Two Annunciations: MSNBC Supports Barack Hussein Obama, And He Is Not Black (or so says someone)

In a matter of minutes from now (30 minutes), Barack Hussein Obama, the handsome and well-spoken senator from Illinois, shall officially announce his candidacy for President of the United States. Assisting him in this proclamation, and no doubt a supporter of his candidacy, is MSNBC, the cable network featuring such notable political wisemen as Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and Keith Olbermann. My saying that MSNBC is assisting him is due entirely to the fact that MSNBC is hyping its "live coverage" of Mr. Obama's annunciation with undue alacrity at this moment: MSNBC is giddy about this man. Even Mr. Russert's words on an Imus in the Morning program, words replayed during Mr. Russert's testimony in court the other day -- in the Scooter Libby perjury trial -- are perfectly apt: It was "Christmas Eve" in the newsroom when Libby was indicted. No doubt it is Christmas morning today.

Alas, I have proven rather incompetent in my coverage of the Obama story. For I have not properly secured the facts, though, in this digital age of plastic facts, it is not likely that I could ever pin down any fact, for facts vanish in a flash-media second. But please note that on October 24, 2006, in an essay I wrote about Mr. Obama, I noted that his September 2005 essay posted on the Daily Kos, the influential, self-described leftist blog, had as a banner advertisement the following image:



Please note Mr. Obama's placement in this advertisement. Please note that this ad was present at Mr. Obama's Daily Kos essay months before Mr. Obama even announced his exploratory committee for the presidency. Please note that MSNBC not only placed an advertisement for itself on Mr. Obama's Daily Kos diary, but MSNBC placed Mr. Obama's image adjacent to President Bush's, suggesting, perhaps, that both men are in some sort of great struggle. To MSNBC, Obama is a contender, and this MONTHS before he was indeed a contender. Amazingly, MSNBC threw Mr. Obama's hat into the presidential ring before he had himself.

Or so it looks. Or so it feels.

Unfortunately, I only took a screen shot of the actual ad. I failed to take, and preserve, a screen shot of the ad on the actual Obama page. And as you can see, the ad has been removed from Mr. Obama's essay posted, as it was, on the world's largest blog, a blog entirely devoted to political and sociological liberalism.

But who cares, right? This is, after all, the deliverer we are talking about. The great hope. And in just a little less than an hour, there will be a star over the silent little town of Springfield, Illinois. You know, where Abraham Lincoln once lived.

This is all shaping up to be a perfect little fairy tale, the kind America just loves to tell itself.

MY SKIN IS CLEAR (I think)

Curiously related to all of this mythmaking, and jarring our senses, is this essay ("Colorblind") about Mr. Obama (and race in America in general). It is published on Salon. com, and it is written by a "black" woman, Debra J. Dickerson. Perhaps you saw Ms. Dickerson on "The Colbert Report" earlier this week (in a brilliant interview). Ms. Dickerson's thesis, in case you did not know, is that Mr. Obama is NOT BLACK. I kid you not. His mother, apparently, is a white woman from Kansas, while his dad is from Kenya. That Ms. Dickerson defines blackness in political terms is astonishing: to be black in America means, strictly, to be a direct descendant of former African slaves. During Ms. Dickerson's interview with the thoroughly enjoyable Mr. Colbert, she said that Mr. Obama would be better served if he defined himself -- and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP -- as an African African-American. But he is definitely NOT black.

That this woman, who wrote the book, The End of Blackness, is ruining the great idea of a man with dark skin announcing his presidency from Abraham Lincoln's hometown, you know, the town of that great president who clearly made the first great step for the emancipation of slaves so they could become -- eventually -- candidates for President, is a fact too interesting to let pass unnoticed.

But I ask you: if being black is a political-linguistic term denoting only those who are descendants of actual African slaves imported to America, does it NOT FOLLOW that "white" is equally political, denoting only those who have descended from white slaveholders who imported African slaves to America? I think it does. And if that is the case, then, since there were no slaveholders in my ancestral gene pool, I am not white.

There you go then.

I am not white, and Barack Obama, should he become president, will not be America's first black President.

