An Observation

As you may know if you have been one of the handful of people who read this little backwater blog, I make a concerted, sometimes, but not always, unpleasant, effort to read news sources from outside my "bubble."  This means going a bit further than reading George Will, Ross Douthat, and Brett Stephens in the Post and the Times, but I do try to steer away from Breitbart, InfoWars or other such sewer holes of propaganda.  I'm going to draw upon a fairly regular and disciplined experience spanning a couple years now with reading Conservative and Libertarian sources to talk about something that probably appears to be a far-right idea, but which is a crucial influence even on those of a more centrist persuasion.
The thing that I see happening among even the most reasonable of those who are a bit to the right of me is something I will call grievance.  I'm leaving off the modifier (white) that often gets attached to it in a lot of liberal/left writings, because I don't think it's unique to racial issues.  Here is the phenomenon as I see it: conservative people feel as though the culture war is going badly for them. On many social issues they find themselves well outside the majority opinions, even if the issue in question is not one they feel particularly emotional about, they still feel marginalized. I am not going to argue about the validity or even the reality of this feeling. I'm going to approach it, as I would any other sort of grieving process, after all grievance and grief are related.  The feeling is what is important, even though, I know, that sounds very liberal snowflake-ish. The feeling is important because it drives behavior and attitudes that, when they coalesce, can create a circumstance that dramatically effects our political life together.
Donald Trump seized on the depth and breadth of grievance in his campaign, talking about "American carnage," and bellowing about "Making America Great Again," the key word in that phrase being "Again." I have deep skepticism about our political life and process, but even on my gloomiest day, I would not describe life in this country as "carnage," nor would I suggest that America is not already great in many categories, but millions of people chose to believe Trump, despite voluminous evidence that he was a fraud.
Why?
Because grievance makes you do strange things, just like grief does.  The sense that you, and your values, are on the edge of the mainstream is both an alienating and an invigorating experience.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of righteous indignation to get people to do things that aren't particularly great ideas.  Trump's most shrewd and dangerous move, throughout these past three years has been to vilify the press and the "elite," by which he indicts the intellectuals of the academic community and anyone else with enough wealth and fame to be a problem for him. He was able to do this because, quite frankly, the press and the "elite" can be pretty obnoxious a lot of the time.  It doesn't take too many stories about a college kid getting "oppressed" by his lib-tard professor because he wouldn't use gender neutral pronouns to really make the blood boil.  And honestly Political Correctness (capitalization intended) has gone too far at times.
The thing is though, for a lie to work, it has to have just enough truth in it.  For Trump to be able to convince people that immigration is a huge problem, we do have to have millions of undocumented people living and working here.  For him to convince us that they are "criminals and rapists" it does help that MS-13 is a real and savage threat.  For him to convince us that trade wars and violating the standards of international decorum are just getting tough, China and Iran do really have to be pretty bad actors.  For him to convince people whose primary sympathy is with Fox News particular slant that the New York Times and the Washington Post are "fake news," those outlets do have to disagree fairly frequently with Sean Hannity, which honestly you would have to do if you were anything like objective and neutral.  But honesty seems to have taken the gas pipe lately, not a day goes by that I don't read at least one opinion or factual account of how dangerous the current assault on the First Amendment (the freedom of the press part, but also free speech in general) could ultimately become to our practice of democracy.
So here's my plea, and I know it doesn't seem fair, but we "liberal snowflakes" need to stop giving the grievance crowd so much ammo.  We need to stop crucifying people for small missteps because we become like the boy who cried wolf. We have been wailing about small time offenders so long no one really paid any attention to us when the wolf actually showed up.  Remember Gary Hart? Whose presidential bid got derailed because a picture of him with a pretty blond on his lap (who wasn't his wife, but who did not really seem to be his mistress either) showed up and tarred him as philanderer.  What about John Edwards? Mark Sanford (Appalachian trail/Argentinian mistress governor of South Carolina) remember these guys? Did they do bad stuff? Yep.  Did they pay a price for it? Yep. But did we over do it? Yep, we definitely did.  People got so tired of it that eventually even nearly 20 credible accusations of sexual assault and at least two cases of paying hush money to women with whom he had had affairs... well it would appear the moral majority just plumb ran out of moral outrage.
If we want to be able to hold the real villains accountable we need to have some perspective about who they are.  If we want Harvey Weinstein gone forever, we probably shouldn't come down quite so hard on Garrison Keillor and Al Franken.  Paradoxically, giving grace to the merely flawed is probably the best way to avoid falling into the clutches of the truly evil.  Like the old saw says, the perfect is often the enemy of the good.  So if we stay on the rampage against anyone who dares challenge our politically correct hegemony, we're going to create more and more grievance out there in 'Murica.  If we do that, things could get worse. That's the thing with the sorts of people the Brits call "Prigs," eventually everyone gets tired of them.

Values

We watched the Jimmy Stewart classic It's a Wonderful Life over the weekend.  I hadn't actually watched the old Capra Christmas classic for quite some time, but like all really good art even a "timeless classic" like Wonderful Life, can live and breathe.  The thing that got me thinking this time around was the villain, Mr. Potter, a rich, greedy old man with dreams of complete hegemony over the town of Bedford Falls.  He is parsimonious, mean and power-hungry, pretty much the perfect foil to Stewart's George Bailey. Bailey throughout his life gives of himself, puts his own interests on the back burner for the sake of others and generally stands as a moral barrier to Potter.
In the post war optimism of 1946 Potter was an obvious, absurdly two dimensional villain.  No one in Roosevelt's America would have seen him as a good leader or even a decent human being. Early in the movie he engages in bellicose rants about how the little bank run by Bailey's father and later by Bailey himself, would too often give loans out too easily, how they were not profitable, about how they were giving money away to people who didn't deserve it.  In 2018, I realized that not only have we changed our opinion about whether Mr. Potter is a villain, we have elected him to high offices, and no, I'm not just talking about Trump.  He is every politician who preys upon selfishness and fear of someone, "getting one over on the taxpayer."  He is the fear of migrant workers and the warning about socialists leading us into becoming Venezuela.  Granted, I was not alive in 1946, and so I only know about Roosevelt's America from books and movies, but I want to believe in an America that holds George Bailey as a paradigm not Mr. Potter.
This morning I was watching ESPN as I drank my coffee, and one of those tear-jerking commercials for the V-Foundation came on.  The V-Foundation is named for Jim Valvano, a basketball coach at North Carolina State who battled and died of cancer.  If you haven't heard or seen his acceptance of the Arthur Ashe award do yourself a favor and watch:

That's Jimmy V.  He's a George Bailey and he has, even after losing his battle against cancer, continued to fight it through his foundation for cancer research.  But what struck me this morning is how utterly horrible it is that people have to beg for charity in order to fund cancer research.  Cancer research should be a thing that we, as a society, should devote ourselves to with our whole heart and mind and soul, regardless of whether or not it is profitable. It is, like other health care activities, a moral obligation for people who aspire to care for others.  Whether you define that as a religious commitment or not, it is the kind of thing we need to accomplish as a species if we ever hope to move beyond our limitations as mere animals.
See also, the pictures that came to us over the weekend of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers with children in diapers, fleeing from tear gas grenades fired by us at the southern border.  Welcoming those who are in need of asylum from the brutality and poverty of their former home is not just a "nice" thing to do, it's probably not an "easy" thing to do, but it is the moral thing to do, and no amount of equivocation or rhetorical gymnastics will ever make what is happening at our southern border anything but a repudiation of the better angels of our nation. Certain utilitarian arguments for doing the right thing do exist, we need immigration in order to remain vital, because we're not making enough babies, and we are not creating a work force that will do the very necessary jobs in our society, but even if there was no profit in it, taking in those barefoot and homeless babies and their desperate mothers would be the right thing to do.
Don't ever forget what the right thing to do is, and never forget that it is often not the same thing as the profitable thing to do.  Millions of Americans love Jimmy Stewart, and It's a Wonderful Life, not just because it's a touching Christmas movie, but because it presents for us a vision that one man, making choices for the greater good rather than out of his own selfishness, can really make a difference.  Sometimes Mr. Potter seems inevitable, and George Bailey can be driven to wonder if it's all worth it, maybe even to the point where he's ready to give it all up.  I feel like, as a nation, we may be at one of those "bridge" moments.  Maybe the drastic challenges of immigration, climate change, globalization, and even cancer and other diseases, are just our stupid guardian angels jumping into the river daring us to save them.

