Senior year underway, "real life" -- by which meaneth the contrived pressures of Gtown -- has taken over as predicted. I'm also a little unsure how to follow "TED-fest," so I suppose it's back to the old style for this weekend's offering. Might get ambitious and throw another TED talk in towards the end here just to reinforce the trend... For now, back we dive, into the slime.
Religion, Ethics & World Affairs
Now that I've officially been studying in the certificate program of that name for a few weeks, I'll have a go at distilling all that high-minded stuff into some kind of semi-coherent blog post. First, we'll let a certain sax-playing former Hoya who's not sure what the definition of "is," is set the terms of the debate:
But back to how we look like a joke. Not to lead off your weekend with anything too pessimistic, but just look round: the GOP farce-fest "debates;" the world economy heading closer and closer to the edge of the cliff; unemployment at almost 10 percent (and have I mentioned it's about 8 percent for whites and 16 percent for blacks lately?); the environment Egan and Clinton are speaking for; and the squirm session that was Obama's beat-down of the Palestinians yesterday. After all, we'd like nothing more than peace in Palestine...except the Jewish vote in America in 2012. The Roger Cohen caucus wins again.
Hopefully the ethical argument in all of this is clear already: we are playing a dizzyingly dangerous game of know-nothingism at the behest of the Republicans and frankly it's a little shocking it hasn't landed us in hotter water yet. Blah blah blah -- we all know the country's broken/log-jammed/gone and lost its moral compass.
But let's get to the religion and world affairs bit. Consider this little gem from Rick Perry, reported on Mother Jones yesterday:
Even if you don't want to wade into the "theology" of Perry's position, you can't ignore the implications for governance: taking pledges to support bad science and Big Oil/Coal/banks/bank accounts pales in comparison to a God-given "clear directive" to do something. Four of my five classes right now are some kind of religious and two of them examine religion's role in politics and conflict, so I think I have a leg to stand on when I say that I'm all for faith in one's personal life if that helps you order the world and make sound moral decisions, but unless your initials are J.C., you can't govern by theological imperative!
Kind of like the real evil of the Republicans' kleptocracy scheme to rob from the poor and give to the rich, the mainstream media just aren't doing their homework on this kind of thing. I suspect that much of this is because papers like the Times still more or less buy into the "secularization thesis" that prosperous, democratic countries don't really have room for God in the public debate. Moreover, they don't want to rake this particular patch of muck: it's too sticky, and it conflicts with the NYT's own opinions. The paper editorialized today that Obama was right to "stand with Israel" yesterday at the UN (read: bitch-slap the Palestinian statehood he was all for at the UN a year ago); though it's not politically correct, I'll simply state that there are more Jews in New York City than in Israel, so I guess an editorial that at least dared to put the blame for the impasse on Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and the massive lack of political courage exhibited by all parties to this debate was about as good as we could have hoped for on that editorial page.
I'm all for Israel's right to exist and even more than that I'm all for peace in Palestine, but that does not mean that we can trump up the "historical allies," Israel-as-democratic-bastion-in-the-Middle-East (it's got a dodgy democracy and it's getting worse) or -- worst of all -- biblical arguments to justify carte blanche support for a not-so-democratic fortress-state "democracy" led by a reactionary and intractable 'Yahu of a PM. In a Libya redux, French PM Nicolas "l'Americain" Sarkozy spoke right after Obama yesterday and blasted our granny-knot-of-a-fallacy-wrapped-in-an-eschatology of a policy towards the peace process. I'm not categorically for Palestinian statehood nownownow, either, but we have got to look at the reality of what's going on there and start getting ahead of the curve just like we didn't do with the Arab Spring. The Palestinians are trying to achieve something using the eminently screwed-up international forum of the UN while the Israelis are doubling down on paranoia and reactionary domestic politics in the face of uncertainty and potential danger from the Arab Spring rocking the world around them. As I said with Libya, the U.S. has got to get its nose out of the Bible, de-couple policy from the ur-conservative Jewish-evangelical Israel lobby and lead, follow or get the hell out of the way on the peace process. And if Israel's cruisin' for a bruisin' as they seem to be doing now, we should try our best to warn them and tempt them towards the high road, but not pledge our policy on the Bible to support them.
