Volume 45

SEPTEMBER 2007

45. 7: BUSHADEINEJAD 927.2007

The times have rarely seemed so “biblical” since the times were, well, biblical. Those great, dualistic themes—good and evil, the godly and the diabolical, believers and infidels, heaven and earth, the beginning and end of times—seem so proximate, so much a part of our consciousness and discourse. It is both part of, and transcendent to, the “clash of civilizations” [1] hypothesis that seems to be looming from those ancient lands, where, from Gilgamesh to the Six Day War, such momentous antipathies were settled with the sword.

There seems little hope for convergence, for some accommodation, for tolerance in the biblical atmosphere of the present. “You are either with us, or with the terrorists,” our great leader in Washington, and man respected by his followers for his setting and staying a course. The adversary is not much better, the West must convert or die, is the most recent theme of Osama bin Laden. It is a battle that would amuse the most jaded Olympian gods. God, Allah and Yaweh, must have their Bud Lights, nachos, and their side bets ready for the big Clash of the Civs Bowl.

In such vast and significant circumstances it is also astounding that the major chess pieces are such stupid and pathetic beings. But, then, perhaps it takes stupid and pathetic beings to get us to this point. I'm talking about stupid and pathetic beings like Bush and Ahmadinejad. They portray themselves as opposites, but in fact they are really only opponents, opponents of their own choosing, although they would see it that they are in the current of Biblical/Koranic historical revelation and prophecy, and they are “chosen” to lead their righteous peoples to supremacy. “It is written.”

Ironically, they are very much the same man, brothers in zealotry and intolerance, the “twin towers” of deadly ignorance and intransigence.

Both stare into their horrific futures through pinches, beady eyes; they each have that silly, deranged giggle and smirk, the deflective rhetoric that always returns to the dualities.

They each came to power under clouded circumstances, Bush stealing one, maybe two elections with the assistance of political and corporate allies; Ahmadinejad under elections in which opponents had declined to be involved because of disqualified candidates.

Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier; Bush denies that his lies about weapons of mass destruction and implications that Iraqis were involved in 911 are lies.

Ahmadinejad is answerable to Ayatollah Al Khamenei, and Bush answers to Ayatollah Ali Cheney.

They are both religious zealots.

They are both un-popular in their own countries as well as abroad. Bush is a lame duck; Ahmadinejad is not likely to be re-elected in 2009. So they are both in lame-duck/Armagheddon mode.

They have both damaged their reputation of their countries and insulted their own people.

Both men are theopathic tyrants.

Admittedly, there are some differences. Ahmadinejad is more intelligent, but more deranged, Bush is stupid and deficient. Ahmadinejad is bolder and more courageous; Bush we know is calculating and a certifiable coward. Which is probably one of the reasons that Bush continues to respond, or even to meet with Ahmadinejad, despite the latter's entreaties for them to sit down and have out their differences in person. Bush hides behind the claim that he does not wish to “recognize” the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad, whom he considers a terrorist, by meeting with him.

Ahmadinejad almost seems to relish personal confrontation, or, as some see it, he needs to be in the political limelight in order to retain his power. In this regard he is far more entertaining than Bush, even though we must listen to him in translation. He is entertaining somewhat in the manner of Charles Manson, who he somewhat resembles. He absorbs insults with smiles and, as his interview with Scott Pelley, on 60 Minutes (9.23.2007) demonstrated, he knows how to trash talk. He bested Pelley several times, especially when he just grinned when Pelley accused him of being a political leader who has destroyed the reputation of his country. Given the number of polls that have shown how destructive rthe Bush administration has been to the reputation, ad respect for America, Pelley's accusation was one of the dumbest journalistic gaffs I have witness of late.

Ahmadinejad was willing to come to New York and put his butt in front of hostiles at Columbia University, with a student body that has more Jews than he has ever seen in his life. Bush would never go there to speak because Columbia University is not an American military base.

In some respects Ahmadinejad has damaged the rep of Iran. But closer observation shows that he does not really speak for the majority of people in Iran, or even the attitudes of the religious authority that runs the country, but somewhere in between. He recognizes that by poking at Bush, by getting the US to respond by rattling sabers, by threatening Israel, and by attempting to build a nuclear weapon, he has a chance of by consolidating the right-wing opposition to the West in his own country. He is not a stupid man. But he is an engineer, and few things are more stupid than an engineer who thinks human behavior works just like a toaster. [2]

Because Bush is such a coward, it is not likely that we will get our wish to have these two creeps strip down and go at it, mano a mano in some patch of sand under Ultimate Fighting rules—winner takes Iraq, what's left of it. I'll give you five to one that Bush won't even show. Look for him in some bar in Alabama; that's where he went the last time he was asked to fight.

