitorous?

Moreover, what are they looking for? Do they want someone before whom they may bow in worship and adoration? Do they want a savior, a god, to spare them the difficulties of living? Are they so many braying sheep lost without a shepherd? Is that what they are looking for in a president? Are they hoping for a Nelson Mandela who, in the words of U2's Bono, is the "world's president"?

This is the danger of Maureen Dowd. She implies that there is something greater, some one beyond Bush, some one that will quell her vicious prose, overwhelming her with great force of word and deed. She KNOWS what a bad president looks like because she knows what a great one should look like.

But Dowd's greatest danger is that she has succeeded in elevating her own mediocrity to great heights (perhaps she sees herself in Mr. Bush). To her, the symbols of St. Louis and Andrew Jackson are "hollow", which proves my point. That she has managed to draft a successful career on identifying her perceptions of reality as reality itself is more magic than anything Karl Rove could manage for George W. Bush. I believe Ms. Dowd has misunderstood everything she has ever written about, sort of like the way a prostitute misunderstands her body, irrespective of how deftly used.

Ms. Dowd is pretending. Her clients need her to do that.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, Bush, Katrina, New Orleans, St. Louis Cathedral

Ms. Dowd's comments are culled from her essay, Disney on Parade, September 17, 2005, New York Times. A related Contratimes essay can be read here.

Victim Overload

Yesterday, September 17, I heard Ira Glass of "This American Life" interview a victim/survivor of the New Orleans disaster. As many of you already know, Glass is a popular Chicago radio personality broadcast on National Public Radio.

This personal interview left me with only one reaction: I cannot trust what a single survivor says.

Now why this scepticism? Why this seeming indifference to the traumatic experiences of others?

Let me begin to answer these questions by first stating that I've no problem with people sharing how they felt during and after the hurricane. I am certain the grief and worry expressed are all quite real. In "Help Me Understand", I in fact trust the feelings of a woman who has no interest in returning to a place once befouled by crime, and was documented as such long before Katrina hit. My sceptism kicks in when I hear victims' eyewitness accounts about gun-toting National Guard members ignoring pleas for help (though aiming guns at the supplicants); or accounts of water trucks indifferently passing thirsting souls.

The reason for my scepticism is simple. Since the entire event in the Gulf Coast was INSTANTLY politicized (mostly by the leftists in the media) I can not trust what these people are saying. Had pundits and politicians not fouled the waters with claims of racism, incompetence, belligerence and and a variety of other horrible ills, then perhaps we could trust what people are saying about the aftermath of Katrina. But for all I know, the person claiming to be overlooked by white rescuers has already been influenced by Jesse Jackson; the person claiming FEMA indifference has already been influenced by Maureen Dowd. Moreover, I can't trust Ira Glass to actively seek out those victims who contradict his personal views about federal bungling, since he claimed last week at the top of his show in a rare preamble that the laws of the land permitted and even obligated President Bush to immediately take control of the Gulf Coast as Katrina hit.

Lastly, since nearly everyone for miles and miles was a victim, there is a sort of odd problem of victim overload. If everyone is a victim, and therefore everyone a witness, can there really be a reliable account offered when the destruction is so complete? What I am saying is that there were no witnesses to the witnesses, if that makes sense, since everyone apparently was victimized. It's sort of like every person in the city being robbed and assaulted by the same man all at once. Who witnessed what without also being blinded by injury, rage, grief, sorrow or a thirst for vengeance? Who can be objective when everyone is defining everything in terms of how it affected them?

But mostly the problem has to do with politicization. I know there were and are photojournalists at New Orleans who are doing everything possible to get the "money shot", that shot fraught with irony, injustice, and one that depicts a preconceived political, social and/or economic reality. There are journalists doing the same thing everywhere, particularly Iraq. But as with all things we see but through a glass darkly, with the glass this time being the camera lenses of countless photographers and the recollections of countless now-politically polluted survivors.

It is a shame that politics can and do have such a corrupting influence on our perceptions of the real.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

Mea Culpa

You can toss aside any scientific aptitude you may think lurks in the hearts of critics of conservatives, particularly the sort of conservatives President Bush generally rallies around him. Forget the idea that you–should you show the slightest openness to Intelligent Design theory–need be embarrassed for your outrageous speculations. For those who would embarrass you are not so thoroughly above the speculative that they are immune to embarrassment themselves. Critics of conservatives are awash with fantastic ideas about reality. And none so wild as the idea that President Bush, with the aid of the US military, actually caused the Katrina hurricane. That this is countenanced by some, let alone any one, is proof that the flag should be flown at half-staff for the rest of this country's history. The idea has even made its way into my own hometown newspapers, where one letter writer, concerned that there were more contrails before Katrina than there were after, urges readers to go outside and look at the deep blue sky, suddenly free of contrails (you know, those cloud trails left by jets at high altitude) once Katrina passed.