Go figure.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Unambiguous Contradictions: The "Love" Of European Cinema

Sometimes a discovery hits one on the head, like Newton's proverbial apple. What follows is not that sort of discovery. It would be nice to report, even to boast, that I've seen the heretofore unseeable, but no such report shall come. My discovery is more curio than creed, more reverie than revolution. No paradigm shift will follow this discovery's simple wake. Nonetheless, I hope you will join me on my brief jaunt through the philosophy of filmmaking, or cinematic storytelling, and the current condition of the liberal mind in America (I use the word "liberal" to indicate those who might describe themselves as secular progressives with socialist tendencies, and anyone to the left of that).

I am sure you've heard some version of the following in your lifetime: American films are vastly different from European films. No doubt you're nodding your head right now: Not only have you heard this before, you know it, from experience, to be true. And it is arguably true much of the time. In fact, let us without hesitation state the differences:

• American films are often overtold, without subtlety or nuance, in contrast to European films.
• American films present plot lines that are largely predictable, slaking Americans' thirst for resolution, for clear portrayals of the good and the bad; of the guy always getting the girl or the bad guy getting his comeuppance before the last credits. European films are freer from these constraining expectations; and European filmmakers are content with ambiguity and ambivalence, almost flaunting that contentment.
  
• American films speak not only to Americans' alleged need for clear and defined solutions and resolutions, but such films also speak to their alleged need for endings that are not abrupt, thus never leaving viewers hanging. Americans demand a denouement, a tidy wrap up. In contrast, European filmmakers, aware of the complexities of life and death, recognize that life itself often ends abruptly, without resolution, without clarity; their films mirror that reality.
  
• American films are produced for maximum economic impact, for making a big profit splash, while European films are produced for their own sake as works of art (or so it goes).
• American films are largely produced for entertainment purposes, for titillation or distraction, while European films are produced to elevate the soul, to engage the intellect and the heart; or to shock the viewer into existential honesty about the intrinsic meaninglessness (or purposelessness) of life and the shallowness and relativism of social mores.
  

I am not here going to discuss the veracity of these claims. I am interested in something more sociological than cinematic; I want to discuss politics and not the philosophy of art. In fact, what I am interested in is how the differences between American and European film have shaped personal identities in America. What do I mean? I mean that in America, those people who consider themselves "liberal" are nearly always the ones flocking to art theaters to see the latest European import, or the latest edgy independent film. Art films are not usually seen by mobs of conservative, flag-waving Republicans (forgive the overwrought stereotype). Art films, indie shorts, European cult films -- these and nearly anything else European or Euro-inspired are the sorts of things that help define "artsy-fartsy," left-leaning Americans. No self-respecting liberal filmgoer will ever pronounce that "Point of No Return" is better than its inspiration, "Le Femme Nikita," (to pick one populist, albeit violent, example). No genuine artsy-type would ever prefer the Academy Award-winning "Chariots of Fire" to the equally lauded and more continental "American Beauty" (assuming, of course, that type of person would even countenance such "mainstream" films). The European film is a mark of identification for liberals, who are just so comfortable with ambiguity, with abrupt endings, with being left on the edge of the seat, denying themselves the plebeian pleasure of a denouement. Having everything neatly packaged, or fully explained in the gross simplicities of black-and-white moralism, are all anathema to the liberal, sophisticated filmgoer. Tension, irresolution, angst, ennui, despair, futility (and laughter in the face of all of it): these are the mainstays of solid liberal film-loving. Give the liberal a Peter Greenaway film, and give the conservative the utterly predictable "Passion of the Christ" or "March of the Penguins" (both big among evangelicals, by the way); both will be happy.

At least this is true in my experience. When I visit the art house, or when I trek to Harvard Square for a progressive film, I am never surrounded by a bunch of John Birch-types, or even Reagan types. McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Clinton: these suit my fellow theater-goers. No, I'm surrounded by the urbane liberals whose sophistication comes trippingly off their tongues.

Oddly, this is only the case, apparently, when discussing film (or literature). For the liberal suddenly becomes an anxious dolt when it comes to politics. Just take a look at liberal responses to the Alito hearings, for example. Chuck Schumer, a liberal New York Democrat, was shocked and dismayed that Judge Alito would not define with absolute clarity his position on Roe v. Wade. Alito in fact incensed all the most liberal members of the US Senate, House, and press corps, hiding (or so he was accused) in ambiguity and dancing around nuance. Unsure of how a Justice Alito might adjudicate, liberals suddenly demanded certainty of their future, demanding guarantees to prop up what has given their lives meaning and purpose for so long. Liberals expect the courts and governments to give their lives stability, in contradiction of the existentialism of the art house, which says that meaning and stability can only come from the self (good old conservative self-reliance?).