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[1] By the way, what is this stuff about “civilizations”? I'm still waiting for civilization, because, in my terms, (and Martin Buber's, who said that civilization begins when we “take on the ‘other'”) we haven't got close to civilization. There are plenty of peoples who have claimed to achieve civilization, but nary a one of them has passed the essential first test—that all people must be treated equally. Not a single one. And we are still not even close.

[2] It works like a bicycle, everybody knows that.

45. 6: HELL HATH NO FURY . . . [FR] 9.21.2007

Air-brushed Jodie Foster in The Brave One (2007)

Last week Hollywood released yet another Jodie Foster “vehicle.” Jodie is Hollywood's favorite female victim, and Jodie the victim usually gets her revenge and sometimes an Oscar. Now that Charles Bronson has got his own “death wish,” a new sweeper of the streets of our cities of ugly, giddily murderous scumbags is required for the Reagan era “feel good” film--the one man/woman vigilante film.

The irony is that films like Brave One pose the city as the place where women are threatened. This may be somewhat of a cinematic convenience—the city is a place of much anonymity, a menagerie in which creeps and scumbags are a ready selection for the dramatis personae of the mean streets. After all, that's where Foster got her first big recognition, playing 13-year-old prostitute in Scorcese's Taxi Driver, where the film's star, Robert DeNiro (Travis Bickle) dreams of sweeping the streets of the city clear of urban social scum. So Jodie's Brave One character studied at the feet of the master.

Foster seemed like she might be in some real danger from her role in Taxi Driver, not from some tough-looking gang-bangers, but a choir-boy looking John Hinckley, would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley wasn't out to kill Reagan for falsely claiming that he had brought down the Soviet Union, he was out to impress Ms Foster, upon who he had (and seems to have maintained) a mad fan's infatuation. Hinckley molders in prison where perhaps he has had then opportunity to watch the arc of Ms Foster's celebrated career as a movie victim/heroine progress. Did he see her in Flight plan (2005) where her husband is murdered and her child kidnapped (on the plane), but she is conveniently an aeronautical engineer. Jodie does her patented stressed, panicky, manic running around until she gets pissed, finds her kid, and blows up the bad guy? Speaking of panic, did Hinckley see The Panic Room (2002), where burglars force her and her diabetic daughter into a safe room because they are after some valuable documents in there. Again, she vanquishes her male foes. How about Silence of the Lambs (1991) in which she manages to survive the cannibalistic urges of Hannibal Lecter and some psycho who likes to skin women? Foster received her second Academy Award for best actress for her role as a Federal agent. [1] She was more of a victim in The Accused (1988) in which she is gang-raped in a bar and uses the legal system to go after her attackers after she is accused of having lead them on. This role was based on an actual victim, and Foster won her first best actress award for her portrayal.

As the father of two daughters and twin granddaughters [2] I have to admit that something inside me roots for the cinematic female victim who gets her revenge. I enjoyed Thelma and Louise , a film where there do not have to be helpful dialogue scenes that “explain” to you what the film is about, and where you walk out of the theater not thinking “gee, didn't I experience that same bunch of clichés is some of her other movies?” The “victims” in Thelma and Louise might be a bit stereotyped (the date-rapist and the foul-mouthed trucker), but it is no doubt the stupid, insensitive husbands, who most discomfit male viewers. But Foster's street thugs are plucked from the same box of stereotypes that Bronson massacred for a half-dozen films.

Such films no doubt fuel the angst of males who make the anti-feminist complaint that women have become to bold, assertive and difficult. [3] Women like those played by Foster and Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, among others, are not content to lay there and ”enjoy it” while they are being raped and beaten; they just might come after their assailants “with extreme prejudice” and probably make a lot of their sisters is the audience “feel good” about it. Unfortunately, that is not the situation of the great part of females all over the world. Untold numbers of them never make it past the first few breaths of life, untold numbers of them are sold into bondage to rich men who use and abuse them sexually and discard them to brothels or other kinds of abuse. Untold numbers of them commit suicide to escape “arranged marriages.” [4] They would be content just to escape their captors, and abusive husbands, much less than stalking and exterminating them in the dramatic manner of a Hollywood revenge film.

Moreover, many more of them are in villages and countryside, not big metropolises. Their assailants are fare less often young gang bangers out for thrills beating their victims to death (as happens to Jodie Foster's boyfriend in The Brave One ), or gang raping (as was is in The Accused ) that they are people who are known to them, relatives and spouses, or supposed lovers who lure them into kidnap and slavery. In other settings their assailants are probably less of the scumbag street thug than the John Hinckley-looking frat boy who spikes her drink for a bit of raping that might even be videotaped for extra humiliation and fun.