Giving of Thanks

There was a time when all I cared about on Thanksgiving was eating.  I wanted things a certain way, the way my Mom made them.  I wanted it to be a day where things were just so.  And I could get cranky about things not being just so. This was before I actually started getting involved in the work of preparing a meal.  Over the past several years I have found that I actually like that part.  There is some selfish motivation in wanting to be the cook, I can do things the way I want, but I also find it rather rewarding to make things that people enjoy.  This year, I'm going industrial scale. 
Our church congregation is hosting the moving homeless shelter program in our county. Normally we do one week, this week we picked up a second because they were having trouble finding a host for Thanksgiving week.  Tomorrow my family and another couple from the congregation will prepare four turkeys, a ham, thirty pounds of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and a bunch of pies for the over 40 people experiencing homelessness that are in the Safe Nights program.  I'm excited, but a little anxious.
You might think I'm bragging about how great this is, but I will confess something, I wish I didn't have to do it. I volunteered, and I am glad I did, I don't want pats on the back for it either.  I like cooking and I also kind of like the challenge of feeding so many people.  That's not what I'm talking about, I wish there weren't 40 plus people living in my church basement right now who need me to feed them Thanksgiving dinner.  Jesus said, "You will always have the poor with you," but he wasn't challenging us to entrench that as a reality, he was actually rebuking a disciple who was being disingenuous about his concern for the poor (John 12: 8).
There are people downstairs who have jobs, there are parents with little kids, there are people of all ages, races and conditions.  There are some people who fit the stereotype of homeless people, borderline personalities and outright mental illness, people who spend the summer months living in the woods and in hidden spots among the suburban and exurban landscape of Charles County.  There are people who you might never know were living in a shelter program.
I wish I could control the harshness of our world that puts people in such a situation the same way I control the cooking of a turkey or three.  I wish I could convince everyone in our society that this sort of shelter triage is not really a good long term solution and that we need to do better, but I don't have that kind of control over something as big and complicated as our collective psyche.
It might be the rather peculiar nature of my vocation, but I find that I increasingly gravitate to doing things that show results.  I like mowing grass and fixing things, I like cooking meals. Maybe it's the contrast that these things have with my main job, where results are not always plainly visible. I know that in the work of ministry the desire to have too much control is toxic.  One has to trust in a power that is beyond your own to do the work of vocational ministry, but you also have to learn to trust the people you serve.  It's not just you and God, there are other people involved too.  That's why it's often so messy.  Over-functioning is a symptom of trying to control too much and not letting others pull along side you.
I am thankful over this past fortnight that my congregation and a few other congregations have pulled this line together.  Whatever else I might feel about what I'm going to do tomorrow, I do not feel alone in it.  We, the collective we, all of us have a lot of very hard work to do to solve the cultural and social heart problem that is represented downstairs.  As for me, I guess I'm just going to try to feed them some turkey, that's what I can do for now.

Age of Wisdom

People start writing at different ages, Mary Shelley was 20, F. Scott Fitzgerald was 23, Thoreau was 31, Salinger 32, Henry Miller 43, Tolkien 45, there is not really a right time to become a writer, at least if you're a writer of fiction, poetry or something along those lines.  However, if you would like to tell the world how they ought to live, my humble suggestion is that you wait until the pimples have mostly gone away.  The writer of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris, has recently come out to say that perhaps the book about Christian sexual ethics for young people, which he wrote when he was at the ripe old age of 21, has perhaps done some significant harm.
I was fortunate to have grown up in a mostly mainline Christian tradition that only occasionally dipped its toes into the sort of evangelical madness that gave us "purity" culture.  I think I had heard of the book, but by the time I actually got around to awkwardly saying "wassup" to dating, I was not really that interested in purity of any sort.  As I read the reactions from folks around the interweb to Mr. Harris' much belated apology for whatever harm he might have done to a generation of Christian youth by inflicting them with guilt, shame and loads of tacit patriarchy.  I am sort of wondering why anyone would listen to a 21 year old person about something like marriage.
When I was 21 I could barely maintain a functional relationship with myself, let alone another person, let alone provide guidance to someone else to do such a thing.  It is egomania on the border of being a sociopath for a 21 year old to try and give out any sort of relationship advice.  Write a story about your friends doing stupid things, or make up a morality tale about a zombie, but don't write something that might just be grabbed up by a bunch of fearful adults who want to keep the kids from getting too frisky.
That said, I can't really blame Mr. Harris very much.  He was, after all, 21 years old and as such a verifiable idiot.  I know, I sound old and cranky, but 21 years, unless you have lived an extraordinarily full life, is simply not old enough to approach any sort of wisdom.  You might be smart, you might be bordering on capability, but wisdom has, at most, waved at you from across the street.  What is disturbing is how fully and almost violently his work was inflicted upon a generation of youth.  In some quarters it still goes on and I can't adequately express, as the father of a 13 and 14 year old, how creepy it is to me to hear about fathers and daughters going to "purity balls" where the girls promise their fathers they will remain virgins until marriage.
And it is not that I'm some libertine either, I absolutely believe that our culture has trivialized sexuality to a dangerous extent.  It's just that purity culture, as it did and to some extent does still exist, gets the emphasis so painfully wrong.  Teach kids to value themselves and think about things like what love really is, don't try to shame and scare them.  Sexuality, fear and shame combine in toxic ways and that toxic stuff can poison relationships.
Apparently it did so to a great number of people, most of whom are accepting Mr. Harris' heartfelt apology and applauding his decision to not publish I Kissed Dating Goodbye any longer.  But in the articles and comments I have read are a great many stories about lives and relationships that were rather roundly ruined at a crucial juncture.  As the parent of teenagers, watching them take their first steps into the world of human relationship is terrifying, I just pray that at 44 I will have the wisdom not to let my fear get the best of me, and if I do get the fear, I will not inflict it upon them.

A Sigh of Relief

As much as I would have liked the nation to rise up and totally repudiate the politics of hatred and fear that have gripped us for the past two years, I did not expect it, and it did not happen.  What did happen was precisely what the political talking heads predicted: Democrats took the House of Representatives and made gains in Governor's and down ticket elections.  Republicans held the Senate in a very favorable electoral scenario where many of the seats up for grabs were in "deep red" areas.
He who must not be named spent the last week before the election howling about brown people invading from the south and various other dog-whistle fear tactics, but as far as I can see he barely moved the needle.  The thing that I guess makes me feel sort of better about our government this morning than I have in a few years is that yesterday was peaceful (first and foremost), but also that it was predictable.  I'm just getting weary of the chaos, maybe it's my age, but I just can't take the constant outrage and frenzy that comes with he who must not be named.
I'm tired of him, and I think the election gives a glimmer of hope that I'm not alone.  The House of Representatives is the thing that we needed to take the lid off of his boiling kettle of bellicosity.  I'm under no illusion that the Democrats who will take control of one of our legislative assemblies will suddenly be able to get much accomplished, but I at least have the sense that they will be able to do something besides wring their hands and faint on the sidelines.
Various hopeful commentators this morning are outlining what I think would be a fine strategy for the next two years, and it boils down to this: give he who must not be named the chance to deliver on some of the things he claims to want and has promised his base.  Introduce an immigration reform bill that solidifies the status of dreamers, but also which addresses some of the gaping holes in our system.  Introduce legislation that REALLY helps the working class, not just for pretend like the GOP.  INFRASTRUCTURE, not fancy tech-y stuff either, guys (and gals) with hardhat stuff.  This is all stuff that he who must not be named, demagogue that he is, would have a hard time saying no to, because it's stuff that I think, if he has any integrity in him at all, he actually does want.  The Senate might hem and haw, but honestly at this point they don't have the spine to stand up to he who must not be named.
I think that smart people should be able to figure out how to use he who must not be named the same way he has figured out how to use his base.  It would seem to me that with just this one lever of power to pull those we elected yesterday could maybe make a big difference in some really important ways over the next two years, but it's going to mean learning some lessons.  That is probably why I'm actually (sort of) relieved that it wasn't a "blue tsunami" or something that delivered the Democrats everything they always wanted, then they would have no impetus to learn from anything and probably might try to talk Hillary into running again.  As it is, they're going to have to get smart and work at this thing to show the country that they really are an alternative to he who must not be named and his Peter Pettigrew, Turtleman.
The cynical part of me is ready for gridlock and stalemate, but I've gotten kind of used to that.  At the very least, we have pumped the brakes on our descent into madness, it remains to be seen whether we can get meaningful control over the vehicle.

Choice

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind killer.

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

When fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

-Frank Herbert, The Bene Gesserit litany against fear

I have shared this before, but I find I need to be reminded of it myself rather often.  It comes from a fictional universe complete with a fictional religion, yet it rings with a certain truth that could very well be Hebrew, Christian, Islamic or Buddhist.  Perhaps it is a sort of synthesis of wisdom that Herbert was free to express as a maker of worlds, but it is true, fear is the mind killer.

The liturgical process of the Bene Gesserit reminds me of the many instances that Jesus confronted the fear that his disciples had. His approach was not to avoid their fear, or even his own, but to come at it head on, and to encourage them to do the same. This process is found often in the writings of the mystics as they confront the "dark nights of the soul," and such things. The idea that our fears can be avoided is the path to a very bad place.

