Our Floundering Ship of State

O Ship of State

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, -are all with thee! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

         It is inconceivable that the President Obama has, during the last three months, raised about $70 million for his current reelection campaign.  The election is more than a year away!  The Republicans will be obliged to raise similar amounts of money for their campaigns.  We are talking about estimates as high as a billion dollars between the two parties that could be better utilized for more constructive purposes than advertising, negative campaign ads, denigrating other candidates, and waterboarding the hapless television viewer.

          There is something inherently wrong, something improvident about this cumbersome, agonizing process.  It is destructive to our polity.  It should not take so long, be so divisive, or be so expensive to run for office.  It was not always so.   There are more efficient ways to elect a leader and many more useful ways to spend money.  Perhaps the old way of political parties picking the candidates in nominating conventions was better.        

          Less democratic, perhaps, but more efficient, and perhaps more productive of good candidates like Roosevelt, Truman, Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, to name a few. 

          A year ago I wrote that I was grateful that the 2010 congressional and senatorial campaign was over. But wait! Now we are obliged to listen for another year to candidates for the Presidency in an essentially perpetual campaign.   We cannot afford a perpetual campaign, diverting resources from the actual governance of the nation.  A process that is devoted for years on end to divisiveness is a self fulfilling enterprise, a destructive song without end.  The very length of the campaign is productive of even more divisiveness, not the cohesiveness we now so sorely need as a national goal to get us through the great economic global crisis in which we now lie, almost like a tortoise on its proverbial back, helplessly unable to right itself, ready to be devoured by predators.

          Candidates, questioned by journalists about all manner of irrelevancies, including whether that candidate is a true follower of Jesus, Brigham Young, Mohammad, or is a true Christian. Who really cares if Mormons believed golden plates of Jesus were in New York and they moved to Missouri?  Who cares if Jesus ascended to heaven on a cloud?  What difference does it make that fundamentalist Christians pronounce fitness for office on how “Christian” a candidate is? These are not questions that should be asked of candidates. How deep and abiding faith guides a candidate is not the issue.  Religion and government do not mix.  Any candidate, who wishes to force upon the public social issues such as abortion, should be asked whether they also believe that putting people to death is contradictory to that premise.  Why is our dialog so rudimentary, so infantile, and so juvenile in its exercise?  What is it in the American vernacular that has happened to stunt our intellectual growth as an electorate?

          The inanity of it all is a stupefying indictment of either the lack of intelligence of the voter or of the politicians or more likely, both.

          Why do we need Wolf Blitzer and Chris Wallace to moderate debates? Why do we need any moderators at all?  The idea of Michelle Bachman giving a straight answer to anything other than how much she is guided by her faith is so fantastical as to strain the imagination of J.K. Rowling. Mitt Romney, a homogenized, blow-dried, fabric softened mannequin, is now vying with the pizza man for front runnership.    The “debates” are farcical, nincompoop enterprises, offering only a modicum of insight into who these people really are.

          And the President, although disappointing, will probably get another term after all is said and done, given his less than courageous posture in standing up to a Republican party that has been taken over by social ideologues, who deny science, climate change, evolution, stem-cell research, instead harping on piety, religiosity and “values.”

          Our political and electoral system is a broken, rusty, creaking locomotive, chugging up a hill that steepens every year, hampered by global competition, economic challenges, and countries which select their Prime ministers in 6 week campaigns from start to finish.

          The Electoral College is an anachronism. Its origins, based upon state’s rights, disenfranchised women, slaves, and rural communities is in need of serious reform. We need direct popular election of the President, a dramatically shortened campaign, and a congress that remains in Washington, seeing to the business of governance, not partisanship driven by vote getting.

          Billions spent to elect candidates and a rational discussion of the issues confronting the country, do not need years of campaigning.  

         

          Debates should be discussions among the candidates themselves, not howling, applauding audience extravaganzas on Fox and CNN.  The discussions should include follow up questions, follow ups to the follow ups and not be a continuum of handler-generated sound bites.

          People should understand that there should be a depth of knowledge generated by the discussion and a revelation (forgive the expression) of what these people are actually thinking and, more importantly, what they actually know.

Another Depressing Presidential Campaign is Underway

“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”

“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

Recently, some thoughtful friends of mine have been writing about how the personalities of Presidential candidates and their individual world view are not really crucial to the process of how they manage the economy.  These friends equate the economy with all the reasons to elect a candidate.  I suppose this is a rationalization of how to support a Texas top gun like Rick Perry or a crazy woman like Michelle Bachmann whose primitive social instincts are fantastically out of touch with the 21^st century. The economy is important, of course, but there are other issues that trouble people, including  a woman’s right to choose, birth control, education, a safety net for our citizens, and the government’s ability to create infrastructure and an environment in which people can live in safety.