The Brave One tries to squeeze some thoughtfulness and social relevance from the clichés—that's the “don't try putting a 9mm in the ear of a scumbag and pulling the trigger at home” warning that helps keep the rating down—but we have already learned from the Death Wish and Dirty Harry films that the “box office” in these flicks is in the vicarious “getting off.” There are all the usual rationalizations—the creeps will be back for more, the system that is supposed to protect women doesn't, [5] nobody else loves me enough to take revenge for me, etc.—and that makes revenge OK. Actually, it is hard to blame the “brave ones” for taking justice in their hands; what's amazing, given the access to weapons in this country, is that we are not finding a lot more bodies. Then there is that ending in Thelma and Louise , the two of them, driving off that cliff in that convertible, smiling their “death-victory” smiles in their final act of defiance, because they know the system isn't ready to see their side of things. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” but he's usually busy with other things, and he still seems rather pissed off at Eve.

Hinckley has been trying to get himself out of prison for several years, but his requests for parole have been denied. Reagan is beyond further harm, but Foster is still around. My advice to Hinckley is: stay where you are, it's safer.

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[1] The same year that Gene Davis and Susan Sarandon, who were both more deserving of the Oscar than Foster, were nominated for Thelma and Louise, but probably split the voting for each other.

[2] I began exploring the theme of the city as liberator of women in a KPBS-FM radio essay in 1987 on the occasion of what was called “Women's Opportunities Week.”

[3] See also, DCJournal Archives No. 42. 6 “Guys (sort of ) Strike Back.”

[4] Recently, in a rare instance of justice, and then after many years of expense and effort by her family, and Indian woman received some sort of revenge. Her husband and mother in law were convicted of murder in England for having hired killers to assassinate her because she wanted out of her arranged marriage.

[5] You can still hear the cross-examination strategy—“weren't your dresses in a provocative and revealing outfit, miss?”—in courtrooms today. Recently, a television documentary stated that a woman in the U.S. Army has a 1 in 7 change of being the victim of sexual assault by a fellow soldier or superior officer..

44. 5: LAMBS AND FIRST BORN SONS 9.18.2007

"Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you." (Genesis 22:1-18)

There is a lot about sheep in the Bible. Christ is both a shepherd, always finding the lost lamb (us) and returning us to his flock (the Church); but he is also the lamb himself—the agnus dei—who is sacrificed for the sins of the world by his Father in Heaven. There is a lot of sacrificing of lambs that goes on in the Bible, too. [1] I think that there is also a filial dimension to all this lamb sacrificing.

Have you ever noticed the hang-ups about fathers and sons in the Bible? From an anthropological perspective this was a time when social systems were a lot closer to relationships between people and herd animals. Remember that the Hebrews were pastoral people; they saw every year that rams would contest for the right to mate with the most ewes. They say them banging the their horns against one another, and they knew that often the contest was between a senior ram and a junior ram wanting to take over the harem. [2] Human social systems were somewhat the same. Patriarchy was the main type of system in play at the time, and sooner or later the old man was going to get challenged, or going to have to make a deal with one of his sons (primogeniture), giving him the herd and hence the license to get himself a few “ewes' for himself. So there is always the tension between fathers and sons.

God asks Abraham to take his son to the top of a mountain and plunge a knife in him to show his faith in God. And Abe is quite ready to do it, before God says, “Just kidding. But why don't you do a lamb as long as I've got you in the mood.” But when we get to the New Testament God the Father gets into the act himself with his own Son. This time there is no deus ex agni, Jesus is the lamb of God who will be sacrificed. [3]

The concept and practice of sacrifice, I would posit, is deeply embedded in human behavior. I think it began as a survival technique and then became (sometimes in a Faustian way) a form of metaphysical bribery. It probably began with early humans throwing joints of meet to distract predators from attacking them. [4] That would seem to make sense. So why not try to propitiate your gods in the same manner. (“Here, Great Ooog, Father of creation, have a little lamb, with mint jelly, my mother made it herself.”) Some people still today will spill a little wine before they drink, as s sop to their god or gods. Sacrifices were made before wars, weddings, and other major events, and some peoples, like the Aztecs, went a little overboard with vivisecting hearts for their god with the unpronounceable name.

Sacrificing a son, especially a first-born son, [5] was considered a major offering. One supposed that lambs were substituted because veal is a very tender and flavorful meat (certainly better than goat), and therefore a good animal sacrifice. Somewhere along the line sacrificing females came into practice. Anthropologists might suggest that sacrificing females by female infanticide, or adult (witches?), was a form of population control in tough times, since you got a double value from it. But then their might have been a different rationale for sacrificing virgins, especially after the so-called “intact” female became a valued acquisition for males.

So sacrifice went from a reasonable, and wise, practice of propitiating predators with some food as a means of human self-preservation, to a religiously-sanctioned practice of God playing loyalty games with old fools like Abraham, then all sorts

The notion that you have to give up something to get something sets op a rather commercial and instrumental relationship between people and their deities. As noted above, I think this begins early in human history and that we are almost “programmed” to reason in this manner. I sometimes find myself reflexively engaging in what I call Faust-bargains, saying to myself, “What would I give up to spend a night with Angelina Jolie or Halle Barry? Pasta? Cappuccino? My Left leg? My immortal soul?”

