This is the place where what I know about how the human mind works comes in a little handy. I, by virtue of being a student of the Bible and also a Presbyterian, have some experience with legal charters of various sorts. In Seminary we learned about the various and sundry covenants that underlie the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures. We took some time to learn about the Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest examples of a Suzerain-Vassal treaty, which means a binding legal agreement between a king and his subject. We learned about the similarities between that Code and the covenant between God and Abraham and later the Law of Moses. Biblical "constitutions," I will use the Ten Commandments for example, usually present the most important rules and regulations first, and then start to hammer out the details. The first commandment recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy as being given by God directly to Moses is: "have no other God's before me." That rule is the king of all rules that follow, if any of the other rules should happen to conflict with that rule, they take a back seat. Yahweh was really, really not a fan of idolatry. Other rules follow, the nine other rules of the Ten Commandments but also 619 prohibitions found throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and a bunch of prescriptions to go along with them. But the Big Ten were the benchmarks. The law, even laws literally set in stone, are always in need of interpretation. That's why the Hebrews have a tradition called Midrash, in which the texts of the Scripture are continually debated, questioned and interpreted. That is why the actual Constitution can fit in your pocket, but there are legal libraries devoted to the implications of those laws.
Foundations are important when working with laws, and we generally work from the most sacred and important principles, outward into (mostly) less crucial matters of particularity. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has two sections, one is a Book of Confessions, which is a historical record of the Creeds of the Church, going back to the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed (325 CE), and going forward to the Brief Statement of Faith (1983) and most recently the Belhar Confession. We don't use the Creeds as a manual for our church government, we use them as principles and examples, we have a second part to the Constitution called the Form of Government that gives us the nitty gritty, Robert's Rules of Order business. We start with the principle and move into the practice, we establish our ideal and then deal with reality.
The Constitution of the United States of America, also follow this principle in its Articles. Article I describes the Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, how they are selected, what they are responsible for and what limits they have put upon them. Limits were super duper important to people who were essentially doing this because they were tired of all that Monarchist nonsense. It is fairly clear that the Congress is supposed to be the real mover and shaker in this system. They have far and away the most stuff to do, but because they were working with a fairly new idea: democracy, it wasn't entirely clear how best to make this work. If you think that all the folks at the Constitutional Conventions agreed on stuff, you need to examine your assumptions and read a book once in a while. John Adams once referred to Thomas Paine's Common Sense as "a poor, ignorant, malicious, crapulous mass," and said that Thomas Jefferson's "soul was poisoned with ambition." So yeah, they didn't always play nice, and maybe the Trump is not such a new phenomenon.
But they did, except for the random closeted loyalist, agree that democracy was the way to go, but they did not inherently trust the masses of people to make smart choices (seems like remarkably prescient wisdom at the moment), so they put in safeguards against any one person or group of people getting too much power. They sensed the danger of men like Napolean Bonaparte coming to power and engaging in megalomaniacal power grabs. Many of them were Deists rather than actual Christians, but because they were still essentially steeped in the intellectual legacy of the Protestant Reformation they held a fairly firm grip on what human sin could do if left unchecked. And so they checked it, by designing their system with strong brakes and built in redundancies. Some of our frustration with our government is a product of design. It is meant to move slow and have to clear obstacles of its own invention. The men who put this together were not afraid of arguing, and noticed that spirited opposition tended to make the final outcome stronger. If you want to get a law passed in those days, it had better be well thought out and airtight or else you were going to have men like Adams and Jefferson rip you to shreds.
Article II establishes the Presidency (Executive), because in the Congress was obviously going to be entirely too unwieldy to actually perform certain necessary functions. In a world of kings and queens, who was going to represent us? Also, if Congress did somehow go off the rails there needed to be some elected office that might be able to correct them. The process for the election of the Executive was more complicated than for Congress, the requirements upon his character and person, more rigorous, however, it was seen that in military action and foreign affairs, we needed a person in charge. The Executive power was rightly limited, and the process of impeachment defined should he be convicted of acts unbecoming his office: treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.
But these two branches were not quite enough on their own. Triads and triangles are really some of the most stable structures, so they added the Judiciary with Article III. The Judiciary's job is to handle evaluation the laws through the process of legal argument and case law. Their job is to act as the ultimate check and balance. They are not elected, but appointed by the President, and they serve for life, or until they voluntarily step down. They function as a high court and a final word on matters relating to the Constitution. Their scope of operations is narrow and well defined, and they are not expected or permitted to go outside of it.
Articles IV deals with states rights, it is necessary to define the roles of individual state governments within the union. Article V provides for the Constitution to be amended. Article VI is the article that binds us together as a union of states that ratify the document, and Article VII is the actual ratification by representatives from the first thirteen states.
