Quote of the Week

In yesterday’s New York Times, Gail Collins wrote the most succinct summary of the Wall Street fiasco that I’ve read, and it gets my vote for “Quote of the Week”:

“In deference to the current emergency, we will refrain from pointing out that when our national leaders came together following Sept. 11, the results were, all and all, worse than if they had stayed home.”

Exactly, Gail.

I am suspect of this “crisis,” it sounds all too familiar. While the economic problems facing the nation are undeniably deep and real, our economic demise started with a script reading much like the one unfolding before us this week.

Remember in 2002 or so, the President called for urgent action in the face of an “immanent” threat, a don’t ask any questions when the sky is falling fear campaign. Sign and march, trust me, this is for our national interest, including a televised address to the nation on the situation’s urgency. Do or die! It’s all or nothing, and we must move immediately or all will come to an end! And don’t forget the vague promises of long term taxpayer benefits in the guise of eventual profits.

Iraqi oil money, where art thou now?

But the administration has done nothing in this past 8 years to warrant the nation’s trust; in fact, we should all be suspicious of who is asking for the blank check bailout.

Where was the sense of urgency during Katrina and the televised faces of the homeless despondent? Where was the 700 dollar bailout while bodies floated down the streets of New Orleans? Where has the sense of urgency been on any issue of merit except when big money comes into play? Can’t We the People just smile and nod to Wall Street as they run around willy nilly and say, “It’s all working out so well for those people?” Why should the American taxpayer bailout some of the wealthiest, greediest individuals in the nation, CEO’s who have been getting exorbitant incomes because of their self-promoted intellectual skill and expertise, who have managed to do little more than squander their personal wealth while financially raping everyday folks or even those of modest wealth who work hard and plan.

Corporate welfare has reached previously unknown gluttonous bloating when Congress is supposed to unquestioningly sign and pass legislation for a 700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout, and then give a free pass to the very people who created the problem. Wall Street has played fast and loose not just with the facts, but with the structure and sustained health of the American economy, but we’ve got a “get out of jail free” card here called the U.S. government, a.k.a. We the People, and the debt will be loaded onto the underclasses for God knows how many years. Not to mention, all this financial maneuvering happened on the Bush watch, as his rubber stamp congress wrote and rewrote a bevy of banking laws to feed the greed, and now bankruptcy for Joe and Susan America next door is virtually impossible.

But Wall Street gets a pass on backs of Joe and Sue?

Is there a problem with this picture?

I have been waiting for the patriotism card to be played in the middle of this fear campaign, and it came from an unexpected quarter: Mr. McCain.

As told by Ms. Collins in the above quoted essay, “Bring on the Rubber Chickens,” the Republican nominee did not disappoint, and asserted that “Following Sept. 11, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now.”

Bravo, John. You didn’t miss a beat. Make sure to tack 9/11 onto the current situation, frothing up the fear, as you strike a hero’s pose for those people clinging to their one home, and don’t forget the subtext that to think anything other of your erratic and self serving political posturing would be “unpatriotic.”

One of the many ironies of the McCain campaign is that they have appropriated Obama’s mantra of change, while all the while engaging in ever more insidious levels of Bush and Co. tactics, without quite the skill (who would have thought I would use the words “skill” and “Bush and Co.” in the same clause) as the Bush administration puppet masters.

As a liberal who is to the left of most liberals in America today, I am not too keen on this plan. It just smacks of more of the same slipshod, makeshift policy we’ve seen for 8 years, policy which serves the few at the expense of the entire nation, and the Republic’s long term health, while the Democrats smile and nod.

Paul Krugman has been writing on the encroachment of this situation for well over a year, and in today’s column “Where are the Grown-Ups,” he offers no answers. It is a sticky wicket to be certain, but is the sky really falling? There is no evidence, according to Krugman, that Joe and Susan America will be overwhelmingly affected by the crisis: “It’s true that we don’t know for sure that the parallel [to the Great Depression] is a fair one. Maybe we can let Wall Street implode and Main Street would escape largely unscathed. But that’s not a chance we want to take.”

A very serious conundrum, but we’ve got some time to figure it out, as we must.