Sometimes religion gets us to turn the sacrifice upon ourselves. I remember the nuns who taught me in grade school going on about some saint—I Think it might have been St, Theresa of Avila, the “Little Flower”—sacrificing herself by wearing a crown of thorns, which she pushed deeper and deeper into her skull. We were supposed to oooh and aaahh at this, and many did, but there was that underlying suspicion that we were hearing the story of a mystical whack job who was being portrayed as a holy person. Later I learned that the Little Flower might have had some regret at sacrificing herself to chastity; she frequently wanted to be penetrated in the heart with a golden spear. [6]

Sacrifice is probably just another aspect of life. We do have to give up things to get other things, whether it's a joint of beast to some preditor, or cigarettes and strong spirits to live a bit longer. Religion messes that up because we find that what is often given up in a religious exchange is some first-born son, some hapless female, or some cute little lamb or fatted calf. The way religion does it is that somebody else does the sacrificing for you. So much for divine justice.

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[1] I don't know where or when mint jelly came into all this lamb sacrificing, but it makes all the difference.

[2] There were also some Biblical prohibitions against shepherds getting into the action. Apparently during those long, cold nights up in the high pastures some of those ewes got to be pretty good-looking .

[3] Just between you and me I could never get a good image of the Father and the Son together, you know, like playing catch, or going off fishing, or peeing in the woods together, dad and son stuff like that. Of course there would not be any need for the Father to take the Son aside and tell him about girls, since the Church just couldn't abide the notion that the Son of God could have a normal sex life.

[4] Leading to the hypothesis that many carnivores went extinct because humans were tossing Kentucky Fried Chicken and super-sized fries to them.

[5] In Exodus 13:2 the Lord said, "Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb among Israelites, both man and beast, for it belongs to me."

[6] Which is how Bernini portrayed her, as St. Theresa in Ecstasy, in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, in Rome, looking very much like she is in an orgasmic state.

45. 4: HOOAH! REFELECTIONS ON THE SURGE and 9-11 9.13.2007

Preamble: I don't even want to write this damn subject anymore. I'm as sick of it as I am of Bush and his stupid war and his American jihadists. Then I watched a newscast of Bush's photo-op in Anbar and I heard the well-screened “troops” that we are always urged to support issuing war-whoop “HOOAHs” every time their cowardly Commander-in-Chief said his war was going just fine and they were on their way to a winner. HOOHAH, my a**! You want to feel sorry for the gung-hooah guys, but there's a point whether you wonder if some of them are getting-off on this war stuff. If I don't' write about this I'll likely get pimples.

Then an old friend sent me an overlong PowerPoint of 911 pictures, a redundant visual reminder of the horror that one wants remember for what it was and not as an historically-twisted causus belli for Bush and his neo-cons. 911 has been perverted into a rationale for expending gobs of our treasury on the joke that is Homeland Security, and as a basis for that conjugally-challenged greaseball, [1] Rudolf Guiliani thinking he should be president of a country that badly needs a leader with a brain and a conscience. I want to care about 911, but I want to forget all the faux patriots and their flags that it brought out, and especially those who have exploited it.

So, no pimples for me and, not particular order of importance or logic:

PETREAUS: This guy seems as much of an over-starred PR guy as he is a product of PR. He is supposed to be some big intellectual-soldier—military genius and all that crap—according to the build-up on him. So was MacArthur, with whom he appears to share an oversized ego, but MacArthur at least went to fight somewhere. By the way, where was this genius for the five years we have been in this war? Petraeus was commanding officer at Leavenworth and pulled post-hostilities duty in Bosnia and Kuwait. Too busy studying for his Princeton Ph.D. What a joke! If people weren't getting their limbs blown off and civilians weren't getting massacred, it would be funny. One PR story that was circulated is that Petraeus was supposedly accidentally shot in the chest (apparently his only “combat” experience) and jumped up to do 50 push-ups. Wow! We're saved; super-general is here! HOOAH! Or would that be HOOEY!

So now we are to assume that Bush, five years and half a trillion bucks and an army of fired generals on, has now found a superhero and a word, “surge,” that's going to make it look like we are winning and save his legacy. As if we don't know that the whole point of this is to dump Iraq on the Democrats—The Ole Dumperooski [DCJournal Archives, No. 38. 2], and Bush will say he was winning when he left for the ranch. It is not the politics in Iraq that is driving this; it's the politics in Washington. Petraeus is just another ambitious toady who is going along so he will get another star. We are being had; this guy is a packaged product. He'll have his fifth star, and it will cost a lot of blown-off arms and legs and casket flags. Bush is not going to back off. This is his last shot; he as been a failure at everything else he has done and he wants to go out on a winner, even if it is a deliberately-created ambiguity. He doesn't care who dies in the process. He's lied about everything else, this is just another lie. But in the end it will typical George Bush—a disaster.