One look at the Iraq War will also speak to my point. Liberals scream for an exit strategy, for a "plan" and "purpose," for something unambiguously immediate; for a redeployment that brings swift and immediate resolution. Liberals plead for a denouement; for a tidy ending. Liberals demand a purpose for war and every action related thereto; or they plead for a war-less world, one bereft of cinematic drama and reality's unblinking hardness. Liberals even pronounce a black-and-white sense of justice, with President Bush (and America) as evil and anyone else morally superior ("Anyone but Bush!"). Liberals aver that the war is "all about oil" or "all about imperialism," claims which are patently unambiguous and without nuance.

Liberals want government guarantees to care for the poor; or to save the environment; or to ensure that no child is either left behind or without medical coverage. That these are all fears voiced with a Hosanna! Hosanna! (Save us!) to the great State somehow go unnoticed. But what will not go unnoticed is how these anxious pleas stand in contrast to the love of art's alleged ambiguity and purposelessness.

Ironically, it appears that it is the conservatives who are comfortable with political ambiguity, of not knowing how everything will and must end. It is the liberals who want to take not only the suffering but even the anxiety out of life; while the conservatives, who abhor suffering and anxiety, recognize that neither can be expunged solely by the salvific state. Conservatives appear to be fine with free markets -- instead of laws -- shaping economies. Conservatives appear at ease with a war without a defined (and limiting) exit-strategy. Conservatives appear comfortable with a Supreme Court nominee who may or may not overturn Roe v. Wade (and there are many conservatives who support Roe v. Wade, whereas there is nary a liberal who opposes it, which suggests much about which side is more free-thinking). In short, it is the conservatives who are comfortable in practice with life's raw difficulties, whereas liberals only speak of such in theory from the safety of a Greenwich café.

So, there's my foray into film and identity politics. I have only opined about it here, having thought of my thesis last night while listening to the radio. Take it as you will. I am sure it falls short, but astute thinkers will see irony, hypocrisy and hubris, I believe, in those who claim to be "real" patrons of both progressive film and liberal philosophy.

Now, please excuse me while I go and watch "Memento" – in reverse.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Photo: Something ambiguous, I hope. Some of you won't see what it is until you "free your mind."]

Language 101 - For Smart Students Only

Those of us who live in rural, sylvan areas, where wetlands abound, and have hiked through swamp and marsh, understand the dangers of the wet, bog-like places that vibrate with life. Mud and silt are remarkably deep in even the shallowest ponds; and even firm ground can give way beneath one's step. While getting trapped is always a possibility for the solo hiker, wetland hiking might not pose much mortal threat, though humans' tendency to avoid such places might indicate a passed-on trait given graciously by God or evolution; and thus explains why so few die in mud up to their ears. Bayous and the Everglades are not hospitable places save for the most informed and equipped adventurers.

The etymology of the word "quagmire" most assuredly includes the history of people describing why swamps are dangerous: one can easily get stuck therein, and, at times, it is impossible to escape from their mucky grasp. (Perhaps there is a relation to quahogs, clams stuck in the mud.)

That Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, should once again dredge the ditches and pull up in all its frothy mass the word "quagmire" during yesterday's Senate hearings on Iraq, makes those of us wince who understand the simple facts. And the simple facts are these: The United States military, at the drop of a hat, could and can leave Iraq, even today. There is nothing military preventing them from leaving; they are not stuck in a dog-fight; they are not surrounded; they have not lost strongholds or air superiority; they have not lost the seas or the streets (though some are problematic); they are not screaming for supplies and air support. The United States controls a foreign country thousands of miles from its own shores. And, though there are pockets of difficulty in Iraq, just as there are pockets of difficulty in the United States, there is no military reason the United States is stuck, trapped, or sunk in a quagmire. For "quagmire" connotes entrapment and paralysis; and the United States is entirely in control of its own destiny in Iraq. It owns Iraq, really. And it is trying to give it back.

That does not mean that there are not socio-political reasons why the US military must not leave Iraq. I have spelled out why the US's fight in Iraq has been slow, arduous (at times) and clinical in my essay, Trees from the forest, (posted in April), and it all has to do with "regime change", which was and remains the MAIN reason the United States entered Iraq in the first place. Regime change is not synonymous with "deposing" or "toppling" a dictator; it is much more comprehensive and outcome-oriented than the simplifiers among us perceive. For to change a regime is to also install one, one that is stable and permanent. And, ultimately, the goal is to install a regime that is an ally of America's fight against its broader, more elusive and fanatical threats.

