08.31.04
Posted in politics at 10:49 pm by
Arnold, Arnold, Arnold. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about the ruffled feminist feathers that you raised during your own election regarding your harassment of women on your movie sets. You remember, right? The ones you’ve fondled, objectified, and degraded. So, you’ll have to pardon me when you use the phrase “economic girlie man” to describe policies you perceive as economically weak is offensive.
Feminists everywhere should be righteously angered by such a statement. The comparison of an economic policy to being a “girlie man’s policy” reeks of the fact that you don’t have much respect for women. I suppose though given Arnold’s track record that shouldn’t surprise me.
If any of you watched Arnold’s address to the Republican National Assembly you know what I’m referring to by picking on his use of the term “girlie man.” The speech was laden with Terminatorisms. It was a bit sickening really, and I thought that was the end but then who else shows up on stage but the Bush twins.
We get to listen to the Bush twins giggle, breath akwardly into the mic, and prattle on and on about, well, nothing. You know W should really have his daughters introduce him more often. He speaks well in comparison to them.
I’ve got to say, apart from policy of all sorts, the public speaking of all sorts of the RNC this evening left a bit to be desired. I would’ve imagined that for a spot on National Television a bit more thought would’ve been put into the content of the speeches of the evening.
Though, I should take care in railing the content of the speeches of the night too much. It’s more the delivery. Content wise, this convention is geared toward securing the moderate vote. Arnold, Rudy and their friends seek to convince all conservatives that W is going to go to bat for them, that America is safer, that war was necessary.
I guess not much to say, really, about this. I just find the juxtaposition of Arnold and the Bush twins interesting. I hope that the Republicans don’t forget that to carry the day in November they’ll need to avoid degrading women, and sounding immature and ditsy. Best of luck.
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08.30.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:21 pm by
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Posted in education at 9:31 pm by
Almsot exactly four years ago Republican Candidate George W. Bush touted himself as the education candidate. Bush was the candidate who would forever change education. Reform education he did, very badly. Unprecedented national control of public education is the main product of the No Child Left Behind act. (More on NCLB soon!)
The president prides himself in education. Imagine my surprise then, when I read in the magazine of the National Education Association, the NEA Today, that when choosing a candidate to support the NEA wasn’t able to choose President Bush. Now before y’all start screaming about the liberal NEA bastards, you should recognize that the NEA wasn’t able to select President Bush as an endorsed candidate because he didn’t even take the few moments necessary to fill out a survey sent to him by the NEA.
Are these the signs of a man who cares deeply about education? I think the truth is that W forgot about education. It’s impossible to tell what funding for education would’ve looked like had we not gotten mired in a war. Of course, it is his job to be able to do both–handle domestic AND international affairs. It doesn’t seem logical to me to completely ignore domestic affairs like education for the sake of safety–if even we are safer.
America isn’t unifocused as 43 would love to think. Yes, of course, I want to be safe. Safety, though, at the expense of education isn’t really safety at all. Our president would do well to remember that terrorism isn’t the only threat to our safety. I would argue that a rapidly growing void between classes is a much larger threat to the overall safety and wellbeing of this country.
For more from the NEA check out their website at nea.org
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08.29.04
Posted in faith at 9:37 pm by
It’s become a tradition of sorts to offer a few thoughts about my experience in Church on Sunday. Today we watched a little video about evangelism. It was really only loosely related to the topic of the message. Nonetheless, something in that video really struck me.
The video portrayed many different caricatures of evangelism. There was the rich televangelist who sang the tune that Jesus is the way to riches–earthly and otherwise. Then there was the fundamentalist (who happened to be a southerner) who said the only way to win folks to Christ was to tell them they were going to hell. But there was another caricature–one that I was less careful making fun of. The postmodern evangelist.
The postmodern evangelist was portrayed as not really saying much of anything. Uncomfortable approaching anything that resembled truth. Of course, any of you who know anything about the Christian post-modern movement know that this caricature is blatantly ludacris. Perhaps a few British early-post moderns held the claim that there was no absolute truth, but most clearly affirm not that there is no truth but that truth is not easily or as scientifically explainable as most folks have become comfortable with.
The easy argument against this straw man version of post-modernism goes something like this.
1. Post-modernism says there is no truth.
2. Post-modernism is true
Therefore…
3. Post-modernism must not be true
Of course, the above commits the logical fallacy known as the “straw man” fallacy. It oversimplifies post-modernism and then tears down that oversimplification that it has built itself–rather than attacking the truth of post-modernism.