So there is Petraeus, playing fast and loose with the stats in front of Congress, [2] demurring and temporizing, but generally playing Bush's music. Lost in all of this is the notion that there ever was a real mission to this fiasco, as if there was ever any good reason for us to preemptively be there in the first place. Now comes the Pottery Barn logic, and the notion that there will be chaos and mayhem if we precipitously pull out. Chaos and mayhem is what we have now! It's a civil war, stupid, and these people have been killing each other over succession to the Prophet since the 7 th century; they are not going to stop for some general who is a public relations product. We are not potential victors— we are collateral damage in a family feud! Forget the genius-general; we are stupid people who don't read history, who can actually lose—like can't find—$8Billion in cash, lose 190,000 Ak-47s and pistols, who destroyed all of Iraq's physical and social infrastructure, tortured and massacred innocent people, and expect that they are going to give us a sweetheart oil deal. What part of the word stupid do Republicans not understand?

REPUBLICANS. Speaking of stupid, try this: there are three Republican candidates for president who have publicly declared—no, not that they aren't gay, that's later—that they do not believe in evolution. That would be the following idiots: Huckabee, Tancredo and Brownback, who believes that Adam and Eve had a pet dinosaur.

The Republicans are supposedly looking for another Reagan. Oh, great, we need another guy who sells weapons to our enemies for political advantage, who, by the way, is the real “Mr. Cut and Run” if you remember how quickly he pulled out of Lebanon after his general got 250 Marines blown up. Maybe Thompson is another Reagan—an actor with hardly any political substance, and ideological weather-vane. Thompson neither adds or detracts much from the sorriest bunch of jerks ever to disgrace the GOP. Oh, wait! Speaking of disgrace, should we have the next Republican “debate” in a public restroom? That way Senator Craig can be there, too; he'll be the one tapping his foot and asking you to show yours and he will show you his.

And GUILANI. Another fraud. Where does this guy get off making a big deal out of going to “Ground Zero” on 911. He was the Mayor—THAT'S WHAT A MAYOR IS SUPPOSED TO DO! Any mayor would have done the same. So what makes this guy such a big deal. The very fact that he makes a big deal out of it betrays what a phony this guy is. The only thing he did is get there before Bush, but then Bush too a few days to make sure that nothing was left that might fall on him and give him a boo-boo. Cheney, of course, was taking another deferment and had gone to ground. So, do you want some guys who think the earth is only as old as the Bible, an ugly actor who used to be a lobbyist, A Mormon whose political positions change with the geography, or the self-proclaimed hero of 911?

By the way, they all would say “I am not gay.” But I bet Larry Craig could tell us if somebody in that bunch goes . . . well . . . you know . . . tap, tap, tap.

There, no pimples for me. HOOAH!

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[1] I can call Guliani a “greaseball” if I want to. I come from the same ethic group, so it's my privilege. If the little “wop” wants a piece of my action somebody please tell him where he can find me.

[2] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/19610.html

45. 3: IN THE MOMENT 9.10.2007

Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

Life is chain of moments, most of them of not great or significant moment. But life does have its moments for just about everybody, some get more than others; some get better ones than others. They are moments (there are bad moments as well) that we try to preserve, elongate and replicate; but like all moments, they are fleeting, evanescent, and too soon gone, another spent moment toward some final, dreaded moment.

Moments are not just some ticking away of life; moments are the cellular level of life that is not measured by time, but by experience. Indeed, in respect of time, some are longer than others—a few seconds of dentist chair time can seem like hours to some; the climactic moments of lovemaking far too brief. So moments are life's little records of experiences, good or bad.

Do we seem more conscious these days of momentariness? Why has the turn of phrase come into common parlance -– “in the moment”? First, we should consider that we are the only species (at least those that I have talked to) who are even aware that we living with a finite number of moments. We have all sat and watched a cat, dog, or a cherrystone clam, and envied that they had no awareness that their days too are numbered. But our price for not eating pet food, or being eaten at a clambake, is that we must deal with our mortality. [1]

Linguistically, in the moment may owe its etiology to acting. Actors have to get into the moment, the scene, to find the emotion that conveys some character's experience. So they may have more of a sense of the difference between moments that are actual, and those that must be conjured to create and play a scene.

Being in the moment might be considered as a good aspect of our humanness, as a form of introspection that pauses us to consider the fullness and meaning of particular experiences. Being in the moment is a definition of one's own space, as it were, one's place in the event or the circumstance that enriches the experience. To be conscious of being in the moment implicitly recognizes one's contribution and responsibility to what takes place in the moment. There is, of course, a corollary type of moment that one also hears frequently these days—the “senior moment”—that refers to being in a moment, but not knowing which, where or why.