Of course, economic policy is an adjunct to this, but it is not the sole thing. 

I guess my perspective is different: I believe that the socio-religious-anti-science zealotry of some of the candidates, especially on the Republican side of the aisle that unctuously panders to the religious right is a disingenuous manifestation of  a hypocritical vote solicitation-at-any-cost mantra. And when President Obama also does the same thing, “may God bless the United States of America,” at the end of every speech, he is no less obsequious.   Earlier presidents did not need to wear flag pins or make ubiquitous and gratuitous religious references in order to please the voting public.  Abraham Lincoln’s references to God were not done as a matter of course at the end of every speech. And certainly Thomas Jefferson did not do so.

I understand the perhaps human genetic need to believe in a supernatural force to provide social cohesion and an ability to war against other tribes, but why must it be a prerequisite to garner votes?  Why must every speech be an appeal to piety?  Are not Muslim fundamentalists the same as Jewish fundamentalists or the Catholic Church in their a priori discounting of other faiths, claiming their faith is the exclusive path to salvation?

At least the Catholic Church is somewhat consistent: no birth control, no capital punishment, and no abortion.  But its hypocritical and certainly not biblical 16^th century calls to celibacy among priests so that the church could perpetuate its property and estates are no indication of godliness.  And there is a cogent argument that the celibacy requirement attracts sexually abusive individuals to its ranks.   The Catholic religious hierarchy continues to mystify me.

Why is the American public so ostensibly pious?  Europeans have already moved away from state religions, but in the United States, there is an almost secular state religion, an unintended consequence stemming from the tolerance set forth in the Constitution.  The entire fringe religious fundamentalism in this country has a cult-like tenor to it, an irrationality that is almost indecipherable yet understandable at the same time.  I think the candidates should be extensively questioned about whether they expect to govern by divine revelation.  Michelle Bachmann has been particularly adept at dodging that question.   George W. Bush, born again, took us into two wars costing trillions of dollars, which history has borne out to be unnecessary, given recent events in the Middle East. 

I still remember the Republican debate in 2008 when the candidates were asked if they believe in the theory of evolution and all raised their hands in the negative. That question should be put to the candidates again.

At the same time, the ideological, proto-religious aspect of the economic arguments presented today is undeniable.  On the right are the zealots who want to remove government from the economic process, yet wish to include it in the social agenda.   Do not abort the child, but once it is born unwanted, abandoned, and neglected, let it inhabit the lower depths of a Dickensian untervelt of deprivation, ignorance and poverty. 

America must find a rational alternative to this mind numbing debate:  Moving beyond piety in its political dialogue, whether it be a religious or dogmatic view of economic solutions or its misappropriated social creed of imposing religious education and its anti science dogma in the public schools.

Focusing on the solutions to our social problems through ideology is neither productive nor encouraging of solutions. 

Polarization in Washington and an Increasingly Dysfunctional Government.

The Tea Party, a misnomer from the start, is, it seems, a yearning to return to what it perceives as an America of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  It is a faction of disenchanted, negative people who believe that government should be highly limited, a sort of return to the days when people lifted themselves up by their bootstraps, and needed no help from anyone.  Days when people lived in log cabins, worked on agrarian lands, and tilled the soil. Those who inhabited the cities lived either in poverty or in monumental wealth. The days when the United States Constitution, a venerable document, perpetuated freedom of religion, non-voting women and, of course, that amazing gift to America—the institution of Slavery, which culminated in a Civil War, killing about 600,000 Americans.  After the Civil War, the gilded age and the industrial revolution produced the beginnings of the middle class and a claque of millionaires and Robber Barons. Those good old days were not so good.  But people “worked mighty hard for mighty little pay,” and understood no one was going to give them a handout.  Along came the labor movement, strikes, and a progressive government that broke the trusts, thanks to Theodore Roosevelt.  It was not an easy battle.  But it was the beginning of a safety net for its citizens, and an attempt at hybridizing a partnership between government and laissez-faire capitalism.  It was the beginning of a just society.

We are no longer that country.  We have regressed. We are a nation of putatively entitled illiterates, a nation that does not understand its own history, and of politicians who barely understand the complexity of the issues that are overwhelming them.  We are a nation with exponentially increasing disparity between rich and poor.  Politicians hew to the call of CNN, Fox News, and a strident, brainless debate, taking positions that are not moderate or well thought out. Our government seems dysfunctional because it does not know how to cope with what may be increasingly an ungovernable situation.

