Volume 37

DECEMBER 2006

37. 7: Evangelicus Americanus (SOS, Part 6) 12.31.2006

It's Day 6 of Mysteries of the Bible at sea and I can feel my frustration building. Donald calls it Bible study, as though it were some sort of real critical, intellectual process. Some of the people carry their grossly annotated bibles and concordances. Someone even brought a Jewish version of the Old Testament. So there's the appearance of it being intellectual. But it is really Bible affirmation; all about hammering that badly edited volume of stories, songs, lists of genealogies and rules and myths, written at different times, that re-translated, and bowderlized, compilation of thees and thous into something coherent and prophetic. Rather than “the word of God,” as they like to put it, it is a pastiche fashioned by different editors over the centuries of writers who often wrote of events with all the direct experience of myself writing about American Civil War as though I had fought in it.

But then I already knew that about the Bible. My other frustration, of which I am a little ashamed, is that nobody has really elected to take me on my heretical views about it. I'm coming t the conclusion that it's because most all of this group are basically good people. They come from stable, prosperous, democratic nations—and that has to be a big help—so they are not likely, or even inclined to gird themselves in C4 and nuts and bolts and blow a disco or a school bus to eternity. That does not discount the remote possibility that, in the extreme there might be one who would bomb an abortion clinic. They are more consumed with their faith than perhaps they should be, but for the most part they are not theopathic [1] like their paradise-seeking martyr-Muslim opposite numbers.

The reason became obvious—there were only as few American Evangelical Christians in this group, and only about three of them seemed to fit the fundamentalist mode. Since the Reagan years the reciprocal resurgence of political conservatism and evangelical Christianity have gained a strangulation hold on American politics and have dominated our political and social life for the past nearly thirty years. Politicians increasingly kowtowed to fundamentalist religious leaders who controlled the dim minds of millions of adherents, chunks of mass media, and even founded “universities” and mega-churches. Religious blowhards like Billy Graham had always had access to the highest echelons of political power, but did not seek it for themselves. That was not the case these days with the Pat Robertsons, Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons, and Ralph Reeds who possessed money and political ambition to match their arrogance. Robertson, who has taken to informing his flock that America's problems—even the attacks upon it on 911—are God's punishment for its sinfulness, even made a run for president. Political candidates from local to national feel obliged to genuflect to these generals whose forces besiege the wall between church and state, sprinkle their speeches and platforms with references to our Christian nation and principles, and promise to ram prayer and creationism into our classrooms, turn back the progress made in women's rights, censor media, marginalize homosexuals, and insinuate themselves into the most personal aspects of our lives. They may have finally overreached themselves—both the Religious and Political Right—in the now infamous Terri Shiavo case, but that was also evidence their arrogance and reach. American Fundamentalist Christians had become a force and threat worthy of being called “The American Taliban.” They had finally, and in such a short space of time, reached the highest office in the land in the person of George W. Bush, a man who could openly claim that God wanted him to be president, and who could not have achieved that office without the “useful [religious] idiots” with whom his political party had formed a Faustian compact that has made a travesty of both democracy and Christianity.

American Evangelical Christians had come to stand for almost everything I am against. Their faith, even in Christian terms, is anachronistic, harkening to the Inquisition in Europe. They tend to have a millennial perspective, a sense of Armageddon and the “end times.” It's a retro-Christianity that brings them close to eschatological parity with the Muslims who share some of their distasted for aspects of modernism, liberal societies, the participation of women in society, and other values, such as the separation of church and state. This is something that is not likely to come into these Bible discussions, but I still have to wonder what of their biblical perspective opposes the Koranic view, what they think of the prospect of a momentous clash, not of civilizations, but of cosmologies. I find it almost laughable, were not there to be so much collateral damage, that both sides may be end up sending millions of their believers to a paradise that neither knows really exists.

But most of the Bible class seemed hardly like our contemptible American Christian Evangelists at all. Their faith was more considered, contained, and, if the word can be applied to metaphysical belief, if not reasoned, at least reasonable. Perhaps it was because politics scarcely entered our discussions. Perhaps also, because there is ugly history in all of their states, especially in the religiously-sanctioned mistreatment of less-fortunate and more pigmented peoples over whom they took dominion in Australia, South Africa, and in the other reaches of the Christian British Empire, they see the dangers of zealotry more clearly. I even began to suspect that they sensed the distinctions between their own Christianity and that of the Americans, especially since the emergence of Bush and his legions of the faithful. Perhaps this also explained why Donald steered the discussion to Old Testament passages upon which he built hazy metaphors and extracted gratuitous interpretations. To go to the central tenets of Christ's message was really to invite a level of discussion that dealt with revolution, with both religious and secular authorities that have become entrenched, oppressive, self-perpetuating and long distanced from the values and motivations that created them.

There was another hypothesis. Three of the group had approached me outside of the class to say that they “appreciated” the questions that I was raising. One admitted that she was a rather “bored” with the wanderings in the desert of irrelevance of the Old Testament, and one of them, I suspect, relished the notion of a clash between myself and Donald. They said that they were either shy or inured not to raise such questions. I might not be their champion, but I brought the prospect that things might be more “entertaining.” I wasn't sure who was exploiting whom. In any case, why shouldn't the Bible be “entertaining”; Cecil B. DeMille made a film career out of it.