Perhaps best described by Stanley Fish. Post-modernism holds that all people regardless of anything else look at truth through lenses. Since they have lenses, they are unable to percieve the truth in a way other than the way that they see it. Make no mistake though–postmodernism affirms that there IS truth, but that we as creatures that view that truth through lenses see that truth imperfectly. (For the record, that sounds pretty Calvinist.)
Of course this video didn’t only commit the straw man fallacy on post-modernism. It’s simply that I as a postmodern person (I fear that to deem myself a postmodern thinker may be a bit rash) am taken aback by the blatant misrepresentation of my group. It would be equally fair for the fundamentalist to be irritated by their misrepresentation in this video.
Why misrepresent groups in order to caricature them? What good does what is essentially misleading people do? For what purpose do we do this? Does it make a good point? Let’s talk about evangelism if we want to talk about evangelism. I’m even okay if we want to talk about why we think our view of evangelism is right. But at least take the time to get the facts straight before you slander a whole group of people that you’ve done a piss poor job of researching their views.
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08.27.04
Posted in politics at 5:33 pm by
I was listening to NPR this morning–and everybody knows that what you hear on NPR is unequivocally true–nonetheless I found this tidbit rather interesting. There was an overall examination of what 43 (or Dubya as many know him) said in his first RNC nomination acceptance speech, versus how that panned out.
For the most part, 43 batted pretty well. He’s at least taken steps to accomplish those things he promised to accomplish. K-12 education was at the top of his agenda, No Child Left Behind being passed is a great example of 43 sticking to his word. (Now the successfulness or the funding of NCLB are issues that I’d love to discuss in the near future.)
43 also promised the tax cuts that 41 is famous for not delivering. Oh boy did Dubya deliver. Unprecedented tax cuts, like none other in the history of this country in terms of percentage of GNP and gross dollar amount.
33% of the tax cut dollars was saved by the richest 1% of Americans. The average tax savings for a household in the top 1% was over 78 thousand dollars per year. 43 saved over 100,000 dollars himself per year last year because of his tax cuts. Dick Cheney–well, he saved MUCH more, but I guess when you make $813,226 dollars in 2003 you can’t expect much less.
The number that shocked me most was that 78 G’s that the top 1% of the population saved on average. It shocked me so much that I thought I’d take a look at what that 78 thousand a year would do for the households that lie below the poverty line in the US.
For the contiguous 48 states and D.C. the official poverty line for a family of 4 is just a shade over 18,000 dollars per year. During the Clinton years folks living below the federal poverty line only numbered 11 percent. Magically, since 2000 those numbers have risen to over 15 percent. No doubt this is partially due to a slouching economy, part is due to the fact that despite tax cuts, their taxes have been a sacred cow of sorts…no one dares touch the taxes of the poor.
Let’s generously assume though that a miracle happens and somehow only 10 percent of families fall below the poverty line. If we take the 78 grand of tax savings of the richest one percent of Americans and split that 10 ways you end up with 7,800 dollars per family. While that doesn’t sound like much, for a family of four that could easily be the difference between having heat in the winter, making a trip to the doctor with your sick child, or properly feeding not just your children but also the parent or parents of a family.
I’m not necessarily advocating such a straight “no strings attached” Robin Hood system of welfare. I think, though, hearing some of these stats helps to understand just the problem. Perhaps if we hadn’t chosen to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a pre-emptive attack, or finally garnered national oversight of public schools only to recklessly neglect their needs for funding, it wouldn’t be so apparent that 43 is working me over with a broomstick.
It seems that Dubya believes that personal responsibility extends so far that folks should be grateful that he’s given 78 g’s to the top 1% of America. The indigent should just be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and continue to be subservient to the ruling class until they get their big break–even though he’s given them nothing.
Is it just me, or does that not make much sense?
40″The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Matthew 25:40
Addendum: Fred Clark points out that the poverty rate is around 12.5 percent this year according to Census data. It’s notoriously hard though to get an exact number on the poverty line, as such I’ll leave my 15 percent number in the post.
Really, the poverty line is a stupid way to differentiate between folks of need. It’s really a sliding scale. Just because a family of four makes 20 grand a year–it certainly doesn’t seem that they are much less in need than the 18 grand a year family. Anyhow, just a little aside.
