Open Threat

american fascism: the christian right

2009-02-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

Many people seem surprised that the Christian Right – which, by now, includes the Republican Party – claims to be the champions of morality while they themselves act in very immoral ways. For instance, I have seen countless comments calling out the Christian Right for its tendency to lie when it suits their purpose, even when those same Christian Right activists extol the virtues of the Ten Commandments, which include a prohibition on lying. The Christian Right is willing to use the mechanisms of democracy when it results in their desired policies being enacted, but they are willing to undermine those mechanisms when public sentiment is against them; compare the Christian Right’s petulant response to protests over the passage of Proposition 8 in California, to their constant attempts to slip anti-abortion legislation past the people of states who have constantly voted against such laws.

Those people who are surprised at this moral duplicity fail to recognize a core characteristic of the Christian Right. They see the word “Christian”, and hear the leaders of the Christian Right talk about the “Bible” and “Jesus”, and assume that they are sincere in their beliefs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Christian Right uses the cover of Christianity, but it is not at heart a religious or theological movement. It is a social movement that seeks political power to enact a radical and reactionary social order, and it has learned that hiding its motives beneath the veil of religion serves its purposes.

The Christian Right is a fascist movement.

The term “fascism” has been so overused that its meaning has been diluted. Sometimes that overuse has been innocent, as when teenagers accuse mall security of being “fascists” for taking away their skateboards; other times, dilution and confusion are the intent, as when Republicans recently began charging President Obama with fascism, even as they charged him with being a socialist – two ideologies that are mutually hostile and utterly incompatible. This has led to a majority of Americans having a fundamental misunderstanding of fascism as a political movement; thus, they fail to see its characteristics, even when those characteristics should be blatantly obvious.

There have been many attempts to define fascism. One of the most well-known was penned by Umberto Eco in his essay, “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”. I am going to list the features he identifies as characterizing the fascist:

The cult of tradition
The rejection of modernism
Action for action’s sake
Disagreement is treason
Fear of difference
Appeal to a frustrated middle class
Nationalism, and obsession with a plot
Humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy/life is permanent warfare
Contempt for the weak
Everybody is educated to become a hero
Will to power transferred to sexual matters
Selective populism
Newspeak

Each of these is characteristic of the Christian Right in America. There are other definitions of fascism, and the Christian Right meets their criteria as well.

There is much danger in invoking the legacy of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini or Augusto Pinochet, all exemplars of fascism. One may be accused of violating Godwin’s Law. However, Godwin’s Law refers only to invalid use of those names or the specter of Nazism; when the comparison is valid, then it does not apply. Invoking Godwin won’t work here; the only thing that separates the Christian Right in America today from Nazism in 1930s Germany is the lack of a charismatic leader, and the Christian Right continues their search that person daily.

When that fundamentalist Hitler does appear, there may be no time to reflect on the warning signs that have been clear for decades, and which are now impossible to ignore. The Christian Right has enormous power in governments across the United States. It has infiltrated organizations from your local school board to the Department of Defense and every branch of the military. It exerts control over, if not outright ownership of, major corporations, including news and entertainment outlets. It has spent the last several decades building a parallel universe of fake universities and research institutions to give its policies the veneer of respectability.

Its dream is the same dream that motivated the Taliban to transform Afghanistan into a hell on earth, only with Jesus in place of Mohammed. The Christian Right is truly an American Taliban.

They recruit members through tactics perfected by religious cults. They have created a closed and self-reinforcing world – again, in the manner of cults – to prevent members of learning the truth about the nature of the movement with which they have become involved. The great majority of those who embrace the Christian Right for solace and comfort in a cruel world are not motivated by evil, nor do they desire to do evil to others, but that is the direction in which this movement is taking them. They see the world through the fantasy that their movement pushes on them, and use tactics ranging from projection to denial to refuse to accept what is actually stunningly obvious to them. Remember, the Germans never saw the death camps or smelled the odor of burning bodies, even as they lived right next door to them.

I intend to go through Eco’s list point by point and show how each applies to the Christian Right. I will also go through the lists of others and do the same. Fascism cannot survive the light of day; it works through subterfuge and deception, and examination is its enemy. My work will not bring an end to the movement itself, but perhaps it can reach individuals slipping into that night before it is too late, and maybe it can impress upon those already fighting the Christian Right that this fight is far more important than they might want to think.

netflix or piracy

2009-02-20T17:04:00.000-08:00

I had to cancel my Netflix subscription while I was in the Army, but otherwise I have been a loyal and happy Netflix customer for years. I’ve loved the service, and recommended it to everyone I knew who loved movies. Netflix was one of those few companies that always seemed to do good and, when they made a mistake, to acknowledge it and make it right.

Recently, Netflix decided to upgrade their Watch Instantly feature. They replaced their old system with a new one based on Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in. The good news is that this enables customers to watch movies in browsers other than Internet Explorer, including on Mac OS. The bad news is that it doesn’t really work.

I have never had any trouble watching video on my computer. I can watch streaming movies and television shows in high-definition at Hulu, YouTube, ABC.com, and other video sites. (That used to include Netflix as well.) I can watch video downloaded from iTunes.

Yet when I try to watch movies at Netflix now, I get an error: “Individualization error. Cannot play back protected (DRM) content,” with the error code 8156. This happens with every movie I try, in both Firefox and Internet Explorer (both of which are fully up-to-date).

This problem is not that uncommon, as far as I have been able to determine. A Google search turns up numerous references to this particular error, but always without any solution. Netflix customer support is no help; although the CSR did try a number of things, he eventually referred me to Microsoft. I am currently in the early stages of that process now, though I have already been informed that they will probably just refer me back to Netflix – the vicious circle.

And over and over on the web, you see the same complaint: that people have been loyal and happy Netflix customers for years, who have recommended the service to all their friends, and who have now had their experience ruined in a matter of days or weeks. Meanwhile, Netflix does not seem to care enough to address the problem seriously.

This is a failure on the part of Netflix: one, for failing to address this error in a fashion that shows a commitment to their customers, and two, for relying on an obscure piece of software from Microsoft, a company well-known for their half-assed approach to software development, but craven attention to detail when it comes to bending over for the movie and music industries.

This points to that perennial problem with Digital Rights Management. I pay for the Netflix service. I do not use P2P services or torrents. The only videos that I do not pay for are those ad-supported videos (at Hulu or ABC.com, for instance) that are offered for free. I have no software or hardware installed on my computer that could capture streaming video, protected or otherwise.

And I – and all those others – are the victims of DRM. We are actual customers who have paid for our products and services, and who cannot now use them because we are being caught in this DRM dragnet. Meanwhile, people who never pay for movies or television shows (or video games, for that matter) because they get them from BitTorrent or the Pirate Bay are completely unaffected. Anti-piracy measures never affect the real pirates; they only affect the people trying to be honest customers.

More and more, I feel like a sucker.

Why not just steal the content, if that is the only way that you can actually use it? Why not just steal it, when, after you pay for it, you are suddenly and without warrant branded a criminal by a poorly written piece of software? Here is a struggle for morality in the digital age: when morality results in getting, well, screwed, then the only option is immorality – or, maybe, it is time to reassess our definitions of morality. Maybe it is time to download, download, download, without sending a penny to the content providers who would otherwise take our money and run.

If these massive corporations, whose budgets compete with the gross national products of nation-states, want to treat those of us who would be customers as thieves, while doing nothing about the real thieves – other than suing single mothers for having a handful of songs in their shared folders – then why should we not all be thieves? For the last decade, the RIAA and MPAA have acted like criminal organizations, protection rackets shaking down the little guy – pay up, or else we’ll bust up the place – while using their lobbyists to convince uninformed or in-their-pocket legislators to pass clearly unconstitutional laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In England and New Zealand, content providers have strong-armed ISPs into dumping their customers on merely the accusation of “piracy”. These are not the actions of a legitimate business; these are the actions of a Digital Mafia.

In that context, are not the thieves the good guys?

Netflix, you don’t give refunds for partial months, but my subscription ends in just over a week. You’ve got that long to start treating me like a paying customer again, and not a thief. Otherwise, you will have one less customer, and BitTorrent may have one more user.

distinctions

2009-02-19T21:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about mainstream religious believers.

My scorn is generally reserved for the extremist right-wing, which includes fundamentalist Christians. I could easily expand that to include extremists around the world, most especially those found in Muslim-dominated nations; however, fundamentalist Christians pose a far greater threat to the future of America, and thus attract more attention.

What about mainstream believers, though? How should I approach that belief system?

Mainstream religions are as false in their beliefs as fundamentalist variants. However, that could be said for many other beliefs, so it is not the “truth” of the belief system on which I must base my analysis. Rather, I am most concerned about the effect of these belief systems on the world, including other people, and, for the most part, mainstream religionists are of little concern to me.

In fact, as a recent study has shown, mainstream Christians at least are for the most part a very intelligent and open-minded group. These Christians belief that it is a person’s behavior that determines their moral quality, and not their professed allegiance to a particular god. Good people will get into Heaven when they die regardless of the particulars of their faith; to use an overused metaphor, but one which contrasts nicely with the fundamentalist viewpoint, they believe that many roads lead to god. Surprisingly, even atheists like me can get into Heaven if we are good people; again, it is not a loyalty oath that determines salvation, but how one behaves, particularly toward other people, as well as the sincerity of their beliefs.

For the record, I find a number of interesting ideas in Christianity. However, overall I find the religion a muddled mess. The same goes for other religions as well: the Quran reads like it was written by William S. Burroughs (only without as much anal sex). The Old Testament in particular is a hideously immoral book, filled with violence and intolerance that is not just condoned by Yahweh, but required by him. The New Testament is better, but only just: for all the faults of the Old Testament, it at least did not promise to condemn the unsaved to eternal torture in Hell; the kind and benevolent Jesus was the first to voice that idea. Thus, it is not just contradictory; its nature is schizophrenic, and its eventual fixation on apocalypse is unsettling and has done much damage to the world.

Mainstream Christians have largely abandoned those ideas; if they believe in Hell, then it is reserved for the true monsters of history like Adolf Hitler or Torquemada. They do not reject the real world in favor of fantasy; they accept the findings of science, and interpret their religious beliefs in the light of reality. That, by the way, was the historical approach taken by Christian theologians, with obvious and notable exceptions, until the development of fundamentalism in the late 19^th century.

So long as religion remains a private matter, it seems to have a relatively benign effect on society. In those areas of the world, however, where religion plays an important role, it brings with a host of social ills. Murder rates are positively correlated with religious faith. Divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, and school drop-out rates are higher in those parts of America which are more religious. So are poverty and infant mortality; so long as they survive to be born, the religious right doesn’t much care for children. Religion interferes with education and social programs; it even appears to have a negative effect on the economy.

In the end, a world without religion would be a boon for humankind. Those nations which have a reduced level of religiosity also have higher standards of living. However, atheism cannot be forced; any forced belief system leads to individuals seeking out the most absurd and damaging alternatives imaginable. The preferable goal must be freethinking. A secular America must be one in which individuals are attracted to the benefits of freethinking on its merits alone. They must see the value in education and knowing how the world really works. They must understand that others do not believe the same things or the same way that they do, and they must respect their right to do so.

That is why a confrontational approach toward the mainstream believer is the wrong approach. That risks pushing such individuals into the waiting arms of the right-wing, always ready to swell the ranks of its populist army. Confrontation must be reserved for the fundamentalists, the Christian fascists in our midst who would institute an oligarchic theocracy. The God Delusion and God Is Not Great are great tools to challenge them, to refute the absurdity and horror of their ideas, and, every so often, to attract the mainstream religionist who has begun to doubt, but they must not be used on the mainstream believer; that will ultimately do more harm than good.

Moreover, the very controversy that surrounded these books is a service to our cause, as are the atheist billboards that have caused such fury among the gentle and kind-hearted fundamentalists who cannot bear to have their beliefs questioned even a bit. They get people talking, and get the word out that there are alternatives to religious belief; that the blinders can come off; that there are people out there who think the way you do, and you are not alone. Moreover, they make the fundamentalists look like the intolerant, hateful, and closed-minded fantasists that they are.

Mainstream religion does not breed extremism; that finds its origin elsewhere. Nevertheless, the mainstream can feed the extremist ranks if better alternatives are not available. In a couple of decades, as the heirs to the Southern Strategy which created the Christian Right die off, the United States may recover from the dark night that has engulfed it lately; otherwise, this will become a third-world, fundamentalist memory of a once-great nation.

rebranding

2009-02-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

According to this story in Christianity Today, the Christian Right no longer wants to be known as the “Christian Right”. It seems that that term has taken on pejorative overtones. Who ever would have thought that?

Accordingly, the Christian Right is now trying to do what Phillip Morris did in 2003 and which Blackwater is doing right now: rebrand themselves with a more media-friendly name. Phillip Morris tried to hide from their cancer-peddling by renaming themselves Altria, and Blackwater is trying to hide from their murderous thuggery behind the ridiculous new moniker Xe. The Christian Right has chosen the phrase “socially conservative Christians”.

Yeah, that’s gonna work. Excuse me if I stick with the old terms until you’ve ruined the new one as well.

Although the article provides a forum for Christian Right spokesmen to voice their usual dissatisfaction, it doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the history of these terms. You see, this is only the most recent attempt by the Christian Right to rebrand itself. Today they may claim that the term “fundamentalist” is pejorative, but there was a time when they proudly embraced that term; it was only after America at large came to realize just what that term stood for that its negative connotations became obvious. The Christian Right no longer wants to be identified as the “Moral Majority”, either, though that was another, more recent rebranding attempt; in fact, it was one of their attempts to slough off the stench of “fundamentalist”.

Regardless of what new term they come up with, they will ruin it as well, because it is never the terms that give the movement its bad name, but what that movement stands for. “Socially conservative Christianity” nowadays stands for little more than hatred of others, wallowing in rank and willful ignorance, and ensuring that the privileges of the wealthy are protected at all costs. There is little Christianity left in the movement, for good or bad; indeed, it takes most of its doctrinal cues from the darker passages of the Old Testament, finding little to its liking in the New but its sadistic apocalyptic fantasies. What is left is all bad.

It may seem a bit Orwellian that the Christian Right is resorting to semantics to hide its core mendacity, but this is a movement that heartily embraced Big Brother’s methods. They have practiced long with their pet project, creationism. When creationists could no longer hide its religious nature, they rebranding it as “creation science”. When that didn’t work, they tried “intelligent design”. Nowadays, it’s all about the code words: “strengths and weaknesses” and “teach the controversy”. Regardless of how it is described, it is still the same package of mythology and lies.

And the same applies to the movement that embraces it. The Christian Right may use any combination of words it wants to try to present a more media-friendly face, but they will never truly lose the negative image until they renounce the very beliefs that produce that image. Until then, they remain “Christian fascists”, an “American Taliban”, and the “extreme Religious Right”.

In short, they remain the Christian Right.

julio

2009-02-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

Julio worked at McDonald’s for four and a half years. Fortunately, he was lucky enough to have recently attended one of President Obama’s town hall meetings. Julio asked Obama what he intended to do to help people like himself, who had tried to find other work, but were unable to do so. After his appearance, Julio has been offered at least two internships, and has become a minor celebrity.

Good for you, Julio! Now, President Obama, what about the rest of the people who work at McDonald’s?

It was disappointing that Obama’s response to Julio consisted of little more than platitudes. The minor celebrity that Julio has earned has helped to obscure the President’s non-answer to his question. The media story will focus on Julio’s “success” – he essentially won a lottery – and ignore the import of his question: what is to be done to help those who work at places like McDonald’s, or Walmart, or any other low-wage, no-benefit, dead-end job, and have no alternative?

I have personal experience of that, because, all told, I worked at McDonald’s for around ten years. Let that sink in a moment: TEN FUCKING YEARS!!! It was not because I was a bad worker, or that I did not have skills. After I got my degree, it most certainly was not that I was not qualified for a better job. It was because there was nothing else. The only places that were hiring were places like McDonald’s, or Burger King, or Walmart. For a time, I thought I had escaped when I got a job at a call center doing tech support; that turned out to be worse than McDonald’s (!) and I eventually returned to my former “career”.

And I was not, by then, some teenager working after school to earn some pocket money. It is a fantasy, largely concocted by Republicans and “Libertarians”, that the only people who work McJobs are teenagers on their way to something better. Sure, a large percentage of my restaurant’s staff was comprised of teenagers, but at least half were well beyond their teenage years. These older workers comprised the backbone of the restaurant. They – “we”, I should say – worked 40 hours or more each week, and kept the story from falling apart; running a McDonald’s is not as easy as those without such experience would like to think.

And for our services, we received almost nothing. We were still “part-time” employees; the only full-time employees at McDonald’s were management. We received no benefits like health insurance or retirement plans, and we had no job security; we could be fired at any time and for any reason. We were paid minimum wage plus whatever nickel and dime raises we had received over the years; when I did finally escape, I earned just over $7.00 an hour.

And I was one of the lucky ones, not just because I did eventually escape, but because I did not have a family to support. Many of my coworkers did, and, even if both parents worked, their combined incomes still fell short of the poverty line. Republicans like to preach about the rights of the “unborn”, but what about the effects of such a life on children who have been born? The Republicans – and their Democratic and Libertarian abettors - are silent on that.

So, back to you, President Obama. What do you intend to do to help people like Julio who don’t have the good fortune to appear on TV? Is that “nothing” I hear you muttering under your breath? Because, despite your promises of “change”, you are still a centrist Democrat who will stop at nothing to ensure that the needs of the corporate gangsters who run this country outweigh the needs of its citizens? Your non-answer to Julio was the sort of evasion I would have expected from your predecessor, and was not encouraging, to say the least.

President Obama, you have been in office for less than a month. In that time, you have done some remarkably good things. You have also disappointed me more than once. This was another example of the latter. If you really want to bring change to America, then you will defend the rights – indeed, the human dignity – of people like Julio who don’t win the celebrity lottery, and who continue to toil day after day, year and year, with nothing to show for it in the end.

You have to decide who is more important: Wall Street billionaires whining about $500,000 salary caps, or the vast bulk of the American citizenry who wouldn’t see that much money in 20 years of full-time work (even if corporate semantics deny that status). Because only one choice means that America will continue as a nation.

(Oh, and as I said above, I did eventually escape McDonald’s. I just had to join the Army in my thirties to do it.)

northern aggression

2009-02-10T18:32:00.001-08:00

“What we are dealing with today is the greatest power grab by the federal government since the war of northern aggression,” [Representative Bryan] Stevenson said, R-Webb City, referring what Southern states called the North’s attempt to end slavery in the 1860s.

The remark caused a sudden gasp heard throughout the House’s chamber.

What Stevenson was referring to was the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation that President Obama supports that would essentially repeal the Bush-era Federal Abortion Ban. Since the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that decriminalized abortion, the Religious Right has done everything they can to recriminalize the procedure. This has included some surprisingly sleazy tactics, including the murder of doctors who perform abortions, as well as outright subversion of the democratic process.

Although most would have considered Stevenson’s remarks merely exaggerated hyperbole, they actually constitute rather a profound Freudian slip. In case you are not familiar with the term, a Freudian slip is when subconscious forces cause the truth to slip out, despite one’s conscious attempt to suppress it. To Stevenson and those who think like him, the “war of northern aggression” remains a central part of their psychological dynamic and social agenda.

The modern Christian Right was born following the south’s loss at the end of the Civil War. It was a direct response to the abolition of slavery, which the south had defended on religious grounds for over 200 years. To southern Christians, slavery was mandated by God, and racial hatred had become central to their “theology”. In essence, this construed a heresy, and it was around this heresy that the fundamentalist movement – the backbone of the Christian Right – formed in the closing decades of the 19^th century.

(Racism also played – and continues to play – a significant role in the fundamentalists’ rejection of evolution by natural selection; any theory that implied that the hated blacks were equivalent to whites was blasphemous.)

Conservatives suffered a second profound loss during the Civil Rights Movement, when the system of racial apartheid that had been constructed in the south collapsed. Suddenly, it became politically suicidal to express openly racist viewpoints. Of course, the fundamentalist social movement adapted in an Orwellian fashion, adopting the use of code words and “dog whistles” to signal the real meaning of its words to its supporters. The movement has even attempted to rewrite their role in the maintenance and defense of slavery and racism, stating that Christianity was “always” opposed to slavery and it was the hateful “Darwinists” who actually supported the practice – even hundreds of years before the theory was even published.

Today, the Christian Right and the Republican Party at large, which the fundamentalists have thoroughly infiltrated, target new groups for oppression: homosexuals, immigrants, and women. It is that latter group which is the real target of anti-abortion laws, since the Feminist Movement was as much an embarrassment to the Christian Right as was the Civil Rights Movement.

