Political Dysfunction Spells Trouble for Democracies

Op ed writer E.J. Dion’s newest piece appeared in our local newspaper this morning titled, Political dysfunction spells trouble for democracies. It is a timely and terribly important topic about which we here at MMR have bandied around for some time. It focuses on youth, primarily American and German, who face ever-smaller slices of the economic pie.

Of course, there is a difference between American youth and the German youth even though nations both belong to the G8. One political the other educational. German children are educated on a two-tier track: they either go on to higher education or begin studying a trade depending on high school testing. They aren’t tossed to the wind on graduation day as are American students.  And college tuition is free in nearly all of the states and only moderately expensive in two [500€ per semester]. Thus German youth are prepared well as they enter the workforce.

Secondly, as Dion points out, today’s youth, according to a recent report titled, The Democratic Disconnect, are facing obstacles that post-war children never faced:  “The collective engagement of a concerned citizenry for the public good is eroding. Democratic governments often seem crippled in their capacity to deliver what their people want and need.”

Here in the U.S. many of us know that and are lamenting the gridlock that has kidnapped our democracy. As Dion says at the end of his article, “They could begin by pondering what an unemployed 28-year-old makes of a ruling elite that expends so much energy feuding over how bureaucrats rewrote a set of talking points.”

Dion points out, in a 2009 survey by the German polling firm Forsa: “that zero percent — yes, zero percent — of workers in Germany believe they can have a significant impact on how policy in Germany is shaped via the ballot box.”

At least they are realistic.  Of course, at the present time, the German social safety-net is much broader and tighter than here in the U.S. Germans take care of their youth and pensioners. Their cities run well, transportation and infrastructure is excellent as are their schools  and their economy is relatively stable.

Here in mid-May many high schools are holding graduation ceremonies. For many, it is the end of their formal education. They will walk across the stage, smile, get their diploma and face the reality that this piece of paper guarantees nothing. It is essentially useless in planning for a solid economic future. Of course, this all sadly suggests that our society may become responsible  for the care of this person throughout their life.

What a jackpot for right-wing political banter!

And the vicious cycle.

And the gridlock.

Fundamentalist Idiocy Again, Again

Did I mention the idiocy of fundamentalist Christians yet?  Or do I repeat myself?  What they say makes great fodder as well as fertilizer.

It’s about the recent election of former S.C. Governor Sanford to Congress. A local radio personality [religious FM station] wrote an op ed on a local religious blog site in which he condemned his election because of his ‘personal moral failing,’ although he was forgiven by  a ‘God of grace and second chances.’ He chastised the voters in that congressional district for ’not caring care about the ethics and character of our elected officials any longer.’

Of course his ‘sin’ was the same as that of Bill Clinton [and a long list of other,unnamed politicians]. Bedroom stuff, as usual. My, my those fundies are surely obsessed with sex!

By the way, the author, who is also a pastor, skewered the Affordable Health Care Act in his rant on ‘immoral behavior’ of politicians. What? Well, yes because, after all, the pastor is a Republican.  Not only a Republican but I suspect at Tea Party Republican due to the many uses of the word ‘freedom’ in his screed.  Hence the diss on President Obama’s health care legislation.He mentioned the 15,000 pages of legislation in the act to reinforce another point: the more external restraints we need on our behavior, the less free we will be.

Go figure, this from a fundamentalist pastor. Restraints he said. As if fundamentalists aren’t into the ‘restraining’ business.

Well, I thought you might like to keep up with the latest fundy idiocy which is spreading rapidly like a malignant cancer across the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

…addendum

Educating Christian fundamentalists simply doesn’t work. They do not accept any education that is in direct conflict with their worldview. What remains is to educate the rest of the American populace about Christian fundamentalism and dominionism, educating the American populace about the David Bartons of the world, so that when elections occur, an educated populace can reject the infiltration of fundamentalism on the rest of American society, which will, given the right opportunity (usually in a climate of fear like 9/11), erode American democracy entirely and push our nation into the fringes of the world into irrelevance.

- Dakota O’Leary, freethinker,  scholar of theology and literature

Send the Clowns to DC

Clowns are a curious lot as are the current members of Congress.  It has become increasingly clear to me that our current form of government, which has served us fairly well for over 230 years, is now defunct. It is in permanent paralysis and likely to remain so for years to come.  It’s all about personal and partisan political game-playing rather than serving the welfare of The People.