What we don’t have to do is rely on the “skills and competency” of the folks who got us into this mess, the ones who will be rewarded for their bad behavior unless the F.B.I. steps in with criminal investigations, and most certainly not a situation requiring that we trust an administration who has persistently duped us down the road of democratic demise while enjoying long days and even longer evenings down in Crawford.

In my opinion, we should take a pass on the sign and march and work out a sustainable plan. We the People are not well served by this conflation of posturing and immediacy. Such a plan won’t create jobs, a sustainable economy, or reinstate those 401 K’s that have gone sour. That will take time, and this plan is a hasty pudding with a recognizable odor. Chicken little tactics won’t save the day. They didn’t after 9/11, significantly contributing to the problem before us now, by way of the national deficit.

My qualifications? I temped on Wall Street when I lived in Manhattan, and I saw all the banks when I went to work in the morning, and I worked in many of them as well as the brokerage houses.

My proximity to the market in those days makes me an economist.

Quote of the Week Runner-Up: Paul Begala’s politically incorrect comment on Thursday evening is too rich to leave out:

Troy Davis: U. S. Supreme Court Stays Execution

The U. S. Supreme Court granted Troy Davis a last minute reprieve, less than two hours before his scheduled execution. An update can be found here on CNN’s site. According to Amnesty International the reprieve is in effect until Monday, 29 September.

To learn more about this case, you can read Bob Herbert’s essay, “What’s the Rush” or visit Troy Davis.org.

Lead us from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.
Lead us from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Lead us from hate to love,
from war to peace.
Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Peace, peace, peace ~ shanti, shanti, shanti.

Adapted from the Upanishads, for the benefit of Mr. Davis.

Equinox: A Miscellany of Convergences

The equinox arrived today, bringing with it the first day of fall, the coming of shorter days and longer nights, and delivering an equal convergence of day and night.

In honor of the equinox, I’m offering some of my finds for the past week or so, convergences coinciding with day and night’s equilibrium:

Alice Walker wrote an ostensibly strained analysis in her essay, “What Our Country Desperately Needs is a Leader Who Loves Us.” But much of her argument emerges from her Buddhist practices; consequently she suggests a unique and profound antidote to our cultural malaise, seen, for example, in the politics of fear and smear. I’m not sure American politics has ever been about “feeling the love,” but at the very least her essay raises the question, “why has feeling the fear become so much more politically effective than feeling the love?” The convergence of love and politics is a poignant answer to our fear driven ideological numbness, even if we may not be ready to head the call.

In a convergence of modern scholarship and ancient practice, scientists have concluded that Stonehenge was the ‘Lourdes of prehistoric Europe’. Their argument in part rests on the believed magical healing power of the bluestones mined in North Wales, used to mark astronomical events, and the discovery of diseased bones and skeletal remains. Stonehenge was a mecca where the individual’s life and death converged with the heavens in imaginative ways. The remarkable conflation of the individual and the cosmic in the “primitive mind” gives this reader pause.

In a convergence of injustice and courage, Bob Herbert rose to the occasion last week and wrote on the plight of Troy Davis. In an election season of hyperbole, polemics, and the media’s preoccupation with the big game, Mr. Herbert reminds us what this country is about: the individual and their right to justice. His column also reminds us that we have a long way to go. One of the week’s best Op-Eds which I hope every visitor will read.

A depth of life and a tragic death met this week: David Foster Wallace was found dead, a suicide. A. O. Scott gives a superb reflection on Mr. Wallace, and the sidebar readings to the left of Scott’s article give a rich introduction to the writer’s life and work. Joshua Ferris’ first person remembrance is the most personal and moving memorial that I read.

In the ongoing convergence between individual greed and the common good, Paul Krugman wrote a compelling argument today for why the bailout should be closely scrutinized. He writes that some “are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq . . ..” His essay “Cash for Trash” should be required reading for every citizen, especially members of congress, given the Bush administration’s history of “urgently” rushing headlong into an enterprise, usually with a different agenda on the table than the one described.

I appreciate the idiosyncratic convergence of liberal and conservative views in Tom Friedman’s writings. I found this Christian Science Monitor review of his book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” and it is worth reading. To date, he’s been one of the most progressive writers on global warming and its ramifications, and if you don’t have the time to read his book, this summary will serve you well.

