Oh, the Places We Go

 Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better, it's not.
-Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

I love Dr. Seuss, but I did notice some things when I started reading those beloved books from my childhood to my own kids.  Yes, it was the racism.  Africans and Asian people depicted in crude stereotypes.  At the time I just chalked it up to the rather unreflective racial attitudes of a mid 20th century white guy.  As much as I want to say this is another case of over-reacting by the woke Gestapo, I actually know precisely the problematic images and depictions that have gotten six Seuss volumes pulled from future publication.  I'm sort of glad that the people in charge of Seuss's material have decided to pull them, even though McElligott's Pool is sort of a personal favorite.  This is not being "cancelled" by the way, it is a voluntary decision made by people due to a combination of public relations management and, I would hope at least a little bit of a desire to just do the right thing and stop propagating material that traffics in stereotypes and racist tropes.

    But there is a discussion to be had here in the midst of all this; is it really a good idea to hold artists from the past to modern standards?  For instance, and this is far from a novel use of this example, should Huckleberry Finn, be removed from the literary curriculum of most high schools because of it's pervasive use of the N word.  Mark Twain was a white guy, who despite actually crafting a book about the humanity of a black man, probably used that derogatory word in real life quite a bit.  One of my own personal favorites is Thomas Jefferson who had deeply problematic attitudes towards blacks and indigenous people, should we somehow try to sanitize him for our own protection?  Or do we let them be who they are.  Do we let Seuss (Theodore Geisel) who in addition to writing books for children also produced polemic anti-Nazi and consequently also anti-Japanese propaganda be who he was and try to teach ourselves and our children to be better in the places where it is necessary?

    I think that's a pretty important thing to consider here because in addition to the problematic texts, which again I suspect were more a result of simply not knowing any better, there were also some highly valuable moral lessons taught by the works of Dr. Seuss.  McElligott's Pool, one of the books slated for removal is about hope and faith and actually makes the point that the world is such a large and diverse place that anything is possible.  The Star Bellied Sneetches, is actually an anti-racist tale that points out the utter absurdity of considering physical characteristics as a marker of superiority/inferiority and also a commentary on how unscrupulous characters might take advantage of those who think that way.  The Lorax, my personal favorite, is about the dangers of unrestrained capitalism and how it will lay waste to the natural world and cause suffering in many ways.  And of course, Oh, The Places You'll Go, is a fanciful ode of what every parent wants to tell their child as they grow up.

    Look, I have read Baldwin, I know that representation and depiction in media have a deep effect on children and how they seem themselves in the world.  That's why I'm okay letting these few volumes simply fade away.  Just as I'm okay letting Buckwheat, Tonto and Aunt Jemima get swept onto the dust heap of things that were okay to most people at some point, but then just weren't anymore.  What I don't want is for people to paint Theodore Geisel as a racist, because I do not believe he was.  It doesn't matter to him I suppose, but it does matter to us.  We just can't go through this with all of history.  It's not only objectively stupid, it also gives the genuine racists that are still drawing breath a really good tool to pull a bunch of folks onto their team because of the knee jerk reactions that a lot of us have to things like this.

    The culture wars have a way of making people more sure of their own righteousness rather than more aware of the way their prejudice and biases adversely effect their neighbors who look different than they do.  If we really want to work on making this world a genuinely better and more equal place, we really should try and keep Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain and Theodore Geisel on our team.  Asking them to change is futile, because they're dead.  All we can do is change how we react to them, and maybe actually use the view from their place in history as a teaching tool so that we and our kids can do better.

Modern Revolution

 Differing weights are an abomination to the Lord,
And false scales are not good.

-Proverbs 20: 23 NRSV

There are many things that the Hebrew Scriptures point out as "abominations," but the sort of thing that gets that label rather more often than just about anything is economic injustice.  Whether it is scales that do not weigh truly (not by accident I wager), or the moving of a duly placed property marker, the detestable nature of trying to cheat others rises as a stench in the nostrils of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Fortunately for the financial industry and Wall Street, God appears to be currently on vacay from the whole smiting of first born children and plagues... well maybe not plagues, that one may still be on the table.  Whereas Jehovah may have been merciful to the hedge fund managers and corporate raiders, the virtual community of Reddit has decided to mete out a rather delicious form of justice, which I suspect The Lord Almighty is having a rather holy chuckle about as we speak.