Now where was I? Oh, yes, writing something about . . . something . . . well, it'll come to me in a moment.

But there is also something rather self-indulgent in the manner in which that turn of phrase is uttered these days, as though one being in their moment is so fully assertive of their individuality as to demand an exceptional status. We all have our special, individual, moments, but they do not exempt us from social responsibility or concern for others. Of course, sometime moments are imposed upon us, often with undesirable or dire consequences. People can remember with precise detail “the defining moment when” an earthquake struck, a bomb exploded, when something change in their lives so significantly that the moment is like a slash of existential demarcation between all that went before and all that followed.

At a societal level one can readily see how “in the moment” came into common usage in America. Our celebrated individuality, our fascination with each promised “fifteen minutes of fame,” our prospects for being an American Idol, the way our commercialism relentlessly promises the right moment for this or that sort of moment, [2] our obsession with “records” and being number one, to having “been there,” and “done that,” of marking our lives by wearing hats that proclaim “Pearl Harbor Survivor” or being able to proclaim “I was at Woodstock,” or what we were doing when such and such a team won the Super Bowl or World Series. We seem especially concerned with having our moments, to the extent that we almost try to arrange our lives to have them, like existential movie scenes. [3]

It is harder to imagine such attitudes for other societies, some in which life is so de-individuated, so conformed to overriding social norms that people rarely “get a moment to themselves.” If not the exigencies of difficult life circumstances, then the circadian regularities and conventions of religious and social mores can so dominate individuals as to leave few “personal” moments for them. Such moments, such as they are, become “stolen moments” in a regulated rhythm of times for prayer, political regimentation, or just plain economic drudgery.

Let us “take a moment” to consider that either type of society might bring upon itself a life-changing moment of great consequence by the manner in which it regards the “management” of individual experiences or moments. The rigid society that allows little room for individuality and self-reflection runs the risk of being caught by inability to develop self-reflection, by its inflexibility. Yet, it appears that the other extreme, a society in which people spend more and more time in their own moments, also courts dangers. We see this to some extent in the three main global dangers that threaten American society: global warming, global terror, and global energy depletion. All of these concerns require a degree of social solidarity that is eroded by a society in which being “in the moment” is practically regarded as an inalienable right. It is rather amazing that American has been conducting a war in Iraq for five years with no discernable sacrifice on the part of its citizens. No moments appear to be surrendered over energy resources as the rising costs of fossil fuels seems to have produced no reduction in demand or usage. Global warming, easily the most serious and potentially catastrophic threat (and related in part to energy resources) has had no corresponding and commensurate reduction in individual “moments” to change behavior and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We should also be cognizant of the fact that Nature also “has its moments,” and in the case of global warming, although we may blithely go along have out own moments, some of them contributing the rise in temperature, there will assuredly come perhaps the most significant moment in earth history—the moment, scientists tell us that may be sooner upon us than we think, the moment earth temperature reaches an irreversible and self-reinforcing tipping point. At that moment, all of humankind will be in a moment together, and there will be very few, if any, people who will want to be in it thereafter.

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[1] I have also heard that animals have no sense of time in the way that we do. After we leave our dogs for a few days it doesn't matter whether its days or months, supposedly they lose all sense of time. Anyway, I've never seen a dog with a watch.

[2] One erectile dysfunction commercial promises a product that will have its customer “ready” when the “moment is right.”

[3] “In the moment” has a popular New Age aspect to it. A few web sites use the phrase in a positive, up-beat way to promote self-reflection and meditation. There are also, at this writing at least four record albums title “In the Moment.”

45. 2: THE END OF FAITH, by Sam Harris (2005) BR 9.6.2007

The God Biz is a marvelous enterprise. All other economic enterprises employ some earthly resources—raw materials, finished goods, knowledge and service—but religion turns nothing (that which cannot be known) into something through the catalyst of fear. Amazing when you ponder it. But it explains why some used car salesman from rural Georgia can steal a Gideon Bible, affect a blow-dried pompadour, buy a cheap glossy suit and get a lot of dumb, fearful, sick, credulous dolts to give him their money in hopes that they will be ascended into heaven at the Rapture. It helps explain why clerics dress up in silly suits and parade around grand churches like royalty, why Muslims will bounce their heads off the ground five times a day, Jews will stand like bobble-heads in front of the Western Wall and, Buddhists will chant “OM” and spin prayer wheels, and why Christians will form prayer chains against same-sex marriage . . . one could go one for days.