More and more Americans are understanding this fact yet what can we, the people do?  Very little directly, yet there is another way to both vent our anger and perhaps bring about change- clowns.

Yes clowns!

I propose a National Clown Day all across the nation, perhaps on the fourth of July. Those who could travel to DC could ring the House and Senate with clowns.  At home, rather than waving flags and blowing off fireworks, we all should dress up as our favorite clown, get into the local parades and carry a sign such as  CLOWNS in CONGRESS!

It might be fun!

Will the Idiocy Ever End?

We are a remarkably moronic nation and I’m not talking about the math, science and reading scores of our students. It’s the adults.  The ones who ‘believe’ lots of idiocy. Yesterday my wife found the photo below on her Facebook page posted by a right-wing ‘friend.’

Sigh!

It truly is amazing what we Americans ‘believe.’ I wonder, though, if it is universal, cutting across national borders? Are Europeans and Canadians as gullible as we Americans? Or do they have a built-in ‘sensibility’ filter that many Americans lack?

Take religion for example. I’ve been playing around on a religious website lately observing the ‘beliefs’ of a group of fundamentalist Christians. When I throw in my agnostic thoughts I’m attacked like a rabid dog. Seriously. These people are sold on Creationism, the young earth hypothesis,  blood atonement, literalism of the Bible, and anything else you can imagine. It doesn’t take too much effort to ‘imagine’ what else is in their box of beliefs.

What else could account for the odd and skewed ‘beliefs’ demonstrated by those on the right-edge of the political spectrum?  After all, most are God-fearing, born-again, Bible-thumping Christians. You know, those who answer any question of morality with, “For the Bible says…”

I’m not talking a small group by any means. The Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape survey found that 26.3% of U.S. Protestants refer to themselves as evangelical. One fourth! Another Pew survey found that about 27% of the U.S. Catholic population consider themselves as old-style, literalist, charismatic Catholics. Together, this is a huge number of people across this nation.

Given this, why would we wonder why so many Americans hold odd ‘beliefs’ on other, non-religious issues? If this group can hold on to  incredible religious beliefs that defy history and science, it is easy to understand that this group may be quite vulnerable to accept propaganda of a political nature.

In a Fairleigh Dickinson University survey released January 2013, 75 percent of Republicans say that at least one political conspiracy theory [of 4 given to them] is likely true. This includes 64 percent who think that President Obama is hiding information about his background and early life and 19 percent who think the 2012 Presidential election was stolen. Yes, that stuff!

My unproven theory is this: a religiously marinated mind is a sponge for conniving politicos. What do you think?

Why Congress is Failing Us

We all know that the current Congress is a failure, yet do we know why? Here on MMR we often assume that it’s just the same old political game that has been played for decades in DC. However, it isn’t.  The new political ‘meme’ that is choking our government in Washington is a recent and radical mutation. Few Americans know of its existence because they, like many of us, believe it is just a different version of the old political game.

It is not. And it ought to frighten the hell out of us- assuming that we knew. One of the goals of this blog is to inform The People of the shenanigans, tricks and downright dangerous deeds that are being done in the dark corners of the alleyways that affect The People.  Veteran journalist Bill Moyers is the ultimate muckraker these days and he found something terribly troublesome which he presented on his PBS program two weeks ago.  It is titled, Why Congress is Failing Us. This follows on the heels of a book written a year ago by political scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann:  It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.

The phrase ‘new politics of extremism’ ought to wake you up as well as the hairs on your neck. Many of us are old enough to remember hearing Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater. The KKK, John Birch Society and Fr.Charles Coughlin all promoted an extreme right-wing agenda as did the southern segregationists.

Authors Ornstein and Mann blame today’s gridlock [read anarchy] as mostly the fault of right wing radicals within the Republican Party who engage in “policy hostage-taking” to extend their political war against the president.

Yes, the GOP.

Period.

And don’t give me that ‘dime’s worth of difference’ routine; it is today’s extreme Republican Party that is to blame. Mann said in the interview, ”The two parties are not equally to blame because the Republicans have become extreme both in terms of policy and process.” Ornstein said about the Tea Party wing of the GOP,  ”If Barack Obama is for something, we have to be against it because he’s not a real American.”