    If you're not familiar with what has transpired over the past several weeks, let me give you the quick and dirty layman's explanation (the only one I can really, I'm not much of a financier).  The retail chain GameStop, has been struggling mightily, even before the pandemic.  It was a victim of the fact that people who want to buy video games mostly do so by downloading them over now ubiquitous broadband connections. GameStop was a sort of retail/thrift store for gamers, you could trade in old games and buy new or used games and equipment.  It had a brief and rather successful run in the industry before the paradigm shifted on them (O those pesky paradigm shifts, we church folk know them all too well).  Well, when GameStop's fortunes appeared grim the vultures of Wall Street sprung into action.  By the way, I may be doing a disservice to actual vultures in using that metaphor, but it is rather appropriate.  Hedge fund rich guys decided it was time to bet on GameStop going down the tubes, so they start to do their sorcery and create a downward spiral deflating GameStop stock and making it easy for them to swoop in and buy it all at a discount and then liquidate the assets.  All of the Chads on the Street know this game, and so they all sort of stand back and let it happen, survival of the fittest, cheerio!

    Well, a certain Redditor who also knew the game, decided this was a crappy way for a business who once helped him indulge his Legend of Zelda jones to go out, so he rallied the troops.  And troops there were to rally.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that an online bulletin board like Reddit is rather thick with gamers.  Gamers have been inhabiting such spaces since they were run in MS-DOS and had nothing but white text on a blue screen that would make most people today think their computer had crashed.  These gamers are also now not 14 year old boys with barely enough allowance money to buy a sandwich.  They are now a diverse group of actual adults who have jobs and income, and thanks to the pandemic, a bit of extra time.  They started buying GameStop stock, and before the Wall Street Chads knew what hit them, their little short sell scheme was shot all to hell. One hedge fund got hit so bad they needed over a billion dollar bailout from their big brother company.  That's some serious damage caused by a large group of motivated people.

    All of the sudden billionaires were crying about how unfair this is; "class warfare," they shouted.  I'm going to buy stock in the manufacturer of the world's smallest violin, except Robinhood probably prohibits that nowadays.  Oh yeah, Robinhood is a stock trading platform that many of the Redditors used to buy stock, because it's purpose is daytrading and speculative investing.  They are of course, not a rogue band of economic justice warriors as perhaps their name portends, but just a tool that was put out there by some big corporation who couldn't possibly see how allowing massive numbers of regular people to play the same games Chad and Todd have been playing on Wall Street for years could ever backfire.  Now the mask is really off though, lots of people are seeing that the game is not just rigged, but if you figure out how it's rigged and manage to work around it, they will change the rules super quick.

    It's villainous really.  You might even say an abomination.  I would for sure.  This is a dire flaw of capitalism: money makes all the rules.  The Bible actually gives the situation a name: Mammon, and let's just say it's not a term of endearment.  I have really enjoyed reading about how this little thing has played out, but I'm actually hoping that it doesn't stop with GameStop.  The great thing about "the people," is that we come up with solutions to almost any problem eventually.  I mean think about how we Americans took a gamble on this thing called democracy, at a time when the world could scarcely imagine any other way of governance other than the aristocracy and monarchy, it would be chaos, they said.  Sometimes "they" were right, there is a fair amount of chaos in democracy, the past four years are a testament to that and the past month was a serious flirtation with destructive chaos.  But if we learn from it, we will get better.

    I have suspected for years that, despite the benefits it might have, the system of unfettered capitalism might just kill us all.  We can't let the already incredibly wealthy just continue to bleed us dry, making their own rules and then turning over the game board when they get beat anyway.  Call it class warfare if you want, but the existence of billionaires when people starve to death and go without shelter is an abomination if I ever saw one.  Violence is not going to solve this for us though, they can afford their own army if they need one.  Perhaps if enough of us see through the game though, and learn to play it in a way that creates real monetary consequences for the worst of the greed-heads, we might just get things to change.  As it stands, I'm not sanguine about GameStop's chances.  Despite their now soaring market value, they're still a thing the world probably doesn't need very much.  It was never really about saving GameStop, it was about kicking a bully where it hurts, and as such it was a jolly good show.

The Centre Holding, Barely

 I never dared be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old.
-Robert Frost, Ten Mills, I. Precaution

It is time to think about the future.  Not just the next four or even eight years, but the future of our Republic.  A very dangerous moment has just passed, and we have inaugurated a new President.  He is not the man that radicals wanted, he is not going to shake up the order of things and create a new paradigm in our government.  Joe Biden is a centrist, that most uninspiring creature, but the sort that you really need to be in charge in a time like this.  Our norms have been chewed up and spit out, our institutions have been tested, who knows how far they were from breaking. Depends on who you talk to.  Thankfully we didn't find out.  Thankfully the sound and fury played their hour upon the stage and the idiot has shuffled off to Florida.