That's why Sam Harris's book may be announcing, but is not likely to produce an end to faith. The title is provocative; it has to be to get any attention with all this religious proclaiming, preening and praying going on. But faith isn't going away, and Harris knows that as well as anybody. He is a philosopher-neuroscientist, he works right at that intersection of the brain and the mind, the same intersection perhaps where the spirit seems to hang out like some entity that haunts reason.

In the final analysis Harris's brief is about the age-old contest between faith and reason, the battle that Aquinas though he brought to an armistice. But actually it is faith that has carried the day—that cheap, quick and easy express to life's answers to why we are here. They were all written down in King James English, Hebrew and Arabic in simple, edible chunks for those who did not want to do the intellectual heavy lifting for themselves. It re-took the field with the hegemony of churches over states and with the assistance of vast hordes of ignorant, frightened peasants. By the time of the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and the modern era, faith and religion had a free pass in most every society because it had become associated with what was good and proper behavior. The atmospherics of most societies were such that not only were the myths and tenets of the pervading and presiding faith almost axiomatically ingested by the time a child asked its first innocent question. [1]

Harris not only makes compelling points that goodness does not require faith, but demonstrates that along with a faith's commandments to be good are ingested a healthy dose of which infidels one is supposed to hate. [2]

We must wonder just how much the spate of books that have come out in the last few years challenging religion have been inspired by the events of 911. Harris is strident in his condemnation of religious belief for its justification of and responsibility for so many wars, so much persecution, and other evils, always in the name of the respective deities. However, Christian fundamentalists will be pleased that he seems to reserve special enmity for Muslims. He states that: “We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is un ambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has bee ‘hijacked' by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literatures of the hadith . . . .” He further writes that: “In Islam . . . the thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, subjugate, or kill unbelievers; kill apostates; and conquer the world.” [3] This fits well with Huntington's “clash of civilizations” thesis, the justifications of global warriors on terror, and the themes of Republican Congressional prayer breakfasts. [4]

Further back in memory are, of course, the antics of Christianity, which quickly turned from being persecuted under the Romans to becoming the Romanized world's favorite reason for persecution. Those Pilgrims to America that are always portrayed having turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes with the natives, escaped their persecution in England so that they could find a nice new place to burn and hang witches and set about giving the natives a good and fatal does of one of the venereal diseases. And let's not even get into the holy Spanish, busy with the Inquisition at home, and practicing genocide for gold on the natives of the new world—with the aid and complicity of their Church and its prelates.

Another section of this book deals with what the author calls “the science of good and evil,” here to make a case for goodness without the need of religion or eternal reward. Unfortunately it is a weak and meandering chapter, betraying perhaps, as does the cognitive science section of the book, that some of this material has bee dropped in from his graduate studies. When he does get to Kant's ‘categorical imperative' and Jesus' ‘golden rule' of loving our neighbor he does not develop it. Elsewhere he makes the point that there is not reason for goodness not to exist in the absence or even renunciation of faith, but he seems weaker—maybe it is the nature of the beast—being a proponent than a critic. [5]

Harris ends with a look at the differences between Eastern and Western spirituality. But Eastern spirituality, particularly that which involves mysticism, is actually, according to Harris a rational enterprise . It involves an engagement with the mind that seeks enlightenment, a form of knowledge. It is not blind acceptance. [6]

Harris's bestseller might put a dent or two in the great Leviathan of credulity that influences or rules much of human experience, but it will not end it. Just this day it was announced that American Christian creationists are working with schools in Turkey to develop their science curriculum in “creationism.” Apparently the Muslim Turks are also ready to believe that Cain ad Able had a pet velocirpator. Good Lord! Maybe the road to peace and tolerance is paved with blind faith and stupidity!

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[1] “Why is the sky blue, mama? Because blue is the Blessed Virgin's favorite color, my child.”

[2] “You shouldn't be playing with Joshua Steinberg, Tommy. Remember, his kind of people killed Jesus, and his mommy cooks with chicken fat.”

[3] Pp. 109-110, and 113

[4] To be fair, Harris cites theses that the Arab/Islamic world is not a couture at the same state of moral development as the West, and also the historical fact that the central lands of Islam have been humiliated by foreign control for nearly a century.

[5] Elsewhere, in DCJournal , we have also dealt with this subject, particularly in Nos. 15. 8 and 20.7.

[6] Cf. DCJournal Archives No. 43.7: Hey, I Just Realized Something!

45. 1: OPERATION HATE THEIR FREEDOM 9.3.2007

What!? They plan to sculpt the face of Moqtada al Sadr into Mt. Rushmore!?