Fundamentalists and their Republican puppets do not care about children, “unborn” or otherwise. Abortion is merely a backdoor they can use to reassert reproductive control over women; once women’s bodies once again belong to them, then they can work on the rest of the woman’s life. To them, this is merely one step toward reinstating the antebellum southern ideal that has become their mythical Golden Age. The Civil War may have ended the 1865, but the conservative movement continues to fight it. Like all fundamentalists, they are hopelessly trapped in the past.

ponzo reads the bible - war on christmas special

2008-12-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

It may piss off the Christians to hear this, but Christmas doesn’t have much to do with anything in the Bible. In fact, take away the nativity scene and the rest of the holiday comes from pretty much every European tradition except the Christian one. The Romans were exchanging gifts during Saturnalia long before the three wise men showed up at Jesus’ house (yes, house – we’ll get to that in a bit), and the only thing that the Bible has to say about Christmas trees is to condemn them.

As far as the birth of Christ thing, of the four books of the Bible that discuss the life of Jesus – the Gospels – only two of them talk about his birth. And, given the Bible’s track record so far, it should not surprise you to learn that even those two books disagree with each other.

This starts making sense when you accept the most important fact about Jesus: he did not exist. Jesus was merely the cooption of pagan resurrection god myths by a particular Jewish sect in search of their long-awaited messiah. This is fairly obvious when you compare the four Gospels. They mostly agree on the gist of things, but they disagree on the details, which is precisely what you would expect from oral traditions. Furthermore, when you compare that gist to other Mediterranean and Near Eastern religious traditions, you find that they track fairly well: Greek sects had their resurrection gods; Egyptian sects had their resurrection gods; and so forth. Everything Jesus did, some other god had done before him.

As for the date of Christmas – December 25^th – well, that’s not Christian in origin either. In fact, the modern holiday season, whether represented by Christmas, Hanukah, Eid, Kwanzaa, or some other holiday, is merely the modern version of the ancient celebration of the winter solstice – that time of year when the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer again. The Romans even celebrated the winter solstice on the same day that Christians would later celebrate Christmas, December 25^th. A popular myth is that early Christians intentionally set the date of their holiday around the time of the Roman Saturnalia festival, so as to partake in the festivities without drawing attention to themselves. However, Christianity was little more than a local cult at that time, and it is unlikely that anything like Christmas had begun to develop so early in the religion’s existence.

The first hard evidence we have of the celebration of Christmas on December 25^th does not occur until the year 354CE. It just so happens that that date was already in use by pagan Romans as the birth of Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun”. Jesus has always had a sun god aspect, which is also in keeping with the other religions from which he is liberally borrowed, and which was especially obvious in early portrayals of him. As the Roman Empire transitioned from the Greco-Roman to the Christian religion, dies natalis Solis Invicti simply became Christmas, because the god celebrated was one and the same. And both gods, in this context, were simply symbolic representations of the solstice.

It has become something of a tradition that, around this time every year, we have to listen to the right-wing bitch and moan about the supposed “war on Christmas”. To any observer, however, Christmas is in no danger of disappearing. The truth is that Christmas has always been a secular holiday with religious overtones that change depending on the particular religious tradition of its observers. It is also true that the most rabidly religious groups are not the most fervent in their celebrations of Christmas, but in their attempts to suppress and ban them.

There is no “war on Christmas”. However, there is a right-wing fundamentalist Christian “war” on every other holiday that might be celebrated this time of year. What concerns the right-wing is not that their holiday might be taken away somehow, but that someone somewhere might not believe and practice in the same fashion that they do. The right-wing is threatened by any reminder that they do not possess undisputed cultural hegemony. Fundamentalist Christianity, with its inherent paranoia and delusions of persecution, makes the perfect foundation for a homegrown American proto-fascist movement, and that is precisely what it has become over the last few decades. Christmas, being an emotionally-charged topic among its followers, has been co-opted into a symbol of their supposed persecution at the hands of domestic enemies.

Also present is the right-wing embrace of anti-intellectualism, which has reached such an extent that the right-wing now seems proud of its ignorance. Its members are loathe to learn about the world, because, in learning, they might discover something that would make them question their beliefs; since they already know that they are right – because they believe they are right – then that new learning must be wrong, and, in trying to divert them off the “straight and narrow path” of their own egoism, intrinsically evil. Thus, they divide the world into neat boxes, but only two: fundamentalist Christian, and everything else. It is this anti-intellectualism, this fear of being wrong, that causes them to miss and dismiss the long history of the winter solstice as the ultimate multi-cultural celebration.

And it is this anti-intellectualism which leads them never to know that what they purport to celebrate as the birth of Jesus is not even true Biblically, for that fear of learning extends even to their own holy book, which they dare not actually read because they might be wrong.

As I mentioned above, only two of the four Gospels even mention the birth of Jesus. Those are Matthew and Luke, and they disagree with each other. The nativity scene, and the well-known story of Jesus’ birth, is a mishmash of both, taking the gaudiest bits of one and mixing it with the gaudiest bits of the other.

For example, the three wise men only appear in Matthew. Here they visit Jesus at his parents’ house in Bethlehem. The manger only appears in Luke, where Joseph and Mary must travel to Bethlehem for the purposes of census (itself a dubious idea) and find all the inns to be full. Unfortunately, the three wise men are absent from Luke’s version. Thus, the three wise men come from Matthew, and the manger comes from Luke, with the discrepancies conveniently forgotten.

The shepherds only appear in Luke, where they are visited by the angel while guarding their flocks. This bit is also incorporated into the standard nativity story. However, shepherds don’t guard their flocks in the field in the middle of winter, not even in the Near East (where it is not perpetually hot). In other words, according to the Bible itself, Jesus could not have been born on December 25^th. Given his role as a resurrection god, it is probable that he was initially identified with the vernal equinox, which marks the approach of spring; only when the myth incorporated the solar aspect was his birthday changed to the winter solstice.

Herod and his slaughter of the first-borns only appears in Matthew, and is a wild fiction. The contemporaneous Roman historian Josephus produced a detailed biography of Herod that makes no mention of such an event, nor does any other history produced at the time (and such an event would have drawn notice). Meanwhile, in Luke only, Joseph and Mary travel to the temple in Jerusalem after Jesus’ birth to offer thanks to Yahweh for his birth, but this is missing from the standard tale, which ends in a strange anticlimax (Jesus is born, and that’s that until Easter).

As I mentioned above, these disparate tales make sense if they are considered to be different versions of the same oral tradition. The other two Gospels, Mark and John, begin with Jesus already having started his ministry. In all versions of the myth, the death and resurrection is the important part (though, again, they differ on the details), but Matthew and Luke seek to emphasize the deific nature of Jesus, as well as his Hebrew lineage (this places him within the context of messianic Judaism).

The obvious question here is why a story sprang up that incorporated bits and pieces from each of two different versions of the same tale, without anyone noticing the discrepancies. I mean, couldn’t they read? Well, as it turns out, no, they couldn’t. Not only was most of the population of Europe illiterate until well into the modern age, but the Catholic Church also did its utmost to maintain strict control over how the religion was presented to its followers. Only members of the church were permitted to “interpret scripture”, and, even then, they had to interpret it within an established framework; to do otherwise was to risk being branded a heretic. With the traditional Christian penchant for the gaudy and saccharine, it is likely that the standard tale was the result of a new and underground kind of oral tradition, one for the common people in which Jesus may be born in the most lowly of states (a manger), but in which even the wise and the powerful recognize his superiority and eventual triumph. In that sense, the Christmas story becomes a pseudo-proletarian version of the resurrection god myth.

Meanwhile, as Christianity spread throughout pagan Europe, it incorporated the traditions of the locals so as to win their support. Thus, the Catholic Church incorporated its pantheon of saints, which appealed to the locals’ traditions of multiple gods with specific domains of power. Christmas, likewise, expanded from its origins in the Roman Saturnalia and Sol Invictus festivals and adopted local customs such as mistletoe, stockings on the fireplace, and the Christmas tree decorated in lights.

Ah, the Christmas tree! Here we find the ultimate irony of the “war on Christmas” kerfuffle, because this is, in fact, the only Christmas tradition that the Bible does mention:

Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. (Jeremiah 10:2-4, emphasis mine)

Odd, isn’t it, how the Bible itself may be the biggest culprit in the “war on Christmas” of them all!

Cross-posted at Ponzo Reads the Bible.

this special day

2008-12-25T10:22:00.001-08:00

Today we celebrate the birth of one of the greatest persons to have ever lived – indeed, one of the architect’s of the modern world: Isaac Newton.

Among his accomplishments, Newton helped establish a mechanistic foundation for the universe, by providing mathematical descriptions of motion. His ideas helped push back the darkness of pre-Enlightenment thought, and are still very much applicable today. Even if they had been fully surpassed by the theories of later physicists like Einstein, however, that is just further evidence of the strength of the scientific method that Newton helped exemplify, for science does not hold onto ancient ideas just because they are tradition and make one feel good about oneself.

So today, we celebrate by finding something that is staying at rest, as objects that are at rest tend to stay, and, by applying an external force and witnessing the equal and opposite reaction of the object, we observe that that the force of its new momentum is equal to the external force applied.

And then we eat an apple. (That part may be myth, but at least we will acknowledge that fact.)

prtb - catching up

2008-12-20T18:32:00.000-08:00

I know I never write these things even after I make an effort to do so. You want to know why? Because reading the Bible is bad enough; writing about it is even worse.

Much of the Bible seems like housekeeping, in which details are included just because they are part of the chronology. Thus, we spent entire chapters learning why some obscure mountain or cave bears a particular name, when that location will never be mentioned again. This is not just housekeeping, but pointless housekeeping – like tidying up a building that’s about to be bulldozed.

There is no moral message contained in these passages. These passages do not serve as prologue to a moral message. They are “history”, except that they are mostly a-historical, made-up fantasy.

So we come to Genesis 23, in which Sarah finally dies. The trailer-trash Sarah has exemplified some of the most immoral behavior you might ever come across, and she will not be missed. Sarah’s death is dispensed with in two verses; the remaining 18 are devoted to Abraham negotiating for the purchase of a cave in which to bury her, and a discussion of why that cave is called what it is called.

Housekeeping.

Genesis 24 picks up a bit, but not in a good way (unless you enjoy unintentional laughter). Abraham is now worried about his son Isaac not having a wife. Since this is the Bronze Age, Isaac cannot be expected to go off and find his own wife, so Abraham sends his slave out to find one for him.

You really need to read this chapter just to enjoy its repetitiveness. It tells the same story, in almost precisely the same words, three times – and almost tells it once more! In the end, the slave winds up finding Rebekah, who agrees to become Isaac’s wife.

We can finally say good riddance to the abominable Abraham in Genesis 25. I guess he won’t be pulling that “she’s my sister” bullshit on anybody else now. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the birth of Isaac’s two sons, Esau and Jacob.

Jacob will be one of the ancestors of Judaism and later Christianity and Islam. Like his forebears, he is a shining example of how not to treat other people. His brother Esau comes to him one day dying of hunger and begs for sustenance. Jacob agrees to give it to him, but only if Esau sells him his birthright. Thus, for the price of a bowl of beans and a piece of bread, Esau’s descendants are robbed of their rightful inheritance and must become Jacob’s servants.

Oh, what a glorious history the Jews/Christians/Muslims share!

At least we’re half done with Genesis now. It’s all (further) downhill from here.

a good point

2008-12-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

On the heels of my last post, John Avarosis has a great point. If Obama considers holding anti-gay views to be mere “disagreement”, then where are the racists? Where are the anti-Semites? Will he be having a Klan rally at the inauguration? Will the skinheads put on their own parade?

The parallel between being black and being gay is not perfect. Slavery in America was based on skin color, not sexual orientation. The double-standards gay people face today parallel the abuses of American apartheid in only the vaguest fashion. Moreover, gay people can always “pass”, whereas that option was never available to the majority of blacks.

Yet we are a people who deserve to be recognized as people, not as a sexual preference. Is that not the same thing that motivated the Civil Rights Movement: the desire to be judged, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., not by the color of one’s skin, but by the content of his character?

So, if hating us and denying us equality under the law is a valid “point of view”, then what about all the other points of view? The Obama team can troll the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center; I’m sure they can flesh out the post-partisan makeup of the inauguration with a few of the groups listed there.

It’s all up for debate, right?

fisa to warren (and beyond)

2008-12-18T17:07:00.000-08:00

It is pretty amazing that the Obama team would select Rick Warren to deliver the “invocation” at the inauguration in January. The gay community in particular is aghast, given Warren’s outspoken anti-gay views, as well as his vocal support for Proposition 8.

Obama’s supporters seem to have short memories. I don’t, unfortunately. Yeah, I did vote for Obama in November, but I’m not sure if I did it out of support, or just to piss off the right-wingers. Obama’s mantra of “Change” was revealed to be nothing but a cheap catchphrase way back in June.

That’s when Obama endorsed the FISA Expansion Bill, which retroactively legalized BushCo’s evisceration of the Fourth Amendment. When pressed on the issue, his defense used the same fear-mongering language of the Republicans. It was that moment when the tone of his presidency was set for me.

It was just a couple of weeks ago when everyone was up in arms over Obama’s protection of Joseph Lieberman. The Democrats were so eager to achieve that 60-seat majority in the Senate that they simply forgave Lieberman all his sins, despite knowing full well that he would side with his true Republican allies when the pressure was on. Also, the Democrats – like the Republicans – also believe that they are above the law and the people they purportedly represent; Lieberman had committed no crime, because there was no one (important enough) to commit a crime against.

One might be tempted to ask why, in the 21^st century, it is necessary to include an “invocation” to the imaginary Great Sky Fairy when inaugurating a new president. If anybody bothered to read the Constitution – besides us radical leftists, that is – then they’d realize that the president serves the people, not “God”.

Furthermore, one might be surprised that even Obama and his progressives feel that they must kowtow to the demands of the Religious Right. They have fallen for the myth that fundamentalist Christianity represents a valid theological position, instead of being a reactionary social movement wrapped in a corrupt heresy.

Or maybe Obama feels that this gesture will placate the rabid denizens of the far right that he is not, in fact, the “Antichrist”. If so, then he is obviously willing to cast aside the support of his own people for a group that will never, ever, ever support him. This shows once again the absurdity of American politics, in which the majority can repudiate the proto-fascist ideas of the fringe, and yet, when all things are said and done, our leaders still embrace that fringe.

FISA. Lieberman. Warren. Who wants to bet that the next betrayals will be named after torture, Guantanamo, and Iraq?

womb control

2008-12-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, I commented that fundamentalist Christians – they of the anti-abortion, “pro-life” movement – don’t really give a damn about babies. It is obvious that they don’t much care for children after they are born either. Now they are cheering the impending passage of an executive order that would strip an untold number of American women of their reproductive rights in the guise of “conscience rights”. But don’t be fooled: fundamentalist Christians have been waging a culture war since the inception of their heresy in the late 19^th century, and babies – unborn or otherwise – are merely a prop in it.

The United States is the wealthiest country in the world. The US spends more than any other country on health care. Yet, according to the results of a 2007 study by Save the Children, the US ranks 36^th in terms of infant mortality. That is behind virtually all of “socialist” Western Europe (including the European Union as a whole), and even Cuba.

It is revealing that, the last time this study was conducted in 1997, the US ranked 28^th. In other words, since the “pro-life” George W. Bush came to power, the US has actually declined in this ranking! But that should not surprise us.

Looking at the United States itself, we see another revealing trend. Of the 15 states with the worst infant mortality rates, twelve of them are located in the so-called “Bible Belt” – i.e., those states with the highest percentage of fundamentalist Christians. For the record, the District of Columbia is unranked, since it is not a state; however, DC has the highest rate of infant mortality in the country. Still, is having eleven states in the top 15 any better than having twelve?

Well, not really. Of those states that voted for the “pro-life” John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, eleven of them – you guessed it – are among those 15 with the worst infant mortality rates. Conversely, of the 15 states with the lowest infant mortality rates, eleven voted for the pro-choice Barack Obama. (Again, to be fair, DC voted for Obama, but has the worst infant mortality rate. Meanwhile, Utah has the best infant mortality rate in the country, but voted for McCain.)

Those exceptions don’t change the big picture, though. If fundamentalist Christians and Republicans really cared about the health of children, they would be working on improving the infant mortality rate in the United States as a whole and in those particular states where they have the most power.

This same hypocrisy is revealed by how the Republicans deal with evidence that pollution results in higher levels of infant mortality. This article from the Kalamazoo Gazette from April of this year details how Republican congressmen are blocked the release of just such a report. If the health of the “unborn” were so important to them as they claim, they would have taken this report and run with it, whether the study was complete or not. After all, a lack of evidence did not stop them from doing that very thing with the false hypothesis of “post-abortion syndrome”, even though no legitimate study has shown a link between having an abortion and experiencing depression afterwards.

We all remember the debacle of S-CHIP, in which Bush vetoed a bill expanding health care to underprivileged children for the most dubious of political reasons. They spare no time in providing tax cuts to the wealthy, but the health of children who cannot afford treatment in America’s broken medical system means nothing to them. It is that which captures the true meaning of children to this inhuman mob.

Children – babies – are unwilling pawns in the right-wing’s quest to roll back the clock on women’s rights. They do not want to “save babies”, but control wombs. They remember when women were solely the possessions of men, and they will not stop until they have regained their tarnished golden age.

ponzo reads the bible - genesis 21-22

2008-12-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

I’m trying to make Ponzo Reads the Bible a regular feature, and Sunday seems like the most appropriate day for it. Unfortunately, the first entry happens to concern Genesis 21, which is mostly boring as shit, so we’re going to skip much of it. The first half does deserve mention, though, because it not only introduces a major character, but reveals what kind of a person Sarah is.

Sarah gives birth to Isaac. Sarah, of course, is not only Abraham’s wife, but his sister, so we are already in weird ass territory here. Sarah is also over 90 years old at this point, so it’s even weirder. Fortunately, Sarah has been receiving fertility treatments from God: therefore, Isaac.

Of course, a 90-year-old woman giving birth is biologically dubious, but we do not question the pumpkin carriage or the ruby slippers; all fairy tales need their supernatural elements. Thus, we will take it in stride and move ahead.

Earlier we felt some sympathy for Sarah, but, if that hasn’t already evaporated, it will now. Since Sarah has her own kid now, she gets jealous of Hagar and her son Ishmael. You may remember Hagar: when Sarah was still infertile, she forced her slave girl Hagar to bear Abraham a son, Ishmael. Well, now Sarah wants them out of the house, because they offend her.

I’m no fan of Abraham or God, but I am willing to cut them a break here. God promises that Hagar and Ishmael will be taken care of, and that is indeed the case. Sarah, on the other hand, couldn’t care less whether Hagar and Ishmael live or die. So fuck her.

This chapter now goes off on one of those odd Biblical non-sequiturs and discusses the origins of a well, so this is where we’ll skip ahead to Genesis 22. I was willing to cut God and Abraham some slack a moment ago, but this is the chapter that makes me want to take both of them out back and ensure that no one ever finds the bodies.

This is the part where Abraham almost murders his own son at God’s request.

God decides to “tempt” Abraham, but God is really testing his loyalty. He demands that Abraham offer Isaac as a sacrifice. What is remarkable here is that Abraham does not suffer any moral qualms about this. He does not question why God would make such a demand. He does not resist in the slightest. He merely packs up his ass (the other kind), selects his best sacrificin’ knife, and sets off to the altar.

Of course, we know that God relents at the very end, with Isaac bound on the altar and the knife in Abraham’s hand. What does this say about God, though? He demands loyalty to him over familial relationships, regardless of the damage it does. What did Isaac think about his father after this? What was their relationship like? Is this the kind of human society that God expects his followers to create: one in which no one can trust anyone else? Even worse, this passage has served as the template for subsequent Christian families rejecting their children when they didn’t turn out the way that they wanted.

In other words, these are the “family values” that fundamentalists truly have.

Any God that would demand that its servant demonstrate his loyalty by killing his own son is simply evil. And any father that would blindly and robotically follow such a command is more than a “bad father”, but a sociopath.

There is more to consider here, though, because there are two versions of this story. As we’ve discussed previously, the Pentateuch is comprised of at least four different source documents. Well, the Isaac sacrifice story appears in two of them. The one people are familiar with is the one in which God relents at the very end; this is basically the Disney version of an older, original tale. You see, in that source document, Isaac never appears again after this. In other words, originally, God let Abraham go through with the sacrifice.

There is evidence that human sacrifice was practiced by the forerunners of the Israelites. By the time the Bible was compiled, the practice had mostly shifted to animal proxies. There are still passages in the Bible that reflect the earlier practice, though; most of them were edited out, but reconstructing the source documents reveals them. This is one such example.

Genesis 22 ends with – what else? – a boring genealogy. Hopefully things will pick up next time. (Actually, they don’t.)

who's distorting what now?