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[1] This is a favorite neologism for which I take the blame. See, Archives, 10. 2: The Theopaths (7.15.2004)

37. 6: CUT AND RUN, REPUBLICANS! CUT AND RUN! 12.26.2006

Will daddy Bush please buy little Georgie a baseball team, or a new X-Box, something other than a country to f**k up, so that we can begin to get back some semblance of the pre-Bush America we knew. It takes a big man to admit his mistakes, and wee Georgie is the type of guy who gets bailed out, gets to hide in Alabama when his daddy got him on the Georgia Air National Guard drinking team.

But it looks like George will stay on his course. The course he believes is his destiny despite all the lies and deceptions and delusions about his war that lie behind it. He may be the last person on earth who believes that! And so he is more and more likely to turn the White House into a bunker. Like Hitler, he has already shoved aside the advice of his generals, and now he will do the same with the Iraq Study group and even politicians from his own party. His former Secretary of State has turned on him, his ejected Secretary of Defense fired at pissy memo at him, his appointment at the UN has cut and run, his new Secretary of Defense says, de facto , he is losing his war. Less that third of the country believes the reasons he gives for his war and they have stripped him of his congressional majority for it. He will become more isolated and petulant. He doesn't perform well under such conditions (not that he performs well under any conditions).

Will even the Republicans rue the day that their little idiot stole the 2000 election? With only two years to run before the next presidential election Georgie Boy has them between a rock and a hard place. This is what happens when you have a guy who thinks he was anointed, the messiah that is supposed to deliver America from 911 and the marauding hoards of Islam. Indeed, there are dangers of that sort, but they need to be looked at with clearer, far more intelligent, eyes than those clouded with years of substance abuse and the beatific vision of born-again-ism. George was the wrong guy (really for any time, not just the current age), with the wrong values, who chose the wrong enemy to fight, but is constitutionally incapable of overcoming his self-delusions and changing direction.

Some Republicans have come to this realization, and turned away from Bush in the mid-term election, helping the Democrats regain the House and Senate. But what looms is possibly losing the White House and even more congressional gains for the Democrats, especially if Bush hangs in there with his war, as day by day the American and Iraqi body count tallies, and the chaos worsens, as the other enemies of George become more emboldened and America inexorably loses not only its moral influence and reputation but its military reputation as well before the rest of the world. Moreover, it is being weakened every day in its ability to fight the real war on the terrorists. This is what George's war seems to be “winning” for us; Iraq is pretty much a lost cause, because it was the wrong cause to begin with.

Like the rest of his life, George's “accomplishments,” even with the assistance of a rich family's influence in getting him into the right schools and bailing out his business blunders, are very thin—and questionable. His presidency has accomplished moving a lot of American wealth in the direction of people like his family, toward the corporate elite. He has paid back the religious fanatics who helped elect him by getting in the way of important medical research and filling courts with judges who quote from the bible more than they swear on it. He's reversed all the important environmental legislation, pandered to the drug companies, and especially his and his vice-president's energy. There has been no important social legislation, and at least he has failed to dismantle social security and is still trying to ruin Medicare. George is no friend to the little people of Red states who helped to elect him because he's said he would keep gays from ruining the fabulous institution of American marriage that ends in failure literally half the time, and other of Satan's works. Even some of them are slowly beginning to “get it.”

It's the corporations that have cleaned up under George, not the people. George's war, mis-directed at the enemy who is supposed to force ladies in Red states to wear burkhas and pray five times a day toward Mecca, has been basically a fiasco that has killed as many of their kids as there were Americans killed by 911, maimed tens of thousands more, and has filled to coffers the war profiteers. They fight and die so Georges's friends and campaign contributors can get fat, but buy into his praise and promise of support for troops he sends back time and again to be little more than bomb fodder and targets.

This has been an especially bad bunch of Republicans, emboldened to pursue an increasing twisted set of values they call American values, but a are now exposed to be the sort of corruption that the polity wants stopped. Exposed for their sleazy Abramoffs, their racist Trent Lotts, and self-serving Frists, and their denying Hasterts, and hypocritical Foley's, for using poor Terri Shiavo for political advantage, for unleashing Swift Boat Veterans and some of the dirtiest campaign practices in history and crooked elections, and on and on. And lying about it all.

Still, there are those Republicans—and we all know some of the personally—who remain in denial, who cling to the label out of stubbornness or stupidity. They should cut and run to the light, but will they?

So it needs to be said, with no apologies to those on them—because there is too much at stake here—you are on the wrong side, both politically and morally. Where you stand is where your leader has divided the nation—where we are either posing phonies like George Bush, or Americans that the worlld can admire and respect. Where you are leads to not just being despised abroad, but to gated communities, to becoming isolated from any friends and loved ones who have tolerance for those who are different. It leads to perverted humor, to jokes with a smirk. It leads to judging people by the labels and stereotypes that you attach to them. It leads ultimately to a form of social genocide, a paranoia that brings you actually or metaphorically to wearing camouflage and caching weapons in Montana, or spiritually awaiting some insane and inane notion of the “endtime.” You delude yourself that there can be some “morning in America” re-constituted by some actor who was well into the evening of his life and faculties, or an America that would bludgeon the world into “democratic” versions of itself. You fail to see the irony, the internal contradictions, the sheer denial of it all. You delude yourself that you are the majority; but you are in fact, and in demography, cobbled together by a Machiavellian cloud of fear, not just of the Islamic hoard, but of the ultimate mid-toning of our melanin, of the names of other gods, the rights that others rightly demand for their privacy, their sexuality, and their spirituality. You still claim exclusively for yourself the rights of those of first arrival, begrudging social and physical space, protecting the prerogatives of the rich by your own counterintuitive accessions to additions to their privilege. You scorn the homeless because they “do not respect property values.”