Notice that the invocation: "I must not fear," is quickly revealed to be a futile attempt.  The path then is not avoidance of fear, but rather the facing of fear, allowing it to happen and then observing its passage, noting what it really was, and the effect that it had. The end result is learning, and growth.

It seems we are being sold an awful lot of fear these days, on the eve of an election it seems particularly vitriolic.  I am trying to see what it is I can learn from the passing of fear, because it will pass, as surely as the day turns into night, but there will be more to come.  I would like it if I could help people see the nothing that lies in the wake of their fears, but alas, we cannot live other people's struggles for them.  For instance, I cannot bring myself to be afraid of the Honduran Caravan of refugees.  To me those poor people are victims of poverty and violence who, should they make it to our borders, should be received with grace and proper documentation.  But many people appear to fear differently than me, yet I cannot learn much from their fear, because I face something rather different.

What I fear is the loss of democracy that could come from the fear of others. In essence, I fear the toxic effect that fear has on those who allow fear to be a killer of the mind, who will not face it, let it pass and see the nothing in its wake.  Ben Franklin is often quoted or paraphrased, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security probably deserve neither."  As with many of Franklin's sayings, there is a slightly apocryphal feel to this one, but since I started with a fictional religious incantation, I guess I can keep rolling that way. It calls us to look at what courage really is, courage is not lack of fear, it is the willingness to face it.  We all must deal with the balance of whether to be open to others, or whether to try and seek the greatest possible insulation from others. It may be true that the safest of all possible worlds would be the one where liberty and justice for all is not just confined to our ideas and ideals, but is always a practical guideline. 

Fear will always work against both liberty and justice.  Beware those who sell you fear and even those who try and give it away, they are not trustworthy. 

You cannot really expect to be free from fear, but you have a choice on how to deal with it.  I commend the Bene Gesserit methodology, let it come, let it go, look at the nothingness that is left and consider what that tells you about yourself.

What We Can Do Now

Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun.

Look, the tears of the oppressed - with no one to comfort them!

On the side of their oppressors was power - with no one to comfort them.

And I thought of the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, 

who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, 

and has not yet seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

-Ecclesiastes 4: 1-3

Tree of Life Synagogue was not far from where I went to seminary.  That doesn't really make it any more tragic to me than the numerous other incidents of mass violence that have wracked our nation over the past few years, but I guess it does sort of deepen my own sense of dread.  It brings me to contemplate the limits of rationality when it comes to things like this.  As I read the papers this morning, listening to people trying to make sense of the whole thing from various angles, the voice that keeps coming back to me is one from the very Hebrew Scriptures that both Jewish folk and Christians hold as holy.

Granted, the "preacher" of Ecclesiastes, is far from typical, and certainly not the "go to" adviser if you need some cheering up, but he is a bracing bit of reality that I find I deeply need in moments like this.  Ecclesiastes is sort of like the Blues, it doesn't make you feel better, but it does make you feel less alone.  That's an important thing, because being alone is what allows you to become like that guy who shot those people in the synagogue and the one who mailed those pipe bombs last week.  Alone you feel like all "those people" are against you, and sooner or later, if you're alone long enough, everyone becomes "those people," even nice Jewish people in Squirrel Hill going to services on the Sabbath.  Of course it doesn't help if you insulate yourself with hate spewing internet sewers and only watch news that tells you all the things you should be afraid of... constantly... 24-7 with increasing foam around the mouth.  But to tell you the truth, people went crazy with hate and fear before any of that existed, all it really takes is alone-ness, or in more specific terms, the absence of community. When you are isolated, you tend to consume hate with more gusto.  When you do not regularly see other people, and relate to them, and make the effort of connecting with them, it is far too easy to de-humanize them into the enemy.

In that state, people tend to see those who practice community as particularly galling.  In addition to simple logistics of getting people when they're all together, at church, synagogue, rock concerts and schools, there is also the probably unconscious pathology of attacking the very thing that you need, but which you do not have.

As dangerous as it may be, community is the only cure for this disease.  Witness the grace, even in mourning, of the communities that suffer like this.  Mature religion will always give people a different way to respond to this problem.  Remember when the families of those people who Dylan Roof murdered forgave him?  Remember the Amish who forgave the Nickel Mines shooter?  Give Tree of Life time, they will also astound you with their grace.  It's hard to say how, but they will; pay attention to them when the shock and awe are done with.

Immature religion will clamp down and tense up and try to harness the fear and hurt of a moment like this to bring down the curtains of control.  Many people will tell you that armed guards and increased security are the solution, that is not only untrue, but an evil distortion of what communities of true faith hold as their deepest value.

Jesus, who was Jewish by the way, said it this way, "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for may sake will find it."  That's not endorsing wanton self-destruction, it's all about control and whether you must be in control, or give that control over to God. If you trust, if you love, if you live in faith, you are truly alive.  If you live in fear, hate and anger you are more dead than you even realize.  That's what we have to tell ourselves, over and over again, in moments like this: love is dangerous, do it anyway; community is difficult, do it anyway; forgiveness can be heart-wrenching, do it anyway.  It's not because it's the obvious reaction, it's because it's the only reaction that will ever heal this broken world of ours.

Louder Than Bombs

So now there are bombs being sent to noted liberals all over the place: George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Robert DeNiro, Joe Biden, and probably more to come.  None of them have reached their target, none of them have harmed anyone... yet, but this is yet another widening gyre of a culture war run amok and the casualties in the long run will not be minor. This is not Donald Trump's doing, at least not directly, I don't think even he would sanction this sort of terrorism, but the response to it is, once again, deeply disturbing.  The Fox News contingent is fainting and hand-wringing, all the while muttering under their breath about "false flags," and how this is just another conspiracy to make Trump look bad or sway the election.
At some point though, when your only explanation for things is a bizarre conspiracy theory, you might have to admit that perhaps you're not on the right side of things. When your explanation for everything unfavorable to you is a result of "the media" spinning things in a certain way, you might at least acknowledge that perhaps there is some truth contained in the overwhelming corpus of what can still feasibly be called journalism. Journalists and opinion columnists do sometimes see things clearly.  For instance, this piece appeared in the NY Times today.  No doubt, Trump apologists will say that it's just liberal propaganda or fake news, but it makes a balanced point about the rhetorical practices that have taken over our political arena lately.  It does not blame Trump for the pipe bombs, but it does blame the fear mongering and violent tone of his rhetoric for creating a scenario where an unhinged individual becomes more likely to act out.
The guy who opened fire on Republicans playing softball last year, shows us that the same thing can happen on the left as well as the right, however, I do not recall Democrats making excuses for that or blithely ignoring it as though it was just inevitable and moving on to other things.  Trump, as usual, postures as a tough guy, and in doing so feeds into precisely the sort of zeitgeist that catalyzes this sort of thing in the first place.  All of the people on the bomb list are people who are frequently blamed for the imaginary ills of our society, and we have seen other examples of this: Soros is secretly funding the refugee caravan coming from Honduras, Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who wants to institute Sharia law, Hillary Clinton... I don't even have time to list everything that Hillary Clinton has been accused of, so let's just say Benghazi and leave it at that.
My point is that irresponsible rhetoric has been setting the stage for this sort of thing for years now, and honestly both sides have a hand in it, but one side is more red (take the implication for what it's worth).  Part of this is simply a function of identity, conservatism has a built in reactionary streak that sees change as bad and which always seeks to maintain the status quo.  Conservatism is the favorite haven of those who are already doing well, those who have the power, the money and all the "rights" they want.  Liberalism, at least in the classic sense, looks towards improvement of the status quo, sometimes it even gets around to being altruistic, so that it seeks improvement for everyone.
Honestly, a healthy, functioning society would have both impulses at work, but we do not, at present, have a healthy, functioning society, we have a large scale version of the Jerry Springer show.  Right now, the Liberal side of things is hanging by its fingernails to some idea that civility might be possible. It is a very diverse body though, encompassing everything from libertarians to communists, and within that diversity there are many who think, as Eric Holder expressed last week, "when they go low, we kick them."  That's a bad idea, because if we do that, we let the bully win.
Trump, and by extension, the entire GOP have become bullies, they have the power, and they are not afraid to use it.  People who haven't had the bully's fist aimed at them often look on with approval or disinterest.  Very rarely will anyone stand up to a bully on behalf of someone else.  Trump seems to have only one very narrow sort of self awareness: he knows who to target.  Soros is an easy target for the MAGA crowd to hate: he's rich, he's a New York Elite, he's a known liberal, and to top it off, he's Jewish, for any of the latent anti-semites in the gang.  Hillary is demonstrably hate-able to large swaths of the population.  Obama and Biden? Well, I have a bit of a hard time finding any explanation to dislike those two other than flat out racism, I mean disagree with them maybe, but dislike, or even hate them?  That's tough, but not apparently impossible.  Which is the point, when you can convince people that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are dangerous enemies, unless your last name is Bin-Laden, you have crossed into Jim Jones territory. Robert DeNiro? Fughettabahit.
But this is where we are, I have a feeling it's going to get worse.