2008-12-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

Via Right Wing Watch, we learn that the fundies are upset about something (as usual). In the words of one of their spokesbigots:

Appearing as a sarcastic, rotund Christ, Black distorts the Bible and condones shameful, homosexual acts. Associating Christ with perverse activity is an affront to all people of faith, especially Christians. Apparently Black and company find it hilarious to falsely accuse Christians while they intentionally distort the Bible. Black ought to apologize.

That’s in reference to the Prop 8 Musical, in which Black appears as Jesus. As usual, though, it is the Christians who do the distorting. At no point does Black’s Jesus distort the Bible; he merely points out some other things that the Bible condemns (or advocates) as strongly as homosexuality, and that fundamentalist Christians pick and choose the rules they want to follow.

This is in the same vein as those creationists who maintain that Christianity was against slavery in the 19^th century. It is hard to believe that even they are so ignorant of history (of biology, sure), so one can only conclude that they are being willfully mendacious: their particular brand of religious heresy arose out of their support of slavery.

Once again, we see that the “values” people wouldn't know a value if it snuck up behind them and…well, you get the idea.

the origin and nature of fundamentalism

2008-12-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

Fundamentalism is often treated as if it were just another point on the natural continuum of religion. Thus, on one end, you have liberal religionists, and you have conservatives on the other. This hides the truly radical nature of fundamentalist belief, however, because there is a profound difference between conservatism and fundamentalism.

Conservative religious belief may be relatively inflexible, but it remains within the boundaries of mainstream religious belief. Fundamentalism embraces the absurd fringe. It is an aberration within the evolution of a religion.

In fact, fundamentalism isn’t really a religious movement in the theological sense. Instead, it is a social movement cloaked in the guise of religion, both to win the support of ill-informed religionists, as well as to disguise its true motives.

Fundamentalism arises in a society in response to changing social conditions. It occurs when a rigidly traditionalist society undergoes massive and rapid change to which it cannot or will not adapt. Rather than adapt to changing times, fundamentalists seek to resist them. Although it was their inflexibility that led to their loss of social status, their response is merely to insist that this was the result of not having been sufficiently inflexible. Effectively, they hope to undo the change by doing the same things they were doing before, only moreso.

Fundamentalist Christians would have you believe that they represent a line of thought stretching back for millennia. In fact, fundamentalism is a relatively recent development, having originated in the final decades of the 19^th century. It originated in the American south following its loss in the Civil War. For two decades, southern society had been based on slavery, and Christianity played a primary role in justifying this practice. Slavery was seen as God’s will, and its reinstitution became the focus of fundamentalism in the post-war south. This remained the case until the Civil Rights movement finally broke the control fundamentalists held over southern society.

Actually, that still remains the case. However, it is no longer socially acceptable to express racist sentiments in the open. As a proxy, fundamentalists have adopted homosexuals as their new target of bigotry. They also continue to work against the rights of women; don’t think for a second that anti-abortion activists give a damn about “unborn babies”.

As I observed yesterday, fundamentalist Christians have largely stopped pretending that there is anything except hate that motivates them. Their beliefs originate from hatred and bigotry; without someone to hate, their lives are meaningless.

hatred in the guise of freedom

2008-12-03T21:12:00.000-08:00

Fundamentalist Christians like to complain about their “religious freedom” being taken away. Of course, they’re never concerned when someone else’s religious freedom is taken away, so that right there should make you question their integrity on the principle.

Another thing is that, when they talk about religious freedom, they always use some standard examples. For example, if gay marriage were legalized, then it would become illegal for Christians to rail against the abomination of homosexuality. If religion cannot be taught in science classes, then Christians cannot accuse “Darwinists” and atheists of corrupting the morals of America’s youth (or something).

The same goes for abortion, contraception, and reproductive rights. It also goes for Muslims, who, as we all know, are terrorists – every last one. Pick your own favorite minority, and somehow fundamentalists Christians have conflated hating it with the concept of religious freedom.

It is entirely disingenuous for fundamentalist Christians (or any other variety) to pretend to care about religious freedom. After all, fundamentalism – particularly its American variant – is merely fascism with the hooks cut off the swastika. To the fundamentalist, there is only one kind of religious freedom: the freedom to believe what they tell you to believe, goddammit! I mean, amen.

It has become virtually impossible lately for the Christian fascists in our midst to cloak their true motives anymore. The whole Prop 8 outrage was but the most obvious example of how religion has become nothing but a cover for bigotry. These are the same people who have hijacked the word “family”, and who are attempting to hijack the word “person” as a cover for reproductive control.

In a way, blowing their cover is a good sign. It shows that they know they are on the wrong side of history, and that their days are numbered. However, a cornered animal is dangerous, and these animals are not only cornered, but fucking rabid as well. When the word “Jesus” drips from their lips, it does so in a coating of thick frothy saliva.

ponzo reads the bible - genesis 20

2008-11-30T13:55:00.000-08:00

It’s been quite some time since my last post in the Ponzo Reads the Bible series (which is now migrating to the new blog, though you can always access the archives here). I have practical reasons for slacking off – moving halfway across the country being the chief one – but the most immediate excuse is that I got stuck on Genesis 20. I just didn’t know how to respond to it.

It is not because Genesis 20 contains some life-changing moral message that caused an epiphany in me. Rather, Genesis 20 simply continues what has quickly become the theme of the Old Testament in general: God’s chosen people do terrible things to others, with God’s full approval.

How many times can I condemn the moral degeneracy of Abraham and Sarah, or of their God for letting them get away with the shit they pull? How can I find new words to describe my disgust?

Here is the summary of Genesis 21: Abraham and Sarah travel to the land of Gerar, which is ruled by King Abimelech. Once again, they play the “Sarah is my sister” trick on Abimelech, convincing him that Sarah is free for the taking and ensuring that he will fall in lust with her (keep in mind, by the way, that Sarah is over 90 years old at this point). Once Abimelech has taken Sarah for his own, God shows up to demand the Bronze Age equivalent of protection money, threatening dire consequences if Abimelech fails to pay up.

Excuse me, but how is this not a protection racket?

This time, though, there is a twist. You see, Abimelech may have taken Sarah to be his wife, but he has refrained from even touching her in the meantime. God couldn’t care less, though; he still insists that Abimelech pay up or face the consequences. In fact, he even has the audacity to take credit for Abimelech’s own modesty.

Oh, and it gets better, because here we find out that Abraham and Sarah weren’t lying about the sister thing after all. Sarah really is Abraham’s sister; he just married her anyway!

What is all this I’ve been hearing lately about “defending ‘traditional marriage’”?

Now, all of this would be fine if it were used to convey some moral lesson – i.e., if Abraham and Sarah eventually got what was coming to them for their actions. That is not the case, though. Instead, these trailer trash degenerates engage in trickery and deceit with God’s imprimatur, and God even shows up to twist the arm of their innocent victims. Three major religions trace their origins back to Abraham as ur-patriarch, and never stop to examine or question his true nature. These religions worship the same god that is here behaving like a petty thug.

What does this say about those religions, or their adherents? What does it say about the nature of their god? The only rational conclusion is that God – Yahweh, Allah, or whatever name you choose to ascribe to this deity – is evil. The chief religious concept that the Bible supports is maltheism.

The Bible hardly needs critics, as it is its own worst enemy. If its adherents ever bothered to read it, or if they did so without succumbing to massive cognitive dissonance, they would reject it outright.

unions and bailouts

2008-11-18T17:52:00.001-08:00

During the first half of the twentieth century, unions played a central role in ending the abuses of laissez-faire capitalism and securing rights for workers. Unions became an important part of the American economy, giving workers a voice. However, the economy has changed since then. Manufacturing jobs which formed the base of union membership have become harder and harder to come by, replaced by a “service” economy in which unions play no role.

As someone who spent – gah! – ten years working for a particular fast food chain - *cough* McDonald’s *cough* - and having absolutely nothing to show for it, I was never able to sympathize with the demands of unionized workers. Like retailers Wal-Mart, Kmart, and others, the fast food industry has ensured that its workers are unable to organize, and so it has always treated them like crap. I was a witness to that; despite the myths, a substantial portion of fast-food workers (and their compatriots in other industries) are not high-school kids on their way to better things; they are adults, often with families, trying to make ends meet in local economies that offer no alternatives. The UAW never spoke up on our benefit, so I couldn’t have given a damn about them.

Nevertheless, even as I met the demands of presently unionized workers with resentment, I recognized the need for unionization, and that need has only become more profound in the current economic climate. If a company has no reason to fear its workers, then it will never provide them with anything even approaching decency; countless recent examples prove that to be true.

Which brings us to the auto industry. The Big Three American auto makers – Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler – have asked for a portion of the $700 billion Wall Street giveaway. The Republicans in Congress – and their lockstep supporters – are opposed to such a handout; they have actually taken the position that the auto industry be allowed to collapse. They don’t care about how many people are hurt by such a collapse, or its effects on the economy as secondary industries dependent upon it go down like dominoes. No, they are willing to see this happen for one reason and one reason only: to break the back of the United Auto Workers union.

Although most of the Republican platform has been taken over by religious nutjobs, there is still a faction loyal to the demands of big business and the ultra-wealthy. Unions stand in the way of unrestrained greed and rapacity on the part of corporate sociopaths, and the CEOpaths lust for their destruction. The Republicans are always quick to do their masters’ bidding, and the masters see this as an opportunity to get rid of that unionized thorn in their side.

Indeed, it was largely to break the power of the unions that the US economy was reorganized in the eighties to become a “service” economy. The propaganda was that others would do the dirty work, and Americans would oversee it all. That, of course, was bullshit: under the rule of the exalted senile Ronald Reagan, unionized American workers lot their jobs, and Chinese slave laborers snatched them all up. In that sand, the foundation of our contemporary economic woes was laid. Unions disappeared in the eighties; the standard of the newly dominant service industry was minimum wage and no benefits.

Remember that, when Republicans talk about the “American dream”, they don’t mean what you think they mean.

Of course, the American auto industry is not in trouble because of the UAW’s unreasonable demands. It would not surprise me if the total wages of every single UAW member put together failed to match that of a single General Motors CEO. The auto industry is in trouble for the same reason that the banks were in trouble: the people at the top took advantage of the gift of deregulation, and pushed things past the breaking point. Moreover, they clung to an outmoded business model based more on myth than reality: big, gas-guzzling vehicles that were simultaneously ugly, unreliable, and user-unfriendly, but which they convinced themselves Americans still wanted, even as those same buyers turned more and more to foreign options.

I was in opposition to the Wall Street free-for-all giveaway, because I knew it would neither help those who really needed help, nor do anything to help the economy overall. The money would disappear into a corporate black hole, spent on golden parachutes, luxury spa trips, and the proverbial ivory backscratchers. I have not been proven wrong. It is for the same reason that I oppose a giveaway to the auto industry: it won’t actually help the auto industry; just the CEOpaths at the top. Technically, I wind up in agreement with the Republicans, but for very different reasons.

Post-crisis, it is not the power of the unions that I desire to see broken, but the power of the antisocial bastards at the top.

gay secular fascist lives!

2008-11-17T20:16:00.000-08:00

Props to Newt Gingrinch for what may just become my tagline.

I know, I know: it seems like it’s been forever. It’s not like I didn’t want to post, but, when I reached for the keyboard, something stayed my hand. I suppose it was the feeling of shouting into a void, but fuck that: I’m old friends with the void.

So I’m back, and I promise nothing. If you’re curious, you can read the posts I wrote at aop where I geeked out about Star Wars, but those were a while ago as well.

What have I been up to? Why, playing Fallout 3, of course! I’ve been playing that game at a leisurely pace for weeks now, and I am nowhere close to finishing it; it’s so much fun that I only push the main storyline forward when I have to.

In between, I’ve been catching up on Battlestar Galactica episodes. My time in Korea put a crimp on keeping up with the series, so I’m trying to catch up – avoiding anything that smacks of a spoiler in the meantime.

Oh, and there’s work: an hour of productivity, following by a day of boredom and resentment. Yeah, I went to college and joined the Army so that I could become a secretary! That’s precisely why I applied for the job, even though the job description was completely different when I submitted my resume. (Though it is a job, and I do recognize that I am lucky to have it. It’s just inadvertently becoming the very thing I never wanted to be, in the shadow of the very thing I wanted to be, that bugs me. My life is governed by ironies.)

So here’s to gaydom, seculardom, and *cough* “fascism” – with a lot of geekdom tossed in for good measure! I missed skewering quite a lot of right-wing idiocy while I was away; I’ve got some catching up to do.

blah blah gay blah blah god blah blah fire

2008-11-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

According to this turtle-headed freak, “God” is so angry about the anti-Prop 8 protests in California that he has decided to set fire to people’s homes. Presumably, most of these homes were occupied by heteros with kids, so this seems rather counterproductive on Jehovah’s part – but the Great Sky Fairy has always been indiscriminate in his tantrums.

Seriously, though, I could ask, “Who thinks like this?” but I know that a great many people actually do think like that. Remember how the fundies blamed 9/11 on TEH GAYS, and then, a couple of years later, blamed Hurricane Katrina on TEH GAYS? Oh, and TEH GAYS are also responsible for the economic crisis, apparently.

That’s what religion does: it rots your brain from the inside-out, until you are ready to believe the most ridiculous things.

(Via Pam’s House Blend and Right Wing Watch.)

Body language.

2008-09-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I’m watching the debate.

My impression so far is that Barack Obama is doing much better. He has provided real answers to the moderator’s questions, regardless of what you think of those answers. John McCain, on the other hand, has been vague; when he has provided specific examples, they are almost irrelevant. He has made a couple of good points, but those are commonsense ideas that could have come from either candidate. He has also told multiple provable lies.

However, much more than the content of their speech, one thing in particular has stood out to me. That is the demeanor of the two candidates.

Obama has the appropriate debater’s stance. He appears open and energetic, and he divides his attention between the moderator, the audience, and his opponent. When he speaks to McCain, he looks at him; when McCain is speaking, Obama looks at him.

McCain will not look at Obama. He keeps himself turned away from his opponent. When Obama speaks to him, McCain keeps his head down or turned away. On the few occasions when he has spoken (semi-)directly to Obama, he doesn’t even look at him then. He even has his body turned away from Obama.

That is bizarre. It is either defensive or dismissive. Regardless, it is rude, and displays a lack of respect for his opponent. That violates one of the most basic rules of debating, in which both individuals, no matter their difference of opinion, treat each other with general respect.

McCain is a liar. By this point, his entire campaign is based on lies, which have come almost on a daily basis. It is remarkable that his behavior during the debate is that of a liar: the downcast eyes; the defensive physical posture; the refusal to look at his accuser directly.

So McCain is either displaying the characteristic behavior of someone feeling shame, or he is being intentionally disrespectful of his opponent. Either way, I can’t imagine how that could play well with a general audience, though I’m sure the right-wing racist Christofascist base will love it.

And then there is McCain’s death’s-head smirk.

TAGS: 2008 Presidential Debates, Barack Obama, John McCain

Up & down - a request.

2008-09-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

In August, I got a job. I had been unemployed since leaving the Army, and I was starting to get worried. I had my savings, but they would have run out eventually; what would I have done then?

Then I got the job. It was the one I had been hoping for, and it was more than halfway across the country. For the first time, I got to leave the place of my birth and irrelevance without shackles (the Army may be great in many ways, but it comes with many conditions that put restrictions on your life).

So I moved, and I like my job, my coworkers, and my new home. The only thing that I dislike is the drive to work in city traffic every morning. For the first time, it seems that things are starting to work out for me.

At the same time, two of my friends have suffered serious downturns in their own lives. One of those friends is a real-world, personal friend whom I have known for many years. The other is a virtual friend whom I have known for only about a year and a half, and then only through blog comments and email; nevertheless, I owe her a special debt of gratitude, and feel very close to her despite the fact that we will never meet in person.

It seems terribly unfair, though one could say that I’ve already experienced the suffering portion of life. Just a few years ago, everything in my life was different; my future was only a sliver of hope, and I had no idea what to do about things. If it had not been for my mother, I can imagine what would have happened – though I do not like to do so.

It is because I’ve been there that I believe the things that I do. I have watched religion fail those in need time and again, and I know that the only things we have to rely on is each other. I have seen the self-interest and indifference of those in positions of power, and I know that the hierarchy – any hierarchy – is always going to fail those who near the bottom. I have no confidence in the government to solve our problems in society, because the government is always incompetent – though some shades of governments are worse than others, and we should continue to fight against them.

We live in a world of particles and forces, and the only intelligence comes from our own brains. That is also the only source of goodness, just as it is also the only source of evil. I spent too much time trying to convince myself otherwise, so that I could rationalize the dichotomies in my life. Disillusionment was the result.

I don’t know what to do to help out my real-life friend. However, if anyone stops by and reads this, you can help out my virtual friend, Deb, by going to her fantastic site, clicking the PayPal button, and helping her save her mother. If there is anything else you can do, then please do it.

Remember: if we do not have each other, then we don’t have anything at all.

3 to 2, plus Chrome.

2008-09-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

I uninstalled Firefox 3 this week. It was a hard thing to do: to go back to FF2 after I'd gotten accustomed to many of the new features in FF3.

I had to do it, though, because FF3 was sloooooooooow. It took forever to start up, and then it would hang or even crash when I tried to do something. I tried everything I could think of: I thought maybe ZoneAlarm Forcefield could be causing the problem, so I shut it down. No effect. Reverting to FF2 has restored the speed I was used to, and I haven't lost any of the important features since Mozilla still hosts extensions compatible with the older version.

It's been a bad couple of weeks for browsers, actually. I thought I'd try out Google Chrome, but it crashed at install. Today, I've been getting errors from Blogger every time I tried to update my blog template; doing the same thing in Internet Explorer worked just fine (I keep IE around just for times like that).

Ugh, maybe it's time to clean the computer out. I certainly need to defrag the hard disk, but I've got a lot of software running that could go away without causing me any heartache. I have no intention of reinstalling Windows, but I should make a list of unnecessary applications and do some uninstalls. Maybe I could get Chrome to work then.

TAGS: Firefox, Chrome

Minimalism.

2008-09-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

I have been having problems with my blog templates.

"Open Threat" is not formatted properly. Blogger continually ignores my commands, so what you see on screen is not what I have selected behind the scenes. This is problematic: the design of the blog is very important to me, and I cannot be happy with it until it looks the way I want it to.

As you may or may not be aware, I recently closed my old blog, "(adventures of) Ponzo", and stripped it bare of all my old posts. You may or may not be aware of why I did this. Anyway, I decided to resurrect "adventures of Ponzo", and have been struggling with the template there as well. I never could get Disqus to work there, so "aoP" is running Intense Debate.

I have no idea why I am having this much trouble, and I have considered switching over to Wordpress. I like Blogger, however, because it gives me more and faster control over the template, and Blogspot is a more widely used host. If my recent tinkering has worked, then I should have trackbacks installed for Blogger (use Greasemonkey and the script you can find here).

As far as the two blogs go, I am going to post to both of them for the time being. I will decide which one to keep eventually. I know that this probably falls into the category of "theatrics", and I apologize; what happened a couple of months ago happened at the worst possible time. It caused me to overreact, but I think it also gave me an opportunity to reassess the attitude I had had with this whole blogging thing.

And so it begins anew.

2008-09-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

I came back online last week. I’ve not posted, though. I wish I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy, but that’s only partly true. The main reason is that I’ve just felt overwhelmed lately by the present state of affairs in America and the world.

It feels like trying to dig yourself out of a mountain of shit with a toy shovel, while every shovelful of shit you manage to displace results in many times that amount being added in its place.

The sheer mendacity and malevolence of the Republican Party is only to be expected. Is it not John McCain’s daily lies, but that so many Americans are prepared to believe them. It is not the shallow Christian corruption of Sarah Palin, but that so many Americans have been distracted by McCain’s new shiny thing. Polls now show a tight presidential race: how could this be? Are people so blind? Are they so stupid? Are they so evil?

Sure, it might not be that way if not for the fecklessness of the Democrats. Barack Obama has had so many chances to prove himself the better candidate (and, next to McCain, he remains such), but he has failed again and again. Once he got the nomination, another Obama arose to take the place of the first one. For me, it was his vote on the FISA bill that did it. I swore after that that he had lost my vote; if McCain were not such a fucking mess, that might still be true.

For the record, I have been unimpressed by Obama and the Democratic Party since that fateful vote. Obama is not a “progressive”, nor is he a “leftist” or a “socialist” or a “Marxist”. I am all of those things, to varying degrees, and he can only disappoint. I am also an atheist, and the Democratic embrace of religiosity at the DNC did not go over well with me. Like we needed anymore, that was just more evidence that the Democrats are “Republicans-lite”; there is no left-wing in American politics.