Personally, I am living my life backward, I was much more conservative when I was 19 than I am now.  The difference for me has mostly been the development of empathy.  I didn't have much when I was young, I have more now, and it seems to be growing.  If I'm not careful I may end up one of those extremely sentimental old folks who seem to really just love everyone.  As for right now though, I find myself very much in the center what you might call the political spectrum.  I am pulled a bit to the left because of my convictions about justice, particularly for the poor and the oppressed.  Honestly, I can't imagine myself 20 years ago embracing liberation theology quite like I do now, but I do, and I don't regret it.  Capitalism, while I still consider it superior to the alternatives, needs a heart transplant if it's going to help us advance as a species.

The thing is though, the takeover of the "conservative" movement by a populist demagogue with deep personal flaws actually made me appreciate the conservatism I used to call my home. 15 years ago I considered George W. Bush a fool at best and a war criminal at worst, Trump's administration has made me nostalgic for W, and it also makes me think, what in the actual heck is going on here?  Well, as it turns out, if you plot our recent presidents going back to WWII, most of them end up falling pretty much within spitting distance of the center.  At worst this means there isn't a drastic difference between how say Bill Clinton handled things and how W did it.  I suspect that we still would have gotten ourselves sunk into the quagmire in Afghanistan even if Gore had been President.  Iraq part deux, maybe not, but who knows.  But at best, it means there isn't a drastic difference in how the two sides would have handled things.  For instance if a conventional Republican had been President last year when COVID hit, he or she probably would have handled things very much the way the Biden administration is going to do it: tell people to wear masks, shut down what had to be shut down without making it a political football, work like hell on a vaccine and try to get it rolled out quick and smooth.  

What Trump did is try to spin this virus, that did not care about political party, from something that was making him look bad to something he could use to his advantage.  The goal should have been: keep over 400,000 Americans from dying, but instead it was: get Donald J. Trump re-elected.  I think even Tricky Dick Nixon probably rolled over in his grave.  Republicans owe it to us as a nation to not let another character like him get their nomination.  We need conservatives to operate like conservatives, not like terrorists, but that is what the far right fringe is right now.  The Proud Boys and the others like them on the right are exactly the sort of bogeymen that Fox news tries to make of Antifa.  They are willing to be violent, they believe conspiracies of all sorts, and they think that they can win.  The left has had some who think that way in their house for decades, but they have never quite let them get so close to running the show, and a Democratic president has never sent them marching to the capitol with his love and admiration.

Let me tell anyone who is afraid of the sinister elements on the Left, and I say this sympathetically, they are far too disorganized and perhaps even schizoid to be any real danger.  Antifa is not a shadowy organization seeking the overthrow of the government, they're not even hard core anarchists (which if there was a threat from the left, would probably be it).  Antifa is a shortened form of Anti fascist, which means they are against fascism, the statist manifestation of authoritarianism.  Donald, only I can fix it, Trump was the closest thing we've ever had to a fascist in the oval office.  But he wasn't completely there yet, he was sort of a half baked fascist.  I am very much against fascism, which I suppose makes me Antifa, at least as much as anything can.  I'm not out rioting in the streets, I don't even go to peaceful protests, I don't like crowds.  I write and I preach about Jesus.  Jesus was put to death by fascism, the much ballyhooed Pax Romana was a textbook example of fascism, which was probably why Mussolini had such a great time bringing it back to Italy during WWII. That being said, the Democrats shouldn't let that crowd run the party either.  Even and perhaps especially if they're trying to use the name of Jesus to do it.  There was actually a scene in the Gospel where he is offered the authority to rule all the kingdoms of the world, and it was an offer from the Devil.

So listen up America, you know when J-Lo sang This Land is Your Land, yesterday?  Did you get a little misty?  I did too, but I know that Woody Guthrie wrote that song, and he wrote it because he absolutely HATED Irving Berlin's God Bless America. And he wrote it because he was a pretty hard core socialist with the workers rights movement.  Woody lived close to the working people and he thought the Robber Barons and the Politicians were his natural enemy.  Property ownership was a bit of a sticky subject in some of the non-J-Lo friendly verses of that song, and so was the plight of people who worked their whole lives and couldn't feed their family.  That song demonstrates that you can be a leftist and be a patriot, for real, you can love this country and what it stands for, you can love the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  The patriotism of the right fringe is all about hatred and exclusion, they're not writing great songs about this land, they're chanting about killing people and storming the capitol.