There it is- racism and extremism rolled into one bundle- a bundle that purports to be anti-tax but is really something else altogether. It is becoming pathological just as the historic extremists mentioned at the top of this post. Pathological is a term that I don’t easily throw around, yet I detect it simmering all throughout our nation. It’s basic ingredients are race, color and national origin. Yes, ‘those people.’ And what frightens the political extremists on the right is the knowledge that they are suddenly a minority in this nation.  My mind flashes to South African Apartheid or Nazi Germany or the Southern Segregationists.

Do our high school seniors know about this history? Do they understand? Will it stay with them? Or does it all fade when they enter ‘real life?’ When they ‘grow up?’  How does what they learn in history class impact the rest of their lives?

 

 

While I was Away

I’ve been away from all of the topics that we muse about here on MMR for nearly a week, child-sitting for my grandchildren in eastern Ohio. My wife and I were able to take some day trips while the kids were in school.  I’d highly recommend the underrated Cuyahoga Valley National Park which runs from Cleveland to Akron through quite scenic and geologically diverse landscapes. As a resident of the Flatlands of western Ohio, the park area is stunningly varied and interesting. Hiking and biking trails wind through the valley along side of a passenger train with easy hop on/off stops for serious bicyclists. Additionally, one can explore history as the former Ohio & erie Canal locks are extant along the valley floor.

As a result. I’ve missed the world. Did I miss much? By the way, what happened with that diminutive two-bit dictator of Korea who was planning to have a fireworks show? What about Syria?  Have we figured out the ‘good guys from the bad guys’ yet and are Graham and McCain still crying for us to get involved? No need to ask about Congress.  I assume that everything is deadlocked with lots of bluster on both sides. I suppose that climate change is progressing as predicted.  No doubt gun control is still dead in the water [of melting glaciers].Religious fundamentalists, I presume, are still as nuts as ever. And I take for granted that the rich of the world are growing richer and the poor continue to eat the crumbs from the table.

What did I miss?

GW Bush Approval on the Rise

Incredibly, the approval rating of GW Bush is rising.  His numbers are up 14 points since he left the Oval Office according to the latest poll. Further, approval for his handling of the economy is 19 points higher. Imagine that.

On a talk show this morning the question was asked, ‘Why?’ Why indeed.  My take is America’s perennially plagued short memory. As a society, we resemble more of an adolescent rather than a mature adult. Compared to Western Europe we are inattentive and rash.

Yet how can Americans forget a major economic crash at the end of his presidency and the two wars, one of which still endures? Or don’t we give a damn? Maybe we, as a culture, are stuck in the pioneer stage with a frontiersman ethos? Our lust for guns says so. So does our willingness to engage in military adventures or misadventures.

Today the GW Bush library opens. I wonder how much propaganda is on display. And will the visitors gobble it up as they did during his presidency?

The Ignorance of Fundamentalists

There are none so blind as those who will not see. You can quote me on that. But seriously, they are an ignorant lot. I’d like to concentrate on Christian fundamentalists because they live in my neighborhood and I know more about Christian fundamentalists than I do of Islamic fundamentalists.

In the past 24 hours three examples of this ignorance swirled around me. One this morning appeared in the Letters to the Editor of the Toledo Blade. A writer known as Janet Hass penned this:

God is compassionate and not responsible for evil. He has promised to bless us if we keep His commands, but has promised to allow evil, sudden terror, and wasting diseases upon us if we reject Him.

When President Obama said in Turkey in 2009 that the United States does not consider itself a Christian nation, we may have lost the protection of the God who created us.

Sure. God no longer protects us. When did God begin to ‘protect’ us? Right after Pearl Harbor? Post Civil War? Right after 9/11? Or just before President Obama took the Oath of Office?

Then there was this unbelievable statement from a man who is a self-described apologist for the Catholic Church.  This was his first post for a local religious blog:

There’s been constant change since Jesus arrived 2,000 years ago and founded the church, fulfilling the prophecies of the Old Testament.

What? You are probably saying, “He never founded the Christian Church because he died a Jew and had not intention of abandoning his Jewish faith.” Of course, you’d be correct.