Even if we grant that the insurgency is not in its "last throes", as Vice President Dick Cheney recently said, but that the insurgency situation is escalating at worst or "static" at best; the United States is not anchored militarily by that insurgency; it is not mired down and caught in its grip. Again, the US can always leave that insurgency behind, and my guess is that it in fact will, leaving its suppression for the new Iraqi regime to handle and define. That there might remain a wildly successful insurgency active when the US does finally withdraw its troops, does not prove failure or loss, if the regime is indeed changed. But I doubt any insurgency will be wildly successful; at least as a result of US failures.

What is clear is this: that critics of the war, Sen. Kennedy tallest among them, who believe that the difficulty of regime change proves that the war is a mistake, commit the fallacy of oversimplification. The converse of their argument is that the legitimacy of the war would be proven if the war were easy. But the legitimacy of the war might be proven by its difficulty, and not disproven by it. That there are pockets of resistance, that there are reported setbacks, does not discredit the war, just like setbacks in cancer treatments, or chess playing, do not prove the illegitimacy of either medicine or Kasparov's conceding a bishop to a pawn.

This is the reality: language is abused daily in this spin-war called politics, and it is most enthusiastically abused by the Democratic Party and its minions in the mainstream media. Understanding the word "quagmire" requires not merely aptitude, but humility, for the most learned are always the humblest: they can only learn if they admit their ignorance. And the smartest among us understand that using "quagmire" to mean "something that superficially looks difficult and protracted", is an abuse of language, and is so much double-speak. It is obfuscation and prevarication; it is bastardizing Babel-speak. Don't accept it. Ever.

And do not be deceived by the fallacious "If there is no exit-strategy, how is that not a quagmire?" For it is illogical to the core. An exit-strategy is always elastic; its plasticity is always necessary to ensure survival amidst the infinite variables of life. People enter into all kinds of relationships. We do not ask, "You've entered into courtship with James; what is your exit-strategy?" We do not ask, "Doctor, now that you've opened up the patient, what exactly is your exit-strategy, considering that there are complications you did not expect?" Nor do we conclude that the doctor is in a "quagmire"; nor that he is performing an "illegitimate operation." We do not ask, "Coach Belichek, if you get pinned down deep in your end of the football field, what is your exit-strategy?" Nor do we conclude that Coach Belichek's team is stuck in the mud should he say that he does not have an exit-strategy.

Not having an exit-strategy doth not a quagmire make. In fact, following a pre-conceived idea or plan may actually create a quagmire: read Black Hawk Down and learn how rapidly adherence to an exit-strategy devolves into a quagmire.

In battle, as in life, it is the combination of rigidity and flexibility in proper balance that most often guarantees success and survival. But the rigidity of thought, its constant and intransigent pounding on the podium by Sen. Kennedy and like-minded critics, is remarkably deadening.

If you want to see a quagmire, look at the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate. Talk about going nowhere, spinning ceaselessly in the same tired ruts, grinding gears down the same abandoned roads.

Too bad they don't have an exit-strategy. (Maybe we voters can give them one.)

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Is this a Double Standard?

[I offer deep and abiding gratitude to David Horowitz for featuring this essay at his website, Frontpagemag.com, in April.]

By the time the 1960's came to a close, I was in fourth grade, all of nine years old. I recall that the '60s scared me: that the Black Panthers, assassinations, riots, and even the epileptic screaming of Janice Joplin simply frightened me. Having been born in the middle of a war, I found Vietnam scary as well, though the allure of combat teased not only my imagination but the backyard play-fantasies of my New Jersey playmates (till I moved to New Hampshire in 1968). And there, in second grade, in what may have been my first gesture of bravado, I recall telling classmate Timmy Tyrrell, who already was planning on being a minister (his whole family was devoted to that goal), that I wanted to grow up to be a "heroin addict," a boast I completed with a pantomime of shooting up: arm on my desk, sleeve rolled up, pencil heading deep into my vein - and Mrs. Barden nearby. I would join the rebellion, I declared, and I'll have my hair as long as Rapunzel's.

Recently I've been reliving those times, in the trenchant and matter-of-fact analysis of David Horowitz' autobiography, Radical Son. It is a revealing book, prophetic in its disclosure, giving me an anchor for my wind-tossed anxieties about a decade deemed by some "the best of times."