You need to stand in the center to see the difference.  Hopefully, if we do what Joe asked us, if we hear him out, no matter where we stand on taxes, on healthcare and suchlike, we might gain from that center perspective and see what the real dangers to our Republic actually are. And we won't be so ready to buy that white supremacy is the only thing keeping us from communism or that smashing out the windows of a Best Buy is stopping fascism, and we won't equate being asked to speak politely and civilly with being cancelled and maybe we won't be so hot and ready to cancel people in the first place. From the center you can see that ideas might compete, but you don't always have to only pick red or blue, this isn't the Matrix (as far as I can tell). Only if we see them for what they are do we stand a chance of putting them to rest.

I Know that Voice

It's been a while since I last took to this space to bloviate about anything.  Part of that is a simple desire for self preservation.  There were many times over the past few months where I wanted to rant and rave about something, but for reasons of my own personal sanity, the desire not to try and get any more wound up about politics, or contribute to the same emotional spiral in others, I have refrained.  But here, this week, where the supposedly last step of the election is taking place, I have come to a realization that I think is important for we the people to take into consideration: we are being abused.  Some of us are being physically abused, others are being emotionally abused, we're all being controlled and told what to think.

Sometimes it's hard for the abused to admit that they have been abused.  Most people would prefer not to think of themselves as victims.  There is usually ample evidence of self-blame along the lines of: "Oh, I'm such a fool, I just should not have made them mad."  There is equivocating: "nobody else is going to treat me any different." There are excuses made: "It's only because they love me so much that they get so riled up."  I have actually been in a place where I have had to try and get abused persons to admit that they were in an abusive relationship, and it is more difficult than you think.

It is nearly impossible to get the abuser to admit the same thing, until some very dire line has been crossed. Donald Trump is the drunk spouse that comes home and slaps his wife, but he has, as of yet, failed to come to a moment of clarity where he realized that was a mistake.  He thinks she needed it.  She was hysterical and talking about trying to actually take care of the poor and welcoming immigrants and such things (wonder where this so called Christian nation got those ideas).  Plus all his buddies at the bar swear that she was flirting with some commie pinko who looks like a hippie, or maybe even a black guy.  I'm not justifying anything that he has done to us as a nation, but he's about to get the boot and maybe get to meet the sheriff.  So let's look at another shade of vile: Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley et al are the worst sort of people to have around in this sort of a situation, they are the justifiers and the opportunists that vulture around the edge of an abusive relationship.

What they are is villainous, not just ridiculous.  They are like the neighbor down the street who is rooting for the abuser to get locked up so he can go make time with the lonely wife, who they know will put up with a lot of mistreatment.  They do not have the excuse of being impaired, or being ignorant, incompetent and out of control.  They know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.  They are trying to pull a scam of epic proportions, and for the good of our republic, I really hope it fails.

Here's the logic: they want to move in on the wife (the American people), who has been abused by a malignant narcissist for several years, but who finally got up the gumption to kick him to the curb.  The problem is that all of the abuser's buddies think he's an okay guy who just runs off at the mouth a bit.  They have not really seen, or have chosen not to acknowledge the bruises that the Donald has left on this nation.  Cruz et al, know that the buddies are going to have to accept their play for her affections at some point.  But their excuses are carefully confined so as not to offend the MAGA drinking buddies:

"Yeah, abuser guy really wasn't that out of line, I mean look at the sweet microwave he done got her last time he smacked her around."

"Yeah, we know he was toxic, but you can't just rob a man of his legal rights, even if he uses them to smack his wife around a few more times on the way out the door."

"Yeah, that's a shame what he did to her, but it's just Donald being Donald."

"Now she's going to shack up with that communist. We gotta protect her from herself."

"Everyone's saying there's more than meets the eye here, we need to investigate."

But there's nothing to investigate, except for a drunk guy who punched his wife in the face.  She may not be perfect, but she doesn't deserve that sort of abuse.  And the thing is, they don't really care about the wife, they would be perfectly fine for the abuser to keep on abusing, because it improves their long term prospects of being able to move in.  See they think that if such a rotten human can get himself hooked up that way, imagine if they could be just slightly less rotten.  It would be a great way to get what they want and not really have to change much at all.  Jumping over that low bar would be super easy.

Watch, if he does decide to try and work his way back in the door in four years, the so called "dirty dozen," will be the first ones to crow about how he nearly derailed the peaceful transition of power, at least during the primary.  In the general, that commie boyfriend will suddenly make a comeback.  I'm telling you 'Murica, we are being abused by more than just that orange buffoon.