In a convergence of excruciating pain and triumph, I am pleased to write that I completed the Boston Marathon route on Sunday, once again trumping agony with the mysterious convergence of circumstance, a.k.a., synchronicity, which kicks in when one gives the seemingly impossible to the Great Ether, a kind of Stonehenge revisited, an inexplicable meeting of the body and the heavens.

Happy Autumnal Equinox.

Sarah Palin and The Great Divide, Pt. 2

I found the following Monday morning when I turned to The Economist: The Born Again Block: The Democrats are Having A Lot of Trouble Wooing Evangelical Voters. It nicely coincided with Sunday’s entry, and it gives me the opportunity to unpack a little of what I wrote in my letter to Frank Rich.

I first offer an anecdote, to illustrate the concerns I previously expressed and which were echoed in The Economist article.

I spoke with my mother on the phone last week. Not surprisingly, she is the only in her circle of evangelical friends voting for Obama, and the following is typical of what she encounters. “Jill and I were talking yesterday, and she couldn’t believe I was voting for Obama. Jill said, ‘But he is for abortion.’ I told her abortion is just one issue, and I think we need to vote on more than one issue, but she doesn’t understand how I can be a Christian and vote for someone who upholds abortion. She seemed to think I was being un-Christian by voting for Obama.”

Jill is indicative of my mother’s friends, and compared to most, quite tolerant. For this group, Christianity is an iron clad doctrine, reinforced by Sunday sermons, home Bible studies, radio and television programs. Diverting from the doctrine is to wander off the “straight and narrow,” the assurance of salvation not quite as iron clad since “once saved always saved” is a hotly disputed issue. More compelling, though, is the buttressing of doctrine through the spiritual relationship formed through prayer, worship, and the Christian community. In these communities “values” are formed and become yoked to the believer’s subjective experiences. Such experiences might be dismissed as mass hallucination by skeptics, but the import and transformation in their personal lives is quite extraordinary. (Skeptics would be well served to read The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.)

Most of these individuals will never have access to the elite or even semi-elite educational institutions that mark the background of those publishing and writing for The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, etc.; their lives are circumscribed by their faith communities, their work, their families, and their neighborhoods. College is not a given, and many of my mother’s friend’s children have attended Bible colleges, or have an educational background like Sarah Palin’s: fragmented and unfocused.

First and foremost in the minds of this group is a “relationship” with God, understood exclusively through Jesus Christ, and the purification of their lives in this goal. Their primary role models are Biblical characters, and the Bible is not viewed as a compilation of historical documents, or a redaction of oral traditions, but the absolute and unquestioned Word of God. Such certainty sanctifies this world view, but more important offers rote assurance that the believer rides the tides circumstance victoriously.

To dismiss religious belief and its expressions is to ignore compelling evidence of the brain’s hard wiring for spirituality, and the increasing evidence for the mysterious complexity of the unconscious mind. It is also to ignore the profound connection between spirituality, creativity, the intricacies of human development, and most important, the unavoidable reality of the symbolic imagination characterizing our species.

Among Evangelicals, personal experience, faith, belief, doctrine, and “values” form an intricate psychological web: these are not bad people, but very often decent people holding suspect ideologies born from good intentions, reinforced in the community, and solidified through spiritual experience. More germane to this discussion, “faith” is not an abstract concept that is merely talked about, it is a daily surrender of one’s self to a personal spiritual quest and set of beliefs which must be narrowly defined, for the path is ’straight and narrow.’ This life and the afterlife depends on their responsibility to this experience and walking “the straight and narrow,” even though the pitfalls of that walk are numerous. Discussing faith abstractly or to treat it as a private matter entirely misses the point; in the political realm, a candidate so speaking simply demonstrates that they aren’t a “true believer.”