The Real Culture War
Here's the "sitrep" (situation report), as they say in the military: economically, we're re-fighting Hooverism and the 1930's in America and the 1990's in Japan as the Lesser Depression gets a little less "Lesser" day by day; we're re-fighting the 1840-50's know-nothingism and nativism of the Republicans; we're re-fighting the 1880's in terms of Gilded Age kleptocracy (again, the Republicans, then as now); environmentally, we actually do seem to be determined to hasten the Last Days -- but in a Darwinian sense, which will very much be a lose-lose-lose proposition; and internationally, we look like a joke because the leader of the free world, the Great Exception, the beacon on the hill, the light unto the nations can't even vote to fund its own government for more than a month or two at a time, and even then only on the second try on yet another emergency measure.
The culture war isn't so much between "rich and poor" or "labor and capital" or whatever so much as it's between the reactionary conservative-white-male-ism that's got us into the predicament outlined above, and a progressivist-humanist, TED-watching, game-changing, creative-thinking vision that, as Robert Wright told us in the final talk of TED fest, we've come too far to screw it up now.
On that note, here's your moment of Zen: earlier in his talk, Wright mentions that he believes global governance is essential to the future of humanity, but leaves the idea as a parenthetical aside. It's pretty easy to miss in the talk, but after I'd watched it a number of times to get the post ready, it stuck. Between that insight and a year abroad that convinced me the world is kind of a big place after all, I walked into the Intercultural Center building with new eyes one day. I've probably had at least half of my classes here in the ICC, but until now I hadn't thought for two seconds about the Big Thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ that I walk under every day to get to class:
"The age of nations is past. It remains to us now, if we do not wish to perish, to put aside the old prejudices and build the Earth."
An odd quotation to inscribe in foot-high letters over the heads of thousands of hard-charging young realists and future diplomats, spies, military commanders and politicians, isn't it? That's probably why I couldn't make head or tail of it in my freshman/sophomoric International Politics days. But now that I'm Culture and Politics/Religion, Ethics & World affairs (courtesy of study abroad), I think I get it: that wily old French Jesuit -- ironically, a paleontologist and Darwinian who figured out how to account for Darwin in Catholic doctrine -- is issuing the big, game-changing challenge to myself and everyone else like me to take our fancy-schmancy Georgetown/SFS educations and build the Earth. It's up to us: we can keep on doing what we've always done and always get what we've always got, or we can listen to de Chardin and change our game.
***
TED for the weekend: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives. Up yours, David Brooks -- not all us young Facebooking couch potatoes are amoral slugs! Some of us do have brains and morals, and some of those are a little upset at your big rightward turn lately into the fallaciously-founded territory of the conservative white male. As one of my Jesuit professors says, "Our capacity for self-justification and -delusion is virtually limitless." Go get your own morals checked out before you tell me I haven't any to begin with. I'd like to think your reports of the death of my and my generation's moral compass are greatly exaggerated...
Religion, Ethics & World Affairs
Now that I've officially been studying in the certificate program of that name for a few weeks, I'll have a go at distilling all that high-minded stuff into some kind of semi-coherent blog post. First, we'll let a certain sax-playing former Hoya who's not sure what the definition of "is," is set the terms of the debate:
“We look like a joke,” Bill Clinton said this week, on the growing crazy caucus of earth-unfriendly politicians. “If you’re an American, the best thing you can do is to make it politically unacceptable for people to engage in denial.” (Tim Egan, NYT, 9/23)It goes way deeper than environmentalism. As I've been imploring for months, you've got to be reading your Krugman every Monday and Friday at minimum. (Follow his blog on the NYT site every day if you can.) Charles Blow's Saturday column is also required background reading for this blog: Krugman keeps laying out the economic facts far better than I can; Blow gives us a weekly reminder of what the policy failures Krugman decries and the 10-percent unemployment they produce really look like.
