Category: Punditry

Interesting articles, videos, and opinions.

The New Feminist Lie

As the Republican primary for the Governor of California reaches Election Day, the two main candidates continue to seek the conservative vote by trying to depict themselves as ultra-conservative on issues while trying to paint the other as essentially liberal. The truth is neither candidate is a true conservative. This race serves to illustrate the dilemma many Republicans face to get the support of their own people.

At the other end, there is the problem of broadening support beyond the Right. The easiest way to do this is to take a book from advertisers and misrepresent. Advertisers have long used the idea of female empowerment to sell products to women, with the empowerment being little more than sexism. Similarly, Sarah Palin now calls herself a feminist. But she is not a feminist in the established sense of the word. Her “emerging conservative feminist identity” is simply a new set of words to describe women who don’t agree with women’s rights, who are against the use of contraceptives and who are anti-abortion. The catch phase is nothing more than a lie, designed to get support for a party that consistently votes against women’s rights.

Feminists (not Palin’s faux feminists) are more intelligent than that to fall for the lie, but as advertisers know, you can fool people some of the time, and if you keep hammering away, you will fool even more. Eventually perhaps, we will reach a 1984 world, where catch phrases have lost their meaning, and we all mechanically respond to the lies that are being fed us.

Obama’s Waterloo?

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may signal the end of trust in the President Obama, just as Hurricane Katrina damaged President Bush’s standing. Considering all the aspects of the oil disaster, it is difficult to see how the administration could have acted otherwise. But we the people expect more. Although the public’s general view of the government comes with a large dose of cynicism, when we find ourselves in a situation like the BP oil disaster or Katrina, we expect some superhuman solution to the crisis.

The truth of the matter is that there are some crises that are so great that they are beyond the ability of the government to deal with immediately and in a totally effective way.

The 9/11 attack was a major crisis that fell within the range of our ability to act, and the government did react swiftly and effectively identified the source of and responsibility for the attack. Until we were diverted into the irrelevant Iraq war, there were only small missteps that could be criticized.

In the case of Katrina, it is true that Bush made some goofs, but overall it was clear that the extent of the crisis was well beyond the country’s ability to deal with it immediately and effectively. When the waters retreated, most of the blame fell unfairly on the shoulders of Bush, and he and his administration will forever be marked by the failures of Katrina.

Will we see that same with Obama and the BP oil disaster? Obama’s main misstep has been not to be seen to be angry with BP. As the disaster develops more and more into a major catastrophe, I think it is quite likely that we will tar Obama with it as part of his legacy.

Arizona, USA and Illegal Immigrants

Arizona’s law against illegal immigrants is probably more of an expression of frustration than a law than can be comprehensively enforced. There has been nationwide condemnation of the law, but at the very least, it has put focus back on the pressing issue of illegal immigration.

Part of the outcry against the law is that it will lead to racial profiling. But the racial profiling, in this case, is mostly due to the “accidental” circumstances; after all, practically all the illegal immigrants come from south of the Arizona border with Mexico. Profiling is inevitable, whether there is racial bias or not.

Arizona’s frustration is understandable, even if one regards the law as extreme. US policy on illegal immigration is presently ineffective, and in many ways ambiguous. After making allowance for refugee and guest workers status (however the exceptions may be determined), it is absolutely imperative that the United States adopts a hard, consistent policy that the country sticks to – inflexibly! This would include no more amnesties, no way for an illegal immigrant to to legalize his status from within the United States, and in all cases, after due process, immediate deportation. Other countries do it. Why don’t we?

Take Australia, for example. Australia does have an advantage over the USA as regards immigration. The ocean forms a virtual moat around the country, but it still has its share of illegal immigrants, including a surprising number from the United States. Whenever the Department of Immigration identifies an illegal alien, after due process, that person is immediately flown out of the country back to his land of origin. There is no messing about as here with court hearings to see if he has bought a ticket, a situation that costs as much as a ticket and is nothing more than a waste of time.

If a child has the luck to be born in Australia and is therefore a citizen and the illegal parents are not, there is no way that the parents can stay. They are illegally in the country and have to be deported. They can leave the child or take him with them. (He will always have the citizenship in his back pocket, should he wish to return when he is older.)