The idea of "weather weapons", I should think, has an ancient history, rooted perhaps in the prophets of old, who called forth rain and shut up the heavens with fervent prayer. But here is a serious look at the idea, called "The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction." I hang my head in sorrow, not because such speculations are true, but because there are real people who believe such things are true.

Religiously, conservatives may believe in the Virgin Mary or the Book of Mormon. But liberals may believe that Shirley MacLaine "channels" an ancient spirit; or that Tarot Cards are more than a parlor game gone awry; or that crystals and pot and patchouli move the soul toward the transcendent; or that Christian Science is right when it teaches that the material world does not exist at all other than as an illusion of "Mortal Mind". No one is exempt, it seems, from the wildly speculative, and no political party is exempt from embracing the foolish.

But I must say that the wild speculations regarding President Bush's culpability in everything bad confronting humanity is enough to make me seek citizenship on some other planet. I believe in the Virgin Mary. I do not believe George Bush is the source of my sorrow, my woe, my plight.

***

Who To Blame

This is no gross slip into narcissism. But I have found someone to blame not only for the Katrina disaster, but also for the Iraq War and even September 11. And that someone is right here: I am to blame.

You see, I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. I put him in office (and he never stole my vote). I put a Bush sign at the end of my driveway; I wrote letters in support of his candidacy to various newspapers. I wanted him to be president.

Hence, I am to blame for 9/11, Iraq and Katrina. Had I not expended effort to secure George W. Bush's election, he would not be in the position he is now, or has been in for the last 5 years. Hence, the nearly 3,ooo victims of 9/11 would be alive today had I placed Al Gore in office. Hence, the nearly 2,000 dead American soldiers would be alive today had Mr. Gore, and perhaps his successor, John Kerry, maintained control of the executive branch of America's government. Hence, no or very few people would have died in Katrina had a Democratic president been in power; the levees would not have broken, and the FEMA response would have been swift and total, unhindered by the Department of Homeland Security, which would not have existed at all because Democrats would have prevented 9/11 from occurring in the first place.

Mea culpa! Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. It is indeed all my fault.

As a Republican (I only joined the party a few months ago, by the way), I have brought great despair on this nation. I am indeed a Repugnant (as one loving Democrat refers to me), and I am the cause of the "Two Nations"-syndrome separating Americans one from another.

I bid you all, please, blame me.

And now, my apology.

Please, my dear, sad Democratic brothers and sisters, please know that had I only believed in the competence in just one of your candidates, just one, I would have not voted for George W. Bush. Please know that had you produced one, just one, dynamic candidate, and not the insipid, stilted and posturing Al Gores or John Kerrys of your party, I would have gladly voted for that candidate. But, you see, how colossal must your party's failings be if George W. Bush, by ALL accounts a mediocre candidate, could beat your party's very best? And please, spare me the idea that Bush stole an election in 2000 when YOUR PARTY controlled the entire executive branch of government at the time. Bush trounced Kerry in 2004, not in numbers but in outcome, since it was clear Republicans were voting for a President they did not love. Can you imagine what will happen to your party when the Republicans put forth a candidate they adore?

So, you see, I was almost entirely bound by your party's utter incompetence in getting leadership to the forefront of the national discussion. Even now, as Joe Biden wows us with his intellectual tepidity at the John Roberts Supreme Court nomination hearings, there is not a single member of your party that knows what SHOULD happen in America. Your entire party seems only to know what SHOULD NOT happen. But such knowledge is not leadership. It is complaining.

Of course, I can posit for you the names of at least a dozen local men and women, all prolific letter writers to local newspapers; folks who can barely organize their personal lives who nonetheless know exactly HOW to be President of the United States. These people (and there must be dozens in every town) know how to manage tax cuts "for the wealthy", surpluses and deficits, war and its insurgents, and natural and man-made disasters without–and this is capital–the good sense of knowing how to take care of their own lives. You know them: they are the copy-editor who could be a better publisher than his paper's owner; the accountant who could be a better CEO than the man currently in place; the parent who could be a better school principal than the buffoon in the front office. Please, I beg of you, let me nominate any of these for president, if you surely believe that these represent your very best.

Truly, it warms my heart to think that people like Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Harry Reid and local letter-writer George Duncan not only will be happier without Republicans in office, they will be nicer, less snide, and thoroughly more affable souls with anyone but Bush at the helm. Now if each of these Democrats could find one leader among them who was not as flaccid as John Kerry, then we might all find the world just oozing with peace and joy.