It’s enough to make you want to throw up your hands and walk away from it in disgust. We Americans live in the wealthiest country in the world, which shares far too many vital statistics in common with third-world countries. If this election goes the wrong way, then that will be it for America’s relevance in the world; the country at that point will exist only to be feared and hated, to fear and hate.

John Edwards always talked about “two Americas”. I never really liked Edwards, but at least I can say that that precluded any disappointment on my part regarding his affair. He was right about the “two Americas” thing, though. How can you tell the difference between the two? One of them doesn’t have to surrender their civil rights to get on an airplane.

So, this has been my “back from hiatus” post. Not quite as brief as I had originally intended, but it got the job done. Now I can write without having to explain my absence (though I will do that soon).

Some chick from Alaska? Seriously?!

2008-08-29T16:53:00.000-07:00

I know that sounds horribly sexist, but come on! You know John McCain did not pick Sarah Palin as his running mate because of his deep and enduring respect for feminism. Palin is Dan Quayle with a vagina.

What I mean by that is that Quayle was selected as the running mate of George H.W. Bush not because of his qualifications, but because he was a (supposed) pretty face meant to woo women. Palin is intended to woo a particular kind of woman: Hillary Clinton’s professionally disaffected supporters – aka, the PUMA people.

Palin is a stunt. A 42-year-old, one-term congressperson from Alaska who doesn’t even know what the VP job entails. This, from a campaign that cannot stop taking potshots at Barack Obama’s supposed lack of experience. McCain has met her only once; there is no way that he could consider her a legitimate VP nominee. It is only that “special” qualification between the legs that matters, though, to a campaign and a party (and a political movement) that seems to grow more and more childish by the day.

The sad thing is that the Palin stunt just might work. The PUMA people are so petty and vindictive in their anger that they have promised to vote for McCain out of spite. This, even though they’ve pretty much demonstrated they have no clue what the man’s positions actually are. McCain hates Obama, too; that’s good enough for them.

TAGS: Sarah Palin, John McCain, Vice President, 2008 Presidential Election

Hiatus

2008-08-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Just temporary, I assure you.

You see, I am going to be moving. Halfway across the country, as a matter of fact. My first concern once arriving at my new home will be to find somewhere to live. Once that's taken care of, I will arrange to have internet access installed, because I cannot stand to be away from it for too long. It may be a couple of weeks before I'm online again.

I know I promised the third part in my creationism series, but I just haven't been able to work on it. It will be some time in September before it is posted. My apologies if you were looking forward to it.

I will let you know when I'm back online. See you soon-ish.

Racism and creationism series - update.

2008-08-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

My post on Pangaea and Creation was accepted for the current issue of the Carnival of the Godless at Letters from a Broad.

The third part in my series was originally planned for this weekend. I’ve not had time to work on it, though, so it might be a couple more days before it is posted. It is my favorite of the three, though, and pulls a lot together, so a quick, shoddy job just won’t do. It will be worth the wait, though. No hints this time.

TAGS: Carnival of the Godless, Evolution, Creationism

Racism and creationism (part two of a series).

2008-08-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Part one in this series can be read here.
...

Contemporary creationists would have you believe that they represent a line of thought that stretches back for millennia. In fact, creationism is a relatively modern development, having emerged at the end of the 19^th century. This same period saw the rise of Christian fundamentalism, another unique development in the history of Christianity.

It is true that earlier Christians had regarded the Biblical account of creation as true. However, post-Reformation Christian theologians and philosophers had been surprisingly open-minded in their approach to scripture. When empirical evidence contradicted their understanding of the Bible, they regarded themselves as having failed to interpret it correctly. For them, it was not a choice between Biblical literalism and scientific evidence. They would exhibit a theological humility that fundamentalism and creationism would utterly reject.

Creationism is merely an aspect of fundamentalism, in which every word of the Bible (even the parts that contradict the other parts) is regarded as literally true. Fundamentalism arises when a culture undergoes a sudden and massive change that undermines its prior social position. Such change may come from internal or external forces, but it always involves a rejection of modernity and rationalism. Creationism represented just such a flight from reason. It would drive the development of fundamentalism, and would remain its most fervent ideal.

Creationism arose as a cultural force in the post-Civil War south. Prior to the Civil War, the southern economy had been based on the slavery of black Africans. To rationalize this form of slavery, southerners had internalized the belief that whites were inherently superior to blacks. The form of Christianity to which they subscribed had adapted to fit this social system – for instance, it had magnified the importance of two Old Testament concepts in particular to justify racial inequality: the “Mark of Cain” and the “Curse of Ham”.

The south’s defeat in the Civil War may have ended slavery as a legal institution in America, but it did not bring to an end a racism that had become so deeply ingrained in southern culture that it formed the foundation of white southern identity. Thus, following the withdrawal of federal troops from the south, white southerners would reinstitute slavery in the form of the convict lease (chain gang) system and racial segregation.

Their defeat in the Civil War, however, had shaken their confidence, and the growing popularity of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was a threat to their very identity. If Darwin were correct, then whites and blacks were biologically equal; worse yet, they were related via a common ancestor, and shared the same developmental lineage. For a culture that regarded even a single drop of “black blood” to be an indicator of inferiority, this was an outrage.

Creationism developed in the racial miasma of the late 19^th-century south, and emerged fully formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Creationists manipulated the law in many states to prohibit the teaching of evolutionary theory, and were prepared when John Scopes went on trial for teaching evolution in 1925. In the decades since, creationism would serve as the spearhead of Christian fundamentalism.

The Civil Rights Movement would threaten southern identity once again in the decades following World War II. Newly divorced from the Democratic Party (which white southerners had embraced en masse following their defeat by Republicans during the Civil War), racist white southerners would be wooed by a very different incarnation of the Republican Party in the sixties. The Southern Strategy would result in an influx of racists into the Republican Party, who brought their fundamentalist beliefs with them, and gave them a national stage for their ideas.

The goal of the fundamentalist movement was nothing less than a return to an idealized past in which its ideals were supreme – a goal shared in common with all varieties of fundamentalism. As its most emotional issue, creationism was used in an attempt to attract followers outside the fundamentalist base. Until this point, creationists had primarily worked at the local and state levels; they would continue to do so, of course, but their new access to the Republican political apparatus allowed them to make creationism a national issue for the first time.

Open expressions of racism were no longer socially acceptable, and an open message would have worked against the fundamentalist agenda anyway. Creationism was overhauled so that its racist core was no longer obvious, but its origins in racial hatred remained lurking below the surface. The Ku Klux Klan had embraced creationism openly during its heyday, and modern white supremacists would do the same. Creationists willing to endorse continental drift in an effort to avoid an African origin do the same. Creationists continue to use the term “monkey” to refer disparagingly to human ancestors; this is a rather obvious “dog-whistle”, as is obvious from even a cursory perusal of racist propaganda from throughout the 20^th century.

Of course, most people who endorse creationist beliefs do not do so out of racism. In a terrible irony, even a large segment of traditionalist black Christians endorse creationism. Although these individuals are not motivated by racism themselves, they have endorsed a belief that arose from hatred, and serve the interests of religious leaders who know full well the implications of their beliefs.

TAGS: Evolution, Creationism, Fundamentalism, Racism

Correction to "Evangelicals and their voting preferences".

2008-08-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

It appears that I made an important error in my last post describing the findings of a survey by the Barna Group. My error did not affect my ultimate conclusion. However, I did mischaracterize the nature of the Barna Group itself, and I would like to correct that here.

In doing my research, I did not do third-party research into the Barna Group. That was a mistake. Therefore, I overlooked a very important fact: the Barna Group itself is an “evangelical” organization. The Wikipedia entry of its founder, George Barna, describes the group’s position as follows:

The Barna Group conducts opinion polls, which are generally interpreted from an evangelical perspective, and often cited within evangelical circles. His research has revealed "a radical gap between what we heard Christians professing they believed and the values and the lifestyle that grew out of the values.” [Emphasis in original]

That is supposed to be favorable. Indeed, the entire entry is written to be sympathetic toward Barna, and yet its content is damning. It describes someone who targets children for proselytization due to their “spiritual vulnerability”, and who rejects anyone whose views of Christianity do not align with his own views (he has even penned a book entitled Pagan Christianity to describe such individuals).

I was wrong in ascribing legitimacy to the Barna Group; it is, instead, a prime example of the fundamental propaganda program blurring the lines between extremist and mainstream Christianity. The Barna Group is not attempting to dispel the illusion that fundamentalist Christians are more numerous than their vocal activism would suggest; instead, it is conducting a test of ideological purity. Nonetheless, the results of its survey confirm that the beliefs it represents appear to be a diminishing social factor in the United States.

TAGS: 2008 Presidential Election, Christianity, Fundamentalist Christians, Evangelical Christians, Barna Group Survey

Evangelicals and their voting preferences.

2008-08-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Important correction to this post. Please see here for additional information about the Barna Group.

...

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist looks at the results of the latest political survey conducted by the Barna Group. The survey breaks down voters into religious groups and asks them who they are planning to vote for in November (and if they intend to vote). Mehta provides a useful chart breaking down the numbers in the survey. It shows that every religious group, including atheists and agnostics, tilt heavily in favor of Barack Obama, except for one group: evangelical Christians.

The Barna Groups breaks down the evangelical results into two categories, based on whether they self-identify as evangelicals, or whether the Barna Group classes them as such. Both groups lean toward McCain, but there is an interesting disparity between them.

Among self-identified evangelicals, 37% report that they will vote for Obama, while 39% say they will vote for McCain, with 23% undecided.

Among those classified by evangelicals by the Barna Group, only 17% report that they will vote for Obama, while 61% say they will vote for McCain, with only 14% undecided.

Also interesting, using self-identification, almost 40% of Americans adults consider themselves evangelical, whereas, using the Barna Group’s questions, only 8% fit that definition. Among the first group, 83% say they will vote in November, while 90% of the latter say they will vote.

These are staggering differences, and they raise a number of questions. The questions themselves are rather non-controversial, and I would imagine even a large number of mainstream Christians would answer them in the affirmative:

Say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today

Indicate they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior

Say their faith is very important in their life today

Believe they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians

Believe that Satan exists

Believe that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works

Believe that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth

Assert that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches

Describe God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today

Being classed as an evangelical is not dependent upon church attendance or the denominational affiliation of the church attended.

A number of scenarios come to mind to account for the discrepancy. It is possible that there is bias in the Barna Group’s results. However, if that were the case, it would seem to be working against the Christian ministries they represent. Bias could only be found if one were claiming them to be intentionally underreporting the percentage of evangelicals in America, but, as you read above, the questions they ask are non-controversial, and would point away from this possibility.

I also considered that evangelicals may be falsely reporting their affiliation and voting preferences in order to skew the results; I have referred to fundamentalist Christianity as a reactionary cultural movement in the past, and this would not surprise me. However, if that were the case, then one would expect the results to be even more biased in favor of McCain. Even if McCain is not particularly popular among evangelicals, his positions would certainly be more in line with their own.

The only reasonable conclusion bears out something that I have asserted for some time, and the reason that I do not use the term “evangelical” to refer to right-wing, activist Christians myself: there is a difference between fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. Evangelicals represent a much broader range of social views than fundamentalists, and are more tolerant, open-minded, and respectful of the views of others. The blogger Slacktivist is one such evangelical who has nothing in common with the hard-liners.

Fundamentalist Christians, long known as the Religious Right or Christian Right, are a different breed altogether. The inheritors of the reactionary social movement that arose from the union of white southern segregationists with the Republican Party in the 1960s, they constitute a vocal and dangerous cultural movement. Their preference for John McCain, whose opposition to abortion and gay rights fits into their social agenda, makes him their preferred candidate, and their overwhelming intention to vote indicates their activist bent.

Furthermore, fundamentalists have made a concerted effort to have themselves identified as representatives of “normal” Christianity, blurring the line between themselves and more numerous mainstream Christians. Given that their activities have caused the term “fundamentalist” to take on negative connotations, they have attempted in recent years to rebrand themselves as the more moderate-sounding “evangelical”. It is unfortunate that outside groups, from the Barna Group to the Pew Forum, have fallen for this in an attempt to avoid giving (manufactured) offense.

What this study reveals is that the core of the fundamentalist Christian movement is in tatters. Only 8% of Americans can be classified as belonging to it, using even the broadest and least damning criteria. They still possess a lot of power, but their social influence has diminished considerably. This should be heartening for people who hope for a better future for America.

TAGS: 2008 Presidential Election, Christianity, Fundamentalist Christians, Evangelicals, Barna Group Survey

One from the vaults: From Neuromancer to the Singularity.

2008-08-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

This post was originally written over a year ago. It serves as a great foundation for future posts on the cyberpunk genre and technological change. I am republishing it with only a couple of minor edits.

...

The foundations of cyberpunk were laid in the late seventies (though precursors go all the way back to the fifties - e.g., Alfred Bester). However, William Gibson's Neuromancer, published in 1984, was the archetypal cyberpunk novel. Ironically, as much as Neuromancer was responsible for the development of the cyberpunk genre, it also laid the seeds of its decline; few of the later authors to work in the genre would go beyond the tropes established in Neuromancer, and the genre would become overwhelmed by its cliches.

As much as Gibson wrote the archetypal cyberpunk novel, Neal Stephenson wrote the ultimate one: Snow Crash. Stephenson then wrote the archetypal postcyberpunk novel, The Diamond Age. Unlike cyberpunk, which was typically set in a relatively concrete future, postcyberpunk novels, if set in the future at all, take an ironic approach - e.g., Charles Stross.

Throughout most of the history of science fiction, authors have predicted the future in a very linear fashion. For example, during the fifties, it was commonplace for authors to predict space travel and flying cars as common elements of the future. Forget that flying cars are a terrible idea anyway, and that space travel fizzled out because it was boring; other than these elements, the future for these authors was little different from their present. Even in the cyberpunk of the eighties, the future was still a linear development of the present. However, predicting the future has gotten very difficult.

Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave was the bible of the cyberpunk movement. In this book, Toffler analyzed the history of human civilization and how it was affected by technological development. Each major technological advance set in motion a "wave of change" that radically altered society. The first wave was the Agrarian Revolution; the second was the Industrial Revolution. The focus of the book was on the Third Wave, which would be driven by the development of computers and information technology; the Internet is one of its direct results. The thing was that the waves were occurring at an ever-accelerating pace: the Agrarian Revolution had taken perhaps 200,000 years, whereas the Industrial Revolution happened less than 2000 years later. The Third Wave happened only a couple of hundred years.

What this meant was that the Fourth Wave would likely happen in only a couple of decades; in fact, the Fourth Wave would happen even before the Third was complete. The Fifth Wave would occur almost immediately. It would no longer be possible to predict what the future would look like.

Add to this confusion Gordon E. Moore. Moore's Law states (very roughly) that computers will grow more powerful at a geometric rate, doubling their computing power with every generation, while every generation would last only half as long. Eventually, this rate of development would reach infinity; by analogy with black holes, this event was named the technological singularity. Just as it is impossible to predict what happened beyond the event horizon of a black hole (a gravitational singularity), it is impossible to predict what will happen after the "event horizon" of a technological singularity.

Vernor Vinge (who coined the term "technological singularity") originally predicted its occurrence around 2030. Ray Kurzweil also used this date. However, Eliezer Judkowsky of the Singularity Institute considers this time frame conservative, and predicts that the Singularity will occur around 2021. Thus, we are perhaps only a decade away from the point at which human civilization and human nature itself undergo the most radical change yet.

This, I believe, is responsible for the recent dearth of science fiction dealing with the future. Even pioneers Gibson and Stephenson have turned their sights elsewhere - Gibson to the present, and Stephenson to the past (though both continue to brink a (post)cyberpunk style to their material). It is also responsible for the resurgent popularity of fantasy in literature and film.

TAGS: Science-Fiction, Books, Cyberpunk, Singularity

Presidents gone wild!

2008-08-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

This picture is going to be all over the internet – well, the liberal part of it, anyway – tomorrow. It’s our beloved George W. holding up the American flag at the Beijing Olympics…backwards. Duh!

I’ll let others fret endlessly over the flag itself. I want to draw your attention elsewhere, to this woman at the bottom:

Look at the expression of surprise on her face!

Just what is George doing with his penis?

TAGS: George W Bush, Beijing Olympics, American flag, Backwards flag

Pangaea and creationism (part one in a series).

2008-08-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

Part two in this series can be read here.
...

Last month, Deb linked to an article at Scientific American about a DNA study tracing the migration patterns humans across the earth. The study itself was uncontroversial, merely providing additional support for something that has been known for over a century: that humans originated in Africa, and, from there, spread across the globe.

Deb was bemused and angered by some of the commenters on the SciAm article. You see, it didn’t take long before the creationist pile-on began. In only the third comment, one commenter rejects out of hand the African origin of humanity; in the next post, he or she “explains” his or her “reasoning”, in an incoherent comment which mostly revolves around oil deposits in Asia. Near the end, however, he or she makes an oblique reference to a theory that would seem out of place in creationism: Pangaea.

It may come as a surprise, but some creationists have embraced the theory of continental drift – and Pangaea in particular – to support their beliefs. To be fair, not all creationists subscribe to this idea. However, it appears to be popular enough to warrant a response from numerous creationist organizations.

According to these “tectonic creationists”, two verses in Genesis refer specifically to Pangaea and continent drift. The first of these is Genesis 1:9, which reads:

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

[Emphasis mine] This is said to refer to Pangaea. The second verse is Genesis 10:25, which reads:

And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

[Emphasis mine] This is said to refer to continental drift. It takes little effort to explain why all this is nonsense. The first verse cited is severely distorted by this brand of creationist, and the second is taken wildly out of context. Genesis 1:9 refers rather simply to God forming order out of chaos, a commonplace motif in Near and Middle Eastern religions. Genesis 10:25 refers not to a literal division of the terrestrial landmass, but to the social upheaval that occurred in the wake of the events at Babel.

Why creationists would embrace Pangaea and continental drift to argue against evolution? After all, neither of these concepts fits easily into the Biblical framework; they must be shoehorned in, and mutilated in the process. Just for starters, Pangaea was not the “original” supercontinent, but only the latest in a long series of supercontinents; nor will it be the last. Furthermore, plate tectonics is driven by incredibly violent energies below the earth’s crust; if these were released within the span of a single human lifetime, they would destroy all life on the planet.

It is true that creationists have been forced to mutilate other ideas in order to fit them into the fundamentalist framework. Creationists typically deny the true age of the universe by claiming that the speed of light has slowed since the time of creation. There is a difference between the speed of light and plate tectonics, however: the former is obvious, whereas plate tectonics is non-obvious and could easily be ignored within the context of a 6000-year old earth. Dragging the latter theory into the mix does the creationist no favors, and makes him look rather desperate in the process.

Finally, as I mentioned above, plate tectonics and continental drift are non-obvious phenomena, and most people could go their entire lives without having the slightest inkling that the continents move around. The evidence in favor of these theories is conclusive, but hardly the sort of evidence that demands everyday attention.

In contrast, evolution by natural selection is supported by an extraordinary amount of evidence, and new evidence accumulates daily. Evolution has successfully passed the many tests to which it has been put, and it has made reliable predictions for both laboratory and real-world settings. Furthermore, evolution is rather obvious, and Darwin’s theory was only one in a long series of theories that attempted to explain the biological similarities in nature – earlier theories that, I must add, did not result in the same level of controversy Darwin’s received.

Obviously, creationists find evolution offensive in a way that they do not find plate tectonics. The latter theory is impersonal; it says nothing about human nature. Evolution, on the other hand, does address human nature, and it was not long after the theory was proposed that one of its implication for human origins was understood. It was this implication that led to the development of modern creationism, and that drove its development for nearly a century. Pangaea and continental drift are merely the latest attempt to avoid facing that implication, one that most people accepted long ago.

I will discuss that implication in my next post in this series, but I will give you a hint: it involves blood – specifically, one drop of it.

TAGS: Evolution, Creationism, Pangaea, Continental drift, Plate tectonics

Primary and secondary purposes: just not getting the difference.

2008-08-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

John Gruber provides an analysis and comparison of recent memos from Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer. He’s mainly interested in the style of the memos, but I noticed something revealing in an except he provides from Ballmer’s.

In discussing Google, Ballmer makes the following statement:

We continue to compete with Google on two fronts — in the enterprise, where we lead; and in search, where we trail. In search, our technology has come a long way in a very short time and it’s an area where we’ll continue to invest to be a market leader. Why? Because search is the key to unlocking the enormous market opportunities in advertising, and it is an area that is ripe for innovation.

[Emphasis mine] No. Search is about search. As in, searching for information. That is the first and foremost purpose of a search engine, and it is why users use them. Users do not turn to Google – or any other site – to be served ads.