Go Gently

We don't yet see things clearly.  We're squinting through a fog, peering through a mist.

But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!

We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us.

-1 Corinthians 13: 12 (The Message)

Thank you Eugene for all that you have done for me.  We met one time, at a conference, when I was just barely out of seminary.  You were the star of the show, but you didn't seem very comfortable being the center of attention.  I was struck by your gentleness and the way you seemed humble and quiet in the midst of quite a bit of fawning by pastor types like me.  I had read so many of your books at that point that I felt like I knew you, and I suppose I did in a way, your books are honest, and I will always hear your quiet rasping voice whenever I re-read them.

I had already mourned the fact that you stopped writing, but I felt like the world was a better place with you up there in Montana on that beautiful lake.  Now I must accept a different vision, that you are home with God, you have completed your baptism and come face to face with the Savior that you served in so many ways.  I think your service through writing has rescued the Church from much silliness and formed many of us into better pastors.

I have read your memoir and I know your life was long and full of goodness.  I know that you did not fear this day, but rather, with the gift of faith, looked forward to glory, and seeing God clearly.  I am happy for you today Eugene, but sad for the world that has lost your wisdom and your presence.

Your writings will be a gift for years to come, thank you so much for leaving them for us.

When you see Fred Rogers, tell him "Hey Neighbor!" He got to me a lot earlier than you and taught me a lot about what it means to be kind.  Not that it's a competition, but you two really make Presbyterian ministers look good.

Thanks again Eugene, your life has made a difference.  Enjoy the Resurrection.  

See you there after a while,

Mark

What If?

One of the hardest things to do in dealing with conflict is to honestly consider the fact that you might be wrong, and that the person with whom you are in conflict might be right.  It goes against our nature, it causes us to ignore obvious data points, it leads to confirmation bias, and generally creates the right conditions for us to act like jackasses.  Watching bits and pieces of Trump's 60 Minutes interview and reading the various opinion pieces about it this morning, I was struck by the fact that he just might believe himself.  For some reason, this makes me feel just slightly better, but that better feeling is highly relative.  Do I feel as good as I would have if Obama was still President, and I had a dignified and diplomatic President who could speak eloquently and demonstrate some actual emotion besides anger? Well, no, but my overwhelming impression of Trump on most occasions is that he is a con man pulling one over on a whole lot of people, which makes me despair for the greater political situation.
What I'm thinking now is that perhaps he really believes that all of his actions are genuinely for the good of the country.  He really is trying to make America great again, but it's sort of like when a toddler is trying to make Mom breakfast in bed: messy and probably not going to taste very good. I'm not exactly sure which is worse: huckster or true believer, they both may in fact be quite dangerous.  I'm also not entirely sure that Trump isn't just playing a convincing true believer, in which case he conflates the dangers of both.
I guess what makes me feel better about the true believer angle is that the truth has been such a punching bag for the last three years, and at least, if he believes that his strong man act: populism, nationalism, isolationism, protectionism, etc. is really in our best interest, then at least reality will have a shot at proving those instincts misguided... or maybe not.  Maybe I'm wrong in my liberal progressive ideas about creating a better world through cooperation and lifting up the oppressed.  Maybe this universe does operate by the rules of Ayn Rand, and self interest is god.  If that's true then the Trump way is probably not such a bad idea.  We should be strong, we should beat up on anyone who isn't us, because they're looking to do likewise. I'm not above that sort of misanthropy, in fact, I rather enjoyed it for a very long time.
The thing that won't let me really revel in it though is this thing that keeps coming up in the book that I read every day.  The idea that self interest is not god, and in fact God is God.  Not only that, but God is not capricious and vicious like some people seem to think, but rather God is full of justice, steadfast love and mercy.  The reason why God creates is so that everything that is can show the love that moved God to create in the first place.
You would think that people who believe that Jesus is the reliable witness to that love would get the picture: the way to victory is not strength but weakness, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, blessed are the meek... you know that guy.  But from the first disciples onward, some folks still got it exactly wrong and piously set about trying to win and accumulate power and make things in their own image, even while proclaiming to follow a crucified Lord.
I guess what makes me more sanguine about Trump being a true believer as opposed to a cynical con man, is that it means he is just another Herod, or Caesar or whatever, he doesn't ultimately matter that much.  Maybe I should have known that from the beginning, maybe I should have known it about politicians I agree with.  I still think that we should try to make the world a better place by loving our neighbor rather than trying to take advantage of them.  I still think that the goal of humankind ought to be community rather than empire, but then again, maybe I'm just whistling past the graveyard of our hubris.

Persecution Complexity

Forgive me, but I'm going to bombard you with a few links to some things.  The first is the source material upon which the other three are commenting, a study called Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape.  It's 160 pages long, and if you really want a pretty good summary of what it says you can read an article in The Atlantic, which approaches it from what I would call a Liberal/Moderate perspective.  But also give a moment to Rod Dreher's take on it from The American Conservative as well as the Libertarian spin from Reason.  I don't have the time or the inclination to sort out all the neurotic tendencies of each group, but what I find interesting is that they are all approaching this information as though it is a sort of revelation about the American people.
The findings of the study indicate, to put it in layman's terms, we are not as crazy as we look, but we do look pretty crazy right at the moment.  Oddly enough, I think all the commentary agrees on this: there is a large majority of people out there who are simply tired of this bull-pucky. They are tired of being called out and told to check their privilege, they are tired of rage-muppets like Sean Hannity, they are really tired of Donald Trump's twitter habit, they don't feel like they deserve the constant scolding and lecturing that they get from the PC police.  In short, and I can identify with this, they would not mind if the single digit percentages of both "progressive activists" and "devoted conservatives" were rounded up and shipped off to a large penal colony (unfortunately Australia is no longer available), to fight it out Thunderdome style.
Oh what a wonderful world it would be, but alas that solution would be pretty Nazi-esque and some new and cursed fringe elements would probably take up the mantle of driving us all crazy from both sides afresh. So, here we are America, over 80 percent of us, somewhere between "traditional liberal," and "traditional conservative," who honestly don't have that much that we deeply disagree upon.  We have let ourselves be hijacked by partisanship and paranoia.  Every one seems to feel persecuted, especially if they peek into the opposite echo chamber. How did such a small number of us get the power to make the rest of us miserable?
As with all power, it was given to them by the consent, or at least the tacit acceptance, of the "governed."  We have turned over sober assessment of our national struggles to those who profit from sensation and vitriol.  Good journalism is trying to make a comeback, but it's now got lots of competition.  Just look at the differences between the various responses to Hidden Tribes, they all kind of like what it says, but they lead with sensationalist (and smarmy) headlines: "Woke elite have no clothes!" that stoke up the people who already agree with them to draw clicks. Don't get me wrong, it's good to have a variety of voices taking on the data of something like this, but the sanest voices have to compete with the rhetorical equivalent of a drunk street preacher wearing no pants, and the internet degrades our ability to tell the difference.  It's good for us to realize that the center may just actually be holding, but I think that the center is holding sort of like the parents of two difficult toddlers trying to have a nice dinner, which is to say, not very well, but no one has gotten stabbed with a fork... yet.