But it truly warms my heart too, to realize that, if the Democrats believe none of this tragedy and war and terrorism would have occurred had they held power, then I am not to blame at all. They are.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved

The New Times

A friend of mine once complained that the Wall Street Journal, a largely conservative, perennially pro-capitalism periodical, charged for all its online services. To my friend, this smacked of opportunism and capitalist gain-mongering. For that reason alone he refused to read the Journal. He would read the Boston Globe and the New York Times, who give away nearly everything online.

I wonder how my friend now feels knowing that the New York Times is going to charge online readers $49.95 per year ($39.95 if you sign up now!) just to read the paper's op-eds and guest columnists. Regular editorials will still be free, but if you want to read Dowd, Krugman, Friedman, Kristof, Rich, well, you'll have to pay.

That this is a disappointment to me is worth noting, particularly since the genesis for this website was born in my disgust of the NYT's columnists: Contratimes means "against the times", and damnit, I am against the New York Times with all my soul. (A truly great read, by the way, is Bob Kohn's Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted .) My disappointment derives in realizing that I will soon not be able to cite or access the NYT's columnists for purposes of ripping into their insipid prose; and their largely inane and always partisan analysis.

How is it, I ask, that a progressive paper like the NYT needs to profit off of its columnists? Or is this just a fund-raising project, with the extra cash collected from the new fees going to the poor, perhaps helping ease Krugman and Kristof's guilty consciences? Surely the NYT is not thinking of personally profiting from this membership fee; surely the columnists are not expecting any personal financial gain?

I suspect that part of the problem is that web-access to NYT opinion threatens the NYT's stronghold on ideas. As things stand now, columnists' opinions are instantly exposed to criticism from a whole host of writers, many such as myself: unpaid, active, and fed-up, grinding axes in weblogs day and night. I should think that limiting access will curtail this somewhat, though if it doesn't, at least the NYT will make some money trying to stanch the bloodflow.

It all perplexes me, though. For the NYT's columnists, if they are anything, they are idealists. As such, I should think that they believe what they are doing is part of changing the world into something better; about contributing ideas of meaning and import that will guarantee equity, justice and purpose for all. But if indeed this is the case, that these writers believe their opinions actually improve the world, or will lead to such improvement, then would they not want to dispense their antidotes and salvific ideas and observations for free, particularly ensuring that the underprivileged and poorest among us have access to truth? What if Jesus Christ's message is indeed the salvation of humanity? Imagine if he charged money before he spoke a word. What does the NYT's fees suggest about its writers' idealism? Does it not make readers suspect that it is not strictly offered as sage advice to a desperate planet in need of guidance, but rather presented as entertainment or so much ear-tickling chatter to satisfy partisan convictions, and that for profit?

Alas, I am afraid the motives for such fees are hardly as noble as the NYT's perceived elegance in such matters.

***

In other news: The death toll in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast may not be nearly as dire as I thought. Of course my thoughts were influenced entirely upon media reports coming out of the region, reports which now may be deemed gross over-reactions to the problems post-Katrina. Could it be that the "abysmal" evacuation and relief efforts were not as abominable as they were first perceived? Could it be that the realities were exaggerated and distorted for political gain, or as a shield behind which were hidden all sorts of pre-existing, underlying problems in the region, particularly in New Orleans?

Also, it is important to note that the NYTs (and other papers) found former First Lady Barbara Bush's remarks about Katrina's survivors reprehensible enough to file a report about her apparent miscue. Mrs. Bush observed that many of the survivors were in better situations after Katrina than before. That I have provided for Contratimes readers a transcript from a National Public Radio interview essentially proving the accuracy of Mrs. Bush's observation is telling. And Mrs. Bush did not state her positions in terms of Katrina being a good thing. In fact, she said the idea that people were better off afterwards was "sort of scary". But whenever the media can exploit a situation to highlight the upper-classes' alleged insensitivities towards the poor, they will, without compunction or fairness.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

This Morning, Four Years Later, Still Lovely

[Those of you with a formal education in poetry should, I hope, understand the structure of the following poem. But even if you dislike poetry, or have no training in poetic forms at all, I don't think you'll feel you've wasted your time in reading what follows. Peace to you, on this important date in history.]

The List Is Long

The list is long of lovely things:
the rhythmic pulse in baby’s cry
lift of air on butterfly wings
glint of sun in a lover’s eye.

The list is long of lovely things:
the beat of heart in human ears
trumpet of geese on autumn wings,
whispers soft, soothing sleepy fears.

What man is this who finds no solace there
no refuge in the parade of sunsets
in the verse of poets, or potter’s ware,
no delight in composer’s minuets?

What man is this who cannot dance
at the trinkling song of silver stream
or praise the lure of blossomed plants
or laughter merrier than a comic’s dream?