In this you are mean in thought and spirit. Worst of all, you think that America is defined by your narrow vision and mean spirit. And that is why I don't pity you, and I give you the wariness that any threat to both the idea and essence of America deserves. It's not your America by tenure, by right or by righteousness, and you shouldn't delude yourself into thinking you will get it without a fight. You cannot arrogate the morality of America to yourself, especially when it is a morality of intolerance. You cannot arrogate patriotism to yourself, because the vary act of doing so is unpatriotic. Your notion of freedom is perverse because you regard it as your prerogative to grant. And if you faintly understood what democracy really means you would shut up and realize that it is something that people take for themselves; that it is not gifted to them by self-annointed hypocrites.

When you followed the likes of George Bush you crossed the Rubicon, you crossed to the other side, the Dark Side, the wrong side.

And I say this with all due respect.

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37. 5: WORDS TO REMEMBER US BY 12.20.2006

A few years ago I was riding on the light rail system in Honk Kong's New Territories. I was sitting in front of a bulkhead with a glass frame for advertising posters. The poster in front of me was mostly in Chinese, but the pictures were obviously promoting some hearing aid company. But it was the company's slogan that caught my attention: Enhancing Hearing Impairment into the 21 st Century.

They probably paid some marketing consulting company good money to come up with that sententious and ambiguous pile of dung, whose own slogan is probably Screwing Companies With Crappy Slogans into the Next Millenium. If you're not quite deaf we will “enhance” your impairment until you are.

But it made me realize that DRAGON CITY JOURNAL does not have a corporate epigram, and maybe it needs one. So I conducted a survey of corporate epigrams to see if there is any inspiration in them. Here are a few that caught my attention.

An Army of One . U.S. Army. Thanks to Rumsfeld it's getting close to that number. Now the Army is using video games to recruit kids, since that is their target cohort. Gives a whole new meaning to “game over” when they drape a flag on your casket.

The Proud, the Few, The Marines . U.S. Marine Corps . Problem is that it is a few marines who have been acting like death squads in Iraq that have not made the rest very proud of late.

Minds the move the World. KPBS Public Television . Right, and programming that moves your bowels. San Diego's local PBS affiliate loves Andrea Boccelli, The Three Tenors, River Dance, Yani, and –if you haven't puked yet—Andre Rieu, that hirsute fiddler from somewhere in the Low Countries. These are their favorite smarmy pledge drive programs. But they could change to Moneygrubbers that Will Move your Car, since their new scam is to try to get you to, get this, donate your car so that they can buy more John Tesch programs.

Texas has the slogan It's Like A Whole Other Country. Yeah, a banana republic. How about “A Day Without an Execution is a Day With Just Football.”

Sprint as the slogan It All Makes Sense . Have you read your telephone bill lately? There are taxes in there for using your “anytime minutes” during the lunar new year but before the vernal equinox, and fees for detergent for washing satellite dishes among the other four pages of extra charges.

Somebody came up with Tourism, Culture & Nature , as a motto for Sicily , missing the chance to substitute “Sicily, An Offer You Can't Refuse.”

Ireland at least came up the Awaken To A Different World . The problem is that different world usually has wicked hangover.

The Future Is Right Here. Ontario, Canada. Eh?

Toyota came up with the highly suggestive “I love what you do for me” for their cars. Apparently GPS on their cars means refers to something different than getting directions. That was in 1997; their latest is “Get the feeling.” Next thing you know they'll be changing the name of the Camry to the Yoshiwara.

Subaru is less sexy. What is so beautiful about The Beauty of All-Wheel Drive? Is this so you can lay down four strips of rubber instead of one?

Managing Money For People With Other Things To Think About is the motto of the investment company TIAA CREF. First of all, what the hell does TIAA CREF mean, and second, the way American companies behave these days maybe you should spend some time thinking about what your money is doing in some bank in the Cayman Islands.

Defy Obstacles. Air Canada (1998) Now there's a good idea for an airline.

Winning The Hearts Of The World. Air France. 1998 C'mon, you're French, you can't even make friends with the Belgians.

Don't Let Hunger Happen To You . Snickers. OK, Snickers, why dontcha take a hundred tons of candy bars out of our school vending machines and drop them on Ethiopia instead of making fat American school kids.

It's An Up Thing . 7Up (1997) You don't even want to go there.

Life On Land Is Dry. Red Lobster (1998). Only until they drop you in that pot; then it's hot, painful and short.

The Nature Of What's To Come , Archer Daniels Midland (2002). These guys had been calling themselves “Supermarket To The World” since 1997, but now are involved in the growing of what some call “Frankenfood,” in which case we aren't quite sure of the “nature of what's to come.” Maybe, kids with antlers.

We Make Money The Old-fashioned Way. We Earn It. Smith Barney (1997). Remember this one? Oh, the irony of a company that produces nothing, but makes it profit by moving money around, say that they “earn” it. Maybe that caught up with them and, since they became Saloman Smith Barney, they now say See How We Earn It. Oh, yeah, they're gonna open the books for you, right?

Because Later Is Sooner Than You Think. Alliance Capital (1998). Well, good, then, because sooner came sooner than I thought. I think. Never mind, I'll think about it later. Oh my gosh, here's later, already! Wow, Alliance doesn't give you much time, do they?

I love this one. Helping In Ways You Never Imagined . Arthur Anderson. These guys were Enron's accountants. Unfortunately California wasn't able to imagine these guys were crooks. Their real motto should be “Nobody Shreds Documents Faster When the Feds are at the Door.”