Finally, on this same local religious website, another self-identified Christian fundamentalist was asked if he had learned anything about the Gospels and the Old Testament beyond his Sunday School years. His reply:

Religious education is the problem! Nothing you read or learn can teach you that. Jesus rejected and criticized the “religiously educated” of His day.

Education is the problem? Indeed it could be THE problem for those who will not learn, will not see. I’m betting that the three local people quoted above haven’t the faintest idea that recent [4 decades] biblical scholarship has led to many different discoveries regarding these ‘holy’ scriptures. No doubt, many fundamentalists do not even know that the Old Testament writers used the technique referred to as midrash, making up stories that helped the Jewish laity understand more easily the lessons of the Torah. Yes, making up stories to wrap around the laws that the Jews needed to heed.

A second rather common bit of knowledge about the New Testament is that the authors of the synoptic gospels were not eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. Rather, they wrote many decades afterward.  The man called John wrote 70 years after the death of Jesus. Yet Christian fundamentalists believe that these 4 writers walked beside and listened to Jesus and took notes on what he said.

A third common problem with reading the Gospels is that these authors, too, used the midrash technique. Mark, not Matthew wrote the original gospel and Matthew and Luke ‘fixed’ it and added midrash stories for embellishment. Mark never had a birth story because there was none, yet Matthew and Luke fabricate an elaborate one- the one we hear and sing around Christmas time.

Last, and most important, most of the words put into the mouth of Jesus are midrash- especially John. Scholars know that Matthew, Luke and John added huge amounts of narrative that Jesus never spoke in order to move forward their own agendas. Nonetheless, fundamentalists use the ‘quotes’ of Jesus to make their point.

Cracks develop with study; doubts arise with research, but the fundamentalist wants nothing of this because of the slippery slope hypothesis. As a result, they deny anything but the literal word printed in the book.  There is no gray area, no speculation.

As a result, false ideas, based on ‘Holy Scriptures’ becomes the law, the concept to follow, the ideal to strive for.  And surely, hate, boundaries, distrust and even violence ensues.

For the Bible says…

Why Tolerate Religion?

There will be a seminar in DC on Saturday April 27 titled, Why Tolerate Religion? Good question, especially here in our highly-religious nation. The answer, naturally, is freedom of religion, but what about freedom from religion? For that reality, I ought to move to Norway or Sweden or, for the sake of language, Australia.

Yet, I’m stuck here in a city that devotes an entire section of the Saturday newspaper to religion. And it isn’t even in the Bible Belt. I can’t imagine living there.

Why Tolerate Religion? is the title of a book by author Brian Leiter a philosopher and legal scholar. He asks, Why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse?

Yet beyond the legalize, there are nearly daily examples of ‘religious persons’ fiddling around with our laws. Ohio legislators, for example, continue to fiddle around with laws grounded in their religious beliefs. Within the past two weeks, fundamentalist Christians forced the University of Toledo to abandon its support for abortion rights; another fundamentalist Christian is moving to ban teaching of birth control to Ohio high school students, to be replaced by abstinence education.

Fundamentalist lobbyists walk the halls of the Ohio Legislature promoting their religious agenda. And, with gerrymandering, our state legislature is packed with people who place their religious beliefs ahead of the common welfare of the state.  Pathetic.

The book and the seminar will be interesting but ineffective against the wide-spread and strong chokehold of the religious in our society. Yet in the past decade or so, the tide is turning ever-so slowly in the direction of the non-believer. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that the religious will roll over. They will fight tooth and nail to preserve their privileged hold on our society.

Domestic Terrorism in the U.S.

“He’s in custody!” That was the 3-word phrase that lifted the spirits of the people in the Boston area last night. The town of Waterford Mass at last were able to unlock their doors and step outside into the warm April evening air. Four days of terror finally at an end. This, the most recent act of domestic terrorism will now be added to the Google list under’ domestic terrorism.’ It already has been added.

They are listed alphabetically by organization from the Animal Liberation Front to the Weathermen. Each group had a belief and an agenda. Each group thought its agenda important enough to risk public death. Really? THAT important? I doubt it.

The perpetrators, as we all know, are nearly exclusively males. What’s with that? What is it about males that they are the ones who end up on these historic lists? Is it the y-Chromosome? Is it the testosterone? Is it nature?  Or is it nurture?

Well, gentlemen, have you any guesses?