I admire the optimism of those who think we are going to innovate and rise to the occasion.  But I wonder.

Now we are engaged in a cultural and economic war, a war promulgated by a coterie of privileged corporations, their corrupt lobbyists, and “job creators,” who, the Republican party now believe, will restore our shattered economy through not having to pay more taxes and by shutting down the court system (so called tort reform) cutting social programs, education, pensions, social security, breaking labor unions, and lowering taxes.  Tea partiers believe that more jobs will come out of favoring those who will invest if their taxes are lower and are not held to accountability by the law.

Different economic schools of thought cannot agree on whether to tax less spend less or to tax more, spend more on infrastructure and technology.  Business might call this investment or capital expenditure.  Make no mistake.  The debate is more religious and ideologic, and while economists are a valuable resource to tell us what went wrong, they do not seem to be able to predict the future.  What most economists do agree upon, however, is that it will take a partnership between government and free markets to perpetuate stability and a climate for innovation and investment.  It has always been so and a dynamic market economy needs structure and regulation as well as a safety net for its citizenry.  A centrist view of governance has always been America’s strength.

The problem is that we are no longer an agrarian or even an industrial economy.  We are a post-industrial economy, with less ability to compete because of rising illiteracy, sloth, and a fundamental denial of what is happening beyond and within our borders.  We are turning away educated immigrants, and exporting jobs overseas, because there is no one here to do them and because people in more ambitious countries are willing to work harder for less, are more skillful and better educated.  A return to the American century (the 20^th) is not at all likely. American Exceptionalism?   We are withering in a sea of internal discord, rancor and disparity between rich and poor.  The middle class, built through years of struggle and reform, if not already vanished, is clearly more ethereal.

On top of all that, we have leaders who do not seem to be able to rise to the occasion.  Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have anyone who is able to capture the imagination of the people, to motivate them, to seize the moment.  The President seems a capable, intellectual pedant who is afraid to be branded an angry black man, so he tries to compromise and form a consensus that becomes more and more illusory.  The Speaker of the House is a political hack that caters to his Tea Party minions with a revolting unctuousness—a disingenuousness that is so obvious it is shocking.

Harry Truman we need you now.

Rites of Tribal Initiation: 2011

Jews, have for millennia, circumcised their male offspring as a ticket to entry into the
Tribe.  Hitler’s minions, as a means of identification of male Jews, caused men to drop their pants in order to determine who should live and who should be gassed, tortured, or otherwise exterminated.Under those circumstances, it became more difficult for male Jews to escape doom and certainly argued against the procedure.

A friend of mine, a Rabbi, recently wrote an incensed article about what he termed an anti-Semitic tract, “Foreskin Man,” (www.kurtstone.typepad.com) which condemned circumcision and seeks to introduce a law criminalizing the practice. Aside from all the medical controversy, the differentiation between male circumcision and female genital mutilation seems, for me, a difficult distinction to make.   Both procedures attack the genitalia of the victim.

Arguments that males benefit from the procedure and are less susceptible to sexually
transmitted diseases do not really address the moral issues of the rights of an infant who is unable to consent to the procedure and must suffer the consequences of the decision of his parents who are usually religiously, not medically, motivated. On the other hand, waiting until one is 16 or even 18 renders the procedure painful and usually not done. This even though there is evidence that there is a reduction in urinary tract infections as well as a reduction in the incidence in penile cancer.

Recently the British Medical Association pointed to medical and psychological risks of
the procedure, including anxieties, anger and even attempts of those circumcised to restore their foreskins.  Some courts in Europe have declared the procedure illegal.

There has also been evidence that sexual sensation is diminished because the glans of
the penis is desensitized.  However, there is evidence to the contrary that no loss of sexual sensation occurs.  There is no doubt, however, that there can be medical complications, including, among other consequences, fistulas, cysts, necrosis, and ulceration.

One thing is sure: there is little doubt that circumcision arose as a tribal rite and a methodology, according to Maimonides, to control male sexuality.   There seems to be an increasing consensus among medical societies that male circumcision “should not be routinely performed.”

What is clear is that it is a primitive practice, and rationales by religious people
have been carefully crafted to justify its perpetuation.  Many Jewish parents decide to do it so that their children are not singled out for having a “different penis” in the locker
room. (With no disrespect intended to recently tweeting Jewish congressmen.)