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08.26.04
Posted in culture at 11:01 pm by
Okay. I’ll admit it. I love to watch Newlyweds. You know the one with Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. It’s the latest rage in reality television. The basic story line of a typical show goes something like this: Nick and Jessica have some sort of everyday problem that one would easily deal with on a regular daily basis. Neither of the two feel capable to deal with the problem–nor does Jessica’s personal assistant (who really does very little assisting of anything and is more like a present day Kato Kaelin.) Next, since Nick, Jessica or Kato…er…the houseguest, can deal with this problem–which is often something like having an ant problem or some wild animal crapped in their yard they pay an exorbitant amount of money to have this minor problem alleviated. Then after the professionals all arrive, Nick, Jessica, and the houseguest round up an entourage to go out for dinner. (After all, after all the busyness of the day they’re all far too tired to cook for themselves.)
This is labelled “reality tv.”
Let that phrase sink in a moment. Reality TV.
I don’t know what circles all y’all run in but where I come from that doesn’t even begin to approach reality. Of course, we don’t see the reality of Nick and Jessica’s life. Anything that approaches reality is edited out because after all the producers know that the general public doesn’t tune into MTV for an hour to watch reality.
I think that people watch reality tv to escape from their own reality and be transplaced into another. The problem I see with this is that reality tv doesn’t tell the truth. Shows like Nick and Jessica’s Newlyweds tell the world that if you’ve got a wad of hundred dollar bills that you can purchase case after case of Miller Lite and drop thousands on the Kentucky Derby–you’ll be happy. If you can afford to load your entourage onto a plane and head off to Mexico for the weekend or spend a week in Fiji to learn how to surf, you’ll finally have arrived. If you’re a sex symbol, your life is good.
What I find exceptionally ironic about this is that the folks who actually believe this message should, it would seem, realize how miserable their lives are. They escape for an hour or two or three a week only to return to their pale, poor lives. If you believe what MTV is selling.
But MTV isn’t selling truth. Plenty of folks that have a little are far happier than even Nick, Jessica, and Kato. I think it’s time we see a disgustingly average reality tv show. I’m tired of seeing rich folks spend their money. Show me a lower middle class family who cleans their own gutters. A woman who is a size 12 rather than a tan size 0 with triple D cups. A husband who works in a factory and comes home and plays with his kids. A family who plays board games together rather than globetrotting out to Mexico for the weekend. A truly happy family.
But that’s bad tv. Or is it?
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08.25.04
Posted in faith at 11:42 pm by
I hung out with my friend tonight. He was recently seeing a girl, but she broke up with him. She played the God card. If you’ve never experienced the “God card” it goes something like this (we’ll call my friend, Mike and the girl God Card Girl):
Mike: Hey how’s it going?
God Card Girl: Pretty good, okay I guess.
Mike: Why just okay?
GCG: Well, I’ve been thinking…
Mike: Uh huh…
GCG: I just feel like I need time to work on my relationship with God right now.
Mike: Okay.
GCG: I don’t really feel like I prayed enough about our relationship before I got into it.
Mike: Oh, but I did?
GCG: So is that okay?
Mike: Yeah, I guess.
Other variations of this ploy include comments like “God is telling me to break up.” I’m sure that there are other examples of the God card that I’m excluding, feel free to remind me of any I’ve missed.
Obviously I’ve cut out some of the boring bits and edited for clarity. But that’s the thrust of the argument. I think this argument is pretty much one of the worst in the history of humankind. Wait, no. The worst argument in the history of the universe.
Now, in all fairness, I’m a little pissed because my friend was on the receiving end of a breakup and I’m duty bound to be on his side of things. But I’m going to try to ignore that bias and offer a thorough treatment of the God card phenomena. Frankly, I know the argument is complete bullshit mostly because–and I’m embarrased to admit this–I’ve used the God card.
One reason this argument sucks is because quite often when used God is telling one party to break up God doesn’t seem to be telling the other party to break up. So, is one person’s connection with the almighty so much better than the other that they can divine what God wants more than the other?!?
Another reason this breakup method is shitty is because it implies that one’s relationship with God needs to be at some predetermined point before one can enter into a relationship. I disagree with this philosophy vehemently. If I would have waited until I was a good little Christian boy until I married my wife, I still wouldn’t be married. Hell, I may never have gotten married. But, I’ve learned oodles about the man God wishes me to become FROM MY MARRIAGE! It would’ve never happened if I had waited until I was “ready.”
But the thing that really took the cake in this situation was the fact that this little vixen even had the gaul to say that she hadn’t prayed enough before starting the relationship. In this case the bitterly ironic thing is that my friend Mike had been diligently in prayer about the relationship–and he was excited about the possibilities. But God card girl didn’t pray. This causes me to wonder what the basis was for her to assume that God wanted her to himself? The truth is–there was no basis.