I share this because I am more certain than ever that the causes for my anxiety have not been rebuffed or destroyed. The radicalism that pervaded the '60s remains, with the '60s youth now in places of political and social prominence, and their children and grandchildren, each breast fed on the idealized protestations of their '60s progenitors, now seeking their own Age of Aquarius. Horowitz reminds me of this, and though I am intellectually mature enough to rein in my emotion (most of the time), anxiety still wakes the soul at night. They are here.

They of course, are those who cannot and will not permit dissent from the party line that a "redemptive future", as Horowitz puts it, is possible; a future without poverty, inequality or any perceived injustice. This future is about emancipating humanity from the fears imposed by the Church; about liberating people from the incorporated capitalist greed bent on creating an unquenchable thirst in consumers; about tossing off the common sense shackles of sexual and artistic prudence.

Go back with me, for a moment, and relive the 1960s' radical beliefs about revolution in America. For example, relive the revolutionary conviction that criminals, particularly black ones, were really acting as liberators; that they were merely acting out as repressed people against an oppressive "system"; against "the Man." Recall that the Black Panthers were not merely victims, but liberators, fighting with clenched fist the classism and injustices of a tyrannical white enterprise. The Weather Underground, violent and aggressive; the property-smashing protesters in American university towns; even the Vietnamese communists exterminating the Party's transgressors; each of these received the compassion, mercy, even the all-out support, of American leftists from coast to coast. For these eruptive and confrontational movements, unavoidable according to Marxist-Hegelian theory, were allegedly symptomatic of a repressive, soon-to-die capitalist colossus.

So Horowitz tells in truly chilling detail and - with what cannot be described in any other phrase - he tells with nothing short of bravery. For Horowitz himself was a revolutionary, born into an American family of strident and organized Communists. But after decades of mounting a truly impressive assault on America with revolutionary zeal, Horowitz saw his ideals crumble into the realities of the gulags of the Soviet Union, and the failed socialist economies everywhere Marx was embraced.

Perhaps the single most important line in Horowitz' work is this, which he describes as the subtext for defending the left's moral failures: "No matter how bad my actions seem, my heart is in the right place." This defense, Horowitz argues, was deployed by leftists everywhere as they were confronted by the violent, murderous realities their actions and ideas supported.

It is an important line to remember.

THEY ARE HERE

Sunday, April 24, 2005, in typical fashion, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes of House Speaker Tom Delay that (and I quote Mr. Rich), "It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the 'left's last legislative body.'" One wonders what Mr. Rich means. It is never a "lie" to argue, no matter how one argues. It is a lie to deliberately tell a mistruth. Arguing is not lying. Lying is lying.

Here's Tom Delay's full remark: "And of course, the leftists hate it when we attack the left's last legislative body." That Delay is referring to the judiciary is inescapable. But that it is a lie is hardly accurate; nor is it an argument, as Rich wrongly suggests. If anything, it looks like an incontrovertible truth: it is transparent that the left indeed does hate it when Delay (and others of his ilk) attacks the judiciary. Just look at how the leftist media have reacted to his remarks. They've aimed their guns at him. He's a "liar."

I share this small item for a very important reason. It reveals that the left, embodied by Mr. Rich, is blind to its double standard.

That double standard is this: The left rarely, if ever, inquires why the right, particularly the religious right, is so disenchanted with "the system." Moreover, the right is never offered the rather easy out granted to the left: Tom Delay, for example, will never be acquitted for his 'lies' with the merciful "we disagree with Mr. Delay's actions and words, but his heart is in the right place."

No, Rich never inquires, and I believe he has never inquired, why Delay and his colleagues feel so outraged by the US judiciary. Or why conservatives feel "oppressed"; or why radical opponents of abortion (the few that exist) have taken up arms and shot abortion doctors. Are conservatives' hearts in the right place? Never!

That Mr. Rich (and virtually every leftist pundit in this country) has never granted such tolerant understanding of the right indicates the clear line of demarcation between the two political wings. Leftist writers are much more willing to discern the heart of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein than the person seated next to them on the train (unless that person be a member of MoveOn.org).

In Radical Son, Horowitz spells it out plainly for all to see. He recounts how the leftist media reacted to his defection from the left: with an onslaught of lies, vitriol and scorn. And he recalls how Garry Wills, protegé of right-wing William F. Buckley, was treated by the right when he defected for the left: He was treated like a human being deserved to be treated, with respect.