That is something that Google understood from the start, and that Microsoft – and a host of other companies – simply do not get.

Google does offer ads on its search pages (and in other services, such as Gmail). They are simple textual ads, though. They do not affect the speed with which the page loads, or distract from the primary purpose of the page. They can be easily ignored while the user does what he or she visited the page to do.

Other companies, however, regard content as secondary to advertising. It is noteworthy that, on many pages all over the internet, the ads load first, followed by the content – the reason you went to the page in the first place. Sometimes, a flash ad will then pop up over the content. Even short magazine articles are divided over multiple pages: each page loads more ads.

And this problem is not just limited to the internet. Television has become a platform primarily for serving advertisements; programming is secondary (and often hidden behind an annoying animated ad).

For all its faults, Google understood that forcing users to view advertisements is not the way to attract them. The advertisers may have the big money, but it is users who have the eyeballs advertisers are seeking. Disrespecting users by treating them not as individuals, but as resources to be exploited, will only drive them away. Eventually, the eyes glaze over the ads; there are too many to keep up with, and they all disappear as noise in the background.

Customers, whether they be computer users or TV viewers, will find alternatives to ad-laden sites or channels. In online search, that alternative was Google, which displaced prior king Yahoo, which was very useful until the ads became more important than the search itself.

In summary, Google did not get where it is because people use its services to view its ads. The ads are peripheral to the experience, and do not distract from it. If I had my way, there would be no ads at all (actually, I do have my way; thank you, AdBlock Plus and Customize Google), but I am more than willing to live with ads that treat me like a person, instead of just an itchy index finger.

Until Microsoft learns that, it will never dethrone Google. And the same goes for every company that treats content as secondary to advertising. All those advertising dollars drive the user away. You may think that’s a smart strategy in the short term, but, in a few years when you are an also-ran, you’ll realize that all the ads in the world are of no value if there is no one there to see them.

TAGS: Advertising, Microsoft, Search Engines

Lesson learned the hard way:

2008-08-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

Do not put a plastic shipping envelope in a shredder, no matter if it looks like it will go through or not.

I got the shredder working again, but it took two hours of using a knife, scissors, a screwdriver, and a pair of tweezers to get all the little shreds of plastic unwound from around the blades.

And I still have a pile of old papers to shred.

I won't be making that mistake again.

Faces everywhere.

2008-08-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

Let’s take for granted for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth, aka, Jesus Christ, did exist. What then would be the odds that he was blond-haired and blue-eyed, as depicted in the picture in my last post (under the toast)?

Virtually none?

I’d go into it in more depth, but Brandon at the aptly named MyNameIsBrandon has already covered the topic more than adequately. I’d rather write about pareidolia.

Pareidolia refers to seeing an image, usually vague, in essentially random information. Multiple explanations have been offered to explain the phenomenon, but it seems to be rooted in the pattern-recognition faculties hard-wired into the human brain. Brains do not analyze every bit of information available from the environment; that would be extremely slow and usually wasteful of energy. Instead, the brain “samples” the information in the environment and attempts to fit it to a pre-existing pattern. That works well enough most of the time, though it leaves us susceptible to illusions.

Pareidolia is just such an illusion. It often takes the form of seeing a face, given the importance of faces in human development. Carl Sagan hypothesized that babies predisposed to recognize the faces of their parents would be more likely to survive. Faces also play a central role in learning, as students picks up visual cues from the expressions of their teachers.

Thus, we are very likely to see faces, and it takes very little information to produce a “face pattern” – a couple of dots for eyes and a line for the mouth, inside a roughly oval or circular outline. So we see a “man in the moon”. (Actually, I never saw it until a high-contract illustration pointed out what I was supposed to be seeing.) East Asians, by the way, see a rabbit. UFO enthusiasts and New Age types see a “face on Mars”, though they had to get all conspiratorial after later photographs showed the formation to be just a mesa.

Catholics see Jesus and Mary everywhere they turn. Protestants also see Jesus, but not so much Mary. Mary has appeared on the side of a building, on a fence, in a window, on a tree stump, in a grilled cheese sandwich, on the wall of a freeway underpass, on a piece of firewood, in an accumulation of chocolate drippings, in a piece of paneling, on a pizza tray, in a watermelon, and on a pebble.

Jesus joined his mother by appearing on a pretzel, and went on to appear by himself on a floorboard, on a wall, in the clouds, on a tortilla, on a Pizza Hut billboard, in a tree, on a brick, in a nebula, on a dental X-ray, in a frying pan, in a window, on a rock, on another rock, in some paint, in a shower, on a truck, in a fish bone, on a piece of pierogi, on a piece of sheet metal, in a hot chocolate spill, in a shrimp tail dinner, in a Chihuahua’s ear, in a couch, and in a bag of Doritos. Also, in a special appearance as his infant self, he appeared on a snail shell.

What do these pareidolic Jesuses have in common? They look like the one in that abysmal painting. Mary always looks like the one in another painting. If Jesus is hanging on a cross, it looks like still another painting. In the same way, when Christians (mostly Catholics) used to experience stigmata, they bled from the palms of their hands, just like it showed in all the paintings. After it was determined that the bones and ligaments in the hands are incapable of supporting the weight of the human body, and that Jesus would have had to be nailed to the cross through his wrists, the stigmata shifted to their newly assigned location.

Rather than seeing images of Jesus (or bleeding like Jesus) in a historically probable fashion, what these Christians see (or bleed) matches the cues in their environment. This strongly implies that these incidents are not “genuine” religious experiences; if they were, they would be independent of traditional Eurocentric stimuli. In the case of Mars-face enthusiasts, the pareidolia is often simply a case of wish-fulfillment, though severe cases may imply delusional tendencies.

The case would be complete – that pareidolia results from facial recognition faculties – if it weren’t for another species of pareidolia which throws a kink in it.

Muslims don’t see faces. The Quran forbids depictions of Mohammed, and God – i.e., Allah – is incorporeal. The Quran, however, does not prohibit writing their names, and Muslims go out of their way to write those names on everything, from mosques, to flags, to weapons and armor. So it should come as no surprise that, when Muslims experience pareidolia, they do not see images of their holy figures, but their names written in Arabic.

It doesn’t hurt that Arabic writing is cursive – that is, it consists of squiggly lines (which is not an insult; cursive Latin writing also consists of squiggly lines). Arabic is also highly mutable, and Arabic calligraphy has developed into an art form of its own. There are also far fewer squiggles in Arabic, supplemented by a lot of dots. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination, then, to see the name Allah (which is quite simple: three characters) or Mohammed (four characters).

So we have examples of Mohammed on the side of a sheep, and Allah inside a piece of beef, in some beans, in a tomato, on a fish, and on an egg. Oh, and on the other side that same sheep.

And, of course, there’s the monkey tree, a multi-faith pareidolic opportunity.

As for me, I see faces everywhere (except on the moon, oddly enough). Don’t tell that to my shrink, though. Pareidolia may be commonplace, but it it’s not Jesus, you might find yourself in a straitjacket.

TAGS: Pareidolia, Illusions, Pattern recognition Religion, Religious imagery, Psychology

In honor of pareidolia:

2008-08-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

Atheist Sees Toast in Picture of Jesus

TAGS: Pareidolia, Christianity, Jesus, Toast

The box.

2008-08-07T14:41:00.001-07:00

This is a “sweatbox”. It and other such “boxes” were used to punish prisoners, primarily those assigned to chain gangs, and primarily in the southern

United States

. When confined in such a tight space in hot conditions, a prisoner will rapidly experience dehydration; this was not a side-effect, but the very purpose of such confinement. Similar devices were specifically intended for the purpose of torture, as discussed in this article about Vietnamese POW camps.

This image comes from a timeline posted on the website of the Florida Department of Corrections; the accompanying text reads:

The infamous sweat box is a small enclosure, so small a single man barely had enough room to sit. A man could stand up and would often stay in the box for two days with two or three other men.

The use of the sweatbox was ruled inhumane decades ago, but its illicit use continues. This article discusses the use of such a sweatbox in 1998 to punish a judicial critic in Alabama.

According to CNN, the US military has released images of what it calls “segregation boxes” used to confine Iraqi prisoners. The Raw Story has video showing all three released images. The boxes measure as little as three feet by six feet, making lying down impossible and sitting difficult. It is hard not to see these pictures and not immediately think of sweatboxes and the abusive chain-gang system with which they were associated.

US military spokespeople avoid the issue of whether the use of such boxes constitutes torture; the spokesman quoted in the Raw Story article merely assures us that prisoners receive food, water, and access to toilets. Then again, the same was largely true of chain-gang prisoners, and few would dispute that the device then constituted torture. A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch is quoted as expressing concern over prisoners held in such devices under conditions of extreme heat, but, once again, we are reminded that that was their historical purpose.

Do I even have to mention that, in the US south as in Iraq, the people who spent most of the time in such devices were a shade darker than the people who locked them inside?

It is remarkable that such devices could be used without anyone in a position of authority being outraged over the historical parallels. This is what happens when the people in charge are utterly lacking in morals; they know the history of these devices, but they just don’t care.

TAGS: Iraq War, Torture

FeedBurner sucks.

2008-08-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

FeedBurner does not work.

If you have subscribed to this blog using FeedBurner, and - somehow - receive this post, please use another method to subscribe. I recommend using the Atom link at the bottom of the page, the Subscribe link in Firefox 3, or the custom Subscription link available for Google Reader under the Goodies tab (go to Settings, click the Goodies tab, and simply drag the Subscription link to your toolbar).

I have been testing FeedBurner by using its feed as well as the Atom feed. The Atom feed is much faster, and the FeedBurner feed still hasn't delivered my last post. (Theoretically, FeedBurner should be using the Atom feed itself, so I have no idea what it is doing.) I assure you that I inserted the FeedBurner code according to the instructions (I will delete in in a week's time, after this post has had time to propagate (assuming it does so)).

FeedBurner has failed to respond to my request for help, left on their discussion board over a week ago. I do not expect this problem to be resolved.

I have deleted the FeedBurner link, and will explore other easy subscription options. Personally, I prefer the Google Reader subscription link (under Goodies), but that only applies if you are using Google Reader.

I have no idea how many readers this will affect, since FeedBurner has provided different subscriber tallies every day I've used it. I would like to offer my apologies for any inconvenience; though the problem originates with FeedBurner, it was I who chose to use it. I regret that choice now.

My apologies...

2008-08-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

...to anyone who has been waiting for a new post. As I mentioned last week, my back was killing me. That seems to have passed, fortunately: I went back to sleeping on the floor, making me wonder if I will ever get it through my head that, no matter how comfy the bed may be, the floor is still better for the back.

I've also felt uninspired. That's not to say that big and important things have not happened recently, but none have captured my imagination. I do have two articles in draft form, but I've decided to do additional research on one; the other is part of a massive project, and I can't decide the best way to start.

I'll be back shortly. Until then, please try to carry on as if there weren't a great, gaping hole in your reading day.

Securing the borders to secure the presidency.

2008-08-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a clarification of its rules regarding the seizure of laptop computers at the

border. Anyone entering or leaving the United States may have his or her laptop searched, without evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing. The contents of the laptop’s hard drive may be copied for later analysis. The laptop itself may be seized and removed to another location for further analysis.

Absurdly, the agency claims that this did not violate the privacy of Americans!

The rationale provided for this draconian procedure is that it is intended to fight terrorism. Of course, everything nowadays is intended to fight terrorism, no matter how invasive and outlandish. Take, for instance, the Transportation Safety Administration’s idea of forcing all airline passengers to wear a bracelet that would deliver a Taser-like electrical shock in the event of an attempted hijacking. In the end, that idea was rejected as going too far.

Even if we were to grant the premise that such seizure is intended to “fight terrorism”, then it is remarkably shortsighted. Ignoring the probability that terrorists would encrypt any incriminating data on their hard drives, there is still the option of the internet. There are many companies which offer secure online data storage for a nominal fee; the data can be accessed anywhere in the world, and cannot be seized at any border; and proxy servers and anonymizing software would prevent its interdiction. Many of the servers that host this storage are located in countries outside the reach of US law and cannot be investigated or shut down.

In short, the seizure of laptops would do nothing to prevent an attack by even semi-competent terrorists. It will only inconvenience, harass, and invade the privacy of ordinary, innocent persons.

And that is the point.

There has not been another attempted terrorist attack on the United States by foreign – a.k.a., Muslim – extremists since 2001. My basis for that assertion is simple: if there had been such an attempt, the Bush administration would have wasted no time in using it for political gain.

The absence of such an effort means that the administration has had nothing to work with except the vague threat of terrorism in order to rationalize its continuing assault on civil liberties. Without a legitimate threat of terrorism, it has had to resort to security theater. In the beginning, such theater was relatively minor and harmless: color-coded threat levels, for instance, or bans on liquids in carry-on bags. Like an addiction, however, the theatrics have become more and more invasive.

The TSA only toyed with the idea of electrical shock bracelets, but it did install full-body scanners that produce images of travelers’ naked bodies. The “no-fly list” has grown to include over a million names, at least some of them being the names of persons who have merely expressed criticism of the program. The government has maintained its program of warrantless wiretapping, using terrorism as its justification, and has resisted any efforts to impede what are obvious show trials of alleged terrorists.

These actions on the part of the Bush administration and its agencies have nothing to do with keeping America safe, but that was never their purpose. Over the past eight years, the Bush administration has increased the power of the executive branch to despotic levels. Bush has elevated himself and his associates above the rule of US law, while creating petty tyrannies in the form of the DHS, TSA, and other agencies. To enable this power grab, terrorism was used as a one-size-fits-all rationale.

It is no coincidence that the terror alert level has recently been raised to fuchsia – or whatever – and that the DHS has rolled out its new laptop seizure procedures. The threat of terrorism was used to win support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and to ensure a Bush re-election in 2004. Its main purpose now is to secure the presidency for John McCain in November.

TAGS: Terrorism, Security Theater, Homeland Security, Laptop Seizure, Bush Administration

Fragment: Planet Terror.

2008-08-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

My back has been killing me today, and I’ve not been in the mood to write. Fortunately for you, heh, I wrote this yesterday. It’s pretty much finished; it just doesn’t have a proper conclusion. Think of it as one of those Lovecraftian fragments: if I put it all together, you’d go mad. Mad, I tell you!

…

Of course, sometimes blood and guts, explosions, violent car chases, and frantic gunplay have their play. You see, I also had Planet Terror in my Netflix Queue.

The plot, in a nutshell:

ZOMBIES!!!!!

Oh, you want more detail, do you? Whiner.

Go-go dancer Cherry decides to quit her job. Unfortunately, she chooses the same night that a weapons dealer unleashes a plague on the town where she lives. Not that would have made much of a difference if she hadn’t quit, though. Her mysterious ex-boyfriend shows up in town that night, too. There is also a psychotic doctor and his adulterous wife, and a guy who runs a barbecue restaurant. The plague creates zombies throughout the town, and the survivors fight back. They run into a psychotic Army colonel and his psychotic henchmen, and fight back some more.

The thing about Planet Terror is that, if it had been played straight, it would have been a good but otherwise ordinary zombie movie. With its over-the-top violence, quirky plot, and ridiculous situations, however, it is not only a prime example of the genre, but also a parody of it. The movie was one half of Grindhouse, the double-feature released last year by directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino (the other half was Death Proof, which I have not seen). Rodriguez is the director here, with Tarantino appearing in a cameo.

Grindhouse aspired to recreate the experience of the 1960s “grindhouse”, theaters that played lewd, semi-competent exploitation films. To create that effect, Planet Terror opens with its own fake trailer (Machete) and theater announcements, and the movie is plagued by damage to the “film”, out-of-focus shots, and even a missing reel.

To compare this to the subject of my previous entry, Planet Terror is a completely different example of the horror genre. However, given its nature as parody, it makes no attempt to create a sense of horror, but instead plays around with the clichés of that genre. Unless you are extremely easy to scare, it would be more correct to think of it as a comedy.

TAGS: Movies, Horror Planet Terror, Grindhouse

Two takes on Lovecraft.

2008-07-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

Howard Philips Lovecraft had a profound influence on the horror genre. Every author of horror fiction since Lovecraft has owed him a debt, whether they have carried on his tradition or rejected it.

It is a shame, then, that film adaptations of Lovecraft’s work are almost uniformly terrible. True, Lovecraft’s stories are difficult to translate to the screen; his was a particularly literary variety of horror. Nevertheless, one might think filmmakers would at least make an attempt. Lovecraft, despite having produced most of his work during the 1920s, dealt with concepts that are still groundbreaking, yet most film adaptations of his work resort to the same horror movie clichés that glut the market.

The Dreams in the Witch House is no exception. Despite a positive review at DVD Verdict, the short film (54 minutes) repeats the missteps of far too many such adaptations. One of Lovecraft’s most successful short stories, The Dreams in the Witch House established a disturbing and alien atmosphere, despite its quaint New England setting – a Lovecraft specialty. The character of Brown Jenkin, a rat with a human face, was particularly unsettling. The story’s only flaw was the sudden introduction of a Christian crucifix at the end, the efficacy of which was inexplicable given Lovecraft’s staunch atheism.

The adaptation takes all of this and chucks it out the window. The atmosphere is typical TV movie stuff (this was originally part of the Showtime Masters of Horror series). The characters are clichés. Instead of an exploration of the role of mathematics and angles in ancient magical rituals, we get the worn-out story of an endangered baby, its mother, the new tenant, and the old guy downstairs who may know what’s going on, but nobody believes him.

The movie’s disrespect for Lovecraft is encapsulated in a single line, spoken by the new tenant himself:

Witches were astrologers. They knew science.

Lovecraft is now rolling over in his eldritch grave.

Fortunately, we have a counterpoint: The Call of Cthulhu. Almost 10 minutes shorter than the above film, it provides a fitting and respectful adaptation of Lovecraft’s short story of the same title. Maybe it was all in the style: The Call of Cthulhu is filmed in the style of a movie from Lovecraft’s own era: black & white, and silent (there is a period-appropriate musical score, but no dialog). The effect is not entirely successful – that it was shot on video is pretty obvious, and I’m pretty sure those were fluorescent lights in the background of one scene – but the accomplishment should be applauded. It is obvious that this was a labor of love by Lovecraft enthuiasts.

In The Call of Cthulhu, the narrator uncovers a strange and ominous mystery while going through his deceased uncle’s records. Throughout the world, evidence of a bizarre cult has been uncovered. Common to all is a statue of a winged, tentacled creature sitting on a throne, identified by a captured Louisianan cultist as Cthulhu, one of the Old Ones who came to earth from space before the evolution of terrestrial life. One flashback brings it all together, in which the crew of a ship explore an uncharted island covered with oddly-angled buildings, and come face to face with Cthulhu himself. It is only modern travel that has allowed all the evidence to be brought together, and modern science may be able to put it together to form a truly ominous and terrifying conclusion.

The silent style allows the filmmakers to suggest more than they explicitly show. Appropriately, this was much the same approach to fiction that Lovecraft himself took. The Call of Cthulhu exemplifies this style: although the main story takes place in the present, the action takes place in flashback through the investigator’s records. It is the importance of what was revealed during these flashbacks that produces the horror, not buckets of gore or knife fights with interdimensional witches – and the effect on the reader lasts much longer.

Lovecraft left a library of potential cinematic masterpieces. Not all of his work would work on screen, but many of his short stories and novellas beg for adaptation. It would take the right kind of director to pull it off, however, and those are in short supply. Besides, thought-provoking horror doesn’t fill theaters, and no studio exec, lusting for the next summer blockbuster, is going to take a chance on intellectual horror. Until that stops, Lovecraft fans will have to keep waiting.

TAGS: Movies, Horror, Lovecraft

Position paper: politics and stupidity.

2008-07-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Until June, I was a staunch supporter of Barack Obama. In June, when Obama endorsed the sell-out FISA bill ripping the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution and substituting warrantless wiretapping in its place – giving George W. Bush everything he had demanded – I realized that I had been used. It was then that I was glad that my foot had been too swollen during the primaries to drive to my polling place – my vote wouldn’t have mattered anyway; Hillary Clinton won handily – but it was the principle that mattered.

It was then that I realized that nothing would change under an Obama presidency. No matter what platitudes a presidential candidate may mutter, the real decision makers in Washington are never elected. Instead, they are hired, by multinational corporations or special interest groups – lobbyists, in other words. Corruption has spread so thoroughly throughout the executive and legislative branches – and has made inroads within the judicial – that there is little hope of “saving the patient”, to use a heavy-handed metaphor. Even if he had been sincere in his positions, Obama could never have changed that; his willingness to embrace the status quo, however, revealed that he had never been sincere.

I try to stay true to my principles, no matter how much it hurts. I had to withdraw my support for Obama. When he made his position official by voting in favor of the FISA legislation, he also lost my vote.