The Department of Immigration discovered a Chinese family living a small town in conservative, rural Queensland. They were illegal immigrants and in due course, they ended up on a plane to Hong Kong, despite pleas from the residents of that town, for the family operated the town’s only Chinese restaurant. Since they were illegally in the country, there was no way that they could get their status changed to legal residency. The town’s people then followed the right procedure. They filled immigration applications, guarantees and sponsorship papers, and within a matter of months they were able to bring the family back to the town, now as legal immigrants. The town had a big barbecue for them and pretty soon, the Chinese restaurant was back in business.

Arizona’s move has signaled to the federal government that it is high time for real action. The government should look to other countries where there are immigration policies that work, some of the European countries and Australia for example, to help formulate a workable immigration policy.

Palin’s “Christian Nation”

So Palin thinks that this nation was founded as a Christian nation. She said this piece of fiction in a speech on Friday, April 16.

Sorry, Sarah, you just confirmed what I was saying in the last post, “Ignorance is Right,” because the United States was not founded as a Christian nation.

The founding fathers were at great pains to make sure that the Constitution established the government as a secular government, even though the founders themselves were at least nominally Christian (except for Thomas Jefferson who was not. He believed God created the world but after that took no further interest in it.)

To be founded as a Christian nation, the religion needs to appear in the founding documents, but the Constitution makes no mention whatsoever of Jesus, or Christianity, or any defined god that we could recognize as Christian. John Adams made it clear that the Government of the United States is NOT founded on the Christian religion.

When Palin quotes Washington’s farewell address that extols “religion, faith, morality [as] indispensable supports,” no mention is made of the Christian version of religion, nor of the Christian faith, nor of Christian morality.

Palin’s fiction is another example of the ignorance of the far right at work again. Ironically, she told the women in attendance at her speech that they should not listen to critics who would make them feel that their movement is “all a low-cost brand of ignorance.” But what she was asking them to swallow was exactly that – ignorance of the lowest kind!

Ignorance is Right

It is significant that ignorance plays a large role in the politics of conservatives. I wish I could define that as “of ultra conservatives”, but ignorance has spread beyond the extreme right.

Gross ignorance, for instance, is at the heart of the tea party movement. It is not always as obvious as, for example, when someone in a recent tea party protest against health reform held up a sign that said, “Govt, keep your hands off my Medicare.” (Someone should have told that moron that Medicare is a government program; without government, there would be no Medicare.)

There are many other indicators of ignorance. Tea Partyists like to see themselves as reincarnations of the original patriots who founded this country. But dressing up as them is as close as they ever get, for the founding patriots were not at all like the tea partyists. They were about unity, stability and working together; they were not about disunity and destabilization. Above all, they did not protest taxation. In Boston, after the real historic tea party, they continued to pay their taxes to the colonial government. What they were opposed to was “taxation without representation”, a different matter altogether. The present day tea partyists are actually the antithesis of the real tea party patriots.

The tea partyists do not want to accept the results of the last election. They are stridently anti-Obama, but to call him a Nazi and make him a latter-day Hitler is nothing short of absurd. Obama is the opposite of the extreme right wing that Nazism represents, and of the white race supreme leader of the Third Reich, whose minions set out to purge the land of non-white races, to destroy democracy, and to raid and smash homes and offices of opposition leaders. Uh oh! It’s beginning to sound like the behavior of some of the tea party’s very own members.

Other commentators have noted the racism that is at the heart of the tea party movement, so I’ll leave this one to them. “Take back America,” means in effect, “Take back America from a black president.”

Away from the tea party, conservatives are on the move to rewrite the history books in their own image, especially in Texas, but also on radio and TV and in written publications. This is not simply an exercise in cynicism. It is a genuine exercise of ignorance. In this Right version, Franklin D. Roosevelt caused the Great Depression. (He didn’t, but he was a Democrat, so let’s blame him.) Theodore Roosevelt, one of the great Republican presidents, turns out to be a socialist. (He wasn’t.) Jamestown in 1607 was a socialist experiment that (naturally) failed – ignoring the fact that Jamestown was the result of a capitalist venture that set out to make a profit; it did come close to failure, but eventually made it. Joe McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts of the early 1950s, was actually an American hero and should not have been censured by the Senate. (The censure, incidentally, was led by Republicans.)

More details on the conservative effort to rewrite history are to be found at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/01/91478/some-conservatives-rewrite-history.html.