Soreness

Growing up, I was never really an athletic kid.  The thing that I did learn from my misadventures in Little League was how important it was to be a "good sport."  The first lesson in good sportsmanship is how not to throw a tantrum when you lose, but at some point it is important to learn how to be a good winner as well.  As it turned out, the things that I tended to win in life were more mental than physical in nature, and in that arena it is even more important to learn how to win gracefully.  In the world of competing ideas, presentation and demeanor can be supremely important.  In my line of work, I have had to realize that being right is not even 50% of the job description.
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," is the mantra of a sociopath.  It is the path to wickedness.  Thus, here in the wake of the Kavanaugh debacle, I feel like we are losers, all of us.  The gloating of the winners makes them appear to be insensitive to the plight of people who have experienced sexual assault. This is multi-faceted: they refuse to believe that it happened, the oldest and most familiar form of negation, they may call her a liar, they may simply say that she doesn't remember it correctly.  Worst of all they may, in fact, find her credible, but simply not care enough to delay or even halt their march to victory.  I feel like the responses to the whole scenario I have seen on social media, while they do not add any clarity to the truth of what happened so long ago, tell me an awful, awful lot about the people who double down on scoffing and self-righteous anger.
On the side that feels like they just lost, there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Suspicions (perhaps even hopes) that the legitimacy of the Court is on the wane, vengeful fantasies about voting all the bastards out, and general vilification of those who have dug the bunker of white male privilege that much deeper, have been pretty common over the past few days.  I feel the sort of stomach turning futility of this whole affair.  I have felt it before. It is what Psalm 40 refers to as the miry clay, that sucking pit or bog that just will not let you move and threatens to drown you.  It is indeed hard to be a good loser when that involves explaining to my daughter that the highest level of our justice system may have two men who were credibly accused of treating women badly sitting on its bench.  I understand that accusations are not proof, I understand that we need to have protections against false allegations, this is true and important.  But any quest for the truth was beggared by the limitations of the investigation that eventually took place only because one Republican man grew a temporary spine.
It is unfortunate that the spine was not a permanent addition.  It is unfortunate that many Republicans (not just Susan Collins) had reservations that needed to be put to bed for real, and still decided to just plow ahead.  It strikes me that this decision was too important to be made as quickly as it was.  If I were Kavanaugh I would want every possible measure taken to verify my innocence before becoming a permanent public figure, who will, rightly or wrongly, become synonymous with sexual assault and frat bro misbehavior.
Time will tell what happens as a result of this. It may be that the last retrenchment of white male hegemony was simply the digging of a grave not a fortress, but I am not sanguine that the days of McConnell, Grassley and Trump are at an end. We may be on the verge of outing and holding the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Cosbys of the world accountable, but the system that enables them and even protects them is not going to go quietly.  To think it will just fade away is naive and perhaps even dangerous to the cause of justice.  I know every time I see Clarence Thomas, I can't help but think about pubic hairs and "Long Dong Silver," I consider his judgment to be less than Supreme Court worthy.  Kavanaugh will be a similar case for me, even if I give him the benefit of the doubt that he actually didn't do what Dr. Ford said he did, and he was just a rowdy drunk frat bro doing rowdy drunk frat bro things, as many more corroborating witnesses attest, I still think he needs to own up to who he was. I doubt the veracity of his characterizations of himself, and while dishonesty with oneself is certainly not rare or disqualifying, it does not give me many good feelings about what has just happened in our country.
He is where he is, and we are where we are.  At this point nothing can change that.  My lingering angst right now is that the whole affair was so squalid and rancorous, how can we be proud of what we have wrought?  Win or lose, how can you be happy with how we got here?

L'etranger

I remember reading the opening of Albert Camus' L'etranger,  in French IV as a senior in high school. It opens with something like, "My mother died, whatever."  I was rather more interested in finding out what the book had to do with The Cure's song Killing an Arab, but I remember being struck by the starkness of that opening.  It was really my first introduction to existentialism, and I was reading it in French, because my French teacher, Mrs. Beachy (aka Madame Plage) was awesome.
Looking back, I realize that the course my life took was rather shaped by reading things.  The books that shaped my thinking, and sometimes warped my thinking are important, but not always fun.  Reading Sartre's No Exit, actually lead me to re-evaluate what I believed about heaven and hell, and left me open to the more hopeful visions of C.S. Lewis.  Reading The Catcher in the Rye and The Sufferings of Young Werther, taught me that perhaps teenage angst isn't really that noble of an emotional state.  The existentialists, along with Dostoevsky, Emerson and Thoreau, led me to an understanding that people are fundamentally estranged from one another, and yet, we must struggle against that estrangement.  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," wrote the Walden hermit.
There is this little blurb in the NY Times this morning, which seems like just a data point in the ongoing saga of human estrangement. I'm not a great fan of statistics, nor a great believer in polls, but the upshot of that Upshot, is that a whole lot of people, on both sides of our current Left/Right divide feel like a stranger in a strange land.  47% of Republicans (who currently control all the major levers of power in the government) and 44% of Democrats, feel like the country is completely out of their control. How is that possible?  Well, objectively, it's not. Just like Holden Caufield's romantic self destruction, it doesn't make any sense.  By the time you get done reading Goethe, you realize that "young Werther" is a whiny punk, we need to get over ourselves.  We are not the underdog any more, none of us. We are the Roman Empire that Caesar himself could only dream about, we are also possibly a more entrenched dystopia than Orwell could have imagined, we are also Aldous Huxley's Brave New World on a level that few have fully apprehended.
We are a big humanity sized mess.  Old white men sitting in the seats of power deny the experiences of the young and the oppressed and the female.  Money rides roughshod over all of our systems.  The power-hungry and greedy take brutal advantage of anyone and everyone at some point or another.  As Emerson said, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."  But existential despair is not in order, because we have a situation here that has never existed in the history of the world, we have the capacity to change it, possibly without violence, because for all our flaws we still have a voice and it is a voice that far too many of us choose not to use.
In almost exactly a month we get to vote.  I daresay this is probably the most talked about, and maybe the most important "mid-term" election in the history of our country.  But the trends of voter turnout, especially in non-presidential years are pretty grim.  Roughly half of our eligible voters will not show up. Because I have read existentialists I know why; these people are convinced that nothing they do matters.  Maybe it's because they have been sated and sedated, maybe it's because they have been oppressed and depressed, maybe it's because they have abandoned all hope, but I know this, their estrangement is not an iron fact, it is a trap of their own mind, and it is one the world will suffer and the powerful will encourage and sustain.
I think what I may lamenting here is the dying value of Liberal Arts education, even if it doesn't lead to marketable skills, it does in fact lead to being able to understand the world as it really is outside the 24 hour news cycle. If you read enough, you will notice that none of our struggles and estrangement are new things, and when you realize they aren't just afflictions of the present historical conflagration, you have a valuable shred of hope to hang on to: this disease is not usually fatal.  Chronically depressed sociopaths, dissociated psychopaths and nihilists, are characters we should read about, not personalities we should emulate, and certainly not characters we should elect.  Read more, vote, watch less TV news, shalom.

The End of Argument

Sometimes I like to argue, sometimes I really like it, sometimes I really can't help myself.  That is at least part of why I spend time writing this blog, because there are arguments that I need or want to make, which are not things that I would use my pulpit to put out there.  Sometimes my arguments here make my wife Michele nervous, because while I do draw a line between what I am willing to say here and what I would say from the pulpit, not everyone will appreciate that there is, in fact, a line.

I have found lately that argument is becoming less enjoyable, and I think it's because we have lost something crucial in our public discourse. Donald Trump is an incarnation of what has gone wrong with us.  As I have said before, he is not a cause, he is a symptom, he is an embodiment of our arrogance and our narcissism, he is a manifestation of our tendency to let our own insecurity blind us to the truth and deafen us to Wisdom's voice.

Last night at a rally, he finally got around to mocking Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, for him it was pretty mild, but he clearly fed into the notion that all of Brett Kavanaugh's accusers are nothing but "evil" Democratic operatives, trying to derail a good man. Funny how people who are so very sensitive to the possibility of false accusations are willing to believe something so false in response.  I have said from the beginning of this that the truth is going to be beggared by this process, and that is in no small way because of the strong desire that each side has to confirm what they already believe to be true.

Last week changed very little, the liberal tribe believed Dr. Ford, the conservative tribe believed Kavanaugh, and got a special little charge out of the venom that he and Lindsey Graham brought to the proceedings. That extra little flourish of spiteful rage, was what poker players refer to as a "tell," an almost unconscious action that can give away a player's status. People can have "tells" for different things, sometimes it's when they're lying/bluffing, sometime's its when they know they have a good hand, sometimes it's when they're conflicted.

The decision that Kavanaugh and Graham both made to come out with bile and "righteous" indignation, was calculated to firm up the position of those who already support Kavanaugh.  These two men are both savvy public figures that to read either display as spontaneous would be naive. Their anger was a tactic, and it might work. Trump has demonstrated the immense power that white male grievance can wield in our current situation.  He has repeatedly demonstrated that the only people he really needs to please are the people who will chant with him at his rallies and swell with pride at his latest display of arrogant ignorance.  I think he is, contrary to some opinions, fairly happy with his 40% approval rating,because he has figured out that 40% is what he needs, especially if he can simply outrage, discourage and disgust his way into some of the swing votes.

You see this in the attrition of moderate Republicans, voices who would have wanted more time and more truth to be a part of this moment of consequence, many times just get in line with the tribe, because they know if they don't they will be left without a political home. You cannot persuade people in such a predicament that they should stand courageously for the truth (unless they're about to retire).  That's why we don't seem to be able to argue very well any more, no one really feels safe in advancing their opinion if they are going to run up against people who will simply reply with dogma and rage.

I have noticed a rather disturbing symmetry on two sides of the current tribal divide.  Right and left are both dedicated to portraying the other side as hostile and irrational.  The left will point to Fox News, Breitbart and such as "echo chambers" of conservative talking points and breeding grounds for various and sundry conspiracies about the "Deep State." But the peculiar thing is that, from a right wing perspective, the Washington Post and the New York Times along with pretty much the entire system of academia are doing the same thing in reverse.  Also symmetrical across the divide is the lament that the enemies of the cause are the ones who are playing hardball. Bill Maher often laments on his show that the Republicans have broken faith with our national institutions by doing things like blocking Merrick Garland and blatantly endorsing the numerous lies and half truths that spew from the White House these days.  Oddly enough, conservative commentators make similar claims about Democrats, as we saw erupt out of Kavanaugh and Graham last week.