I have struggled with that ever since. Obama has done nothing to regain my trust, or the trust of many of us “far-left radicals” (which is apparently the camp supporting the Constitution puts you in nowadays). Yet it is obvious that a John McCain presidency would be disastrous for America. There are few issues on which McCain has not flip-flopped; I doubt even he knows what his positions are on them (though I’m sure his owners know). On the issues to which he has remained committed, his views are repugnant. As an individual, he is mean-spirited and temperamental, and seems to display some level of cognitive impairment; he is also old, which should be a factor, PC or not. He has no honor or principles, as his associations reveal. And I want nothing to do with those people who still support him: that core 28 percent.

Just as I held my nose and voted for John Kerry in 2004, and would have voted for Clinton in November if things had gone differently during the primaries, I decided that, if I could not vote for Obama, then I could at least vote against McCain. It won’t change much, except to keep Bush out of his third term, and to roll back the influence racist intolerant ignorance rural fundamentalist nativist fascist puritanical denialist creationist warmongers have over the White House, at least a little bit.

Between Obama and McCain, after all, Obama is clearly the lesser evil.

I am just one person, though, and I cannot fathom how polls still show McCain with as much support as he has retained. Polls, of course, are hardly predictive of the final outcome, and polling has not quite caught up with new technology that may have introduced generational bias into them. I still imagine most of McCain’s support comes from that core 28 percent; the rest comes from mainstream Americans who have been duped by the Republican noise machine. However, Michael Dukakis had a significant lead over George H. W. Bush in 1988, and he lost the election in a landslide thanks to Republican mudslinging. McCain, having signed Karl Rove and his Machiavellian thugs to the campaign, has begun to roll out that same kind of tactic. And, dishearteningly, it may be working.

Although it is too early to tell, McCain may be getting some traction from that “presumptuous” label. People like me, who understand that the word is supposed to mean “ni—“, I mean, “uppity”, won’t be affected. But for the apparent legion of Americans who need to keep a dictionary at hand as they read Go, Dog, Go!, maybe it works. After all, this is a country in which McCain could proudly proclaim that he graduated fourth from the bottom in his class – a country with a proud history of anti-intellectualism. This is a country in which a substantial portion of voters can believe that Obama is a “socialist”, while those of us who actually know something about socialism can say for a fact he is nothing of the sort. This is a country in which McCain can insinuate that Obama is a “fa—“, I mean, “gay”, by pointing to his educated and lucid manner of speaking.

Next to the rest of the development world, America stands out, and not in a good way. This country has the worst educational record in the Western world. A substantial portion of the populace believe that the earth was created a couple of thousand years ago by a god, and that that same god was responsible for creating “man” in “his” present form. This is a country which seriously debates whether life begins at conception or implantation, though the people doing the debating want to restrict abortion rights anyway. This is a country that has fallen for propaganda slogans by “war on drugs” and “war on terror”, and where a substantial number of people still think that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks and possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, America is a stupid country.

And if, somehow, John McCain is elected to the White House in November, it will only cement that view and drive us further away from the 21^st century world and into the dark ages.

Like I said, I cannot support Barack Obama any longer. He has violated a principle on which I cannot accept any compromise. I can vote against the alternative, however. I know it won’t change much, if anything. But I cannot provide any assistance to that 28 percent who believe that homosexuality is a “sin”, but stupidity is not.

TAGS: 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, John McCain

Big oil.

2008-07-31T12:52:00.001-07:00

From Think Progress, ABC: Exxon spends 1 percent of profits on alternative energy.

Exxon Mobil today broke its own record for the highest-ever profit by a U.S. company, with net income this quarter rising to $11.68 billion. While Exxon officials regularly tout the company’s investment in alternative energy, ABC reported today that Exxon spends only 1 percent of profits on alternative energy sources.

From The Intersection, Exxon Mobil Reports Earning Almost $1500 Per Second.

Speaking of energy... As gas prices topped $4 a gallon this summer, Exxon Mobil has posted a new profit record which works out to bringing in $1,485.55 a second.

Compare and contrast.

TAGS: Oil, Energy, Alternative Energy, Exxon

Some other planet is doomed now. Doomed, I tell you!

2008-07-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

Perfect:

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

You know, I probably agree with Al Gore completely on the issue of global warming. I still can't stand him, though.

TAGS: Al Gore, Funny

Stupid quiz time - with rebuttal.

2008-07-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

I ran across one of those online quizzes, “What Religion Do You Fit In With?” I couldn’t help but try it. It keeps telling me I’m an agnostic. I keep disagreeing. You see, there are a lot of problems with this quiz. It is heavily biased in favor of religion, some questions are irrelevant, and one is almost nonsensical.

Here is how I would answer the quiz, if I were allowed to elaborate:

Do you believe that man was created in the form of God, or that man evolved from other species?

Easy question: humans are the product of evolution by natural selection.

Are you a believer that you should try everything at least once?

What does this have to do with religion? Of course no one should try everything at least once. Many activities are harmful to oneself or others. Others would violate your sense of morality or ethics. My answer is “no”.

What do you trust more, your feelings/intuition or your logic/rational capabilities?

Fair enough: logic/rational capabilities. However, there are some situations in which you should trust your feelings or intuition, so long as those are based on sound, rational premises.

Do you plan to recant on your deathbed?

No.

Do you often find different ways of expressing your own spirituality?

This is one of those really problematic question. I do not accept the validity of the term “spirituality”, and I cannot express something that does not exist. There is therefore no way to provide a “yes” or “no” answer to this question without introducing bias in favor of religiosity.

Do you believe in any kind of afterlife?

No.

Do you believe in capital punishment?

Again, what does this have to do with religion? Is the quiz author assuming that religious people would oppose the death penalty, despite its solid support among conservative Christians? Or is the author assuming that those without religion would oppose the death penalty, given that less religious people tend to skew politically liberal, and there is solid opposition to the death penalty among liberals?

Here is my answer. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason that the most depraved of humans should not be executed. However, I do not support capital punishment, because it is enormously wasteful, provides no deterrent effect, and disproportionately targets minorities. Furthermore, the posthumous exoneration of an innocent person is meaningless.

Would you prefer a career in the arts, or in something technical?

I suppose I’m supposed to answer “technical”, because atheists have no “souls”. My answer, however, is the arts. Art can be based on rationalism, after all.

Do you feel that you can be spiritual without having a religion?

Another invalid question. If the concept of “spirituality” is meaningless to me, then how can I be spiritual? Again, this question is biased in favor of religiosity.

Do you believe that eventually, science will be able to explain everything about our existence and the world?

Yes.

Do you believe that your own redemption lies in your own hands or those of a superior power?

What redemption? I do not accept the concept of “sin” as valid, and I have committed no crimes; I have no need of “redemption”. Another question biased in favor of religiosity.

Do you believe that you are more right brained (creative, random), or left brained (logical, mathematical)?

Acceptable in the contest of a quiz, but a false dichotomy in real life. I would answer “left brained”, though I prefer to express myself in a “right brained” fashion.

Do you feel that you need to have a spiritual side?

Lay off the “spiritual” stuff, will you! Again, biased in favor of religiosity.

Do you consider yourself gullible, even a little bit?

What does this have to do with religion? Everyone would have to honestly answer this question “yes” because of that “little bit” caveat, but I answered “no”, since I had an idea where an honest answer would take me.

If you were about to jump off of a cliff, with only a bungee cord attached to you, what would you be thinking?

The options are “I feel alive” and “I wonder how many people have died doing this”. I suspect bias: religious people are more optimistic and would choose the first answer, while the irreligious are more pessimistic and would choose the latter. I disagree with the premise, but maybe I am pessimistic: I choose the second answer.

Until what age did you believe in the Easter bunny?

The choices are “10 or older” and “9 and younger”. A valid question; I choose the latter. Now ask me when I stopped believing in Jesus.

Do you actively work out, and try to maintain physical health in all aspects of your life?

Again, what does this have to do with religion? I suspect bias, but I think the bias is wrongheaded. Religious people have less reason to keep themselves healthy, since God will fix everything for them in the end. The irreligious recognize that this life is the only one they get, and will try to maintain their health so they can live it to its fullest. I tried both answers.

Do you believe that the path to enlightenment/God, is within yourself?

I reject the premise, and find the question biased in favor of religiosity.

Does your opinion of something differ from that of your religion (if you dont have a religion, have you actively questioned other religions)?

This is the almost nonsensical question. Since only the parenthetical question applies to me, I must ask what it means. Does it mean, “Have I considered other religions?” or, “Have I been critical of other religions?” I’ll forgive the premise that I have a religion to establish the word “other” as valid, but cannot answer the question because it is too vague – though I could answer in the affirmative if my second interpretation is correct.

Is it important in this life to live every moment to its fullest, and try to do everything that interests you even if some people consider it immoral?

No, because of that “immoral” caveat. However, in order to get a result of “atheism”, you pretty much have to answer “yes” to this question. Hmm, so atheists are immoral, are they? Who wrote this quiz, the idiots at Conservapedia?

It is almost impossible to get a result of “atheism” on this quiz – the correct answer, by the way. In order to get that result, I had to choose answers that I do not endorse. The author is using a highly stereotypical and biased definition of atheism.

Ironically, however, the description given of atheism is quite good; I just wish those ideas had been reflected in the quiz itself.

You fit in with: Atheism 80% scientific. 60% reason-oriented.
	Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Atheist. You value objective proof over intuition or subjective thoughts. You enjoy talking about ideas and tend to have a lot of in depth conversations with people.
Take This Quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

TAGS: Atheism, Religion, Quiz

Orson Scott Card is a homophobic bigot.

2008-07-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

You probably know of Orson Scott Card as the author of the novel Ender’s Game, but did you also know he’s an intolerant right-wing nutjob? As if to exemplify, Orson has penned a piece for the Mormon Times – apparently, an actual newspaper – in which he reveals his penchant for strawmen, false allusions, and scare quotes.

You see, Orson don’ like him none o’ them thar faggots a-gittin’ theirselves married ‘n’ suchlike. Proving that Southern Baptists and right-wing Catholics don’t have a monopoly on intolerance and willful stupidity, he launches into one of the most poorly written and long-winded rants against gay marriage (which he always put in scare quotes) that I’ve ever seen.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America.

Let’s see: the California Supreme Court determined that the state Constitution does not bar homosexual couples from getting married. Anti-gay activists have forced onto the ballot a proposition that the constitution be amended to conform to their religious beliefs. The vote is coming up this fall, but polling is against it.

That looks pretty democratic to me – except the part about amending the constitution, that is – but I’m just, you know, rational. I suppose when the vote goes against them (and all rational people hope it does), Orson will start ranting about “mob rule” or something.

And if you choose to home-school your children so they are not propagandized with the "normality" of "gay marriage," you will find more states trying to do as California is doing -- making it illegal to take your children out of the propaganda mill that our schools are rapidly becoming.

Actually, Orson, it is homeschooling that is most often used for purposes of propaganda. Of course, there are parents who do wish to provide for their children a better education than what the public schools could provide, but who cannot afford a private option, so they choose to home-school. They are in the minority, however.

The majority of homeschoolers simply want to educate their children in an environment in which they are fully submersed in Christian propaganda, keep them from learning anything about evolution, and, in general, prevent them from encountering any belief that might challenge their parents’ rigid worldview – like learning that everyone is not exactly like them. That’s why homeschooling is predominantly an activity of right-wing Christians, and not representative of the general population.

But you knew that already, didn’t you? You just didn’t want to come out and say it.

Orson now switches in mid-rant to the term “homophobe”, to which he objects being called.

A term that has mental-health implications (homophobe) is now routinely applied to anyone who deviates from the politically correct line. How long before opposing gay marriage, or refusing to recognize it, gets you officially classified as "mentally ill"?

Actually, there are sound empirical reasons to describe anti-gay activists like yourself as homophobic. For example, rabid homophobia among men has been positively correlated to arousal to images of homosexual activity, implying psychological denial and reaction formation. The obsession people like you have with homosexuals is also indicative of psychopathology. And homophobes are very likely to engage in violence toward homosexuals.

But, if you want, I’ll stop calling you a “homophobe” and cut right to the point:

You’re a bigot. There, that better?

Remember how rapidly gay marriage has become a requirement. [emphasis in original]

What? Where? I must have missed those long line of heterosexuals being forced to marry other heterosexuals.

Here's the irony: There is no branch of government with the authority to redefine marriage. Marriage is older than government. Its meaning is universal: It is the permanent or semipermanent bond between a man and a woman, establishing responsibilities between the couple and any children that ensue.

Here’s some real irony for you, Orson. Was it not the very same fraudulent cult you follow that made polygamy a cornerstone of its practice, and that set up its own government to protect it? Is it not that very same cult that now tries to hide that historical fact, even while it’s more extreme members continues to practice it?

(In another column I will talk seriously and candidly about the state of scientific research on the causes of homosexuality, and the reasons why homosexuality persists even though it does not provide a reproductive advantage.)

I would love to hear your views on the subject. If it’s as good as your present column, I’ll have to drape a tarp over my computer.

Human beings are part of a long mammalian tradition of heterosexuality.

I thought people like you didn’t believe that you was a-come from none o’ them thar monkeys. Maybe that’s not what you’re saying here, though, since you’ve really come unhinged. This is, what, your sixth or seventh digression from the topic at hand; it must be hard to keep it all, ahem, straight.

But this brings up an interesting point. Since you’re so damn longwinded, I won’t quote, but it seems that you’re saying that the purpose of marriage is tied to procreation. This is a common rationalization of your type of bigotry. What about childless couples, then? Are their marriages “real”? Should a marriage be annulled if the couple fails to “be fruitful, and multiply”? And is this really the level at which your brain works? That you think that marriage should be based on reproductive capacity, and not love?

And as for that “long mammalian tradition”, you’re right, but you don’t see the implications. The overwhelming majority of sexually reproducing organisms are heterosexual, but there are also a minority in every species who favor their own sex. This has not led to extinction in any species, ever. Just because a minority of gay people want to get married, it will not suddenly cause every straight marriage to disappear, or every straight couple to become barren.

It just keeps going on like this, rambling from one topic to another. In a bit, Orson will write the following:

We need the same public protection of marriage that we have of property. If we did not all agree that people continue to own things that are not in their immediate possession, then you could not reasonably expect to come home and find your house unoccupied.

Here Orson comes close to admitting the real reason marriage developed: to protect private property – i.e., a man’s wife or wives. Christianity is full of examples in which a woman is regarded as nothing but the property of a man, be it her father or husband. That’s still pretty much the case in Muslim societies, which originate from the same tradition as your own belief.

Orson then goes on this long spiel about straight people not doing enough to protect the “sanctity” of marriage. Once again, he’s right, but completely misses the point. If marriage is so “sacred”, then why do straight people piss all over it. How many “hunter” marriages are there each year, in which the couple climb into a tree stand to exchange their vows. Given the demographic, I’m sure that most of those tree-couples would agree with you, so I must ask: how does such a display respect the “sanctity” of marriage? Or are they just turning it into a joke?

Why are divorce rates higher in areas with a higher percentage of conservative Christians? Why do so many conservative Christian politicians and ministers rage against the immorality of homosexuality, but later get caught cheating on their wives – often with other men?

I'm sick of you and your ranting homophobia, so I'll sum up:

You are full of shit. You are a bigot. If this were the 1960s, you would be railing against miscegenation. Gay marriage will do nothing to straight marriage. The only reason you and your kind object to it is because you are filled with hate. Somehow, and this is common throughout your political and religion affiliation, you believe that if you don’t absolutely dominate something, then there is an “assault” or a “war” against you.

And while I’ve got your attention, Ender’s Game was overrated crap. I saw that ending coming from the first chapter.

TAGS: Gay Marriage, Homosexuality, Orson Scott Card, Homophobia, Bigotry

Evolve.

2008-07-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

Not bad. Not bad at all.

I’m talking about The History Channel’s new series Evolve. Tonight’s premiere episode discussed the evolution of the eye. The show was rather general, and didn’t have time for more than a brief overview of this subject. After all, the eye has evolved independently on many occasions, and each variety differs widely from others in structure and function. No one-hour show could go in-depth on even a single variety, let alone all of them.

The show really didn’t teach me anything new, but it was nice to watch a program that was based entirely on science. From beginning to end, every conclusion was based on evidence and testable hypotheses. It was very refreshing.

The show offered one particularly interesting observation that I had not considered before. When primates evolved binocular vision – that is, when both eyes evolved to face forward – they lost the ability to see to the side and rear. Binocular vision provided depth perception, which was very helpful in an arboreal environment, but it left primates vulnerable to predators.

To compensate, primates began living in groups, literally watching one another’s backs. This led to a very fortunate side-effect: with more individuals to keep track of, the brain began to enlarge.

So, in other words, binocular vision led ultimately to the development of human civilization. That is certainly a fascinating hypothesis, and I will have to spend some time thinking about it.

I highly recommend Evolve, and will be tuning in next week.

UPDATE: Here's PZ's take. He live-blogged it, and came to the same conclusion I did - "Not bad" - and had most of the same criticisms, though his review is better.

TAGS: Evolution, Television Science

Right-wing response to knoxville church shooting: Silence.

2008-07-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

On Monday, June 28, a right-wing pro-confederate gunman walked into a Unitarian church in Knoxville, TN, and opened fire. He killed two people and wounded six more. In a letter he left in his vehicle, he expressed anger at liberals and gays, and in his home were found books by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly.

The left-wing blogs have given this story a lot of attention. The right-wing blogs…not so much.

Let’s start with Instapundit, written by conservative Glenn Reynolds. Reynolds teaches at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, so this would be local news for him. What does he have to say?

Reynolds only has time to hack out a total of five sentences in three separate posts. He’s been in Florida, you see, so it’s understandable that posting would be light. Well, except for the 17 other posts mixed in with the above.

Michelle Malkin takes note of the shootings. Since a right-wing, anti-liberal murderer doesn’t fit in with her readers’ worldview, however, it is here that the wingnuts start to spin the story into some kind of grand liberal conspiracy theory to discredit conservatives. Right out of the gate, commenter Atheling provides us with this:

If he hated libtards, whey didn’t he go shooting at some college campus?

I smell a rat.

It just gets worse from there. The commenters continue to spin conspiracy theories, but eventually find their native ground and start condemning Muslims.

Other than those two, the right-wing blogosphere has pretty much ignored the story.

What about the news organizations, then. The New York Times discusses it. So does the Washington Post. Here is coverage by the Associated Press. Here’s the sensationalistically titled piece from the New York Post. Here is the take from USA Today.

CNN offers this story. Here is coverage by MSNBC. This is ABC’s coverage. Here is the link to that from CBS. Fox News has…

Nothing. Fox News has absolutely nothing about this incident. Neither does my local Fox affiliate, less than 100 miles from Knoxville. And neither, for that matter, does Knoxville’s own FOX affiliate – although I don’t even think that site has a news section.

This is rather astonishing. A substantial percentage of conservatives get their news exclusively from Fox News and right-wing blogs, and they are being kept entirely in the dark about this story. That is on purpose. Fox News and the right-wing blogs know their audiences; they know what those audiences want to hear, and what they don’t. Stories like this fall into that latter category because they challenge the conservative narrative, and they must be filtered out.

If this story had involved a Muslim or leftist, you could be assured that Fox News and the right-wing blogs would have been all over it.

If this is not a perfect example of the deception on which the conservative movement is based, then I don’t know what could possibly convince you.

TAGS: Knoxville Church Shooting, Conservatism, News Media, Fox News

Brains...

2008-07-24T16:22:00.000-07:00

Aiiigh, run away! It’s ZOMBIE MCCAIN!!!

“He’s coming for you, America…”

(Image via Huffington Post.)

TAGS: John McCain

Two observations about eyes.

2008-07-23T20:34:00.001-07:00

First, does John McCain even have EYES?! Or are those black slits just his windows into the darkness of his soul? At least he’s not doing that disturbing skeletal grin here, as if he’d just invited Jonathan Harker into the castle.

Second, Christopher Hitchens’ observations on the absurdity of religion and the evil it has caused are brilliant (read God Is Not Great), while his neoconservative warmongering is asinine at best. He is proof that expertise in one field does not necessarily translate into expertise in another.

He’s on target in this article at Slate, though. It’s about the eyes of blind cave salamanders. I won’t repeat Hitchens’ analysis – read the article – but I’ll sum it up: cave salamanders are blind, but they have non-functional, vestigial eyes. From an evolutionary perspective, the reasons are obvious.

Creationists, though, maintain that God created every form of life in its present form. Blind salamanders without eyes: okay. Blind salamanders with non-functioning eyes: sure. But why would God create blind salamanders with the vestigial eyes of their sighted relatives? So much for "intelligent" design.

TAGS: John McCain, Evolution, Creationism, Eyes

Clarifying my use of the term "Christian".