As we know, the Evangelicals form a powerful voting block in American politics, the “values driven” vote. Like good Christian Soldiers “with the cross of Jesus going on before,” they have changed this country in the past eight years, fighting for a straightforward, tightly circumscribed morality where right is right and wrong is wrong, to keep their children and their country safe, free from change, and rooted in a particular world view. Sarah Palin has captured their imagination, as I previously wrote, not because she is a woman, but because she is a woman of faith: she is one of them, and people vote for people like themselves. Like them, she prays for guidance, identifies with Bible characters, and if she comes across as “George Bush squared,” it’s because she really is more like Jill than anyone who has ever been on the national stage. Whereas I saw a scripted neophyte in the Charlie Gibson interview, Jill no doubt saw someone like herself: a working mother who had made tough decisions, has floundered and succeeded in life “through God’s grace” by following his Word, and who may not be book smart but has a personal relationship with the Lord, and by God you can’t take that away from her. I believe psychologists call Palin’s “don’t blink” references a variation on “fight or flight.” And like a true daughter of God, Sarah fights. Like Jill fights, and like so many of my mother’s friends fight. It is a world view which sees no utility in parsing, decisions must be made, and staying true to the faith and fighting the good fight win one the victor’s crown, a spiritual promise which must be lived daily. The liberal elite doesn’t “get it” in many ways.

The cultural divide may be overly simplified as a divide between meaning and thinking, the former associated with those on a personal quest, the latter associated with “secular liberal values.” What our thinkers and analysts don’t understand is that the simple sweeping away of the search for meaning by the presumed superiority of rationalism and “liberal secularism” is itself fraught with overwhelming logical inconsistencies, dehumanization and empathic distance being one of the most common. The dismissive, smug disregard of ignorant Bible thumpers being the most relevant case in point. Like it or not, the Evangelicals have a right to vote. Perhaps the most ironic inconsistency which I observe is that the bubble of Enlightened elitism can’t see beyond its own fragile sphere to penetrate the human imagination of about 23 percent of the voting population. Education and intellectual development seemingly foster self-importance and complacency, a.k.a. stubborn ignorance, instead of humanitarian concern and understanding.

At the end of the day, it seems to me a class issue, and those “dumb” Evangelicals know it consciously or unconsciously. I am not talking economics, but the subtleties of class and social mobility in America. When religious conservatives believe in the existence of a “liberal elite media,” the subtext is “those who aren’t like us, those who don’t live like we do.” They understand themselves as not having the same resources, as different from those who are allowed mobility and gravitas.  When this world closes you off to opportunity, choose the next world and a compassionate God who blesses the social have nots. Their superiority to America’s ever present and invisible class system is anti-classicism by way of heaven and its founder; the privilege of their renegade (“maverick”) status is reinforced by God and his Word. Throw in bits of patriotism, Americana, and the fear of terrorism, and you have a world view easily penetrated by the likes of Rove. And while the liberal elite glibly talks about the ignorance of those who vote for individuals like George Bush and Sarah Palin, the fact is that these are the individuals who too frequently throw themselves under our collective political bus while they simultaneously rely on the assurance of God’s favor and protection in their personal lives.

For all the accolades laid at Obama’s feet, what is conspicuously missing from his discourse is real religious rhetoric: a rhetoric of hope is simply secular liberalism ignoring the obvious. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” freely used scripture and the religious imagination in framing its message; Jimmy Carter’s appeal in ‘76 was a real lived “born again” faith which even wrestled with issues of lust. To speak about hope without the certain imaginative fire imported by religion, given the precarious nature of the world and its circumstances, and our own shortcomings, is to speak in a vacuum for Evangelicals. For all of us, somehow the universe must be made hospitable: belief in God is the quickest route to make it so, a fast track speedily bypassing any philosophical bumps in the road. Thus, when you invoke tradition, authority, and the lived experience of “an ever present help in a time of need,” you move into the realm of the religious imagination, one of the most potent regions in the human mind, and notably the same source accessed by some of our greatest artists, poets, and rhetoricians, arguably the region from which our better angels are born.

McCain trumped many of his shortcomings (including his flip flopping on Roe vs. Wade) and shook things up through one simple move: igniting the fire of Republican party’s base through the religious imagination by choosing Sarah Palin. Someone like themselves, a real Christian soldier. Until the Democrats and the left get their sanctimonious rational hands dirty and muck around in the religious imagination, until they quit demonizing the adaptive and meaningful as mere ignorance, and recognize its inevitable function in human life, until they can identify with the Evangelicals in a way which doesn’t smack of patronizing them, they have little to offer this particular block of voters, and the Republic remains in very uncertain territory.