But back to how we look like a joke. Not to lead off your weekend with anything too pessimistic, but just look round: the GOP farce-fest "debates;" the world economy heading closer and closer to the edge of the cliff; unemployment at almost 10 percent (and have I mentioned it's about 8 percent for whites and 16 percent for blacks lately?); the environment Egan and Clinton are speaking for; and the squirm session that was Obama's beat-down of the Palestinians yesterday. After all, we'd like nothing more than peace in Palestine...except the Jewish vote in America in 2012. The Roger Cohen caucus wins again.
Hopefully the ethical argument in all of this is clear already: we are playing a dizzyingly dangerous game of know-nothingism at the behest of the Republicans and frankly it's a little shocking it hasn't landed us in hotter water yet. Blah blah blah -- we all know the country's broken/log-jammed/gone and lost its moral compass.
But let's get to the religion and world affairs bit. Consider this little gem from Rick Perry, reported on Mother Jones yesterday:
In the past, Perry's friends and advisers have argued that defending Israel is not just sound geopolitical strategy—it's also a religious imperative for Christian politicians. On Tuesday, the Texas governor and GOP presidential front-runner vigorously affirmed both views. When Mother Jones asked if he believes America's continued support for Israel is a theological priority, Perry answered: "As a Christian, I have a clear directive to support Israel. So from my perspective, it's pretty easy. Both as an American, and as a Christian, I am going to stand with Israel."This is scary stuff. If it doesn't sound it, go read the book of Revelation: the Last Days sound, to paraphrase Perry, "pretty ugly." And that's part of what's going on here: the Perry-Bachmann crazy wing of the GOP are pretty sure that we're about to enter the Last Days, so we need to not only support Israel for all we're worth, we need to start converting the Jews to help bring about the apocalyptic battle between good (conservative Christian white [mostly] men) and evil (everybody else, notably Muslims and their antichrist foreman, Barack Hussein Obama).
Even if you don't want to wade into the "theology" of Perry's position, you can't ignore the implications for governance: taking pledges to support bad science and Big Oil/Coal/banks/bank accounts pales in comparison to a God-given "clear directive" to do something. Four of my five classes right now are some kind of religious and two of them examine religion's role in politics and conflict, so I think I have a leg to stand on when I say that I'm all for faith in one's personal life if that helps you order the world and make sound moral decisions, but unless your initials are J.C., you can't govern by theological imperative!
Kind of like the real evil of the Republicans' kleptocracy scheme to rob from the poor and give to the rich, the mainstream media just aren't doing their homework on this kind of thing. I suspect that much of this is because papers like the Times still more or less buy into the "secularization thesis" that prosperous, democratic countries don't really have room for God in the public debate. Moreover, they don't want to rake this particular patch of muck: it's too sticky, and it conflicts with the NYT's own opinions. The paper editorialized today that Obama was right to "stand with Israel" yesterday at the UN (read: bitch-slap the Palestinian statehood he was all for at the UN a year ago); though it's not politically correct, I'll simply state that there are more Jews in New York City than in Israel, so I guess an editorial that at least dared to put the blame for the impasse on Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and the massive lack of political courage exhibited by all parties to this debate was about as good as we could have hoped for on that editorial page.