2008-07-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

For the record, I do not think that all Christians are fascists or pawns of big business. In fact, most are not – and that goes for conservative Christians as well.

Yet one of the prime driving forces behind what has the appearance of a modern American fascist movement is the Christian Right. This is stunning. Fundamentalist Christianity is so intertwined with the Republican Party that Republican politicians must seek the endorsement of fundamentalist leaders before they have even the slightest hope of winning office. No parallels exist in any other mainstream American political movement.

Furthermore, this alliance leads Republican politicians to champion legislation favorable to fundamentalist Christians on topics as broad-ranging as abortion rights to gay marriage to high-school science curricula to special rights for fundamentalist churches. This goes beyond coincidence; this is evidence of a symbiotic connection between the two groups.

That connection was born from the Southern Strategy in the 1960s. The Southern Strategy was the crucial event in the formation of the modern Republican Party, and led to a massive influx of fundamentalist Christians into the party. However, it was not fundamentalist Christians that the Southern Strategy had targeted, but white segregationists.

When you watch old videos of the segregationist south, you can see the pure, rabid hatred burning in the eyes and faces of its white residents. These were a people twisted by bigotry. Their bigotry had lasted for generations; they had abandoned first one and then another political identity to preserve it, and even the Southern Baptist denomination itself was formed to preserve the importance of slavery in their culture. It should not come as any surprise that they had molded their version of Christianity to fit their biases and prejudices.

The Bible does contain verses supportive of racism, segregation, and even slavery. Other verses, however, admonished the believer to treat others with kindness. The southern fundamentalists had downplayed the latter, at least as it applied to outsiders, which exaggerating and obsessing over the former. From some of the speeches and writings of southern religious leaders, one could easily get the impression that the Bible was little more than an instruction manual for bigotry – and, unfortunately, to many such believers, this was far too true.

Christianity had become the genetic (or, more properly, memetic) material through which southern segregationists preserved their ideas and transmitted them to their children. The southerners brought into the Republican Party brought with them this peculiar and perverse version of Christianity, and it was from its often schizophrenic beliefs that most Christian intolerance arises.

It is fundamentalist Christianity that now unites the former segregationist constituency. This is not to say that racism, prejudice, and bigotry have disappeared from this culture. All are still present, but expressed through euphemisms and distractions. An openly racist campaign would be suicidal, so, in place of open racism, Christian “values” have come to unite the constituency and focus their activism.

Those are the Christians I condemn, and their beliefs that I reject. It is from their social ambitions that the core elements of this fascist movement arise. The majority of Christians reject the beliefs and “values” of the fundamentalists, and even most of those conservative Christians who sympathize with their beliefs reject their tactics and overall political goals.

Yet fundamentalist activists have made a major effort to connect their extremist beliefs in the public mind with Christianity itself. Uninformed Christians might be persuaded to support the goals of the fundamentalists (and their corporate allies) if these goals are presented as simply “Christian”. At the same time, fundamentalists can gain some legitimacy for their fringe beliefs by co-opting the veneer of mainstream Christian belief.

The corporate-owned news media have colluded in this effort. Fundamentalist theologians are given a prominent position on news programs, and are often the only voice sought – as if they represented the beliefs of all Christians. Such theologians (and I am using that term broadly; “propagandists” would be more appropriate) are not only invited to speak on religious matters, but on political, medical, scientific, and other issues that are completing unrelated to religion. Such tactics have given the movement far more visibility than its real numbers should deserve.

Even on a personal, face-to-face level, fundamentalist Christians are loud and aggressive in sharing their beliefs, and make an effort to conflate their own beliefs with “true” Christianity. Such aggressive tactics make the fundamentalist a truly unpleasant sort of person: less an individual than a political operative.

Similarly, when someone vocally declares himself to be a Christian (generally without any sort of prompting), he will subsequently launch into a barrage of intolerant, bigoted, and even bizarre ideology. Rather than improve the public image of Christianity, such behavior merely brands all Christians with the extremism of the fundamentalist.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to make all of these distinctions every time the issue of Christianity or fundamentalism comes up. “Christian” is mere shorthand. I try to avoid using it without qualifying it with “fundamentalist”, but that gets repetitive quickly. And the term “fundamentalist” on its own is too general, since Christianity is not the only belief system that includes a fundamentalist variety (and, despite the claims of rabid theists, atheism is not one of those – idiots!).

So just keep that in mind: when I say “Christian”, I’m not talking about all Christians. It’s not my fault; I’m not responsible for that confusion.

TAGS: Christianity, Christian Right, Fundamentalism

Quis custodiet Watchmen?

2008-07-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

The trailer for the upcoming Watchmen film is up, and…Wow! Just…wow! First, it’s an excellent trailer. It is perfectly focused, and it builds to a powerful climax. Plus, the song selected to play over the visuals – “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”, by Smashing Pumpkins – perfectly matches the feel of the story. The single spoken line by the disillusioned Rorschach conveys the attitude of the story being adapted.

The film also seems to be a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. Most adaptations of graphic novels treat their sort material with disrespect. Hollywood’s attitude seems to be that, simply because the story was told through illustrations, then it must be “kid’s stuff” and requires changes to make it more mature. The result is a juvenile movie, in which depth is replaced with action sequences, and a pretense of maturity is added by selecting inserting the word “fuck” into the screenplay.

I could care less if the film reproduces every panel in the graphic novel perfectly. In fact, that would be a cheat, since it would simply be fan service, and show no vision on the part of the director. I am more concerned that the film captures the themes of the source material, and it appears Watchmen is poised to do that.

My only caveat is one shared by the graphic novel’s author, Alan Moore. iO9 points to this interview with Moore at Entertainment Weekly. The interview is spread over five ad-tastic pages, but Moore discusses Watchmen and the film adaptations of his work on the first two. Better still, iO9 excepts the relevant parts, so you might want to just read that.

Moore points out that Watchmen is being directed by Zack Snyder. Snyder was also the director of 300, so now you know why I reposted that long-ass review. In my original review, I pretty much blamed Snyder for that film’s fascist overtones, but, if he is now faithfully adapting the ultra-progressive Watchmen, those elements must have been present in the original 300 graphic novel. The Wikipedia entry cites Moore’s critique, in which he condemns Spartans’ use of the term “boy lovers”.

Frank Miller’s response is that he meant that line to convey hypocrisy on the part of the Spartans, whose very society was based on forced pederasty. If that is true (I’ve not read the graphic novel, so I cannot say for sure), then that subtlety was erased from the film version, which plays directly into the homophobic sentiments of its jingoist fanbase. The only person who could have been responsible for that was director Zack Snyder.

And so we are back where we begin. Snyder produced what can only be called fascist propaganda in his adaptation of 300. How then can he deal honestly with the progressive themes in Watchmen, the very antithesis of those in his prior film? Is he just willing to do whatever it takes to turn a paycheck: the epitome of the Hollywood hack?

TAGS: Movies, Watchmen, Alan Moore

Hand in hand: the Christian role in the Republican Party.

2008-07-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

It may seem a bit incongruous that the Republican Party’s two chief constituencies are big business and fundamentalist Christians. However, politics, as they say, makes strange bedfellows.

The Southern Strategy was about more than just expanding the Republican base in the south. You see, there is hardly a widespread popular movement advocating for corporations to rob us blind. That was a bit of a problem for the corporate-owned-and-operated Republican Party…until it came up with an idea.

The Southern Strategy attracted a swarm of racists into the Republican Party. They brought with them their peculiar brand of fundamentalist Christianity. In exchange for the Republican Party adopting their extreme moral positions as part of its platform, the Christians would provide the foot soldiers big business needed.

In effect, fundamentalist Christians support the Republicans because the Republicans will give them what they want on abortion, homosexuality, evolution, stem cells, women’s equality, and whatever other reactionary demands they come up with. Once the Republicans are in power, they are then in a position to give big business what it demands. Corporations and the ultra-wealthy don’t care about social issues, since they will not be affected by the theocratic laws imposed on everyone else.

Fundamentalist Christian values provide the smokescreen behind which corporate interests operate without repercussion. Instead of focusing their attention on environmental devastation, mass lay-offs, corporate corruption, or any of those things which truly damage society, Christians are distracted with preventing gay people from getting married.

This association occurred to me recently while driving to Atlanta. I was trying to find a good radio station, and scanned onto a report on global warming. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was a denialist report claiming global warming is not occurring, but I kept listening anyway. At the end of the “report”, it was revealed that this had been produced by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization.

“What possible relationship could there be between global warming denialism and Christianity?” I thought. Sure, fundamentalist Christians are always in the front ranks of the denialist crowd, but why? Where does this intersect with religion?

The answer is that it doesn’t. However, it does intersect with corporate interests; environmental regulation would cut into their profits. Individuals like James Dobson, bought and paid for by the megacorps, are more than happy to propagandize the troops. If global warming denialism can be turned into a Christian “value”, then the foot soldiers will mobilize and demand that rising sea levels are part of “God’s wonderful plan for your salvation” – or something like that.

Hand in hand, corporate interests and fundamentalist Christians have built the modern Republican Party, and they are equally responsible for the mess made over the past eight years. The past eight years, though, point clearly to the kind of world that they want to create: everyone may have to live on the top of Mount Everest, but the CEOs at the top of the mountain have a lot of money, and women won’t be able to get an abortion.

TAGS: Christianity, Fundamentalism, Republican Party, Global Warming

Denial makes the McCain.

2008-07-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

Lisa Schiffren, at National Review Online:

But, for that message [something about "substance"] to be heard, my inner speechwriter says that McCain desperately needs to punch up his style and not be afraid of a little controversy and polarization of the electorate. I like his calm, controlled tone, and the wry humor. But irony doesn't go over well with crowds. And the straight-forward, informational presentation only works with people who want real information. (Sigh.)

I think Schiffren here provides the missing key to the puzzle: How can conservatives continue to support John McCain?

They are experiencing denial:

Denial is the psychological process by which human beings protect themselves from things which threaten them by blocking knowledge of those things from their awareness. It is a defense which distorts reality; it keeps us from feeling the pain and uncomfortable truth about things we do not want to face. If we cannot feel or see the consequences of our actions, then everything is fine and we can continue to live without making any changes.

Obviously, their brains simple refuse to process the information spilling in through their senses. They continue to believe what they want to believe, even when it clashes with the reality around them - like John McCain being in any way competent to hold the presidency.

It would be sad, if they didn't deserve mockery and scorn.

(Via alicublog.)

TAGS: John McCain, Republican Party, Denial, J2008 Presidential Election

Takeover.

2008-07-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

The ACLU reports that Michael Mukasey has demanded that Congress “authorize indefinite detention through a new declaration of armed conflict,” and that they “subvert the right of habeas corpus with a new scheme of procedures that will hide the Bush administration's past wrongdoing.” The ACLU’s analysis of these demands lays everything out clearly:

"Mukasey is asking Congress to expand and extend the war on terror forever. Anyone that this president or the next one declares to be a terrorist could then be held indefinitely without a trial," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

This is jaw-dropping stuff. The Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer in the US government, is proposing to undermine the Constitution itself! Michael Mukasey has done nothing to uphold US law; instead, he has acted to defend and cover up George W. Bush’s rampant lawbreaking. This in itself is an abdication of his responsibilities. But these latest statements are beyond the pale: Mukasey is supporting the establishment of an executive branch that is beyond the rule of law itself.

What the Bush administration has done over the past seven and a half years has all the feel of a coup d’etat – only, in this case, instead of an outside power attempting to seize control, it is an inside power doing so. George W. Bush and his cronies have succeeded in politicizing nearly every office in the federal government, staffing them with Bush supporters and blocking the appointments of anyone critical of the administration’s policies. The result has been a government that readily ignores the very law of the United States to defend Bush and his agenda.

It was only due to the sheer incompetence of Bush and his cronies that America has been spared from a complete right-wing takeover. Nearing the end of the Bush’s tenure in office, his policies have begun to fail, and a minority of elements within the government have begun to fight back. In response, the Bush administration has become virtually histrionic, raging that anyone would have the audacity to question them. (Of course, that applies only to those within the government itself; the rest of us don’t matter in their equation.)

In short, this has all the hallmarks of fascism. I am not saying that just because I disagree with them; fascism is a distinct political movement, and the policies of the Bush administration fit solidly into its framework.

If the Attorney General himself is willing to openly endorse overturning the Constitution, then I have to wonder how far the Republicans are willing to go in order to hang onto the reins of power. In other words, will there even be a presidential election in November? That is a strong question to pose, and it would have been unthinkable in America even ten short years ago. Of course, at that time, the government had not engaged in torture or indefinite detentions in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, or legalized warrantless spying on its own citizens. What is a rigged or suspended election on top of all that?

TAGS: Michael Mukasey, Bush administration, Republican Party, Fascism

The lib'ral media hate John McCain? You're joking, right?

2008-07-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

I know it’s hard to believe, but apparently there are still people who believe that the mainstream media is “liberally biased”. After all, conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly tell them it is, so it must be true. It’s not like they might have an agenda or anything.

This is the same audience that thinks Fox News really is “fair and balanced”. All Fox News has really done is cheapened the meaning of those terms, along with others like “objective” and “independent”; in other words, if a news service identifies itself with one of those words, an obvious conservative bias is pretty much guaranteed.

This may be pure political calculation, but it is hard to believe that the political movement responsible for the Bush administration is capable of such Machiavellian chicanery. Even the great right-wing smear machine has been going bonkers lately, seemingly unsure if it should be hurling mud at its opponent or its own candidate.

More likely, conservatives believe this because it is burned directly into their worldview. The right-wing embraced paranoia in the nineties, and that fever has yet to run its course. Thus, if a news organization runs any story – any at all – critical of conservative views, then they must be liberally biased. To conservatives, a “fair and balanced” news media is one which runs nothing but stories favorable to them. To them, conservatism is the default, mainstream, “centrist” position. If so, one can only wonder what they consider “right-wing”.

Roy Edreso at alicublog points to this post at Instapundit, which is a perfect example of this mindset. It’s just too good not to pitpick:

RICK MORAN ON THE NYT'S McCain rejection. "The Times is dying. And the story of John McCain’s discarded op-ed is one of the big reasons why." It's almost as if they're not objective!

In the linked article, Moran makes this claim:

Scott Rasmussen has been polling the attitudes of voters toward the news media and has uncovered the not-so-startling statistic that 50% of independent voters believe that reporters favor Barack Obama and are trying to help him win.

From which he draws this rather surprising conclusion:

With half the country able to see through the gushing idolatry of the press and their shameless promotion of Obama’s candidacy, where does that leave journalistic standards like objectivity and fairness?

[Emphasis mine in all quotes, preceding and following.] I was unaware that 50% of American voters were independent, but that is precisely the claim Moran seems to be making above. Let’s check out that Rasmussen survey to which he links:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage…

[snip]

Twenty-seven percent (27%) [of Democrats] believe most reporters are trying to help Obama…

[snip]

Among Republicans, 78% believe reporters are trying to help Obama…

[snip]

As for unaffiliated voters, 50% see a pro-Obama bias…

The Rasmussen article does not reveal the percentage each group comprised of the whole sample. Nevertheless, you can see a number of problems. If Moran is using the 49% figure, then it is obviously skewed by the overwhelming number of Republicans who perceive bias in the media. If he is using the 50% figure, then that applies only to independent voters, and not to the sample as a whole.

It would appear that Moran is engaging in a bit of biased reporting himself, giving his gullible readers the impression that bias is perceived by a far greater percentage of the general public than the Rasmussen results actually reveal. And Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a., the guy who writes Instapundit) is passing along that bias to an even wider audience of gullible readers.

Let’s move on the second sentence in the Instapundit post:

Michael Silence quotes an observer:: "By sending their biggest stars across the globe to interview Obama, ABC, CBS and NBC have reinforced the notion that the Democrat is getting an easy ride." Plus, if you report embarrassing things about Obama, you get kicked off the plane! If a Republican did this, it would be fascism . . . .

You mean like John McCain creating a special VIP section in his new plane where reporters have to “earn” the right to sit and talk with him?

It is absurd to claim that the corporate news media have given Obama a “free ride” while hammering away on poor ole war hero John McCain. McCain has been the recipient of the media’s unending teenage-crush swooning since the primaries began. They have ignored his innumerable gaffes on foreign policy, his daily flip-flops on policy issues, his ties to shady lobbyists – in short, just about every reason that he should not be president, conservative or not. In fact, they even presented him with donuts! (Not the terrorist sort, obviously.)

The rest of the Instapundit post just goes on in the same vein; Edroso provides plenty of examples of why it is bunk. Reynolds is merely recycling the old trope, that the honest, hard-workin’ conservatives are being picked on by the big, mean lib’ral media. He ignores all the evidence to the contrary, because that would undermine the narrative he and his colleagues are pushing.

Bias is built directly into the conservative media machine. Conservative websites, including blogs like Instapundit, almost never link to the sites of their liberal adversaries; whereas liberal sites often provide links, if only so that readers can see for themselves just how ridiculous the conservative arguments really are. If a story cannot be twisted to fit the conservative narrative, right-wing pundits and wannabe pundits simply ignore it, no matter how big and important it is; for example, see how many mentions of Nouri al-Maliki’s recent endorsement of a timetable for withdrawal of US troops you can find among those honest conservatives.

The reason for this is simple: after almost eight years of Republican mismanagement, the conservative worldview is full of holes. John McCain’s support among conservatives is small and tenuous, and the Republican base has been shrinking for some time. The conservatives need to hold onto as many supporters as they can, even if it means misleading them and keeping them ignorant of real-world events. The Republicans built a well-oiled (no pun intended) media machine for doing this, but it is also a result of the conservative worldview itself.

Conservatism is unable to tolerate dissenting views. Conservative pundits keep the bad thoughts out by simply ignoring or rewriting them to fit their preconceptions. I can easily imagine Reynolds being unable to process mentally the sycophantic treatment McCain has received from the media; he can only engage in pareidolia, seeing the contents of his own mind projected onto the media environment. He probably does think that the corporate-owned and operated, advertiser-driven news media is really biased against him.

In other words, if you read about in a conservative magazine or blog, or see it on Fox News, there is a greater than average chance that what they are telling you is a lie.

TAGS: John McCain, News Media, Conservatism, Republican Party, "Liberal" Media, Media Bias

Omnes vincit Al Gore!

2008-07-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Deb linked to this yesterday, and it’s still making me retch. I used it last night to bash Nancy Pelosi, so how’s about I now use it to bash the Messiah himself:

Al Gore was great deflection, yes, but he never will have the ability to raise our spirits, his story carries too much sadness.

Oh, god, I need to get the bucket ready.

“Oh how I love Al Gore,” Digby said wistfully, shaking her head at what could and should have been.

Yeah, yeah. “Selected, not elected,” blah blah blah. Will you just shut the fuck up already?

As long as George Bush is President this chapter [of] Al Gore’s life and the nation will not be closed…

They must hurt him every day, those wounds in his hands and feet. Oh, and there’s the side, and the bloody crown.

Al Gore has a great mission and immense integrity…

Yeah, but, you know, he has to die, because then the sins of mankind won’t be washed away in his blood.

Give me a fucking break here! Al Gore was, is, and shall always be a politician. And you know how well that’s worked out with Barack Obama.

Seven and half years of this! The Democrats have turned the 2000 presidential election into their own passion play, with the Supreme Court doing the hand-washing. It has been impossible to take them seriously. They are like spoiled children, denied their way and throwing the most insipid tantrum ever.

Prior to 2000, Al Gore had done nothing to deserve the presidency. (Neither had George W. Bush, for that matter.) The most noteworthy thing he had done was try to take credit for the internet. He also wrote a couple of books that nobody read. The 2000 election transformed him into a martyr. Then came his cinematic tribute to himself; suddenly realizing that it was probably too early for a bio-pic, he stuck in a couple of slides about global warming, but failed to remove any of the soft lighting.

This is what I hate about the Democrats. They are infected by Romanticism. Romanticism always featured larger than life characters, and treated them with the reverence of demigods. As David Brin masterfully pointed out, the deaths of a thousand ordinary persons did not matter next to the fate of the Romantic Hero, and there is that quality about the Democratic adoration of Al Gore.

The Democrats have been trying to win (“back”) the White House ever since 2000. They are so obsessed with that goal that they are willing to overlook and rationalize every broken promise of Barack Obama. The author of the above may be overawed by Gore’s “immense integrity”, but the Democrats have none of their own. When a Democrat next sits in the White House, it will be nothing but revenge for Al Gore’s martyrdom. Nothing at all.

TAGS: Al Gore, Democratic Party, Netroots Nation

Rogue state.

2008-07-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

From the Human Rights Annual Report 2007 just released by the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee:

The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the Government does not rely on such assurances in the future.