Who can reject the smell of newborn skin
dewy grass cooling naked feet
absolution from staining sin,
or songs of minstrels on evening street?

There is the call of coyotes on a windy night
the yelp of lonely fox and hoot of distant owl
there is the mood of waning moonlight,
and the smell of clean in softness of towel.

There is the charm of little girls
starlight strands of milky pearls
the love of dirt on little boys
rooms cluttered with belovéd toys.

There’s roaring sea in frothy surf
or the froth of a pint in a Yorkshire pub
September light on newly-mown turf
and the warmth of bath in a claw-foot tub.

There’s curve of breast beneath gossamer thread
the taste and smell of grandmother’s bread
the length of limb and strength of stride
of bridles and horses and riders allied.

These things remain, you came to destroy
even the poetry with your prosaic ploy,
you’ve shattered rhythm and scattered rhyme
but mysteries prevail over this shock of time:

The monarch still emerges, eager for flight,
birds gather on eastern coast, migrating over Manhattan
dogs still fetch sticks and cats rub whiskers on morning legs
fish leap through liquid ceilings gaping for water-logged bugs.

Snow still falls, and rain, and autumn leaves
the moon still pulls oceans towards its arid plains
and the plains host waves of grain and meadowlarks
while desert winds sweep earth’s furnaced floors.

The rose still shares improbable bloom
and roses still bloom on maiden cheeks
when roses come by hand of gentle man,
like the sky blushing at the evening sun.

The list is long of lovely things:
which of these was not enough
to keep you aloft, to set you flying?

Which sunset made you hate
the sound of your beating heart
always willing, optimistic, in your breast?

Which sunrise cloud,
or glass of wine
which mountain lake
or desert bloom
which taste of apple or peach
which word of poet or prayer of priest
which low of calf or coo of dove
which light of star, which square of infinite
space,
which scent of woman
which laughing child
which symphony
or saint
or touch of water on skin

which was it,
that made you steer

your anger and fear and
loathing

which of these made you jettison
the long list of lovely things
into the side of a building?

The list is long of lovely things:
the pale of sun in dawning sky,
the clearing of smoke
and the touch of a loved one lost,
touched through love’s perennial hope.

©Bill Gnade 28 Sept 2001/Contratimes
The list of 2,752.

It Was A Beautiful Day

Boston to Los Angeles via New York

‘Let’s do what the man says’
mom says taking my hand,
my feet not touching the floor
so I slide from my seat,
hard to walk to the back of the
plane.

Mom picks me up, carries me;
a little strong.

Before today mom talked
about Los Angeles
of Grandma and Grandpa,
that the city
was named for the angels
that we would see them
if we looked carefully.
This morning she talked of
angels at the airport and
when we left the ground,
my first time in the sky.
We laughed when mom said there
was one on the wing,
and I said that I saw it blow off
and climb back on again.

Mom sets me down, I stand on a seat
arms around her neck,
and we wait. ‘We are getting lower,’
someone says.
Why so worried?
There is pressure on my ears
my skin feels tight
the plane is jumpy, rough
there are turns
and an old man helps
mom and
me, so that we won’t fall
and get hurt.

Someone says something
about smoke outside.
It looks far away.
I ask, are we going there to see
what’s burning?

‘No, honey, no.’

There is noise, confusion.

Mom says,
‘Look at me, sweety! Look at me!
Don’t take your eyes off me!’

I look,
(Daddy says I have those eyes)
her eyes are wet
but she looks happy,
almost

The ground seems too close
to the sky.

She smiles.
Quietly she says,

‘Look at me, honey. Look.
Look right at me.
We’re OK.
It’s OK.”

Where are we going, mom?

‘Nowhere, honey.
We’re just taking a shortcut,
a shortcut
to the angels.’

(Suddenly far below,
on city streets
panicked people
see only
demons)

[In honor of the loving, 9/11/01]

©Bill Gnade/Sept 12, 2001

When Spiders Bite

I am losing my faith. This is not a confession that I've lost faith in humanity, or the future, or tomorrow morning. This is a confession of a crisis of spirit: My very religion is crumbling around me. Atheism almost seems comforting.

What, pray tell, do Derrick Z. Jackson, Ellen Goodman, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman have in common? They have in common the grand prize of making me reconsider my belief in God. For I ask myself how is it that God–and the readers of the New York Times and Boston Globe, and the Pulitzer Prize committee–can countenance, with any seriousness other than serious alarm, the writings of these essayists? I am at a loss.