I have no answer to this conundrum.  On the one hand, it is an accepted and routinely practiced custom.  On the other, it is a form of genital mutilation, and when practiced on females, universally and rightly abhorred.

Whether the group currently promoting Elders of Zion caricatures of Jews who circumcise and Aryan looking anti circumcision claques who oppose it are evilly motivated are marginal to the issues of whether the practice remains morally or medically justifiable.  The growing professional opinion seems to be against it.

And, if one is religious, even devoutly so, and believes that Man is created in God’s
image, why the necessity to improve on God’s creation?  If one is not religious, would not Darwinian natural selection have eliminated foreskins by now anyway?

Is Religion the bête noir of Humanity?

I just finished a book by Sam Harris, “The End of Faith.”

 

 

A disturbing analysis of religion and theology, the book’s focus carries forth a recurring theme of the intolerance generated by all religions, and even sharply criticizes religious moderates.  Traditional thinking had always been that religious moderation is an acceptable alternative to religious extremism.  Not so, avers Harris, reasoning that religious moderation fosters a climate of acceptance of religious extremism.  The acceptance of any religion, ergo, a priori allows an implicit acceptance of the most extreme forms of faith.

 

In a coolly rational discourse, Harris especially derides Islam, the conversion from which carries the penalty of death. Islam also tolerates the subjugation of women, honor killings, beheadings and suicide
bombers; the idea that so sexually repressive a religion offers however many virgins in paradise as a reward for acts of grotesque terrorism speak to its ultimate abandonment of goodness.  The idea that in the 21^st century such a belief system can be food for any serious rational thought befuddles him.

 

He is no less forgiving of Catholicism, and refers to the Lateran council of 1252 which punished the Jews by removing them from society’s grace, promulgating thousands of years of anti-Semitism, including the blood libel, exploring a gruesome litany of disembowelments, heretic-burnings, rakings,
witch-huntings and other nauseating acts of religious fervor, ultimately leading to the Holocaust.  Fortunately, he says, the church abandoned such procedures, but not until the early 18^th century and not before the seeds of the whirlwind had been sown.

 

Jews receive little less effusive acid pen treatment.   Jewish fundamentalists cling to the anachronistic, bronze-age railings of the book of Leviticus, which Harris maintains is an exercise in the misogynistic demands of a paranoid God, who demands complete thoughtless subservience. He calls rigid adherence to primitive dietary laws and circumcision a paradigm of tribalism.  Differences among the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine/Israel are still fueled by cultural differences and religious dichotomy, with fundamentalists on both sides stirring a witch’s brew of racism, terrorism, hatred and death.

 

He relegates theology to a non-science and does not even accord it philosophical heft, since he views religion as an evil in the world which denies people the essence of their humanity, the understanding that people do good things because of their own ethical code, giving the example of monkeys
and other species protecting their young.  Religion is not at all needed to produce morality.   He defines love as a concern for other’s happiness and the placement of those values on a level with one’s own well being, without the necessity of priestly or clerical intercession.

 

This, says Harris, is the new ethic to which we should all aspire, an ethic that needs no class of priests to stand between ourselves and our reason or our humanity.  In discounting the belief of others by virtue of “faith,” we automatically discount the “faith” of others.

In my discussions with others about these undertakings, I have always encountered resistance and reluctance for the faithful to not abandon their sense of reason.  The reaction is “I am not educated enough to talk to you about this,” or “I do not wish to discuss it.”

People who are content to use reason during the week somehow feel free to abandon their sense of reason on Sunday, or Saturday.  

 

Why?

The Mideast in Turmoil II

“All War represents a failure of diplomacy.” Tony Benn

Now that the Middle East has been rocked by the latest wave of freedom-seeking, it is interesting to speculate about how little influence we have over what may happen to us. Hosni Mubarak certainly did not. Surely he did not expect to leave office under the circumstances he did. Muammar Gaddafi, the murderous, insane leader of Libya is killing with impunity as the West looks on in a state of befuddlement, the punditry voicing a confused mixture of morality, pragmatism, and logistical analysis.

Nothing has really changed in our western, oil-addicted psyche. Washington politicians are ringing their hands about the “potential slaughter” of innocents, but what they are really thinking about is the same conundrum that has plagued them all along. Will pubescent Arab freedom choke off the world’s supply of oil and will the countries not yet in crisis be able to sustain the increased production necessary to alleviate the strangulating effect of oil shortages on the economic recovery in America and in the rest of its energy-seeking competitors?