The report lists multiple examples of statements by George W. Bush and White House representatives that the US does not engage in torture – statements made during periods when, as we now know, the US was actively engaged in torturing detainees.

The United States is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. By its own logic, so forcefully demonstrated when small nations offend its will, the United States should now be liable to international sanctions. Other countries have done far less to receive the label of “rogue state”.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent analysis of this, and reminds readers that it appears to be the general will in Washington neither to investigate nor to prosecute anyone connected to the Bush administration for their crimes.

Just a few days ago, Greenwald was discussing the sea change in world opinion of America that has occurred since George W. Bush took office. It is true that America has never managed to live up to its professed ideals, but it is hard to believe that we now live in the same country that we did a few short years ago. The US government is now fully divorced from the people it claims to represent; the opinion of the citizenry does not matter, only the opinions of those within the circles of power.

Does the US still fit the definition of a democracy if this is the condition of its political establishment? Corporate power and special interests group always had a disproportionate influence on government policy, but today theirs are the only voices that are heard; the will of the people, to use the antiquated and obsolete phrase, no longer enters into it.

John Edwards was fond of the phrase “two Americas”. By that, he meant a division between the rich and the poor. There are two Americas, but their division goes even deeper than Edwards described: there are the American people, and there is the government itself. The latter rules the former, but the way an empire rules its colonies: with disdain, condescension, and an eye for exploitation.

With that in mind, it is the Bush regime itself that is the rogue state.

Despite what you hear on the TV news, the Iranian people are not fond of their government, and they are smart enough to recognize a division between the US government and the American people. The Mullahs represent the Iranian people no more than George W. Bush represents the American people.

TAGS: Iran, George W. Bush, Torture, Bush Administration

One from the vaults: 300 movie review.

2008-07-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

The following is a review I wrote of the movie 300. It has been revised and updated…and, unfortunately for the reader, expanded. I had no idea just how long this post was until now: a shocking eight pages! Still, it’s one of my favorites. If you didn’t read it in its past incarnation, then here’s your second chance.

Last year, I saw the movie V for Vendetta. Although I considered it a fun and exciting movie while I sat in the theater, afterwards after having time to reflect upon it I considered it simplistic, moralistic, and, worse of all, undeservedly self-congratulatory. I bring that movie up now because I think V for Vendetta and 300 would make a good boxed set. Both movies are ultimately reactions to the “War on Terror” as well as the policies of George W. Bush and his administration, although they approach the subject matter from diametrically opposed points of view.

300 is a visually stunning film. It uses the same “digital backlot” technology used in the production of the superior Sin City. However, unlike Sin City, it is impossible not to notice the visuals; instead of being lost in the story, the viewer is always aware that he or she is watching a movie. Also unlike Sin City, it is difficult to identify with or care for the fate of the characters. Whereas the characters in Sin City were deep and complex, those in 300 are one-dimensional comic-book characters brought to life. This difference is remarkable, since both Sin City and 300 are based on graphic novels by the same author, Frank Miller.

300 is dramatically and symbolically clumsy. It is hard not to see the parallels the movie wants to make between Leonidas, king of the Spartans, and George W. Bush. In fact, these parallels smack the viewer in the face and are almost insulting in their obviousness. Leonidas attempts to win support for his defense of Thermopylae, just as Bush sought to win support for his invasion of Iraq; both are met with refusals and not-so-subtle mockery. The movie uses the priests of the Oracle at Delphi, the Ephors, as stand-ins for the United Nations Security Council, and presents them as corrupt and in the pocket of the enemies.

300 is presented in such a way that, although it takes inspiration from actual historical events, it cannot be considered an attempt to portray them in a realistic fashion. Rather, it should be regarded as historical fantasy. Ultimately, this only adds to the movie’s symbolic and ideological clumsiness (for example, the Persians are depicted as almost universally subhuman). It is unlikely that most viewers, not having read up on Greek and Persian history, will be aware of the reality behind the movie, and will leave the theater with the wrong impressions. It is hard to imagine that this was accidental on the part of the filmmakers: 300 comes across as a proto-fascist propaganda film.

Boy Lovers

It is difficult not to be appalled at Leonidas’s dismissal of the Athenians as “boy lovers”. Although this is properly a historical reference to the practice of pederasty, in a modern context it conjures up images of homosexuality in general. It is debatable whether pederasty was truly a form of homosexuality; nevertheless, the line clumsily conflates the two, tainting homosexuality with the smear of pedophilia.

This is particularly evident in that it seems Leonidas’s decision not to accept the Persian request for surrender is based on his not wanting to be seen as weak, since those “boy-loving” Athenians have already turned the Persians down. Here we encounter the old trope of the homosexual as weak and effeminate: a sissy. Thus, in order to prove their own manliness, the Spartans can do no less than march to Thermopylae to fight the Persians; to be blunt, they go to war so that people won’t think they are gay.

However, this raises an interesting fact about the Spartans. It is true that the Athenians practiced pederasty, but so did the Spartans. In fact, the whole training aspect of a boy’s life which the movie makes so much of was based around pederasty. Pederasty was the foundation of Spartan society to a degree unimagined by the Athenians.

Moreover, the Spartans not only practiced pederasty with their young novices, but Spartan soldiers maintained same-sex romantic relationships with their comrades, a precise parallel with modern homosexuality between consenting adults. This was part of the reason that the Spartans were such an effective fighting force; the man next to you was not only your friend but your lover and romantic partner, and therefore you had even more reason to provide him support. Of course, the movie makes no mention of this; the Spartans as depicted in the movie are all good heterosexual men with a wife, 2.4 kids, and a dog at home – the conservative ideal of the “nuclear family”.

Finally, the character of Persian King Xerxes himself is depicted as a stereotypical homosexual. He wears gaudy jewelry, moves in an effeminate manner (particularly obvious when he softly places his hands on the manly shoulders of Leonidas), and speaks in a dignified, measured fashion (one almost expects a lisp). Though tall in stature, he is shown being borne about on a mobile throne, implying physical weakness or perhaps an unwillingness to get himself dirty. He is also shown to be petulant, and his hairless skin (particularly in contrast to the bearded Leonidas) suggests femininity.

During this years’ presidential primaries, right-wing pundits attempted to smear Barack Obama using many of the same tropes 300 uses to depict Xerxes. Some pundits have all but suggested that he is gay. Others have suggested that voters should select John McCain because he is the “manly” candidate. Could the sexual allusions be any clearer?

Sexual Perverts

It is also noteworthy that Leonidas’s other enemies are presented as sexual perverts. The film suggests, for example, that the aforementioned Ephos are pedophiles by the way they leer at the underage Oracle.

In Sparta, Leonidas’s wife and queen Gorgo attempts to enlist the support of councilman Theron. Theron, it turns out, has also been paid off by the Persians. However, before we learn this, we are treated to a disturbing scene in which Theron requests sexual favors from Gorgo, who reluctantly complies. Just before Theron rapes her, he states that she “will not enjoy this”, and, as he has turned her around with her back to him, there is the suggestion that he intends to penetrate her anally. This recalls the movie’s condemnation of homosexuality, as male homosexual sex necessarily involves anal penetration.

Finally, as Xerxes tempts the hunchback Ephialtes to betray the Persians, he is surrounded by an orgy of young women. There are close-ups of these women caressing Ephialtes’ misshapen body, a combination of deformity and sexuality that is meant to be seen as perversion.

Together with the movie’s attitude toward homosexuality, these scenes reveal the movie’s attitude toward anything but “normal” heterosexual sex. The movie tramples historical reality to portray the “good” Spartans as masculine, heterosexual men, and conflates anything but the missionary position (with the lights off, of course) as evidence of moral (and political) evil. This sort of thing would be fully expected in a propaganda film – the reactionary right-wing has been trying to “restore” traditional gender roles and sexual inequality for decades – but it is remarkable that the film ties sexuality so closely to its pro-war message. This is just the sort of thing that characterized fascist propaganda throughout the twentieth century, and it is more than noteworthy that is crops up here.

Ironic Iconic Freedom Fighters

As various points in the movie, the Spartans are presented as exemplars of the ideals of freedom. In essence, they are the movie’s stand-ins for the citizen soldiers who have played such a large role in America’s military history, willing to give up their own lives so that others may live free from the shackles of tyranny.

However, the Spartans in reality were not very good exemplars of such freedom. In fact, the movie itself tells us as much. There was no room in Spartan society for individuality; all male Spartans were soldiers. There was no room for debate on this issue; the individual had no choice but to comply.

Indeed, the Spartan soldiers are depicted as almost physically identical. This is not a trait of a free society but of a fascist society. In fact, this depiction of physical perfection would be in keeping with the Nazi ideal of the perfect Aryan German, the Nietzschean uebermensch or “superman”. Nazi Germany was dotted with statues depicting such physically perfect specimens of Aryan manhood, and this was the ideal to which all Germans boys were expected to aspire. The Nazis’ genocidal activities were not only an attempt to exterminate racial and ethnic minorities from the country, but to exterminate “defective” Germans as well, including those suffering from mental disorders, the developmentally disabled, incorrigible criminals, and the like.

Much as the movie wants to make the Spartans stand-ins for the American citizen soldier, there is one scene that shows this to be a lie. This is when Leonidas’s force encounters a separate force of Acadians who have also answered the call to defend Greece from the Persians. Leonidas all but openly sneers at the Acadians, for they identify themselves as blacksmiths, artisans, and other such professions . Leonidas leads his force in answering with their own shouted profession: they are soldiers, and nothing more. The archetypal citizen soldier was willing to lay down his normal life and do what had to be done to preserve the freedom of his loved ones, with the hope that he could return to a normal life after the job was done. The Spartans have no such normal life; they exist for one purpose only. The movie wants to have it both ways, using the Spartans as analogues for the American citizen soldier, while, at the same time, aspiring to a fascist ideal. This is very revealing of the political ideology behind 300.

This should cause the alert viewer to ask how the Spartans maintained any kind of society if they were nothing but soldiers. The movie gives us loving shots of beautiful fields of wheat, but never addresses the question of just who planted, tended, or harvested that wheat. The movie had time to mention pederasty, but just glosses this over.

In fact, these fields were tended by the Helots. The Helots were the Spartans’ slaves, and they lived truly miserable lives, without any sort of political rights and without any type of security, even of their own lives. The Helots were bound to the land, and were inherited by the Spartans when they came of age; they were commodities to be used and thrown away when exhausted. A Helot could be killed by a Spartan on a whim. The Helots are remembered today primarily due to the suffering they endured at the hands of their masters.

Finally, as mentioned above, the movie wants to draw a parallel between the valiant King Leonidas and George W. Bush. This is perhaps one parallel that the movie should have avoided. Although Leonidas died at the hands of the Spartans, his successors went on to overthrow the Athenian democracy. There, they installed a military and aristocratic dictatorship. Leonidas may not have lived to see the Spartan dream fulfilled, but it is certain that Bush would be around to watch his successors follow in the Spartans’ footsteps.

Survival of the Fittest

300 makes much of the Spartans’ demand for physical perfection among their members. In fact, the movie opens as a child (Leonidas himself) is being examined for any and all physical defects. The camera pans down to show us the bones of children who fails this examination and were hurled into the canyon below. The movie spares no opportunity to show us the Spartan men’s perfect abs.

This falls squarely in line with the fascist ideal described above.

Contrast poor Ephialtes. Deformed at birth, his father chose to hide him away rather than submit him to the examination that would surely have ended in the child’s death. Ephialtes grew up isolated, but nevertheless continued to think of himself as a Spartan. He studied Spartan tactics and trained himself to use a sword. When the Spartans march to Thermopylae, he patriotically offers Leonidas his services.

Leonidas rejects him due to his physical deformities. It simply does not matter to Leonidas that Ephialtes has the passion to stand with his brothers at Thermopylae; all that matters to Leonidas is that Ephialtes cannot hold his shield above his head. Perhaps Ephialtes would not be good in the phalanx, but he could have played other vital roles; in fact, after the initial stages of the battle, the Spartans never return to the use of the phalanx, and Leonidas shows no hesitation in allowing the Acadians to fight in their own traditional manner.

The movie glosses over this point as well, but it is this obsession with physical perfection which ultimately dooms the Spartans. Rejected and heartbroken, Ephialtes later betrays the Spartans to the Persians by revealing the hidden goat trail that allows the Persians to outflank Leonidas and his men.

That this fact goes unremarked upon would be an excellent example of the sort of subtlety that characterizes truly great films, except that I don’t think the filmmakers intended it in such a way. Like the Spartans, the filmmakers believe in a fascist ideal of physical perfection, and thus choice to ignore that it was the Spartans’ excessive pride that was their Achilles’ heel. Nazi propaganda posters always showed the most beautiful specimens of Teutonic perfection. So do modern military recruiting posters, for that matter. And TV commercials. There is no room in this framework for those who don’t fit the ideal.

By the way, I can find no evidence that the real Ephialtes was deformed, or that he possessed the moral integrity of the movie’s Ephialtes. In Greek tradition, Ephialtes plays much the same role and has been the recipient of as much scorn as Judas in Christian tradition. I am not defending the real Ephialtes, who was undoubtedly a true traitor who betrayed the Spartans for material gain, but the movie’s Ephialtes, who betrays the Spartans from a broken heart, giving them exactly what they deserved.

The Per(ver)sians

300 is not historical fact, it is historical fantasy. However, it is rather outrageous that the Persians are almost universally depicted as subhuman monsters. They are little different from the orcs of The Lord of the Rings, charging forward in a faceless mass. True, they are villains, and the faceless, disposable henchman is a trope of many forms of fiction (compare the endless legions of Stormtroopers in the Star Wars films). However, the movie has not established that monsters are real in its fantasy world. The depictions of the Ephos and of Ephialtes as disfigured and deformed represent what the movie considers to be their moral inferiority (fair in the case of the Ephos; completely unfair in the case of Ephialtes). Thus, the deformities of the Persians must also represent their moral inferiority.

There are a handful of Persians, however, who are not subhuman monsters. A few of them are fully human. There is something astounding about them, though: they are all black! Yes, that’s right: in 300, all the good guys are white, and all the bad guys are either subhuman trolls or black. If it weren’t so outrageous, one could perhaps forgive the film for its depiction of the Persian masses as subhuman; that could be considered authorial license. However, this is too close to reality, and we must turn to historical reality for comparison: in reality, there were no black Persians! Persia (modern Iran) is nowhere near Africa, and there were no trade routes between black African states and Persia. This is not only appallingly racist, but it is revealing of the mindset behind the movie. In effect, 300 conflates the deformities of the subhuman Persians with being black; by this logic, deformity and blackness are both external physical expressions of moral inferiority.

One doesn’t have to go very far to connect the film’s attitude toward black people with the way black people fit into the conservative, right-wing narrative. From the Southern Strategy in the sixties that welcomed white supremacists into the party with open arms, to the modern War on Drugs and America’s exploding prison population (predominantly comprised of black men), the Republican Party has long held black people as inferior to whites. It was a moral taint of the Negro that led white people in the fifties to find rock ‘n’ roll music so socially corrosive, just as it was the unstated fear of “angry black men” that led to the reaction against rap music decades later. It was this right-wing mythology that dreamed up the “welfare queen”, draining the resources of “hard-working” (i.e., white) Americans while contributing nothing but more and more fatherless children to society.

Fascism is inherently racist. Every fascist movement has chosen its inferior groups, and persecuted them in the name of its own perverted morality. It was no coincidence that it was white racist animosity toward the Civil Rights Movement that formed the foundation of this contemporary right-wing fascism. It is remarkable that 300 was so willing to depict it, but not so remarkable that fans of the movie simply took its depictions for granted.

The ~~Persian~~ Iranian Reaction

It might seem bizarre that the Iranians would be so offended that 300 depicted the Persians in a negative light. After all, in Islamic tradition, the cultures that predate Islam were not simply wrong and misguided, but evil and depraved. (There is even an Arabic word for such cultures, but, sadly, I cannot recall it at the moment.) Pre-Islamic ruins in modern Iran have been reinterpreted in such a way to exaggerate this depiction of their polytheistic builders as essentially demonic in motivation.

In Islam, there simply was nothing of value prior to Islam, and nothing of value outside of Islam. Thus, the Iranians, who have been some of the most vocal proponents of a radical political philosophy based on Islamic ideals, are the very last people to complain about negative depictions of the Persians.

However, it is impossible for an honest viewer to watch 300 and not realize the film’s intent. The film depicts the Iranians as subhuman monsters, undeserving of sympathy or pity. It is no coincidence that this is the precise model used by fascist movements throughout the twentieth century to depict the state’s enemies. Even in modern militaries, soldiers must be trained to think of the enemy is inhuman before he can kill them. Such depictions are the first step in creating a national threat, and the right-wing has been trying to create that threat for ages.

Even prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Christian leaders depicted Islam as particularly evil and dangerous to American society. Of course, this is merely the latest example of the long antipathy each religion has maintained toward the other. During the Bush era, however, there has been a renewed attempt to cast “Islamofascist” – and Muslims in general – in the most negative light possible. The right-wing has attempted, with moderate success, to connect the concepts of Muslim and terrorist in the American imagination. 300 is merely one part of that effort.

It was evident to the Iranians, however, that the United States, having overthrown Saddam Hussein and occupied Iraq, was turning its eyes to the east. Militarists have been predicted war with Iran for years, and recent saber-rattling in the Persian Gulf has only exacerbated the situation. The US has even tried to present falsified evidence of Iranian influence in Iraq as a pretext for attack. Until recently, the Bush administration refused even to acknowledge the Iranians in a diplomatic sense – the only option they afforded for dealing with the Iranians was military – and even its recent diplomatic outreach is half-hearted at best.

The Iranians may have been hypocritical in defending the Persians, but they were well aware that 300 was not about the Persians anyway. The American public is overwhelming opposed to our present war in Iraq, and even more opposed to starting a new war with Iran. This hardly fits with a goal of perpetual warfare, and steps must be taken to counteract public resistance. The Athenians eventually threw off their Spartan rulers; without broad public support for its goals, even the most rabid fascist movement is doomed.

In Summary

300 is a flawed film, but that is a minor issue. The problem with 300 is that it is blindly fascist, drawing unrealistic parallels between a real historical event and contemporary issues, and then painting it all in a gloss of fascism. As other reviewers noted, this is the kind of movie that Leni Riefenstahl would have made had she had access to computer graphics.

Perhaps my commentary seems overwrought, but the very fact that this movie so accurately captures sentiments openly expressed by right-wing pundits and politicians should be worrisome. The word “fascist” is thrown around with abandon anymore, and that has robbed it of much of its power; it is easy to dismiss allegations of fascism as exaggeration and hyperbole. In this context, however, all the parts fall into place. Many people have attempted to define fascism over the years, and a set of characteristics shared by all fascist movements has come together. The policies of the Bush administration and its right-wing supporters fit these descriptions perfectly, and the film 300 gives them widespread expression.

TAGS: movies, 300

Nancy Pelosi speaks out.

2008-07-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States — a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject.
...

The price of oil is… is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate.

I really hate to be sexist, but there’s no better way to put this:

It’s a bit late for Nancy Pelosi to be trying to grow a set of balls.

After all, it was just a month ago that Pelosi was voting to approve the FISA Amendments Act, stripping the Fourth Amendment from the Constitution, legalizing warrantless wiretapping, immunizing telecom companies from the rule of law, and essentially giving George W. Bush everything he wanted.

Pelosi was elected by Americans overwhelming opposed to the war in Iraq and demanding its end, so what did she do? She led the House in approving every single White House demand to continue funding the war. She was also elected amidst strong support for impeaching George W. Bush, so what did she do? She immediately announced that impeachment was “off the table”.

She has done as much as any Republican to protect George W. Bush, so her recent comments come across as more than a bit hypocritical. In fact, they come across as nothing but an attempt at political expediency. The Democrats are big on political expediency, after all; just ask Barack Obama and his supporters.

I think it was the FISA vote that did it, really. Pelosi witnessed the backlash against that vote, and realized that, this time, she may have gone too far. She also surely saw the Congressional approval numbers; in fact, more Republicans approve of the job she and her compatriots are doing than Democrats, and even their numbers are pretty small. She has seen the writing on the wall – her days in Congress are numbered – so she is trying to win back a bit of credibility by calling Bush some mean names, sticking out her touch, and going, “Pffffffft!”

Too little, too late. The organizers of the Netroots Nations convention even had to threaten to revoke the attendee badges of people protesting her. How very Democratic (with the big “D”) of them! Fortunately for Pelosi, she was saved when Al Gore descended from the heavens and cast his beatific light over the audience...but not before Code Pink stormed out during her speech. Seriously, I have absolutely no respect for Code Pink, so when I'm on their side, you know something has gone terribly wrong in Pelosi Land.

TAGS: politics, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party