The problem is that there seems to be no lack of bad faith to go around.  Once you start gouging eyes and hitting below the belt the behavior is contagious.  I'm not equivocating behavior here either, I will admit to some sour behavior on the part of Democrats, going back to how things went during the Clinton administration, but it was Newt Gingrich who really pushed us over the edge of one of those dreaded slippery slopes. He decided that the argumentative, yet productive, relationships of say Reagan and O'Neil were unacceptable and that adversaries must be treated as enemies.  The GOP has always been a step ahead on the way down, leaving the Dems playing catch up, and even occasionally pumping the brakes.  Once Trump happened the brakes failed for both parties. Dirty pool looks different depending on which side of the aisle is playing at the moment, but it is still dirty, and is mounting to the point where it may be a threat to our Republic. We can't argue anymore, because argument requires good faith between the adversaries. Faith in anything other that tribal identity and brute force is lacking at the moment.

What to Believe?

I didn't have time to watch the whole day of testimony yesterday, neither could my heart take such a thing. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was more convincing than I expected, and Kavanaugh's refutation of said testimony was at least as vehement as I expected.  I still don't know where the truth is in all of this, but yesterday didn't seem to change too many minds, least of all the minds that matter in the immediate context.  Out there in this nation of ours there may have been minds changed, or there may have just been bitterness magnified.  The impact of that can only be seen with time and distance.
What I offer here are some observations based on what I do know, I do not expect they will change your mind, in fact, I am still reserving judgment about Mr. Kavanaugh's guilt or innocence, I have no proof beyond the words of two people, neither of whom I know well enough to really say whether they are telling the truth. I do have some professional experience with hearing people's stories, including stories about trauma, and I have observed, on a few occasions, the different ways that the perpetrators of abuse and their victims can perceive the same events.
Let's start with Dr. Ford. Her demeanor, the way that she presented her testimony, including the obvious trepidation that she had about it, was entirely consistent with what one would expect from a survivor of sexual assault after over 30 years, therapy and some obvious healing work.  Her composure in such a scenario was admirable.  If she was sitting in my office, telling me as her pastor about this occurrence, I would believe her.  I have had that actual experience over the years, women with different degrees of distance from the trauma, telling me what happened to them, and Dr. Ford's testimony was absolutely within the range of what I would consider truthfulness.  Could she fake it? Maybe, but not likely.  I think most people that watched, even the skeptics, would have to admit that she seemed like a woman who was telling the truth.
I think the Republican senators on the committee were wise to have a woman do their questioning for them. Today there are the usual post-mortem critiques of Mitchell and her questioning techniques, but honestly, the optic of a bunch of old men trying to break Ford down would have been even more disastrous than what took place yesterday.  And I do believe that it was disastrous, but more on that in a moment.
So on to Kavanaugh, as you may gather from earlier posts, I do have some sympathy for Brett Kavanaugh.  Most of that went out the window yesterday, as I watched him let his anger get the best of him.  It's not that I blame him for being angry, especially if he is falsely accused, but I would hope that in testimony such as this he would have been able to keep it together.  He understands the legal system as well as anyone in the room, and he was evasive about whether or not the FBI should investigate this matter. If he is innocent, indeed, if he wasn't even in the house where the alleged assault took place, he should be as interested in having dispositive proof of such a claim uncovered as anyone.  He seemed to know that his buddies hold the majority and that the people who support him will do so without proof.  He is also probably fairly certain that dispositive proof is going to be hard to come by, and is understandably anxious to avoid more of what has been going on this past week.
Emotionally his testimony was not as convincing, because he seems awfully sure of something that I would have a hard time being sure of myself.  For me, it would be hard to say that I wasn't at some random gathering of kids at someone's house when I was in high school.  I would have a hard time saying for sure that I was never with a certain assortment of people, and I wasn't even much of a drinker in High School, nor was I often at the sort of gatherings described, because unlike Kavanaugh, I wasn't a football player or the sort of person who spent a lot of time sort of hanging out with my bros, I didn't really have bros.  Still, I went places on occasion and at this point, I can't really remember much about that.
You know who would remember?  A girl who was traumatized at one of those gatherings, a fifteen year old who got pulled into a room and pawed at, by two guys who thought it was hilarious.  And that is where this sort of breaks for me, for Kavanaugh this evening might have been totally and utterly unremarkable.  Kavanaugh himself mentioned that Animal House and  Fast Times at Ridgemont High were current movies in those days and that they informed the sense of humor that he and his friends shared when they put crude inside jokes in their yearbook. From the perspective of a couple of 17 year old boys who had "a few too many beers," a brief tussle with a pretty young blonde might not be much of a memory at all.  Ford's account is that Kavanaugh grabbed her and groped her and then Judge jumped on top of them and knocked him off and allowed her to escape, neither of them pursued her.  To them, especially if they were inebriated (not to the level of black out intoxication mind you, just enough to be fuzzy) this might have been thirty seconds to a minute of foolishness.  Nothing ever came of it, she didn't go to the cops or her parents or anyone for a long time, it passed out of their memory because there were no consequences.  Nothing else would have been strange for anyone at the house, except maybe for them wondering where Christine went suddenly.  People suddenly leave parties all the time without explanation, it's called "ghosting," it is unremarkable.
My point is that there is a very real and plausible explanation for Kavanaugh having no recollection of this event, but for Ford it became a trauma that she had to deal with for decades.  Let's say this is the truth: it happened, but to everyone except Christine Blasey, it was such a nothing evening that they can't even remember it.  Kavanaugh isn't exactly lying, and he may not be the sexual predator that some of the other accusers are trying to make him, but should he be on the Supreme Court?
My answer based on his testimony yesterday is no, not because I don't believe him, but because he appears to be so very angry at the wrong people, and that makes me question his ability to put his personal feelings to the side and be an impartial arbiter of the law.  That's what the Supreme Court is supposed to be and do, and it has become something rather different, it has become a de-facto legislative body. A few weeks ago a Republican Senator, Ben Sasse gave this speech at the beginning of this confirmation hearing:

I agree with pretty much everything Sasse says about the current state of our politics, which is a strange thing for me to agree that thoroughly with a Republican.  What he says at around the 10 minute mark though is that he believes Kavanaugh has the ability to put his politics "in a box marked irrelevant," as he puts on the black robes of a judge.  I do not believe, after watching Kavanaugh explode at the Democratic minority on the Judicial commission, that he has that ability.  I think his past as an extremely partisan operative for the Republican party makes him rather unsuitable for the Supreme Court, and that is regardless of whether or not I believe Dr. Ford.

I do, in fact, believe her.  As for Kavanaugh, I'll give him the benefit of some kind of doubt, and I suspect he's probably safe in the reality that he is innocent until proven guilty and proof is going to be really hard to come by at this point.  He's also safe in that he has an invertebrate Senate majority and a tight network of ivy-league power on his side.  He's safe in that the Democrats like Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi rub the MAGA crowd so wrong that anything they say must be conspiracy against the good, hard working people of America. 

Kavanaugh is probably going to be confirmed, and we will have a second Supreme Court Justice who has been credibly accused of treating a woman badly.  I'm just going to have to vote, and tell my daughter that I will always believe her.

Skeletons in the Closet

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

-Bob Dylan

The monstrous fear that exists in the age of #metoo, is that the public reaction to accusations is going to ruin people who are innocent and falsely accused.  Indeed, in my line of work, I can certainly recognize the reality that someone with a grudge or a hostile motive could cause a lot of pain by leveling the type of charge that has been tossed at Brett Kavanaugh.  But what I also know about that sort of situation is that, if and when it comes up, transparency and integrity become very important.  We must approach situations like this without pre-judging the truth, because the truth, despite much current evidence to the contrary, is a powerful weight in how things eventually pan out.

I got into some of the reasons why the accuser's story sounds plausible in the last post, but today I would like to offer an opinion about what Mr. Kavanaugh should be doing if he is indeed innocent of the charges leveled at him.  The first thing that he should do is sort of the exact opposite of what he actually did in his interview with Fox News.  He should acknowledge what he was actually like in High School and College, even if there are some unflattering aspects to be told.  There are simply too many people who knew him then, and despite the fact that many of his Frat Bros have, in good Bro fashion, stood up for him as a stand up guy who could hold his liquor, some of the people, even some who initially supported him, aren't buying his clean cut kid routine.

As someone who probably would not like to have incidents from his college years replayed for all to see, I find it far more wise to simply acknowledge that I did some things I am not proud of when I was young rather than trying to paint myself as a young St. Francis.  I don't need Kavanaugh to come out and give a soul-wrenching confession of puking in the bushes at Yale or detailing every time he got a little too drunk.  I would like to see some harmony between the stories that witnesses tell and what he "remembers" about himself.  I kind of wish we didn't have to go here in this particular process, but as they say, here we are.