Horowitz also makes the claim that pundits of the left are expert in writing, not brilliant arguments, but brilliant indictments. Frank Rich's piece on Sunday, like most of his work, proves Horowitz' point. But Horowitz makes a more chilling claim, and I quote:

"Lenin said that the object of political debate was not to win a debate but to wipe one's opponent from the face of the earth."

Apparently Lenin and his distant relatives don't give a damn about whether one's heart is in the right place.

It's that sort of "understanding" of the revolutionary spirit that keeps me up at night.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

The religious left is no less threatening (A letter to the editor)

[This essay is a letter sent to the editor of the Peterborough Transcript, a small NH weekly. It is in response to comments made retired Franklin Pierce College professor, author and political activist Taylor Morris, who lives nearby. It is related to my "God Bless You Please, Mr. Robinson."]

Criticisms of the religious right, expressed in sundry letters to local papers and the audacious remarks of Bishop Gene Robinson of the NH diocese of the Episcopal Church, strike me as wildly hypocritical at worst and misinformed at best.

Taylor Morris, for instance, in his letter, How to define freedom? (Transcript, 4/14), fails to even consider that there might be a religious left equally bent on establishing a theocracy in America. Imposing religious ideals and principles in the public square is hardly a right-wing activity. The religious left has been doing it for decades.

One need only glance at Unitarian Universalism to rightly conclude that there is hardly a more strident and politically active religious institution in America. Its involvement in shaping society and politics in its own religious image is not only part of its foundation; it is its pride. If the religious right is against gay marriage, for example, the Unitarians are all for it. In other words, the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was a decision that promoted and affirmed the religious ideals of Unitarians everywhere. In fact, the two ministers who performed the first 'marriages' in New Paltz, NY, marriages now deemed illegal, were Unitarian ministers. Does anyone think that those two ministers performed those ceremonies because their church opposes gay marriage?

Moreover, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is nearly monochromatic in its political views. Find a Unitarian Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you've found a miracle. (In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church, at least politically, is infinitely more diverse than nearly any Unitarian society on the planet.) The UUA in America endorses almost every political position held by the Democratic Party; and it rarely, if ever, supports one ideal that could be found to the right of that party.

Remember that the "religious right" is not a church. Unitarian Universalism, however, is very much a church.

Mr. Robinson's recent remarks at Franklin Pierce College, germane to this discussion in their hypocrisy, no doubt received applause by his liberal peers. But is there a more troubling irony than a man using his religious office politically in order to censure religion in politics?

And is it not hypocritical that Mr. Robinson would sow fears of theocracy by claiming that 'God is horrified' (Robinson's words) by the things being done in God's name by the religious right? For Robinson claims to know God's mind, a claim that should sound alarms in liberals the world over: Robinson assumes he not only knows what horrifies God politically; he knows what doesn’t horrify God. And what doesn't horrify God? Apparently the political views of Mr. Robinson, whose views are unsurprisingly identical to the Democratic Party platform.

Lastly, one wonders how Mr. Robinson can use his religion in politics to beat back religion in politics when the Book of Common Prayer, without flinching, expects fervent prayers in which weekly, if not daily, Episcopalians petition their Lord Jesus Christ to guide the 'President, Congress and Judiciary' so that they will perform, not some secular act, but God's very will. Perhaps Mr. Robinson would have me skip over that part of my Prayer Book.

The theocratic ambition of the left is also a real threat to the separation of church and state. Messrs. Robinson and Morris apparently hope to protect that separation. I pray they will.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved

Technorati tags: Religious Left, Religious Right, Gene Robinson, Episcopal Church, Episcopalianism,ECUSA, Unitarianism, Unitarian-Universalism

A foolish consistency

Recently, I rode a chairlift up a mountain with a woman I hardly knew. That itself might be interesting, were I single and irresponsible but, gratefully, I confess that I am neither (well, maybe I am irresponsible, but that fact has not left me single).

Nearly the second I began my uphill journey, my chairmate launched into a criticism of President George Bush.

"The plain fact is that he is a very stupid man. And his only interest is in appeasing the big corporations who run this country," she said with the boldness of an oracle.

I held my tongue and listened as she went from one Bush weakness to the next. Then, once we disembarked at the lift's terminus, the woman switched from corporate greed to the right-to-die.