You see, the God card is far too often an excuse of the most blasphemous kind. I can’t help but imagine what God must be thinking as she witnesses the playing of the God card. I imagine it’s something like this, “Dammit all, why’d you go dragging me into this!” All too often, the God card is really a ploy people who are too scared or too immature use to get out of a relationship that they have other reasons for getting out of. If God card girl had simply been honest with my friend Mike, she would have told him that she wasn’t sure she was interested in dating when she started to feel that way.
The God card is gutless. It’s an indefensible move. You can’t say something like, “Oh, come on your relationship with God isn’t that important really, is it?” If you make that move you’re a bad Christian. Basically, one has the recourse of saying, “Okay, I respect that.”
I can understand a 17 year old playing the God card. But my friend Mike is 24 or 25 and the girl he was dating was at least that old. I just don’t get it and it makes me mad. I used it when I was 17 and I regret it now. I used the God card to tell a lie. God became a powerful pawn in my game of love.
Perhaps though anyone willing to reduce the Almighty creator of the heavens and earth to a romantic lever could use to spend a little time working on their relationship with God. I just hope God card girl didn’t just say goodbye to the way God hoped to work in her life.
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08.24.04
Posted in politics at 3:50 pm by
These are pretty raw thoughts so please grant me a touch of grace if everything isn’t reasoned perfectly–I’m still working on this theory but thought I could stand to hear your comments. With the current uprising of support of Ralph Nader’s campaign for the presidency by the Republican party, I thought I’d take a swing at this issue, too.
Okay, as I see it, Ralph Nader will never force a 3 party system. It just won’t happen. The two most powerful parties in this country are exceptionally polarized. My friend James offers some nice perspective on this phenomena. Since our parties of power are polarized, they’re constantly jockeying for position attempting to gain power from the other side.
A side point that I find humorous is the lame argument that the Republicans actually support a multiple party system and evidence of this is that they’re helping to campaign for Ralph Nader. The truth is that they’ve got a candidate who they can encourage liberals to vote for and they know that they can get not only a happy liberal but also what essentially turns out to be a vote for Bush. Republicans aren’t encouraging a 3 party system, they’re fighting as hard as they can against it. (Fred has a nice piece on this today.)
So we’ve got polarized parties. But we’ve also got a near 50/50 split among the people of this country that support democrats or republicans. Republicans and democrats seem to be almost evenly matched as far as their support bases (at least in popular terms…economically, I think it’s fair to say there’s more power in the republican party; of course, that’s the beauty of a democratic society. Money matters a little less.)
Since the divide is almost equal, the only way to force a 3 party system is to have one party become much more popular than another and then split from within itself–dividing up on issues that folks tend to differ on within the party. Ultimately, I think that rather than external revolution of bi-partisan politics we need an internal revolution if one is ever to be successful.
I for one would be much happier to consider hearing the green agenda if it wasn’t an agenda that could destroy John Kerry’s chances at becoming President of the United States of America.
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Posted in culture at 6:00 am by
I’m a self-described liberal Christian. That deserves some unpacking. I’m a liberal–I tend to find myself politically at the left as far as social, environmental, or economic issues. I’m a Christian–within Christianity I would probably associate myself from within the Christian post-modernism movement. I probably don’t have my “liberal Christian” wings just yet as far as liberal relates to Christianity. To communicate the most clearly I would call myself a progressive, post-modern, democrat, and moderate Christian. (And that was supposed to be more clear!)
Why not a liberal Christian (in the sense of holding liberal Christian beliefs)? Well, it’s not that I’ll never be a liberal Christian–I certainly seem to be moving that way–or that I think liberal Christianity is inherently evil (in fact, I think that the conservative Church needs the liberal Church desperately!) But I would describe myself as a moderate Christian because of my belief in a literal bodily ressurection of Christ, a literal Virgin birth, and things like that. (By the way, if you’re looking for a fantastic book about issues such as these argued from 2 opposing but respectful viewpoints in juxtaposition I would recommend The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions by NT Wright and Marcus Borg.)
Nonetheless, in comparison to most folks in the circles I run in, it’s easiest to call me a liberal Christian. Because to them, that’s what I am. Playing the role of one serious about their faith and also what I’d like to term “biblically liberal”, I seem to be one of a token few in my neck of the woods (west Michigan, though not exclusively, is often thought of as Bush country.) As a token, and this is true of most token individuals liberal, conservative, protestant, or catholic, or whatever, I think there’s a tendency to adopt the party line. Rather than to truly think about an issue when challenged, it’s easiest to adopt an ideology that one is farmiliar with rather than to read and research and from that research to adopt a position that one would view as the most plausibly correct view based on evidence.