Perhaps I am a victim of ennui, the existentialist's boredom, a boredom induced in large part by overindulgence. For I have been a glutton, a foolish glutton, of the writings of myriad "critics" of Bush, Iraq, New Orleans. I have entered their nests, drawn close by blind curiosity, ignorant of their danger. I've been bitten. I am nearly paralyzed by their venom. I await the deflation of my skin, the result of my liquified innards having been sucked out through mendacious mandibles.

It is impossible to overcome, this all-out assault on reality by the opinion-shapers perched atop their righteousness. There are simply too many of them. Their webs are sticky.

Here's one statement from a rebuttal of a recent Christopher Hitchens essay. The rebuttal, written by University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and laced with pedantic and errant lessons on Hitchens' alleged fallacies, has this truly mind-boggling passage:

In essence, Hitchens is arguing for the legitimacy of a sort of hyperpower vigilantism, in which the sitting president of the United States decides which regimes may continue to exist, virtually by himself. The U.S. Congress did not even have the moral fortitude to declare war. The U.N. charter forbids wars of aggression, and, indeed, forbids all wars not clearly defensive that are not explicitly authorized by the Security Council. The Security Council may be, as Hitchens implies, corrupt and yellow-bellied, but it represents most of humankind, while Bush did not even represent a majority of Americans. [emphasis added]

It is tempting to think that the problem with modern American letters is that such letters are being drafted by members of the marijuana generation (and there really is such a generation). Cole's remark might very well have been drafted in a pot-induced haze, for its very imbecility invokes images of Cheech and Chong. One hardly thinks of Sir Bertrand Russell in the face of such polemics (other than Russell's atheism).

Here we have Cole, an opponent of the Iraq War and defender of the UN Security Council's leadership in the months leading up to the war, conceding that the Security Council may indeed be corrupt and pusillanimous, but it at least represents "MOST OF MANKIND." Bush, in contrast, "did not even represent a majority of Americans."

Excuse me while I pause at this moment so I may gouge out my eyes (but I can't, since I'm paralyzed).

Imagine, really imagine, that this statement was drafted by a PhD-holding professor, printed on Salon.com, and is meant to be an academic rebuttal of Hitchen's fallacies. Sadly, I can't imagine it. For me, it is beyond the fantastic; it is beyond the promises of even a serious acid trip. And I can't for the life of me believe that the universe in which this sort of statement is published is one governed by a God.

If a "corrupt and yellow-bellied" UN Security Council represents "most of mankind", does this mean that most of mankind is corrupt? If so, do we not want Mr. Bush to act contrary to that corruption? Moreover, doesn't the statement that Bush "did not even represent a majority of Americans" imply that the majority of Americans, who are part of "most of mankind", are also corrupt and yellow-bellied? Does not Cole's statement mean that Bush and his minority are actually NOT corrupt, but noble and courageous? Indeed it does.

Idiocy abounds, collecting paychecks and laurels.

***

Katrina Note

Now that the race card has been played in the Katrina-Bush slamfest, America is left with this truly dire fact: It can never respond more swiftly or efficiently to a natural or similar disaster than it did in New Orleans. For if it does, it will prove that the government does in fact prefer rushing to the aid of other people than the New Orleans victims. Woe to those all-white states that may face catastrophe. For if the federal government rescues them one second faster than the Katrina victims, it proves the essential racist heart of America.

Hence, we are stuck, damned for doing and not doing, because people with hard hearts have played the race card.

Nice job.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

"Help Me Understand": A Powerful Moment In Radio

On September 7, NPR reporter Michele Norris of All Things Considered filed the stunning "Katrina Survivors Contemplate Whether to Go Home." (To hear the report, go here.)

In her story, Norris interviewed several people from New Orleans who found safe haven in a Baton Rouge shelter in the wake of the hurricane. One interview with Belinda Bruce, a nursing assistant who fled her Elysian Fields neighborhood with her boyfriend and six daughters before Katrina hit, is worth noting. [Since the report is a recorded conversation, I have done my best to transcribe the exact wording of the interview shown below.]

As a lead into her interview with Bruce, Norris says that Bruce "is trying to figure out how to explain the disaster" to her daughters:

Bruce: I really can't explain to them than just to say that maybe it was for the best.

Reporter: For the best?

Bruce: Yes. Because I am more happier, what I can say, homeless.

Reporter: Help me understand that. You, you're sitting here at a shelter, your house is most likely underwater, and you're–you're happier here than you were back home?

Bruce: Because there was so much going on in my neighborhood. Even though I was comfortable in my house, in my house, the blocks up where the kids went to school it was horrible, they always had shootouts, they just didn't respect the kids, they was selling drugs. The good thing is that I am away from that with my kids. So, and maybe they'll get into a better school, a better neighborhood. So ...