"This whole Schiavo thing is just absurd. What is this President thinking? He's obsessed with just one person, bringing the whole government to a stop because one person's on her deathbed. What about straightening out the Iraq War, or Social Security? Why does he care so much about one person when he doesn't seem to care about whole groups of hurting people, like our soldiers?"

I politely interjected that only a few weeks ago Democrats were insisting that Social Security was fine.

"Why should the president fuss over something that isn't broken?" I asked. "Or did it break a few days ago?"

She looked at me bemusedly.

"And besides," I added, "I love it that President Bush and Congress are obsessed with one person. That's what this country is about: it's about the individual over the collective, and how the two must be kept in harmony through law. What a great country, where one individual could have her name mentioned in Congress! Wouldn't you want that for yourself? I know I do. I WANT to live in a place where people care about just one person, especially that person who is the weakest among us."

The woman replied with a surprising statement.

"That's a very interesting take on it, but I don't buy it."

At that, we skied off in separate directions.

I share this for no other reason than to illustrate a disturbing, nattering consistency. It is that consistency which is always inconsistent: it is like a predictable anomaly.

Perhaps I can make myself clearer by pointing out the obvious: My chairlift companion at the very beginning of our ride berated President Bush for caring solely about big groups of people - corporations. Moments later she was lynching him because he cared solely about one person.

Isn't that amazing?

That corporations are composed of individuals - that most corporations consist of individual Americans - is somehow irrelevant to the progressive critic of the Bush Administration, like the woman with whom I spoke. There is apparently something intrinsically nefarious to the 'corporation'. Something un-American and illiberal.

But alas there is nothing wrong (at least to the progressive) with the corporations of state, like soldiers; or the groups of poor people or those disenfranchised by Social Security cuts. No, these kinds of corporate needs are OK, even lovely, to the liberal mind. To that mind, it is bad for the President to care about large groups, unless they are the right groups. And it is bad if he cares about one woman, unless she is the right kind of woman (preferrably a woman who needs an abortion but can't get one). THAT kind of woman should bring a government to a stop.

Thus the foolish consistency of liberalism is to be found on a ski hill in southern New Hampshire. Such foolishness consistently reproaches the President of the United States with arguments that are anything but consistent.

Welcome to the cold desert of the real.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Related Post: A Central (Yet Not Comedic) Irony

God bless you please, Mr. Robinson

Rindge, NH (3/28/05) - In a speech at Franklin Pierce College entitled 'What in God's name is going on in America?', Gene Robinson, the feted bishop of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire, takes umbrage with that bogeyman of American politics, the 'religious right.' (www.mledger.com/2005/archives/1-news-033105.shtml)

Perhaps Mr. Robinson is referring to the audacious declaration found at this well-known religion's website:

'BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the UUA urges its member congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists to proclaim and promote our principles by becoming active participants in public institutions such as schools, libraries, political parties, and governmental bodies.' [General Assembly, 1996]

Of course, Mr. Robinson could not be referring to that kind of activism.

That the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) baldly calls its members to express their religiosity by directly and unabashedly promoting UUA principles in all aspects of American political life hardly raises Robinson's eyebrows. Why is he so indifferent? Because the UUA is a supporter of Mr. Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in Christendom; and he shares with the religious left the hope of creating a liberal, tolerant theocracy, where an 'all-loving God (read 'permissive') is going to be victorious.'

The UUA as a self-described beacon of the religious left is gratuitously political in its agenda, and is, in all ways, a promoter of ideals unsurprisingly similar to the Democratic Party (particularly the left wing of that party). Find a Unitarian-Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you’ve found a miracle.

Is it not a grotesque picture, or a macabre irony, that a religious official would use his religion in politics to censure religion in politics? Mr. Robinson himself is clearly fixated on reproaching the Bush Administration’s policies on everything, and this in the name of his church and his God. Is everyone OK with that?

Moreover, Mr. Robinson claims that God is 'horrified' by the things being done in God's name, ostensibly by the Republicans, and that he, Robinson, not only knows what God is thinking, he knows what God would not be horrified by: namely the political ideas of Mr. Robinson, which, again unsurprisingly, are identical with the Democratic Party platform. What a prophetic voice! (Just think that Mr. Robinson believes conservatives are arrogant.)

Sadly, lost on Mr. Robinson, is that he is guilty of promoting a theocracy that pleases the religious left.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

-'It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.' Charles Peguy