Of course, to some extent, history can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, one might debate the extent to which Ronald Reagan’s policies contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The circumstances around this event are complex; some are open to interpretation, while others do not provide clear indications of significance. What are not open to interpretation are facts and first person statements. But these are exactly what the conservatives are fudging, glossing over, ignoring, or simply misrepresenting (that is, simply lying about) to make the case for their new version of history.

By politicizing history into their own image, they are doing what the very ideologies they most oppose do. These are precisely the activities that non-democratic totalitarian governments (such as Nazism and communism) indulge in to twist history into a model that supports and justifies their ideologies.

Palin Cleans Up

As we saw during the 2008 campaign, Sarah Palin, given even half an opportunity, helps herself. Though the McCain campaign worked hard to keep her in check, she was always on the verge of “going rogue.”

She also helped herself in another way. When the campaign wanted her to improve her image (i.e. her appearance), she went on an enviable shopping spree, spending over $150,000 of Republican campaign funds on herself and on her daughter. Not bad! And she wanted to keep what was tangible after the elections!

When she addressed a tea party convention in February this year, she gave them exactly what they wanted, that is, unrelenting attacks on Obama;  she presented herself as someone sympathetic to their “cause” (i.e. their anger) and a potential leader of the movement. She still charged them $100,000 for the privilege. There were complaints from many of the tea partyists. She fudged on the money, saying to trust her that it will go to a good cause. No doubt it will: Sarah Palin.

Recently at the Oscars Gift Suite, she and her entourage helped themselves to the freebies there. “They were like locusts,” it was reported. “They practically cleaned out the suite.” (That part may have been somewhat exaggerated.) Security would not allow any photos, which were expected by the companies donating items to use for product promotion. These items were then supposed to be donated back for auction (to support Red Cross efforts in Haiti and Chile), but Palin “did not give up any of of her swag.” (E! Online)

It seems that with Sarah Palin, there is no clear line between what is private and what is public. The same pattern seems to have existed in her public positions in Alaska, and it will no doubt continue wherever she finds herself. Perhaps she is also helping herself at Fox News. This trait is not necessarily a bad one. All the great dictators made no distinction in this respect. Their philosophy was, What was good for them was good for the nation.

God is Hate II

(See also the “God is Hate” post of January 31.)

Satan’s favorite Christians, homophobe Fred Phelps and his rabid band of followers at Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas, (mostly members of his own family), have for some time emotionally and psychologically harassed grieving families of dead soldiers at their funerals. They do so by holding signs saying, “God Hates You,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “Thank God for IEDs,” “God Hates Your Tears,” “Fag Troops,” and many that are more offensive.

This happened at the funeral of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder who was killed in combat in Iraq on March 3, 2006. Here the group also included a sign that said, “Matt in Hell.” It was never suggested that Snyder was gay, but Phelps claims he died because he fought for a country that condones homosexuality. He also said on his web site that Matthew’s father “raised him for the devil.”

Albert Snyder, Matthew’s father, sued for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The jury agreed, but this was later overturned by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeal on the basis of the First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech. Now the matter is before the Supreme Court, and it is hoped that this court will find a way to do the decent thing.

It is unfortunate that basic human dignity and respect for intensely personal issues do not enter into considerations of free speech. But surely what Phelps and his minions have done is a gross violation of basic rights. They do have the right to express their views, however evil they may be, but one’s rights are limited when they intrude on someone else’s rights and privacy. Grief is a necessary step in restoring one’s self and one’s life; there is no question in my mind that in seeking to deny both the grief and the dignity of laying a loved one to rest, these hatemongers have intruded on the rights of the mourning family. It was not as if the family of Matthew Snyder could turn away. If someone wants to debase a funeral, the mourners are trapped, and the forces of evil are victorious.

If Phelps really wants to deal with the issue of homosexuality, he should look within himself. His extreme homophobia suggests that he is struggling to deal with strong homosexual urges of his own. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will rule to restore the judgment against him as well as the damages award that the original jury imposed, in effect curtailing his hate mongering. This will give him more time to examine his own deep motives.

God is Hate

On January 29th, 2010, the followers of Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, descended on Gunn High School, Palo Alto CA, to spread their message of hate. They sported signs that said, “God Hates You”, “God Hates America”, “Your Doom Is Coming”, “God Hates Obama” and “Bloody Obama”. They picked on Gunn High School because of a number of recent suicides in front of trains of kids who were associated with the school, events that have traumatized students at the school.