Reporter: So when you, you think about this, how, how do you make sense of it now as you're sitting here and as you realize that even after the disaster, after you had to leave everyone, every thing you loved and, and a lot of people you loved behind, that you're somehow happier sitting here outside of a shelter?

Bruce: Hmm. I felt that [pause] God sent that there because of all the nonsense that was going on in that neighborhood, and just, in that, in New Orleans period, there was too much violence going on and just, just a cleansing, just to clean up that city.

Reporter: So will you go back to New Orleans?

Bruce: I am not going back, it's my intention, I am not going back to New Orleans, not where I was living at.

Reporter: It's just that easy, you'll leave everything behind, your family, your house?

Bruce: It was hard at first, but I'm just looking at it as a new beginning for myself and my kids, so.

I am tempted to leave Bruce's comments to stand for themselves, alone, without my analysis attached. I am humbled by her convictions: She thinks New Orleans was so corrupted that it merited a washing, a cleansing, a purging. A purgatory. Who am I to disagree? Granted I've already opined about blaming God for Katrina, as if it was all due to His wrath at New Orleans' notorious carnality. And I readily admit that I do not disbelieve in either God or His wrath. I merely claim ignorance as to how God thinks and behaves in such matters. Did New Orleans and by extension the rest of us deserve God's judgment? I'll let God be the final judge of others. I know my sins. They are legion. And I know my deserts.

But what in heaven's name could have been so abhorrent, so abominable in New Orleans if a now homeless woman is happier in a Baton Rouge shelter? What poverty, what destitution of life and heart could find solace on a cot, preferring the possession of nothing to the possession of a home, a neighborhood, a city? (One or two commentators have suggested that much of New Orleans was less like America and more like Haiti, which has been a nasty, grief-stricken place for decades.) To where do we turn to understand how losing everything is "for the best"?

And how is it that America could have in its midst a place so dreadful that people who lived there are relieved to see that dread washed away in a cataclysm? How is it that a mother of six daughters greets a "new beginning" with joy when that new beginning means the destruction of everything her children have ever known?

Sobering, sobering stuff, to say the least.

Peace to you, Miss Bruce.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The Left's Subtle Contradiction

You've heard the jingoists chant, "My country, right or wrong." You've heard the hawkish, "America is worth dying for!" or some such bromide: "God, guts and guns make America great." Of course in most cases such chants and slogans are exaggerations or oversimplifications of patriotic sentiment. If necessary, one could easily whittle down any patriotic statement to its nub, its core: "America (in this case) is the greatest nation on earth."

Such patriotic zeal and fervor is greeted by leftists with, at best, a tittering behind cupped hands, with whispered quips about the silliness, quaintness or provincialism of such American civil piety. But typically leftists are not so casual about such jingoism, as they see it, particularly in difficult political times. At peacetime, yes, leftists seem less appalled by love of country. But when times turn tough, leftists often strike a counterblow to the belly of American pride, often pointing out America's shortcomings; its failings, blemishes and imperfections. Red-state patriots are deemed unpatriotically blind to America's torrid past in nefarious world affairs; perceived as victims of faulty discernment before waves of propaganda. Blue-state progressives do all they can to point out this alleged blindness.

In short it could all be summed up something like this: To those on the right, America is great even when wrong; to the left, America is only great when it is always right.

But I have discovered a subtle contradiction in the left's view of America, and it can only be seen in its condemnation of the War on Terror and its criticisms of the Katrina disaster. For everyone knows, at least those of us paying attention, that the patriotic zeal that runs strong through many military personnel and families in support of the Iraq War (for example), is rebuffed by leftists who like to point out that America is immorally participating in an illegal war; that America is not perfect, but tyrannical; that George W. Bush is the world's greatest terrorist; that the CIA created Osama bin Laden (it didn't, by the way); that America's foreign policy is replete with allegiances to dictators who cater to American Big Business interests–all of these are deployed by leftists in their assault at perceived American nobility, superiority or decency. Leftists live to tell of America's faults, deeming themselves patriotic for pointing out those faults, expecting that doing so shall make America "the great nation it should be."

But here's the contradiction, found hidden in this rhetorical question: How is it that the greatest nation on earth can have failed its citizens so miserably in New Orleans? It is also hidden in the plaintive, "How is it that the greatest nation on earth can have people starving to death on rooftops?"

Now, I am not suggesting that people on the right are not asking these same questions. I am suggesting that perhaps only the people on the right are entitled to ask such questions. For you see, the left has already distanced itself from taking the high-road here, as it historically has never believed America to be great in actuality but only in potentiality. The right, despite all its alleged jingoism and fervor, has really always believed America to be faulty. But the right has loved America despite its faults, recognizing its worth in its imperfections: My country, right or wrong.