For further reading:

• David Brooks wrote an interesting Op-Ed today, which intersects with my thoughts above. Although he frames his observations in terms of “populism” and “elitism,” it should be obvious why I agree with his analysis: Why Experience Matters.

• E. J. Dionne also writes on the populist – elitist divide today, and concludes much more optimistically than myself: Whose Elitism Problem Now?

• God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Griffith deals specifically with feminist issues, but her book offers an extraordinary and even handed view into the Evangelical woman’s world.  Nicely summarized and described here.

Sarah Palin and the Great Divide

In Sunday’s New York Times, Frank Rich offered a good analysis of what has been driving the Religious Right in this country since, well arguably since its founding. Though that isn’t really what Mr. Rich argues in The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket, it is nevertheless the heart of his argument.

What Mr. Rich and so many on the left fail to recognize is what drives the fear he describes, and this righteous obliviousness threatens to tear the Republic apart as much as the righteous obstinacy and pigheadedness of the right.

I wrote the following remarks to Mr. Rich on the Times site, and post them here. Being a liberal elitist with strong ties to the religious right, I understand that the cultural divide in this country is as much a fault of the left as it is of the right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mr. Rich,

You correctly place fear as the animating force of the political right.

Fear of an inevitable change which employs a kind of mass delusion in hopes that it will all just go away if we buttress ourselves against the forces of evil, i.e., change.

But what you and many others fail to take into account is the fuel which feeds this fear, and perhaps because the cultural divide is so deep it eludes you and some of the best political commentators.

That fuel is fundamentalist religion.

Fear of hell. Fear of displeasing God. Fear of corrupt doctrine. And fear of a changing world.

Having a direct pipeline to this world view via my loving yet ever fearful family, I was surprised that so many columnists were able to talk with such ease about the delusional nature of the RNC without understanding why such delusion is easy: a Christianity mired in fear, the literal interpretation of scripture, and an unwavering belief in Truth, with a capital “T.”

A world view deeply held by vast swaths of this country, yet dismissed as irrelevant by journals such as the Times and its commentators.

The primary role models for the faithful aren’t ethicists pondering the rights of the individual versus the good for the many, rather frequently dubious characters who receive an ever present help in a time of need. Warriors, scoundrels, kings, usurpers all who fight the good fight in God’s name.

Abstract pondering about the nature of God and the good has no place in this world view, rather it is belief system in which the individual must find an empathy with these characters and create an inviolable connection between themselves and their God. Ms. Palin’s identification with females in scripture is typical.

I appreciate the unmasking of fear and delusion for what it is, but I find it telling that so few of our best commentators fail to recognize the depth and passion driving this fear.

McCain’s inclusion of Sarah Palin on the ticket was brilliant, not because she was a woman, but because she was a woman of God, a woman of faith. This is what has the base fired up, because faith trumps those fears.

Honesty and dishonesty really aren’t relevant — as Bill Clinton said about Judge Thomas and Ms. Hill, “I think that they both believe that they are telling the truth.” Or something along those those. These aren’t empirical issues, but issues of what one holds true, and as we see over and over, Truth trumps empiricism.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the hard part for most liberal parsing commentators to see is that the faithful frequently are often very true to their truth, as they see it.

Unfortunately, their chosen leaders aren’t equipped for their elected jobs, because the notions of wisdom, faith, good judgment are welded together via the mythos. The fear of change, fear of one’s place in the universe has always shaped human behavior, and religion has always provided symbols and ways of approaching the world to give one the capacity to deal with change.

Objectifying this fear concretely in terms of the “evil doers” (in this case, extremist Islam) is classic projection of one’s own animus onto the other, which is why it has served Bush and Co. so well.

Although analyzing the basis of that fear at length is not your column’s purpose, it would do the liberal elite (myself presumably included) well to reflect more on the basis of that fear.

Being dismissive of its complexities may well deliver this country into another 8 years of American demise, and the fundamentalist extremists here at home.