We have heard George Bush say it many times: we must defeat the insrugents and Al Qaeda because “they hate our freedom.” Sure, of course, we don't know what the hell that means, and neither does Bush, but it scares the hell out of blue-haired Republican committee-women. It is a statement that usually goes before “we must defeat them in the streets of Fallujah or we will end up fighting them in the streets of Boise.” This really scares the crap out of red state cretins, especially when Cheney adds in that “the women of America will be forced to and wear burkas.” [1]

Like you, I have regarded these as just more of the ravings of morons who couldn't even attack the right country after 9-11. Propagandistic fear-mongering, so that huge chunks of those war appropriations could end up in the accounts of KBR and Halliburton, so that nice, profitable deals could be made with a puppet Iraqi government to suck oil out of their ground at cheap prices right into the Hummers of right-wing evangelists who like to go deer-huntin' with Jesus and have secret fantasies about Ann Coulter (yuk!).

But my Republican friends said that was just my liberal-commie-pinko-atheist values getting in the way of my seeing the truth of Bush's new book of Revelations. But what if they have stumbled on the truth (it could only be by accident)? What if the insurgents have a plan that is even more subtle than the memo that Condi couldn't figure out that said "Terrorists are going to attack America"? What if?

Here's how Operation Hate Their Freedom Works would work:

First. Democrats demand that the war in Iraq be ended and the troops brought home immediately.

Second. This demoralizes the American forces and gives the insurgents strength and resolve.

Third. The insurgents therefore win the war in Iraq, as predicted. Because we did not win in the streets of Baghdad we must now fight them in the streets of American cities because, as you well know, “they hate our freedom.” But Al Qaeda knows that Americans are very well armed because the Republicans have blocked every attempt to restrict sales of arms to the general public.

Fourth. So they send the shock troops—the fearsome Al Quaeda gay, lesbian and transgender marital shock brigades. Rather than fighting Americans in their streets these troops marry each other in our streets, thereby cruelly undermining and destroying that most sacred of American institutions—heterosexual marriage—just as Republicans said would happen homosexuals married.

Fifth. The effects are disastrous. Christian women began wearing burkas and sneaking off for abortions because their husbands, particularly husbands who were Republican congressmen, began having perverse affairs with Congressional page boys. Republican Senators are found cruising for gay sex in airport men's rooms all over the country. [2]

Homeland Security closes all airports men's rooms in the country, which was particularly bad for older Senators [3] who have to pee a lot. [4]

Sixth. Al Qaeda will then capture and hold all of the hill-tops in America [5] because it is from these hills that Christians (who have taken Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior) will be taken up into heaven at the time of the Rapture. Unable to get to their hill-tops the Christians will be forced to convert to Islam, eat falafel, memorize the Koran, and follow the Prophet (peace be upon him). [6]

This is how the great apocalypse will come to pass. Now you know how these clever insurgents will defeat richest, most powerful nation in the world with a moron for a president. There really is no need for weapons of mass destruction. Let's face it, they used our lack of attention to security, the stupidity of Condi Rice and others in the Bush administration, and a few of our own airplanes, to terrorize us into giving carte blanche authority to a moron to attack the wrong country, run up our debt so that we are owned by the Chinese and Japanese, and ruin our military and our international reputation.

But now they are proving even more clever than that—they have studied us well and know our weaknesses. They really don't “hate our freedom” because they can't figure out what the hell that phrase means either. But they are smart enough to know that we have people dumb enough to believe it—and that means a strategy can be fashioned to uses it against ourselves. They know that we claim to value freedom, but that freedom doesn't extend to gays, lesbians, and transgender persons who want the same rights, including to marry. They know that we have Americans who are so stupid that they believe that their marriages are actually threatened if gays are allowed to marry. [7] They know that there are too many of us Americans who believe that the insurgents really do want to force us all to convert to Islam and make even our skinny women wear burkas .

And because they have been to our airports they know where our Republican Senators hang out. (Craig probably hit on one of them.)

Up to now, they did not have this last piece of their strategy. But now they know how to destroy (what's left of) Congress, which a lot of Right wingers hate even more than they hate the UN, and who would rather have a God-anointed imbecile or a washed-up actor with the power to sell weapons to our enemies and tap our phones of we complain about.

In other words, our enemies don't have to bother hating our freedom to defeat us— because we do .

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[1] Well, it could be a fashionable answer to obese women wearing bare midriff outfits.

[2] This will be blamed on a gay Islamo-Facist Hairdresser who gave John Edwards and $400 haircut.

[3] Not many people are that the title Senator derives from the Latin senex, meaning, senior, or old man.

[4] Chertoff announces that men may use those bottles that they have been taking away from passengers.

[5] Finally, we might get that monstrous whit cross removed from the publicly-owned Mt. Soledad, in San Diego. Cf. DCJ Archives No. 24. 6: The Blancocruxians 9.16.2005.

[6] On the up-side, guys, you will be able to have ore than one wife—that's up to four of the opposite sex (the number same sex wives is still hung up in debate over which wives would inherit the Barbra Steisand albums).

[7] These are usually people who have been divorced a few times, abuse substances and beat their children, so they need some interior decorator to blame it on.