I'm all for Israel's right to exist and even more than that I'm all for peace in Palestine, but that does not mean that we can trump up the "historical allies," Israel-as-democratic-bastion-in-the-Middle-East (it's got a dodgy democracy and it's getting worse) or -- worst of all -- biblical arguments to justify carte blanche support for a not-so-democratic fortress-state "democracy" led by a reactionary and intractable 'Yahu of a PM. In a Libya redux, French PM Nicolas "l'Americain" Sarkozy spoke right after Obama yesterday and blasted our granny-knot-of-a-fallacy-wrapped-in-an-eschatology of a policy towards the peace process. I'm not categorically for Palestinian statehood nownownow, either, but we have got to look at the reality of what's going on there and start getting ahead of the curve just like we didn't do with the Arab Spring. The Palestinians are trying to achieve something using the eminently screwed-up international forum of the UN while the Israelis are doubling down on paranoia and reactionary domestic politics in the face of uncertainty and potential danger from the Arab Spring rocking the world around them. As I said with Libya, the U.S. has got to get its nose out of the Bible, de-couple policy from the ur-conservative Jewish-evangelical Israel lobby and lead, follow or get the hell out of the way on the peace process. And if Israel's cruisin' for a bruisin' as they seem to be doing now, we should try our best to warn them and tempt them towards the high road, but not pledge our policy on the Bible to support them.
The Real Culture War
Here's the "sitrep" (situation report), as they say in the military: economically, we're re-fighting Hooverism and the 1930's in America and the 1990's in Japan as the Lesser Depression gets a little less "Lesser" day by day; we're re-fighting the 1840-50's know-nothingism and nativism of the Republicans; we're re-fighting the 1880's in terms of Gilded Age kleptocracy (again, the Republicans, then as now); environmentally, we actually do seem to be determined to hasten the Last Days -- but in a Darwinian sense, which will very much be a lose-lose-lose proposition; and internationally, we look like a joke because the leader of the free world, the Great Exception, the beacon on the hill, the light unto the nations can't even vote to fund its own government for more than a month or two at a time, and even then only on the second try on yet another emergency measure.
The culture war isn't so much between "rich and poor" or "labor and capital" or whatever so much as it's between the reactionary conservative-white-male-ism that's got us into the predicament outlined above, and a progressivist-humanist, TED-watching, game-changing, creative-thinking vision that, as Robert Wright told us in the final talk of TED fest, we've come too far to screw it up now.
On that note, here's your moment of Zen: earlier in his talk, Wright mentions that he believes global governance is essential to the future of humanity, but leaves the idea as a parenthetical aside. It's pretty easy to miss in the talk, but after I'd watched it a number of times to get the post ready, it stuck. Between that insight and a year abroad that convinced me the world is kind of a big place after all, I walked into the Intercultural Center building with new eyes one day. I've probably had at least half of my classes here in the ICC, but until now I hadn't thought for two seconds about the Big Thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ that I walk under every day to get to class:
"The age of nations is past. It remains to us now, if we do not wish to perish, to put aside the old prejudices and build the Earth."
An odd quotation to inscribe in foot-high letters over the heads of thousands of hard-charging young realists and future diplomats, spies, military commanders and politicians, isn't it? That's probably why I couldn't make head or tail of it in my freshman/sophomoric International Politics days. But now that I'm Culture and Politics/Religion, Ethics & World affairs (courtesy of study abroad), I think I get it: that wily old French Jesuit -- ironically, a paleontologist and Darwinian who figured out how to account for Darwin in Catholic doctrine -- is issuing the big, game-changing challenge to myself and everyone else like me to take our fancy-schmancy Georgetown/SFS educations and build the Earth. It's up to us: we can keep on doing what we've always done and always get what we've always got, or we can listen to de Chardin and change our game.
***
TED for the weekend: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives. Up yours, David Brooks -- not all us young Facebooking couch potatoes are amoral slugs! Some of us do have brains and morals, and some of those are a little upset at your big rightward turn lately into the fallaciously-founded territory of the conservative white male. As one of my Jesuit professors says, "Our capacity for self-justification and -delusion is virtually limitless." Go get your own morals checked out before you tell me I haven't any to begin with. I'd like to think your reports of the death of my and my generation's moral compass are greatly exaggerated...