And there you have the thumbnail sketch of the Articles of the Constitution of the United States of America. I have to say, it's such a sensible, well worked system, that you might think it could just stand all on its own. But, well, not so much. It was ratified on September 17th, 1787. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights are going to come in barely four years later: December 15, 1791.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Opening a Can of Worms
I am tired of it. Sick and tired, in fact, of politicians, some of whom are actually lawyers, answering questions about their policies (or lack thereof) or attacking their opponents using The Constitution of the United States of America, as a show stopper or a nuclear weapon. The other night Ted Cruz stood on a public stage and said that, as president he would govern by the Constitution, and he clarified with the The Bill of Rights, he just said it over and over again, not elaborating, illumining what exactly he means by that. It's driving me freaking nuts.
It really shouldn't surprise me, he seems to use the Bible the same way, which irks me even more, but then again, I'm kind of a Bible person, so it's sort of not fair for me to pick on people who haven't been trained properly in exegesis. What I'm going to do then, is enter the arena of the Constitution of the United States of America, as a layperson, trying to simply deal with the words on the page. I can't claim to be a lawyer, and I'm not going to try and suss out the "original intentions" of the framers or anything Scalia-esque, I'm just going to walk through the first ten amendments to the document called the Bill of Rights. Not all in one blog post, I'm jumping into a series here, mostly to keep myself sane, because as I re-read the Constitution it strikes me as an extremely sane and well reasoned document.
Before we get to the Bill of Rights, though, let us give some thought to the preamble and the Seven Articles of the Constitution itself. The preamble, which was probably one of those things you had to memorize in seventh grade social studies class, is actually a useful statement of purpose for what follows:
I see a rather disturbing correlation between those who want to treat the constitution as etched in stone, and those who would, via the most literal hermeneutic, to wring all the life out of the Word of God. They are too often the same people.
No one of these lofty goals can be established "once and for all." Each one is an ongoing struggle in which we all must engage. Let's take them a point at a time.
Establish Justice: Justice to Thomas Jefferson included owning slaves. Justice to Abraham Lincoln had no consideration of allowing women to vote. Justice to Teddy Roosevelt saw segregation as an absolutely normal and healthy way of forming this more perfect union. We grow more just, by recognizing injustice and challenging it, and because of human nature, there is always more injustice to be found. We have to grow, we have to always engage that process, even and especially when it is scary.
Insure Domestic Tranquility: For a long time, this meant keeping the white landowning men happy. And until that really ran smack into the preceding tenant, it was, more or less a matter of putting on some powdered wigs and arguing it out in clever and verbose speeches. Until the Civil War happened, and the house was anything but tranquil. Then it was the challenge of reconstruction, immigration, westward expansion, industrialization, WWI, prohibition, the Great Depression, WWII, Korea, Civil Rights (MLK and JFK both assassinated), Vietnam, The Cold War, the Middle East, Terrorism, 9-11 and so on and so forth. And now this election, tranquility appears to be something we have utterly failed for a rather long time, but it's still worth a try.
Provide for the Common Defense: Now this is where I'm going to disagree with some of my more hawkish friends, but I honestly don't believe that the common defense of the United States should involve fighting wars on the other side of the world. That would appear to me to be a more colonial sort of activity. But I will admit that here the framers of the constitution could honestly never have envisioned the world as it is now. While this was being written, the sun had not yet set on the British Empire, and the colonists were frankly thanking their lucky stars that King George III had lost his stomach and his money bags for fighting a war on the other side of the ocean. What this meant then, and what this meant now, are admittedly radically different. We're going to run into this again when we get to the second amendment, so I'll leave it for now.
Promote the General Welfare: Again, what that means and who it applies to, have changed radically over the past two hundred years. In the beginning the "general welfare," did not include blacks, natives, hispanics, or really even women other than as a romantic accessory to white males which ought to be safeguarded and protected as particularly valuable property. The landowners had a certain noblesse oblige to take care of all of those lesser creatures, but that was more a matter of private character than legal requirement. Now the table of general welfare has had to grow dynamically and must always keep growing, any stagnation or regression leads to suffering and unrest.
Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity: "Blessings of Liberty," is pretty much what we're going to be looking at in the Bill of Rights. But it's going to become pretty obvious that the need for continual evolution and growth is necessary here and everywhere. The word "posterity" means that the intent was always to look down the road past the immediate and on to the life of their descendants. The ideas put down in this document are not simply a flash in the pan they are a singular investment in the world of the future, and that precludes anything like a static interpretation of what follows.
Next up: The Articles.