General ribaldry in one's late teens is not something that would disqualify a 50 year old man from just about anything.  This includes the idea that perhaps young Mr. Kavanaugh was not always quite as "gentlemanly" as he would want his grandmother to believe.  I do not doubt that now, as a husband, father and respected figure, he treats women with respect and dignity, I have no reason to believe otherwise.  Whether he did as a teenager in the early 1980's is and entirely different matter. Again though, Bro behavior would not necessarily disqualify him, but dishonesty and perhaps even perjury about said Bro behavior in the here and now is another matter.

So Brett, as hard as it may be, you need to be super honest with us and with yourself I think.  If the accusations are false it is even more important to be honest. The simple fact is that everything about this is going to be hard to prove, but don't bank on the technical protections of the law, this isn't a trial. If you want to take your seat on the bench of the highest court in this land, and serve there with your integrity in tact, you're going to have to navigate a world of ideas and assumptions that fall outside of the technical boundaries of the law.  If you actually did what Dr. Ford says you did, then you might as well keep lying, because you're going to answer to a higher justice than the Supreme Court.

What Is Wrong With Us?

If I'm honest I really don't know what to think about this whole Brett Kavanaugh business, other than it is, beyond a doubt, a supreme sort of a mess. There is not likely to be an adequate resolution to the matter that befits the austerity of the Supreme Court, but then again, Clarence Thomas has been a justice for nearly 30 years.  As a teenager I chuckled through watching Ted Koppel dourly discuss "Long Dong Silver," and pubic hair laden cans of Coke.  Honestly, I thought it was funny then (because I was 14), but that joke isn't funny any more.  There are a lot of jokes that aren't funny anymore when you're concerned that the honor and function of important institutions may not survive human stupidity.
As to the question(s) surrounding Mr. Kavanaugh, they are important questions that need answers, not things that should be brushed aside because one political party is afraid they're about to get their butts handed to them in November.  I make no presumption of guilt or innocence, nor do I necessarily think there can be a completely satisfactory verdict based on proof in this case.  The things that weigh against him, are highly subjective, but given what I know about the times, the setting, and the general behavior of Prep School rich kids and College Frat boys, I do not find the accusations utterly unbelievable.  In fact, I might even go so far as to conjecture that they are believable, because such behavior, in the era of my youth, rather commonplace.  So much so that, given a bit of alcohol and the guise of goofing around, Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge, might have done such a thing to a young girl, and thought very little about it.
It's effect on the victim however, would have been rather different.  Do you remember a time you got bullied?  In my school it was rather common place for certain people to walk by and punch other people in the arm, or shove them in the back, sometimes pushing them into metal lockers, violent acts that sometimes hurt.  As the victim of those actions, I remember them, but I'm reasonably sure that the people who did them do not.  What about gossip and taunting? Do you remember everyone you ever whispered foul things about or teased in High School?  I will bet the victims probably do.
Which leads me to the first thing that bothers me about the whole thing: the categorical denial.  I have done some drinking in my time, during the college years it was rarely well controlled social drinking.  I know there are things that happened while I was drinking that I am not proud of, and there is a fair to middling possibility that there are some of those sorts of things which I do not remember.  I'm not talking about black out drunk either, but in the course of an evening of party hopping there are just things that you might forget very easily, especially if you, in your addled mind, didn't really think they were all that memorable.  I know why Kavanaugh categorically denied it, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if he at least acknowledged that his accuser might have some grounds for making such a claim.  Once he categorically denies it, any evidence, however slim, that confirms an encounter between the himself and young Ms Blasey, makes him a liar in the here and now.  It speaks to a lack of humility and repentance if he did actually do what his accuser claims he did.  That, and not whether he was a 17 year old idiot (most of us are idiots at 17) is what would disqualify him from being a Supreme Court Justice.
The second thing that actually bothers me a lot more than anything Mr. Kavanaugh has done, or might have done in the past, is the way that our systems of government are demonstrating their own decrepitude.  George Will makes this point rather well in a column from Friday's Washington Post regardless of what the truth might be here, the process is being revealed as deeply flawed and partisan in a way it is not intended to be, ever.  He traces the root of this phenomenon back to the failed nomination of Robert Bork by Ronald Reagan.  Bork was the guy who finally helped Nixon commit the "Saturday Night Massacre" and thus had a political taint on him that was a bit of a bridge too far for congress back in those days, but the confirmation hearings were something of a farce, as were the Thomas hearings, as was the stonewalling of Merrick Garland.  Farce and Supreme Court of the United States of America are not things that should ever go together.  As Will lays out though, perhaps we have already crossed that line.
If the Senate treats Dr. Ford in a similar way to how they treated Anita Hill, the legitimacy of the court will be called into question, not because of Mr. Kavanaugh, but because of the process by which he was confirmed.  This would be true, whether or not Mr. Kavanaugh was the depraved Frat boy from a John Hughes film, or whether he was actually a virtuous young man who was falsely accused.  The process deserves time to be done properly, after all, they kept Scalia's seat open for over a year, so what's the hurry?
The consequences the Judicial panel not doing their duty are grave, even if Kavanaugh is an honorable man, in fact, they may be more grave for any legacy he leaves on the court if he always has an unproven and yet un-disproven allegation, as Ross Douthat argued in the NY Times last week, hanging over his tenure.  I have a bad feeling that the truth, as has happened so often lately, is going to go begging in the halls of our government.  The old white men in charge seem to be committed to trashing the integrity of the system of late, and the Diane Feinstein's of the world aren't exactly stopping them by mismanaging and grandstanding.
The aftermath of the Thomas/Hill "investigation" was that some people believed him, and some people believed her, the lines of who believed what tended to be largely drawn down the liberal/conservative divide.  Division is what happens when people can't agree on the facts, in those moments the process by which you make decisions becomes very important.  We have an obvious problem with agreeing on facts right now, and thus this abuse and abrogation of the processes of our most important institutions is all that much more dangerous.

Welcome to the Club

For years I have been marking the start of football (American style) in a two sided manner.  On the one hand, as a fan, I watch games I don't really care about much, just because football is back, and because I'm trying to sort out my fantasy football team.  On the other hand, as a pastor, the church being in a sort of erstwhile competition with the NFL for the Sundays of America, I have made jokes about how church will be done before kickoff. But this year, I came to a conclusion that it has perhaps taken me too long to finally admit, but it's time to acknowledge something, and do so without any bitterness or resentment: sports is a religion.
Not only is sports a religion, but in many cases, especially in affluent western countries like the United States, it's kicking the Church's butt.  The two things that people call football are perhaps the most obvious competition.  The American version is played mostly on Sundays, and I very rarely hear people complaining about it taking too much of their time.  Soccer (the other football), may not be quite as much of a phenomenon in this country as it is abroad, but give it time, the concussion issue and the fact that we are now shifting so much of our emphasis with kids to soccer is going to make an impact going forward.  I have been to Europe though, and I have seen the devotion that Real Madrid and La Liga evoke in Spain.  I have learned a bit about the zeal that many Brits have, not just for the Premiere league, but for local clubs, which consist of plumbers and accountants booting it around the pitch, and frankly, any church would be glad to have such energy about its mission. And even in less crowd oriented games, like golf, the religious intention shows through.  I'm always impressed with the advertising that leads up to the Master's Tournament. It's practically liturgical in style and substance, except it's about a bunch of guys hitting a little ball around a very beautiful and expensive series of lawns.
But you know what? It's not worth fighting any more, so I'm going to offer some friendly advice to the latest addition to the world of religion.  I mean this quite seriously, even if my sarcasm peeks out at times.  Take this advice sports world, you're going to need it, because you have decided to wade into the waters of human hopes, dreams and devotion, and this can get deep quickly.