Sadly, as I said above, the leftist mantra has pretty much only been, "My country too–but only when right."

Hence, the left, because it has never perceived America as great, is disingenuous when it cries from the rooftops that the greatest nation in the history of the world should not have left citizens suffering in the Superdome in New Orleans. For if the left means what it is saying–that America is the greatest nation on earth–then it opens itself to criticism about its views on America in general. Is America worth defending in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia or North Korea? Is America really the world's greatest terrorist? Is there any "noble" reason for which an American soldier might die? Is America really all about oil? (And if so, how is it that it could have failed to protect the Gulf Coast's oil-processing infrastructure if oil is all that America cares about?)

And since the left has never perceived America as the greatest nation on earth, we must hear its cries of indignation concerning New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as so much gnashing of teeth, so much anti-patriotic manipulation. For if the leftists do not really believe America is the greatest country, why are they saying it? Perhaps they mean it this way, with a slap to the face of the American right: "If America is so 'great', why are people dead in New Orleans?" If that is the way they mean it, then one might conclude that they are exploiters par excellence; looters of storehouses of patriotic love and spirit.

In other words, the left is either taking advantage of the tragedy unfolding before us, or it is renouncing its earlier positions about America's failures the world over. Either America IS the greatest nation on earth, or it is not. Which is it going to be?

In closing, those of us on the right have never expected America to be perfect in anything it does. Whether it be dealing with civil or international problems, America has not been held by the right to some sort of moral perfection (maybe the religious right has so held it, to some degree, but I mostly doubt that, since the religious right believes that humans are sinners.) It is the leftists who are doing so, particularly in the War on Terror and the war on natural and manmade disasters. And that sets right and left apart, eternally, really.

This is what I believe finally separates the left from the right, and you can take it as you will: the left cannot accept paradox, whereas the right can. But the left accepts contradictions, whereas the right cannot.

(Or maybe, if I feel generous today, the left and right merely disagree on what are acceptable paradoxes. But I tend to doubt it.)

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Hell In A Wet Place

Even if what is reported in the following link is 50 percent incorrect, the 50 percent that is correct is enough to make Madonna blush. That the event as reported in this link only serves to perpetuate the stereotype that homosexuality and narcissism go hand-in-hand is unarguable. Check out the story here. It is worth a glance.

And then there is this story (click here). I know many of us men would prefer not to admit that we know that New Orleans was/is the breast-flashing capital of the world. We've seen the whole licentious display, the Mardi Gras beads collected for successful breast-baring on Bourbon Street, all to the cheers of randy males surging with lust. Hence, this story makes sense, whether true or false. If true, then we would expect such truly sick behavior. If false, New Orleans' reputation as a place of carnival carnality has led to this sort of criticism and rumor.

Finally, the following story puts things in healthy perspective, in a twisted sort of way. Click here for a delicious religious take on how people should talk, think and feel after calamity.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

[I know I said I'd be away today, but I couldn't resist.]

It Is A Labor To Love

I have decided to distance Contratimes somewhat from the Katrina disaster in the Gulf Coast. The disaster is a horrific event, requiring our attention, support and sacrifice. But this website shall only serve to occasionally remind us of the issues there. I will not engage in the sort of psychological and political warfare that it has provoked or uncovered. The bombast tossed around the storm's aftermath is hurtful and inhumane, not just to Americans but to people everywhere. It is injudicious, unkind, and thoroughly wrong. It is the sort of thing best left to commissions and graduate seminars. It is not the sort of rhetoric or analysis that moves the nation towards actually solving a dynamic problem in the present moment.

I want to point out my own failings, my own stumblings in the dark. It has been really difficult to get good information out of the Gulf as to the scale of the disaster. What we have seen are only pockets of difficulty–presented visually in video and print images–but we have not seen the difficulty as a whole. And we never will. As a result, I have been remiss for not being more circumspect about my role and my commentary on this disaster.

One boneheaded thing I stated was that the comparison between 9/11 and New Orleans showed one difference: The media in New York (indeed the capital of media in America) were more actively attentive to the disaster in New York because the media lost so many of their own, or at least their own kind. That may or may not be true. I am not saying that the media lost journalists in Ground Zero, for surprisingly few were lost that day. I am saying that for much of the media elites–the New York Times, ABC, CBS, and NBC–they lost friends and neighbors they understood, could relate to, had known at dinners in various clubhouses and fund-raisers.

