Thou Shalt Not Question Thy Underlying Assumptions...

I had a pretty good Christmas this year. My body did not. Too much alcohol and salty-fatty meats and dairy. So you could say that drunken or hungover constipation was my stocking stuffer. But despite my artery clogging gastronomy, my heart suffered worse from something that has nothing do with blood cholesterol.

Now, as a matter of background, I am descended from a short but thick line of what are today known as Evangelical Christians. My father and both my grandfathers were Baptist ministers and I myself was a devout evangelical Christian until I got to college--Wheaton College actually--and gradually began to question, doubt and disect my beliefs until there was almost nothing left. I was a zealous atheist for many years, completely unwilling to concede even to reason that there could be anything sacred or divine about humankind, creation, consciousness, knowledge or emotion.

I have dabbled with the idea of organized religion since that time, mainly as an emotional response to my working in close proximity to impovereished indigenous and mestizo people in Central and South America. Many of these folks had literally nothing but their families and thier faith, and needless to say it inspired me. But ultimately it has been my unwillingness to part with Occam' s Razor that has prevented me from believing in any traditional organized religion. And I have made my peace with that, and with my family and friends who are very religious.

I was wearing a T-shirt that a friend had bought me, and my fahter asked me what he was up to. He had been in Gaza during the original (so-called) ceasefire, and now works out of the AP bureau in Ramallah in the West Bank. The issue of the Palestinian Question came up, as well asthe issue of terrorism and national defense. My brother, wife and myself on the one side argued that the current situation was rooted in the modern history of the middle east, where the French and British (and Ottoman) colonists had partitioned regions according to their interests, and not necessarily with the interests or input of the inhabitants. My father argued that the State of Israel was originally a theocracy established by God himself, and that if the Israelites (not to be confused with the "Israelis," though evangelicals tend to use them interchangeably) had obeyed God's commandment to kill (I mean smite) all the non-Jews in the lands of Canaan and Palestine back in the Old Testament, then none of this would be happening now.

So, then, was my father retroactively advocating genocide? Surely Israeli blockades, raids and incursions on Palestinian soil were going to breed more terrorists. We argued that the troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bloody Sunday, were huge mistakes by the Brits and extended the assymetric war there by driving young Irish men into the arms of the IRA.

Surely the solution to the violence in Gaza, both by Israeli forces and Hamas, was to come to a two state solution. The problem was due in part to the original partitioning of Modern Palestine and the subsequent wars fought by Arabs and Israelis over territory.

No, my dad said, the boundaries for the state of Israel are derived from God's commandment to the Jews the Old Testament. It would be against God's will to have it any other way.

I tried to give strong suggestions to him, escape clauses really, that we should really confine discussion to the modern history of the middle east, post-World War I, rather than try to explain modern territorial conflicts by means of one man' s (closed) interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. My father cannot concede to reason that any other interpretation beyond his own is a sufficiently Christ-centered explanation of phenomena. What about all the different sects of Judaism, some so strict that they deny the Modern State of Israel as the true covenant, because it was not founded by the returning Messiah? What about all the different protestant denominations, some of whom disagree on very minor (but important to them) passages in the scriptures? What about the Brethren sect in Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon Days, who split bitterly over women wearing pants and promised to pray for each other' s mortal souls.

Anything, please, just concede that you might not have your facts straight, that you might have a unique interpretation of the situation or scriptures that could be informed or altered in the presence of new information?? No...

1.) The biblical promised land (exactly as it appears in my study bible) IS STILL the promised land, and part and parcel of the covenant between God and his chosen people and must never be compromised.

2.) The Jews disobeyed God by not smiting the Philistines and Canaanites to the 10th Generation, so the current bombing of Gaza, regardless of human or social consequences (including "collateral damage" to civilians and increased terrorism) is justified as fulfilling that commandment.

3.) To say otherwise is a slap in the face to God; we're all going to hell anyway (implied not spoken, but understood) as are the Arabs Muslims who are caught in this conflict, since they are on the wrong side of God.

The argument ended with my wife (who is Jewish)angrily breaking a family taboo by breeching the fact that, according to my Dad's beliefs, we're all going to hell including my son, Charlie. My Dad turned to my brother and said: "It's not up to me who goes to heaven or hell, that's up to God," to which my brother said:

" Dad, you're on your own. I don't believe in hell."

I piped in too, following my wife out of the room "Neither do I and neither do Jews, its just a remnant of Zoroastrianism plagerized by John of Patmos to advance his doomsday cult (by which I meant Christianity).

My father tried to continue the argument by saying that his pastor, an ethnic Jewish convert to (a fiery version of) Evangelical Christianity, was a real Jew...that True Jews were circumsized by the spirit (I remember the Epistles)...not the flesh...blah...blah...blah.