Jeff Greenfield, the political analyst and former Presidential speechwriter, has a new book out that hypothesizes about how twists of fate turn the tide of history. The assassination of JFK, for example. Or the fact that a plot to truck dynamite the new President was foiled in December of 1960 because the assassin did not want his family to be involved when Jackie came to the door of their residence. Not wanting to kill the young President’s family led to a delay in the plot allowing the FBI time to foil it. This little known fact reveals how tenuous political and human fortunes are. A slight change of circumstance, a different leader here and there, matters over which even the most prescient leader has little or no control. The randomness of events, play out at the highest levels of government, potentially plunging the world into ever deepening chaos.

Should we do no fly zones in Libya ? Should we have fought in Viet-Nam? Was the removal of Saddam Hussein, empowering the Iranians helpful? Do nations enter wars with inadequate information and are decisions made with poor information, and impulsively misguided leaders? Of course. Decisions rendered in haste are often wrong, but sometimes they are correct. How can so imperfect an operation as government and its leadership really be trusted? Well, in fact, it cannot. Nathan Detroit is rolling the dice.

It is very easy to forget the threat of the Soviet Union, an imploded, decrepit economic house of cards, despite having projected enormous military power perpetuating its own empire, threatening Europe, Asia and the United States. How, in retrospect, could we have considered the threat so daunting? During the post World War II years and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, we lived in fear of a Communist takeover of the world. As schoolchildren we hid under our wooden desks, to protect us from a nuclear Armageddon. Others averred: had we not stood up to the nightmarish Leviathan, we would all be Russian vassals.

What really are the lessons of history? What can impel us to make the right decisions? Thoughtfulness, prudence, and reflection? The very qualities the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has have caused those critical of him to say he is vacillating, indecisive, and too cautious.  George W. Bush was the contrary, embroiling us in two wars, killing thousands, neither of which bloody conflict has really proven its value. Mr. Truman, on the other hand, through courage and decisiveness, prevented North Korean domination of the South, allowing democracy and economic independence to thrive.

The questions of which wars are good wars and which are not remain unanswered.

They probably never will be.

The Mideast in Turmoil.

Events in Egypt still bode uncertain for the West. The fluidity of the situation, now partially determined, has the scent of a youthful, computer-generated revolution, its forces young, vigorous and dynamic, the scenes in the streets of Cairo evoking tableaux of freedom-loving birds learning to fly.

The tired, corrupt government ministers who tried to blame “external influences” for their increasingly precarious grip had averred anarchy and chaos, the classically demagogic response to the change that threatened their grip on puissance.
This, of course, was the manipulative tool of corrupted political forces and is not a new phenomenon from a historical perspective. Every dictator has, to a greater or lesser extent, utilized this fear to perpetuate their own power. The difference is that this time, it failed. Fear and terror lost to a burgeoning aroma of freedom.

We do not now know how this situation will play out. Will the revolution in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East wind up in the hands of Islamic extremists? Will western-influenced youth attain power through some leader who will not become an autocrat? Will a military strongman or fundamentalist Islamists stifle the democratic instincts of the people? Will the reigns of power corrupt whomever it embraces? Will Israel be threatened or find itself at war with the newer forces which might dominate the Arab world? Many other questions still remain unanswered.

In the 1960s, the United Arab Republic was a brief, ill-fated union between Egypt and Syria, which only lasted 2½ years, a paradigm of Arab disunity, almost like the scene in the tent from Lawrence of Arabia when Anthony Quinn entered and demonstrated how the feuding tribes could not hook up, even under British rule. Western attempts to amalgamate Arab countries into one monolith have always been a huge mistake. Too many tribes and nationalities, many of which cannot even agree on who is the scion of Mohammed, offer very little unifying potential. The Egyptians do not now, it seems, wish to reject the 30-year peace treaty with Israel. Nor do they seem to be flying to an Iranian smoke signal, Shia-Sunni Arab-Persian discrepancies momentously militating against that frightful result.

Interestingly and to his credit, John Boehner, on “Meet the Press,” stated that the President had handled the crisis about as well as he could have. A very risky statement, indeed, from the man who must pacify his tea party minions. Governing is far more difficult and complicated than simply leading the opposition.

The lessons taught by attempting governance will face the naifs in the freedom-seeking throngs in Egypt and in whatever other country is next to join them in a quest for democracy. Without a constitutional heritage and institutional foundations of democracy, it will be arduous. Have Facebook and Twitter replaced Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and John Adams in Founding Fatherdom?

We are living in exciting, exhilarating times.