But I failed to understand how many of the superstars of the media and our culture in general have lost homes, families and/or businesses in the Gulf Coast. From summer homes to shanties on stilts, and from TV stations to daily newspapers, the Gulf Coast has lost, and the country has lost, lives and jobs and memories and dreams incalculable. Nonetheless, I still struggle to understand how this event has not quite pulled the media into that sort of funereal quiet that was the salient feature of the post 9/11 TV coverage. There is something intrinsically odd about the media response to all this, and I can't put my finger on it. But I will not suggest that the media, personally, have been effected differently from this disaster than 9/11. In fact, many of the journalists who live and work in the Gulf Coast, if they are still alive, have lost everything they've ever owned.

But here has been my real failure, and it has been a failure of conception, and thus of action. I have commented that when a social group, like those who dwell in cities, becomes somewhat blind to its vulnerability because there is always some sort of safety net deployed to catch that group, to catch them as quickly as possible so that their fall will not be too great, that social group becomes less capable of helping itself when the safety net itself is compromised or destroyed. In short, as creatures, we can become helpless in the face of problems larger than the safety net can handle.

With this in mind, I have pointed to the heroics of at least one man who realized that until the safety net is repaired or until it comes anew, he had to become, along with his neighbors, a safety net unto themselves. They had to take action. They had to even build temporary governments (as at least one hospital staff did). They had to move. Whatever, they had to act. This noble response is inspiring and powerful.

But my failure is that I too have relied too heavily on the social safety net. I have called for patience, or the giving of money, each of which suggest that I have called for people to await a well-financed safety net to come rescue them. But as I have watched this thing unfold from afar, I have indeed expected something OTHER THAN MYSELF to take care of those people "down there." I have indeed expected an all out Rambo-like squad of relief workers, engineers and directors to descend on the area and bring restorative peace to the Gulf Coast.

What I am saying is that as I watch this thing unfold, there has been a faintly-heard cry by thousands of people, nay, tens of thousands of people, to "send everybody!" That the cry is heard dimly is in part due to the inability for us to communicate with the region, and for the region to communicate with itself. But it is also due to my hearing the cries through my trust in the safety net, and that trust has muffled those cries. I admit with shame that most of my being has responded with pity, but not a pity that has moved me to action. It has moved me–in practice–to expect someone else to deal with the problems in Katrina's wake. In fact, I have been made helpless by my dependence on the safety net, but not a safety net that protects me from falling, but a safety net that protects me from having to catch someone myself.

Yes, I know that had I zoomed my car toward the New Orleans coast I would have possibly added to the problem. But I never tried, I never trusted in God or stepped out in faith, to see if in fact my help would have indeed been more help than harm.

This is, in a sense, a problem with the safety net mentality: it may make us no longer love ourselves or even our neighbors. What do I mean? Well, let me put it this way. I have a loved one who believes that she MUST be a Democrat because, and I'll use her words, "I am my brother's keeper." To her, this means paying higher taxes to fund the safety net. But her funding the net actually removes her from "keeping" her "brother." Her money goes to someone else and THEY "keep" her "brother."

Hence, some curious problems arise. Suppose there exists in my world three things–myself, my neighbor and a government to which I pay to provide a safety net for my neighbor. Suppose there is a fire across the way at my neighbor's house. If I am truly my brother's keeper, I will run over and fight that housefire with all my strength. If the house burns to the ground, I will cloth and feed my neighbor, and rebuild his house. But instead of such action, I await the government to come and put out my neighbor's fire, which is not very loving. After all, or so I say to myself, there is a safety net. Curiously, my neighbor is making no attempt to extinguish the fire either, for he has for far too long believed that someone else will come and fix his problems for him. In short, he does not love himself. He's a neighbor who has been "kept."

Alas, distraught at my neighbor's helplessness, I send extra money to the government. And then I get angry at the government's slow response.

This scenario is the result of losing sight of what it REALLY means to be a neighbor. Building safety nets creates a mentality that destroys both self-love and neighborly love. I do not mean to denigrate the idea of a safety net. We do need them. I am merely pointing out the dangers of socializing the safety net to the degree we now see in our culture. Need I point out the obvious? Well, let me say it loud and clear: Millions of Americans barely know their neighbors. (There are many other factors for this as well.)

I don't know what else to say than this: I have not been moved to action, paralyzed not merely by indifference or lack of capability, but because I do not really believe I have any thing to give, or that I am needed. If I did, I'd be in my car right now, heading south, helping rebuild my brothers' houses. Yes, yes, of course, I recognize that if we ALL went south we'd have a different disaster on our hands.

Wouldn't it be great if we could be like the Amish at a neighbor's barnraising, all gathered together in peace and harmony, bringing our tools and gifts to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in an organized weekend, rebuilding it all in a few short days? Oh, if only it could be that simple.

Contratimes

PS. I'll be off tomorrow and maybe even Wednesday. I've been writing poorly lately, I think, and I need to regroup. But I might be back if something important comes to mind.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.