I admit–I’ve been guilty of this from time to time. One reason, perhaps, is that when one’s views are challenged it becomes difficult to say those three little words, “I don’t know.” Because, after all, as the token liberal group member I’m expected to have all the answers to all the questions instantly. If I don’t, my ideology can be written off as incomplete and incoherent. To stave off the embarrassment of such a situation, I pick up the party line and go back to the same tired arguments that may or may not have anything to do with the issue at hand. I obfuscate a particular point with far more than relevant facts and allow my audience to wade through the ensuing confusion. Hopefully, they’ll confuse big words for intellect, complex ideology for relevance; and give up.
This may be why much of fundamentalism is built up on a soft ideological foundation. Quick responses prompted pat answers and over time have created a house built firmly on the sand. Of course, this isn’t meant to imply that there’s no truth to be found in fundamentalism–it’s just that the truth has been supported by poor argumentation.
There’s a real danger in this poor argumentation. Hopefully, we can learn from this and begin to develop a strong and coherent system of ideology to support our belief systems. Perhaps, I’ll feel free not to tote the party line–liberal or conservative–just because I don’t have an answer to every question right away. Maybe some folks will think less of me, some will tire of my “I don’t know, I’ll have to think about that.” But I’d much rather bear the brunt of frustration with the tedium with which I treat each of my positions, rather than to discover one day that I’ve built my house upon the sand.
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08.23.04
Posted in faith, philosophy at 12:49 am by
Amidst the tragic loss of an engaged couple the media tries to create a case for a serial killer. The young man who was murdered is from near my town. Just a few miles away. I guess I live in a small town, so I probably should forgive the media when they get a morsel and they try to turn that news bit into a feast.
Tucked into the media’s attempt to profit off the murder of two young lovers, was a bit of theology. You see the couple were involved in a Christian youth camp. Two of those people interviewed, one in California who was a co-worker and one in Michigan a parishoner, told near identical tales of theology. You all know I’m not a stickler for exact quotes, but the thrust of these folks’ statements was this: “We’re all really sad, but really, we’re jealous because they’re in heaven and that’s so much better than here, they’re in paradise.”
Now, my question is this. If heaven is so much better than here, why aren’t more folks dying to get in. I mean–if they really believe that Christians are better off dead, there should be a huge rash of people offing themselves, right?
It’s not so much that I would argue with the idea that heaven is a perfect place and that it’s better than here. It’s just that I think Christians have been trained that the pat answer to the question of death is, “Well, earth sucked anyhow.” This notion seems dangerous to me.
Admittedly, biblical theologians seem to argue on points about what happens after death. The biggest reason for this seems to be that we don’t know what happens after death, thus the bickering. Regardless, I’d like to offer some suggestions. First, I don’t really like the whole “death is the goal” idea that modern Christianity seems to portray. It doesn’t really jive with the whole pro-life thing, anyway. I would argue that “life is the goal.”
A key component to being alive is having a body to live in. To do the key work of shaping the Kingdom one needs a body–at least to my knowlege, when people die they cease to have the ability to shape what they said or wrote. Their words may shape the Kingdom but they cease to have that effect.
Second, when you die you no longer have a body. Humans are incomplete when the body and soul are not united. God created the two together, and he promises that one day the two will again unite in the resurrection of the dead. I’m ill equipped to argue finer points of theology about the nature of time after death, or whatever, but it would seem to me that from the perspective of time from the moment a person dies until the moment of the resurrection from the dead, that person is incomplete. Now they may be quite happy sipping spiritual tea, feasting on spiritual fried chicken and okra, and tipping back a few spiritual martinis, but the fact remains that they are incomplete.
The third problem I have with becoming too comfortable with death as a goal, is that death isn’t God’s idea. You heard me. I will never be comfortable with death. It’s the enemy. God never intended that these two kids would die in their sleeping bags on a beach in California. This is a big one for me, it drives me nuts really. This notion that we somehow need to be okay with the concept of death because “God called someone home” or “it was just their time.” Hogwash. Is it someone’s time when they have cancer? How about if they die and they’re 21 years old? Is it someone’s time when a murderer decides to take the life of 2 kids? How about if a mother takes the life of a child? I think the answers get much blurrier when you think about all the ways people have died over the history of the world.
The easiest answer for me would seem to be that there is no time. If God had his way, none of us would ever be separated from our earthly bodies. But God didn’t have his way. Instead he gave human beings the greatest gift of all–will. Because of that will we now all face death. Because of that will we can all experience God more fully. It really is a double edged sword. Regardless, let’s all keep in mind, death isn’t God’s idea…so, let’s not get too cozy with it.
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