Remember this one? Put A Tiger In Your Tank. Exxon (1997) After the Exxon Valdez spill maybe they should change that to put an oil-covered sea bird, or a seal, or an otter, in your tank. So there's a little fur and feathers from your exhaust, as long as your Hummer keeps going.

Nobody Can Eat Just One . Frito-Lay Potato Chips. So we filled the bag with three chips and a lot of compressed air.

We Make The Things That Make Communications Work . Lucent Technologies. That doesn't really communicate very well, does it?

The Deal Is In The Meal . McDonald's. So is about a month's supply of fat and cholesterol.

When You're Comfortable, You Can Do Anything. Marriot Hotels. Are your sure? Isn't this hotel owned by Mormons? And do you have any rooms for 12; I'd like to bring my wives. (And three are under age 14; do I get a discount?)

We Know What You Own . MegaLife Investments . And pretty soon we'll own it.

Where Do You Want To Go Today? Microsoft. Is there an Apple Store nearby?

Because Your Period's More Than A Pain. Midol PMS. The guy who thought this one up is sings soprano.

We're Part Of The Cure. Pfizer . However, do not take any of our drugs if you are pregnant or nursing, have glaucoma, have diabetes, have recently been in a coma, have recently been in a Toyota Corolla, have high blood pressure, have a GPA below 3.0, have had a psychotic episode (or seen a psychotic episode of The Sopranos ), have voted for Ralph Nader, have jaundice, red rashes, blue veins, or mauve drapes. You may feel dizzy, drowsy, feverish, poorly, out-of-sorts, or deep regret for taking this medicine; you may experience dry mouth, hot flashes, chills, sexual excitation, a powerful desire for pepperoni pizza – and this could happen all at once – in which case you should immediately contact your physician or Pizza Hut. You should not use this medicine if you intend to operate heavy machinery, a Hummer or a Cuisinart, or nail clippers, go sky-diving, put any appendage down your garbage disposal, or try to program a VCR.

OK, I think it just came to me (must be the drugs). How's this sound to you?

Dragon City Journal : Breathing the Fire of Knowledge on the Metropolis of the Next Millennium.

Catchy, eh?

OK, if you think you can do better please send in your suggestion(s) to urbmedia@mac.com

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37. 4: THE COVENANT , by James A. Michener (1980) BR 12.16.2006

Not many American writers took up the roman-fleuve with the consistency of James Michener. His fictional characters may never have been around long enough to develop much depth, but then they didn't get in the way of the meticulous research he put into te historical dimensions of his books. He was a master at finding the original DNA of a place and a blood line and tracing it out in a painstaking interrelated series of engaging stories as far a he could take it in his generational sagas. The Source remains on my all time favorites list. I was 22 at the time I turned its thousand or so pages. It sent me off to finally read the Bible and played a part in my decision to “fall away” from the RC Church not long after. But that was then. [1]

Recently I was going to South Africa, and around my second cape, the somewhat mis-named one of Good Hope. Curiously, a dozen years after its official end in South Africa it seemed a little strange to be delving into the long history of conquest, repression and genocide that led up to the official apartheid that began in 1948. It wasn't until I returned home that the word was back in this news, this time in, of all places, the title of a new book by former president Jimmy Carter about the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, Palestine: Peace, Not Aparthied. When I first heard Carter being interviewed about the book I winced. It didn't really seem necessary to more than imply—I haven't yet read the book—that the Israelis were the equivalent of the Boer minority of S.A. who took advantage of the crumbling British Empire after WWII to gain the power to build a state around their longtime prejudices and fears. Carter's title seemed a stretch, and an unfortunate one for the Noble Peace Price recipient who brought Israel and Egypt together at Camp David. Most reviewers have focused on the political/historical comparisons between S.A. and Palestine. [2] There are some that are there, at least superficially—physical separation, the domination of a minority over a majority, different intellectual-developmental traditions, superior military power and policing power of the minority state that is regarded as the interloper. Gaza might compared to Soweto. But there is a lot that doesn't fit the history of apartheid, and unless Carter is just trying to be provocative, it seems his case might be harmed more than helped by using it.

But coming from a recent reading of The Covenant what it seems has been left out of the reviews of Carter's book is the religious aspect in which there is another disturbing parallel. The Boers forged their racial superiority out of the Bible. Their Calvinist and French Hugenot background. Illiterate in nearly every other respect the hardy rural white settlers of S.A., fashioned for themselves a “covenant” with God out the the Old Testament (mostly Joshua) in which they were to remain separate from the “children of Ham,” and never marry with the “daughters of Caanan,” and other such proscriptions whose purposes had absolutely no reference to them. They regarded themselves as “the chosen people” of S.A., and arrogated to themselves. They were “superior” to the Bushman who were Stone Age naked nomads, and the Xhosa and the Zulu, who were primitives with often brutal social practices. These aboriginals were, of course, not Christians.

The introduction of farmers and townsmen [3] into this environment seems at first almost accidental. For some time the Cape was little more than a provisioning station for the Dutch East Indies trade in spices, and the Europeans did not venture very far northward. Africa was very much “The Dark Continent.” Interracial contact was rather minimal until settlements and growing population—and Cape Town is an impressive location for a city, with its cloud-shrouded Table Mountain as a proscenium—engendered farming in the hinterland. The land grab was on and there was plenty of trouble. The settlers, the Boers, had much smaller numbers, but better fire power, an indomitable will to prevail, and their belief in their “covenant.” The Xhosa threw themselves into the gunfire with almost suicidal frenzy, but the Zulu, who were united for a while under king Shaka, were formidable in their numbers and in their fear-instilling tactics, chanting, stomping, and banging their spears against their shields. Much of the lore of the Boers and their pantheon of bearded heroes in floppy hats was forged in these wars.