The Westboro extremists were there to rub it in. “You’ll be in front of the train next! God laughs at your calamity!” Phelps’s daughter shouted. “Sodomites,” they sang, “your kids are killed by trains.” The Sodom reference is key, for these hate-mongers have a homophobic fixation and believe that the acceptance of homosexuality is the root of all evil.

Fortunately, the Gunn students and teachers rallied, and with support from the community and many students from other nearby schools, they met the messages of hate and evil spite with signs proclaiming love, with songs and with support of each other, so much so that their unity was an uplifting, inspiring experience. As one student said, “It really helped to pull us together.”

The Westboro group then took its hate to sinful Stanford University, only to be met by a large crowd of students, the school mascot, the outrageous Stanford band and a lone piper playing “Amazing Grace”. It was a message of love mixed with humor to counter those poisoned with hate from Kansas. A student posed with the extremists, holding a sign that said, “Gays for Fred Phelps.”

How can a “Christian” group like this be so filled with hate when the Christian message is so full of love? Only once did Jesus show a flash of hate, and that was when the Greek woman kept bugging him to cast the demon out of her daughter (Mark 7:26-29). Because she was a gentile, not a Jew, he called her a dog: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to the dogs”. But he quickly relented when she replied, “Yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.” Jesus also showed anger at the desecration of the temple by profiteers, but this was not hate.

Phelps obviously has his own thing going (which is definitely not Christian), and his irrational paranoia about homosexuality says a lot about his own demons.

Abortion Terrorist found Guilty

The Kansas Christian, Scott Roeder, who shot and killed the abortionist Dr. George Tiller, was convicted of first-degree murder. His defense all along was that it was the only way he could halt the “death of babies.” The position on abortion is not relevant here. What is wrong is his justification.

The key question is who or what gives him the right to murder another in cold blood. He took the coward’s way and shot him from behind in a church and threatened others as he left. To do it in God’s sanctuary shows what little respect he had for sanctity. He and his supporters who are probably much like him feel that the courts should sanction his action and set him free. Worse still, he and the supporters identify themselves as Christian; yet he acted like the terrorists that we condemn. Should we let the 9/11 conspirators go free because they felt justified in their actions since America in their eyes is the force of evil in the world? Of course not!

The question remains then: Who gave you the right? It is written in the Bible, “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place to wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, said the Lord” (Romans 12:19). Vengeance was not yours to take, you moron!

Let us pray that in his long, long time in prison, Roeder will realise that by giving in to his wrath, he played into Satan’s hand. If not, he’ll probably work that out in the hereafter.

Misplaced Reverence

The Reverend Pat Robertson showed his true colors again by saying in effect that the Haitians deserved the devastating earthquake of January 12. In the same vein, three days after the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001, he “totally concur[red]’ with the Reverend Jerry Falwell that   “pagans… abolitionists… gays… lesbians… the ACLU” were to be blamed for those acts—God’s vengeance. Falwell has meanwhile gone to his ultimate reward, whatever that might be. (It may not have been the one he expected.) We are still left with Robertson and his extreme views.

It has been suggested that Robertson, like other televangelists, is motivated by money, not by religious altruism. I would not dispute that, since I have grown up believing that the sincere ministers do not seek publicity or vast audiences, or solicit large donations; instead, they work for the spiritual welfare of those who seek them out. Robertson, however, is after more than money, for there would otherwise be no need for the Haiti or 9/11 statements, or his suggestion that someone ought to take out Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

I think Robertson suffers from what a lot of clerics suffer from: an exaggerated sense of self-importance. They end up confusing the importance of their ministry with self-importance, in other words, pride (Satan’s sin). They believe that their pronouncements must be true because of what they are — something like the Pope’s infallibility, a person with whom clerics like Robertson would not wish to be identified.

Associated with the conviction of importance of self is a quest for power.  And Robertson did seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1987, an occasion when he apparently lied about his combat experience and also claimed he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa (not so), but then Christian conservatives are OK with lying. (See Christian Implants and Other Wonders, November 18th, 2009, below.) Lack of support forced him to quit, leaving him his media outlet to give him a platform of influence.

Except for the people who keep sending him money, we know that he is an extremist who shoots his satanic mouth off every now and then, and for that reason, we can ignore him except to contain his extreme statements. What is fortunate is that he is one of ours. If he were persuaded by another religion, or lived in another system, he would probably be another Osama Bin Laden.