1. You're going to have to develop a social conscience.  No matter how much you might want to just play ball, people are assigning significance to what you do and what you say.  You want to be about equality and fair play and good sportsmanship, those are important for sure, but they are going to come into conflict with the larger cultural events of our society. Your players and coaches are going to say things and do things that reflect their values, and sometimes they're going to make people mad and sometimes they're going to inspire people.  A lot of the time this will happen concurrently.  You're going to get people who tell you that you shouldn't be so political, and you're going to have to decide whether or not to ignore them. This is not always easy, the church often gets this one wrong, one way or another.  Over the course of time, values are what matter, pleasing people is an unwinnable game.
2. You're going to have to be super vigilant about protecting the vulnerable, and I'm not just talking about player safety, in fact, I'm not really talking about player safety at all.  I'm talking about the fact that people are trusting you with their children.  Seriously, we can barely pull together Sunday School and Youth Group stuff any more because people have got their kids going to some sort of sports practice or game almost every night of the week.  And I see you embracing this role too, with your little commercials about kids who benefit from the discipline and and purpose that sports gives you, but when people trust you with their kids, you had better protect those kids, or else stuff is going to go down. Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky have proven that sports can be a fertile hunting ground for pederasts, any place that young people are tends to become that way.  I know you think it's never going to happen in your program, but let me tell you, it very well might, and when it does, you had better learn to stop trying to quash the news and hide it in the closet. Take it from the Roman Catholics, that is going to make it much, much worse in the long run.  Remember that Joe Paterno was practically the Pope of College football and his refusal to see what Sandusky was up to brought him down.  Until JoePa, I didn't believe it was possible to actually die of shame, but I think that's what happened.
3. You should also learn how to treat women.  I know, coming from a member of clergy, this seems really hypocritical.  Historically the church is about as patriarchal and often misogynistic as you can get, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of a wisdom that took us nearly 2000 year to realize.  I get it, men and women are different, the WNBA and the NBA practically look like different sports, but there are places in all of sport where the glass ceiling just seems way too thick.  You had better learn to recognize that, every once in a while, a female sports figure can transcend our usual sexism.  You're missing the boat on Serena Williams right now, I know you think you're glowing about her, but that lady could and probably should be Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods rolled into one (and without the baggage).  She should be your high priestess right now, you're only letting her be an impressive sideshow.
4. Finally, put your ego aside, and don't think you are in competition with other sports or other religions.  That's not how this works, and I do so wish that the church would actually understand this too.  The reservoir of human hopes and faith is massive, in fact, I would go so far as to say infinite.  We have a deep need to believe in things.  We have a profound ability to hope that's why there are still Cleveland Browns fans. (until last year I could have said Philadelphia Eagle's fans, but I don't have to any more!) At our very best we want to invest in something bigger than ourselves, the church has squandered this in ways too many and too painful to count.  Don't make that same mistake.

In the spirit of trying to follow #4, I am offering you these pieces of advice in good faith. I might still get a little frustrated when I have to re-schedule church activities because of a playoff game, but I am done trying to swim against the tide.  Welcome to the gang Sports.

Adventures in Missing the Point, Part Whatever

Just when you thought it was safe to start a football season... it's back, going on year three, the kneeling thing. The kneelers have clearly stated that they are not protesting the flag, the anthem, the military or our country.  They are not even protesting police per se, they are protesting the rather rampant injustice against brown people that seems to hit the news every couple of weeks.  They, starting with Colin Kaepernick, have pretty clearly stated their purpose, even if they don't always know how exactly to go about reaching the goal of equality. That's a big job, and I think we all sort of need to get behind the mule on that one to really make any progress.
The reaction to these protests remains as stubbornly racist and deliberately obtuse as ever. In the beginning I was on board with understanding that some people have deep feelings about the symbols of our nation, but as time goes by, as reflexive and even reactionary anger at C.K. and now Nike for daring to use his image, is not showing the other side in a good light. I understand that some people are offended by athletes kneeling during the anthem, but those people are steadily losing credibility and possibly losing the whole debate.  It's not that they don't have a valid point, even if the point is just, "This offends me," it is their misunderstanding of the principles of our nation.
We do not live in a monarchy or a dictatorship where one is required to bend the knee in allegiance to anything in order to be a citizen.  You do not have to pledge allegiance to the flag, or show deference to senators, congressmen or the President, that's not who we are. The NFL has the prerogative not to employ players that kneel, but when the player in question is more than just a backup quarterback, they have shown very few teeth on that issue.  They have chosen to bully and maybe blackball Kaepernick, but now he is beyond their reach, and has found another way to continue his crusade with the help of Nike.
Sorry NFL and all of you who are outraged about this, but there is nothing you can do about it.  Ain't freedom grand?  You can boycott Nike if you want, knowing what I know about the company though, I bet they did the math on that one and have a pretty solid guess that they will sell more shoes to people who dig their vibe than they will not sell to the anger mafia.  Oh yeah, Nike didn't go into this like some poor innocent who had no idea that plastering Colin's face with the words, "Believe in something, even if you have to sacrifice everything," was going to start a howling fit among the red, white and blue MAGA crowd.  This is pretty much the inverse of "owning the libs," why are all y'all snowflakes so triggered?
Burning your shoes? Really? You do know you already shelled out your money to Nike for those right?
I've seen people try and re-direct this thing onto Pat Tillman (NFL player who quit his playing career to become an Army Ranger and died in action in Afghanistan).  I've seen pictures of soldier's graves with some inscription about what it really means to sacrifice everything, and yeah, I get that, there are others who sacrificed more than Kaepernick, a lot more, but that, as it has been from the beginning of this, is missing the point entirely. In fact, I find people using false equivalence to connect a football player kneeling for two minutes while a song plays in any way with a soldier dying in service to our country pretty darn offensive (but you do have a right to be that kind of wrong if it suits you).
If anything it drags the sacrifice of soldiers into an obtuse argument that deliberately misinterprets the ethos of the protest in the first place, and it misses the fact that if our nation is going to live up to the values that inspired their sacrifice, everyone should be free to kneel or stand any time they want. Even if someone did want to protest the military, or the constitution, they should be allowed.  The First Amendment gives you the right to say what you will as long as you can bear the consequences. Anger makes you do stupid things, racist anger doubles down on that. Sometimes people have to do things you don't like to make broken things better.  A lot of people didn't like MLK sitting at the whites only lunch counter, or marching through their streets, how do they look now?
Kaepernick is not MLK, but take a clue from this, if Nike is willing to deliberately anger a group of people, they probably think he might be worth it.  They are a corporation not known for taking big risks, but every once in while they do take a stand on something.  They have probably learned that being on the side of human dignity and justice is probably also a good marketing strategy.  I'm guessing they have done the market research and know that they are going to get more out of this than they are going to lose. Kaepernick is winning this argument, if he hadn't done what he did he might still be a backup quarterback that had his fifteen minutes of fame.  Because he knelt and because he talked, and because he is now letting the racist reactionaries hoist themselves by their own petard while his stoic stare confronts us in millions of ads, he is still someone we have to pay attention to, Nike is going to make us.

Questioning the System

One of the really challenging things I have been working through of late is the obvious yet difficult to explain decline of the institution of the Church.  The problem is widespread and multi-symptomatic.  It manifests in the institutional evil that I talked about last week in the Roman Catholic church, it manifests in the crisis level decline of mainline churches, it manifests in the raw materialism and catering to consumerism of the "megachurch," it manifests in the misbehavior of the cults of personality that call themselves pastors. I think I may have gotten to, or at least somewhere near, the rotten core of the problem.
Institutions, given time and a certain level of success, inevitably become more and more invested in protecting and perpetuating themselves. Eventually this replaces their core vision, and they are essentially hollow systems, with no other goal than staying alive. It has been noted that the only way the Roman Catholic Priesthood could abide the level of corruption that it took to conceal so much abuse was that the system itself feared that the truth would destroy it.  Truth can set you free, if you are righteous, but if you are corrupt it will burn like the dickens. And by the way, being righteous is not the same as being perfect or pure.  Wisdom says that the righteous will take reproof and correction, they will repent and turn back from their errors, it is fools who do not heed the lessons of wisdom.
In my own tradition, the great fear that infests my Mainline congregation and the Presbyterian system as a whole is that we are a fading and increasingly irrelevant expression of what it means to be followers of Jesus.  This leads us into silliness at best and conflict at worst.  The silliness manifests when we rush to employ consultants and what amount to essentially marketing strategies.  We hide our failing vision under some very intellectual verbosity indeed.  Every time I hear that we (a church or a governing body) is going to spend some number of thousands of dollars on a consultant, I wonder how long it's going to take before we end up longing for the food the pigs are eating.
This prodigality is rooted in fear rather than licentiousness, but the end result is the same: famine and desperation. As we experience stress on the system, agreement becomes more difficult and conflict is easily raised. The Body of Christ begins to turn on each other as we "compete" for scarce resources, which in the case of the church, are simply people to attend and participate in our congregations.  Often there is an underlying belief that if we "just did X," sometimes maybe even, "if we just believe X," people would come flocking back to the institution and we would not have to struggle so much for survival.  I suspect this narrative has a tragic ending on the horizon, and indeed it may already be upon us.  We have become too invested in our institutions to allow them to be sanctified by the consuming fire of God, and thus the life-breath has left them.
What this means, in slightly less arcane terms is that we have lost the driving force that made the institutions important in the first place.  This happens in Churches and corporations and governments.  When the institution becomes more important than the purpose behind it, you become easy prey for those who would use your infrastructure for their own ends.  Your hierarchy becomes an enabling environment for pederasts, your business becomes a "corporation" that spends most of it's resources on administration, while the productive core of the thing is full of unhappy and perhaps resentful employees. Your government is vulnerable to take over by vain demagogues who are willing to promise anything but capable of fulfilling nothing.
I'm wondering if perhaps the church isn't a canary in a coalmine for our culture as a whole, as the things that afflict us are also causing dissolution and suffering other areas as well. I suspect that if we can figure out a way to recover the light that is supposed to be shining in us, we might just help cure a multitude of ailments.