There is much that can be said for the beauty and attractiveness of South Africa with some of the most dramatic landscape on the planet. But gold and diamonds are more attractive, certainly to the British and the likes of their great imperial-commercial-conquerors like Cecil Rhodes. [4] Eventually this resulted in the Boer Wars, brutal and protracted struggles that were fought with the Orange Free State and the Transvaal republic and which the Boers eventually lost. There is a lot of ugly history both in the battles [5] and in, for example, the concentration camps that were set up by the British.

The British also played their part in the eventual establishment of apartheid , when the Afrikaners took control of the government in 1948. The Dutch word for “apartness” installed laws and practices of separation between whites, blacks (often called, pejoratively, by the “K” word, kaffirs ) that would have warmed the hearts of Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott. That ugly history lasted until 1994, when the whites of S.A. and others, wondered whether the long oppressed Black Africans would take revenge for having been herded into squalid townships, abused, imprisoned, discriminated against and otherwise treated in a manner that would have warmed the hearts of Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott.

The rest of the history, from the end of apartheid , the installation of democracy, and Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, we know much better. It's the new S.A., still with plenty of problems, but trying to find ways to live by Rodney King's dictum. [6] S.A. is searching for a new, secular, covenant, with itself, without apartheid. They probably didn't like Jimmy Carter reminding people about it. But then, we shouldn't forget, either.

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[1] I read several other of his books, especially enjoying Tales of the South Pacific, Hawaii, and Poland. I seemed to have little interest in the ones set in America.

[2] See also, Michael Kinsley's review of Carter's book in [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121101225.html?referrer=emailarticle]

[3] It is noteworthy that, originally as a locations fort ports cities, many of the townspeople who settled in Cape Town and other coastal cities were Malays, Indians, and Indonesians, and other “colored” peoples from the archipelagos of South Asia who became the category of “coloreds” under apartheid.

[4] Perhaps, in returning to the comparison with Carter's book, these mineral riches are the equivalent of the metaphysical riches of the “Holy Land.”

[5] See, in this Journal No. 36. 2: Breaker Morant.

[6] "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?"

37. 3: DEATH VICTORY (SOS Part 5) 12.12.2006

[Continued from 36. 10]

It's Day 5 of the Mysteries of the Bible class and Donald lifts his head from the minute of silence that he invokes at the beginning of each session and wants to talk about forgiveness today. I was hoping we could get to something that would give me an indication of that the politics was of this group, but maybe there would be an opening.

Those who spoke did so mainly about how they felt that Jesus had brought forgiveness to themselves, how they felt “saved” by his death on the cross for their transgressions. It was pretty much chapter and verse stuff except for Sid, who sagely reminded people that we have to be able to “forgive ourselves” in order feel forgive. Sid's angle on the subject went un-remarked upon, perhaps a touch too Talmudic for this crowd.

My chance came when the mic made its way. I took a cure from Sid. I said that I didn't find Christians all that forgiving of others. For example, I brought up the recent incident in Pennsylvania where a deranged man kidnapped several grade school girls and killed some of them before killing himself. The girls were Amish, a pacific group of Christians, and though the killer was known in their community, he was not Amish. The parents of the murdered girls and the Amish community publicly forgave the dead man rather than condemning him and his actions. It was a very poignant— but anomalous —example of true Christian forgiveness in America, I remarked, adding that, at the same time, the President of the United States has blocked monies for condoms for countries in HIV-AIDS strife-ridden Africa because they also practice abortion. He's not forgiving enough to be concerned about innocent women and children and rape victims, I stated flatly—and he calls himself a Christian.

Nobody seemed to want to take the subject up with me until Ron, an American evangelical said, in close to non sequitur , that if liberals like Edward Kennedy and John Kerry were so eager to provide condoms then why don't they take some of their millions and buy them themselves. Ron added something about how the they use the tax laws to maintain their family fortunes. It was too stupid to bother with, especially with the billions being squandered in Iraq and the $10 billion Bush shuffles to Christian evangelicals for programs like teen sexual abstinence through his Faith Based Initiatives. It would have been nice if the English woman a couple seats away from me who had been a nurse-midwife in Niger for twenty years had come in on my side. I'd deal with Ron later; he couldn't even forgive two politicians for being liberals. Hypocrite.

Which is ironic because, in my opinion, the thing that really makes Christianity acceptable to so many people is concept of forgiveness . I always thought that it was the key to its success. Think about it, what a deal—you can do just about anything wrong, but forgiveness is always there for you at the last minute. You can be “saved” on your death bed by accepting Jesus and asking His forgiveness. Read the Confessions if St. Augustine . He lived it up for years, but still ended up being a saint. Forgiveness is the engine that makes Christianity go. That's what Jesus reputedly died on the cross for: our sins, past present and future.