My mom was pretty mad at my dad: "Those were not loving things to say, they we hurtful, you should apologize."

I hadn't argued religion with my dad for ten or twelve years. None of his kids believe in his God, and part of that I assume is the refusal by our early mentors to accept criticism of their faith, to consider the other side, or to innovate or generate new ideas in light of new information. The most dangerous conflict of the modern era is not between Christendom and Islam, nor is it between the modern industrialized west and the developing world. It's not even between religious people and non-religious people (like it seemed to be during the cold war with the godless Russian commies). The conflict of the age is between fundamentalists: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas and other Radical Islamists, ultra Orthodox Nationalist Jews, Hindu Nationalists and Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists who cannot yield ground with respect to their interpretation of (fill in name of Holy Scriptures), and who cannot even bring themselves in their FUCKING holy roller pride to concede ANYTHING to reason.

In my house THAT is an abomination...

I have many religious friends, some of whom probably belive that I'm going to some version of hell after I die. But it doesn't mean they have less in common with me intellectually that my dad has with the Taliban. To the contrary, most people I know can concede to reason, and don't require prophesied genocide as an alternative...and it makes me sad that my father cannot or will not.

Barack my World

As the date of President Barack Obama's historic inauguration nears, his supporters are reeling from some disappointing cabinet picks, a scandalous non-scandal featuring Illinois Governor Rod "Testicular Virility" Blagojevich, and the controversal selection of purpose driven anti-Gay Pastor Rick Warren to officiate at the inauguration.

Let the huge shiny bubble of inflated expectations burst! One problem for Obama's supporters, particularly the ones who favor a quasi-socialist domestic policies, is that he cannot be all things to all people. In the last 30 years, a Democratic president has never come to power by pegging left. Whether most Americans are center left or center right (or a little bit of both depending on the issue) is irrelevant: Obama won this election because the Republican party has followed a national strategy that has left it under the thumb of the wing nuts. By abandoning the center, they have virtually handed the Democrats a permanent simple majority for the forseeable future. The problem now for Democrats (some might not call it a problem) is how to herd all these cats that have come to live under the party' s big tent. Democrats are famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but the Republicans' only chance is to try to find its centrist faction and cultivate leadership there...a situation not likely to occur given the extreme rightwing views of Republican legislators elected since the 1994 revolution.

But I digress...Obama will have to at least kinda sorta make overtures to these wing nuts if he wants to see any of his domestic agenda get off the ground. Rick Warren, hateful as he is to those of us who view gay marriage as a fundamental human right, is a small price to pay for a .50 cent per gallon gas tax to fund Obama's ambitious infrastructure plan, or making moves toward some kind of universal healthcare program (not necessarily "socialized" medicine: see here), or getting our troops out of Iraq (though reassigning troops to Afghanistan may be a tougher slog than Iraq was).

The bottom line is this: Democrats don't have an unassailable majority in the Senate. Republican Senators who represent the views of all those Sarah Palin-loving cretins out there, are hard rightwingers and don't need to play along with Obama to get reelected (though I'm sure their states would love to get some of those Obamanation handouts on the way in that bailout package).

Obama' s people really dropped the ball in the Blago scandal/non-scandal. By keeping tight-lipped about the whole affair, they drew needless scrutiny and suspicion from the press, even though there was nothing to hide. America has had plenty of controlled information over the past 8 years. If Obama's going to preside over a transparent presidnecy, his people need to have a better response to emerging scandals than stonewalling and tight-lippedness.

Additionally, I live in Congressman Raul Grijalva' s Southern Arizona district. I empathized with the environmentalists who really wanted Grijalva to be Interior Secretary, and he probably would have stood up to the well connected and well heeled mining interests in the Western US. But Grijalva' s also a Tucson Democrat, and Tucson Democrats are just as corrupt as Chicago Democrats, only Chicago (unlike Tucson) is the "City that works." When I lived in Brazil the popular dictum for corrupt politicians in the Illinois mold was "Rouba mas faz," he robs, but he gets things done. For politicians like Grijalva, and most of the rest in the Southern Arizona Democratic Machine, the dictum might be "Rouba mas nao faz," he robs and doesn't get anything done. Any way, if greater energy independence is desirable, and I would suggest that it is, exploration for natural gas and uranium on public lands will be necessary, unless we want to go the King Coal route. Most of the powerplants constructed in this country over the past 25-30 years are natural gas. If we really want to decrease carbon emission now, we need to strongly consider expanding nuclear power. All of this can be coupled with wind and solar (and geothermal, tidal, biofuels, hydrogen you name it!), but Ken Salazar will be a better Interior Secretary because he understands this. Dunno if Grijalva does or not.