Other religions are not so good on forgiveness. Islam seems to have the notion that one pays for some of one's sins during one's life. Allah meets out punishment sort of as you go along. Hinduism doesn't seem to make much of forgiveness, but it gives you another chance through re-incarnation. Judaism has a religious holiday of “atonement,” Yom Kippur, however, which seems more about asking others for their forgiveness, but the guilt has a way of hanging on. Christianity has forgiveness front and center; it is reminded every day in its central event, the “sacrifice” of the mass. One minute you can be a drunken wife-beater, a low-down hooker, a rip-off accountant for Enron, and the next you can be swaying with the halleluiahs, prasin' Jaysus, and you are saved (although I am not sure the fundamentalists mean this to this to apply to homosexuals and liberals). [1]

This forgives that Christ earned for us on the cross is related to what a Jesuit theologian who taught me (mostly to be wary of Jesuit theologians) is the “Death Victory” of Christ. Now this sounds quite like an oxymoron. Being killed, and by crucifixion, doesn't sound much like being victorious. But remember, Christ was putatively about something much bigger; he was about fulfilling Messianic prophecy. By being a martyr he might be able to engender a movement, one that might not only reform his religion, but also get the Roman yoke off the necks of the Jews. There are a lot of ways we can say that Christ was victorious. [2] Whether he wanted to found Christianity, or not, there were people, particularly, Paul, who were ready to pick up the ball and run with it. And Paul was a great salesman. Eventually, Christianity, in the 4 th C, became the official religion of the Roman Empire. That was quite a victory, but probably the downfall of any form of Christianity the Christ himself would have had anything to do with. Christianity joined hands with secular power to become the official state religion—somewhat the same thing that evangelicals hanker for today—that could be very un-forgiving of people who weren't Christians and didn't care to sign on. [3]

If Christ's death was a victory it was a short-lived one as far as the purity of his principles were concerned. [4] As has often been said: Christ wouldn't recognize his Christianity today, especially in the likes of Ron.

Later, at lunch, I joined the table of the English nurse midwife who had served so long in Niger. She asked what I thought of the session, but I didn't say anything her not jumping in on the business of AIDS in Africa. I said I didn't have high regard for what I regarded as “contingent forgiveness” in contemporary Christian evangelists. “They seem ready to forgive homosexuals, for example, if ‘they change their ways',” I said. Bush has also pumped a lot of funds into the hands of evangelical groups who have initiated programs in prisons wherein prisoners who accept Jesus get upgraded cells and other perks; those that don't are not “forgiven.” [5]

She asked me if I regarded myself as a forgiving person. I had to reply that, like some people who I admire, I wished that forgiveness came naturally to me. “I really have to work at it,” I said.

“Really,” she said, with a note of surprise, “who might you find it difficult to forgive for something?” It would probably have been better if I kept my mouth shut.

“God, for starters.”

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[1] It should be noted here that the RC Church did come up with a place called Purgatory, in which people who employ this sin and confess method to excess may be required to do some hard time there to atone for the fun. But Purgatory is nowhere near as scary as Hell.

[2] Setting aside that He could go “Nan-nah, Nah-Nah-Nah” at the Romans because he was resurrected. But he had to stay dead, because if he comes back there is no Death Victory. He was supposed to die for our sins, not fake it.

[3] Ditto this attitude for the Muslims.

[4] And, of course, if you subscribe to the New Testament lore, Christ cheated death anyway with his “resurrection.”

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/business/10faith.html?ex=1166418000&en=1018014e9f819204&ei=5070&emc=eta1

37. 2: IT'S THE OIL, STUPID 12.8.2006

The release of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Committee report might persuade those still holding on to the George Bush approach to Iraq to finally get off that disasterous sinking ship. But don't count on stupid George. If they needed any convincing it's that Uncle Jim Baker was finally dispatched to slap some sense into the kid who is running the risk of screwing up American access to the most essential element of life after air, water and pizza—oil. George was supposed to secure us more oil, and things are looking more like it's going to be less.

I think it was Doug that finally convinced me. Not that it should have taken so long. I met Doug on a ship recently. He's in his 80s, speaks like he's had a little stroke, which goes along with his drawl, walks very slowly with a walker. I had to wonder what the hell he was doing on a ship. But I'll cut to the chase. Doug flew 77 missions in P-47s in Europe in WWII. He was shot down on No. 77, hence the walker.

Anyway Doug was interesting to talk to about war. Doug says we beat the Germans because we took their oil away from them. That was the main thing. Doug thinks they were superior militarily. “They were always sending us after oil depots and refineries, anything to keep the Jerries from getting fuel for the planes, tanks and ships. When we strangled that they were done. Oil.” That's what Doug said, and he thinks it's the same now in the Middle East, and he thinks the Bush's war is stupid. Oil. If you don't have it, or access to it, a lot of it, you can't make war, certainly not convention al war. And if you can't make war, you can't be the biggest, baddest kid on the terrestrial block. Oil.

Seems things are something like this. Bush I saved the Kuwaiti's and the Saudi's from Saddam Hussein getting their oil. Had we left him alone in Kuwait he would have taken the Saudis next. That would have made him a pretty powerful guy and he wouldn't have needed our aid anymore to fight his wars or torment his people. Bush I kicked his ass in 100 days and the Kuwaitis and Saudis were accommodating. Oil went down to $10/barrel in the Clinton years. Problem was, it was the Clinton years. He wasn't supposed to win. So the Neo-cons had to bide their time. They tried everything, eventually getting their thugs to go for Clinton's groin (Republicans always hit below the belt; wear a cup). But Mr. Bill prevailed.

The Neo-cons must have been dancing a jig when they got a certified idiot like Bush II for president and then, Allah be praised, the Saudi boys went and took out the World Trade Center and a chunk of the Pentagon. Not Iraqis, mind you, but Saudis . But heck, Americans don't know their asses from third base about the Middle East. If nearly half of them were stupid enough to vote for George Bush, they'll believe most anything. Iraqis were flying those planes, when they weren't making their weapons of mass destruction and talking about how much they “hate our freedom” with the guys from Al Qaeda.

So let's go get ‘em. We'll call it “The War on Terror, smash the place up real good (so we can let the American taxpayers make Haliburton and Bechtel rich fixing things up), haul Saddam out of a hole and get him whacked, install a flunky like Chalabi in something we could call a “democracy,” build a bunch of military bases all over the place, and, bingo, the oil is ours, and we're installed in the Middle East so we can intimidate the other bad guys.

Problem is, this one's going up in the loss column, right under Vietnam. Another Republican debacle in the middle of somebody else's civil war The problem for Georgie is that, starting off as the most powerful feared, military force in the world, George has produced an army that doesn't get much respect from guys in flip-flops, old AK-47s, and bombs detonated from cell phones. Rather than control the ME he has Taliban back hounding his heels, in Afghanistan, Ahamadinijad (or however you spell his name) in Iran saying “I'm building a nuke and whaddaya gonna do about it” and Hezbollah brazenly invading Lebanon, and Hamas elected in Palestine. Basically, he can't do squat; he stretched out, overreached, and everybody knows it. More and more leaders in Central and South America hate his guts and aren't afraid to say so. In short, people know him for the stupid, ineffectual jerk that he is. And, as the experts have said, he has made more terrorists than he has eliminated, and emboldened them. His arrogant, misdirected, pre-emptive, war is a failure and a loser.

That means that he is, and we are, worse off , not better off, as far as the greasy stuff if concerned. We will be more vulnerable to being squeezed on oil prices and, though, we are unlikely to get into a war like Doug fought in 65 years ago [1] , we will still be dependent militarily, on oil. Today there is China, which is going to need a lot of that oil, and maybe they will call in some of the debt they have been financing for us to buy more and more of it. Then we can pay them back and pay higher gas prices.

More and more Bush is isolated in his delusional world. His dismissed Secretary of State from his first term calls his war a “civil war”; his dismissed Secretary of Defense writes a pissy departing memo saying pretty much they have been screwing up, his new Secretary of Defense says we are “losing the war” and he's still talking about “victory” but can't define what the word means or when he would know it. Only “Windsock” McCain seems to still be with him, and then only because he thinks he can win with it. Neither seems to have gotten what the people said with their votes last month.

The shame is that a lot of people, to many of them American soldiers, are going to die in Bush's lost cause, in his grand delusion. This was never about democracy, or even a war on terror, it was, as it was planned even before 911, a greasy land grab. Like a lot of greasy things, it seemed to just slip through his greedy little fingers.

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[1] A war by the way of which Michael Moore writes: “After 1,347 days, in the same time it took us to took us to sweep across North Africa, storm the beaches of Italy, conquer the South Pacific, and liberate all of Western Europe, we cannot, after over 3 and 1/2 years, even take over a single highway and protect ourselves from a homemade device of two tin cans placed in a pothole. No wonder the cab fare from the airport into Baghdad is now running around $35,000 for the 25-minute ride. And that doesn't even include a friggin' helmet.” [ www.michaelmoore.com]

37. 1: GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND ZU-ZU'S PETALS [MR] 12. 3.2006

It's that time of the year again; time for Zu-Zu's petals.

But first, a few words on a related “seasonal” film; one that I haven't seen tree dozen times, and will not likely see. I was waiting for Mel Gibson's film about the birth of Jesus—The Placenta of the Christ—but it looks like I will have to hold off until Mel sobers up. [1] No, I'm, referring to the timely release of a film called, just in case those dimmed kids who have gone to “intelligent design” school in Kansas can't get it, The Nativity Story .

You have to be some kid in a madrassa in the hills of Afghanistan not to have heard the nativity story. But Christian fundamentalists are of a mind these days that Biblical realism is the way to go in persuading themselves that the well worked-over fairytales of the good book are literal truth. Cecil B. DeMille used to scour the Bible for good sex that carried the imprimatur that it was ”from the Bible.” It was a way of getting around the prudich production code. But he stayed away from un-protected sex. [2] My point is, why bother with this story that's on nearly every Christmas card and church créche. Why? Because there's a lot better stuff out there, including my favorite, from 1946 . . . bell-tinkle, bell-tinkle, bell-tinkle . . . It's a Wonderful Life. Right, the movie that is probably as well-known now about Christmas as the nativity story. [3]

OK, call me a sappy, Frank Capra sentimentalist; I can take it. [4] I usually have to eat popcorn to keep from lip-synching every line of dialog from this film. Yet, each time I see it I pick up some nuance I hadn't previously noticed, something that makes it a little richer. But the reason I like this movie is not that it's just a whacking good “every-time-a-bell-rings-an angel-gets-his-wings” Christmas story; it's a good deal more than that.

It's a Wonderful Life appeared just after the war, at a time when the small town was waning fast in the American experience and many of the changes discussed above were beginning to take effect. In some sense it is the last of the truly positive small town films, and even at that, it has elements that recognize that the small town—and America--would never be quite the same. The 1960s were not far away.

It's a Wonderful Life is in many respects about the “common man” that Capra, an Italian immigrant, so admired in the American character. George Bailey (James Stewart) is characterized as just such a person: honest, hardworking, unselfish, uncomplicated. Except that George has dreams that exceed the limitations of his small town, Bedford Falls. He yearns for travel, adventure, and to change the world for the better with noble projects. Because of family circumstances, and surrendering his heart to Mary—yup, another Mary—the girl he marries (played by Donna Reed), George never gets to leave Bedford Falls and he accounts most of his life as a failure because he has not lived out his dreams. George did not even get a chance to leave courtesy of the local daft board which classified him “4-F” because of the hearing loss in the ear he injured while saving his younger brother from drowning.

It is in George's lowest moment, on Christmas Eve, when besieged by a debt not of his own making, that he decides to end his life. That decision is the premise for the film: a guardian angel shows him how many lives he has touched in a positive way, and, in the process, the small town values of Bedford Falls would have been transmogrified by the greedy schemes of Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the insatiable and corrupt banker who harkens to the pre-converted Mr. Scrooge. [5]

Still, in some sense it was the Mr. Potters of the world who would evolve into the conglomerates and multi-national corporations that, today, not only have no allegiance to small towns, but also not to our national borders as well. Eventually Potter's bank would swallow up smaller savings and loan associations, much as, in time, many smaller businesses of all kinds have been devoured or at least compromised by the Wal Marts and McDonalds.

It's a Wonderful Life mixes the small town ideal with Capra's own version of social pluralism, especially in the sensitive way George Bailey treats immigrant families through his savings and loan bank. [6] In the end the values of good neighbors, friendship, [7] and honesty win out, with divine approval into the bargain.

But the facts of the subsequent history of small town America say differently. The film's fictional Bedford Falls was based on a small town in upstate New York, although it was filmed in La Crescenta, California. In the decades immediately after World War II many such small towns in Upstate New York and elsewhere, towns whose economies were founded on products that were no longer competitive (e.g. Gloversville, which made gloves), or whose labor forces were not sufficiently diversified) were passed by when the new interstate highway system was constructed. [8]

It is also noteworthy that every one of the characters in this film who do, for one reason or another, leave Bedford Falls becomes at least financially successful, particularly Georges's brother and the character Sam Wainwright (Frank Albertson). Yet the only decadence in the small town is portrayed by its biggest and most financially successful businessman, Mr. Potter. Indeed, had Potter had his way with Bedford Falls, it would have become, as portrayed in the sequence in which George never existed, a “honky-tonk” place of bars, dance halls, casinos and other sleazy establishments. In “Pottersville,” Violet (Gloria Grahame), who is a pretty blonde with a slightly erotic flair, becomes a cheap dancehall girl who is being shoved into a police paddy-wagon. [9]

More ambivalent is the depiction of drinking in Capra's Bedford Falls. There is a certain amount of tolerance for Uncle Billy's dipsomania and even Mr. Gower's “medicinal” drinking to dull the pain of the loss of his son in the war, but the Pottersville sequence shows drinking in a more socially-destructive light: Mr. Gower is a besotted beggar, and Uncle Billy died in a mental institution from the prolonged alcoholism.

There is, then, an ambivalence that afflicts It's A Wonderful Life: it's “wonderful” if one submits to the blandishments of the small town ideal, but every time one of its emigrants returns or phones in there is a reminder that there is that big, wonderful, sometimes scary world beyond the borders of Bedford Falls announcing that there might be other ways and places for wonderful life. If this movie was a encomium to the small town it was also to a rather mythic America that Capra, an immigrant who didn't just love America because he made good there, but because he loved and believed in Americans as a people.

In this movie we can look at some of our myths and see them for what they were. Yet, we can also enjoy them for what they were, the representation of the ideals we set for ourselves. Most people view this movie each Christmas season as a nostalgic diversion to a time in America that probably never was. Movies require our “willing suspension of disbelief,” but good movies always contain the reminder that reality is just on the other side of the exit sign. When George Bailey discovers Zu Zu's rose petals in his pocket he knows he's back in his reality; and we know that he's back in our myth.

Now to see how The Nativity Story handles its mythology.

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[1] Sorry Mel. I will see Apocalypto (which might be about the end of your career), which sounds interesting, if well within your sanguinary boundaries. BTW, Mel, I am not Jewish, because if I were I would be looking for you to kick your ass.

[2] The whole business about how Mary got knocked up is one of those ways in which the R.C. Church has stepped in dog doo. Joseph, of course, is not allowed to be the farther of the Messiah; so who is it? Was it that angel Gabriel who appeared to her at the Annunciation (Assignation?); was it the Holy Ghost (who used to come regularly to clean their pool); or was it god the Father, the father Father? Or, was this the origin of that story that she got “something off a toilet seat”? See, what I mean? It's better sometimes to keep the 9 th commandment. Since this is Keisha Castle Hughes first big role since Whale Rider , it might even be the leviathan.

[3] Actually, the movie didn't do that well atv the box office in the 1940s, but the re-run revenues since have more than made up for it.

[4] Although I'd rather be called this year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

[5] From one of my runner-up favorite Christmas stories.

[6] The character Martini, clearly an Italian immigrant in the film, bears some resemblance in stature and facial features to Frank Capra,

[7] George Bailey's friends, Ernie (Frank Faylen) the cabdriver and Bert (Ward Bond) the cop, were later used as models for the Sesame Street children's program characters of the same names.

[8] In an earlier incarnation this writer was a planning consultant to several of these small towns,

[9] Sexual behavior in the small town movie was not at the time always portrayed with the innocence of George and Mary Bailey. In Preston Sturgess's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) the film's heroine, Gertrude Kockenbocker (Betty Hutton) is the uncontrollable daughter of a local policeman, who contrives to meet, marry and become pregnant by a soldier, and when she manages to achieve the third goal, cannot even remember his name. A local boy with a crush on her then contrives to step into the role of the soldier, and thus begins the whacky antics of a vintage Preston Sturgess comedy..