It really shouldn't surprise me, he seems to use the Bible the same way, which irks me even more, but then again, I'm kind of a Bible person, so it's sort of not fair for me to pick on people who haven't been trained properly in exegesis. What I'm going to do then, is enter the arena of the Constitution of the United States of America, as a layperson, trying to simply deal with the words on the page. I can't claim to be a lawyer, and I'm not going to try and suss out the "original intentions" of the framers or anything Scalia-esque, I'm just going to walk through the first ten amendments to the document called the Bill of Rights. Not all in one blog post, I'm jumping into a series here, mostly to keep myself sane, because as I re-read the Constitution it strikes me as an extremely sane and well reasoned document.
Before we get to the Bill of Rights, though, let us give some thought to the preamble and the Seven Articles of the Constitution itself. The preamble, which was probably one of those things you had to memorize in seventh grade social studies class, is actually a useful statement of purpose for what follows:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.That's aiming high. That is kind of beautiful and it makes the current miry bog of our political life all the more shameful. The purpose of this document, outlined in the preamble is not to become a sort of hallowed and sacred scripture to be used as a bludgeon, but rather to provide a framework and a set of tools in which "a more perfect Union" might be created, and worked out. "More perfect" is a rather key phrase, in a process where everything is being hammered out and argued by some very headstrong and educated men. "More" in that context would seem to imply that it is always the goal to be a work in progress, which it has been, and will remain, if we're true to the very nature of the work.
I see a rather disturbing correlation between those who want to treat the constitution as etched in stone, and those who would, via the most literal hermeneutic, to wring all the life out of the Word of God. They are too often the same people.
No one of these lofty goals can be established "once and for all." Each one is an ongoing struggle in which we all must engage. Let's take them a point at a time.
Establish Justice: Justice to Thomas Jefferson included owning slaves. Justice to Abraham Lincoln had no consideration of allowing women to vote. Justice to Teddy Roosevelt saw segregation as an absolutely normal and healthy way of forming this more perfect union. We grow more just, by recognizing injustice and challenging it, and because of human nature, there is always more injustice to be found. We have to grow, we have to always engage that process, even and especially when it is scary.
Insure Domestic Tranquility: For a long time, this meant keeping the white landowning men happy. And until that really ran smack into the preceding tenant, it was, more or less a matter of putting on some powdered wigs and arguing it out in clever and verbose speeches. Until the Civil War happened, and the house was anything but tranquil. Then it was the challenge of reconstruction, immigration, westward expansion, industrialization, WWI, prohibition, the Great Depression, WWII, Korea, Civil Rights (MLK and JFK both assassinated), Vietnam, The Cold War, the Middle East, Terrorism, 9-11 and so on and so forth. And now this election, tranquility appears to be something we have utterly failed for a rather long time, but it's still worth a try.
Provide for the Common Defense: Now this is where I'm going to disagree with some of my more hawkish friends, but I honestly don't believe that the common defense of the United States should involve fighting wars on the other side of the world. That would appear to me to be a more colonial sort of activity. But I will admit that here the framers of the constitution could honestly never have envisioned the world as it is now. While this was being written, the sun had not yet set on the British Empire, and the colonists were frankly thanking their lucky stars that King George III had lost his stomach and his money bags for fighting a war on the other side of the ocean. What this meant then, and what this meant now, are admittedly radically different. We're going to run into this again when we get to the second amendment, so I'll leave it for now.
Promote the General Welfare: Again, what that means and who it applies to, have changed radically over the past two hundred years. In the beginning the "general welfare," did not include blacks, natives, hispanics, or really even women other than as a romantic accessory to white males which ought to be safeguarded and protected as particularly valuable property. The landowners had a certain noblesse oblige to take care of all of those lesser creatures, but that was more a matter of private character than legal requirement. Now the table of general welfare has had to grow dynamically and must always keep growing, any stagnation or regression leads to suffering and unrest.
Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity: "Blessings of Liberty," is pretty much what we're going to be looking at in the Bill of Rights. But it's going to become pretty obvious that the need for continual evolution and growth is necessary here and everywhere. The word "posterity" means that the intent was always to look down the road past the immediate and on to the life of their descendants. The ideas put down in this document are not simply a flash in the pan they are a singular investment in the world of the future, and that precludes anything like a static interpretation of what follows.
Next up: The Articles.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Outrageous Outrage
I have been outraged three times today, and it's barely 10:00 AM. None of these outrages actually involved any personal affront or even a traffic situation. It was simply the course of reading the news. I am at the point where I know which news outlets to flat out avoid. I try to digest things with an understanding of different perspectives, and I try to avoid things that I know are blatant fear mongering. However, when you run across a well written, in depth article from a trustworthy and generally non-biased source, and it still makes you want to spit hot nails...
I'm not even going into what my three morning outrages are, they all involve politics and quite frankly, I'm all outraged out.
I would like to reflect on the feeling that I have about the relative healthiness of all this outrage. I feel like it can't be good for me, or for anyone really. The thing is though, outrage is sort of like donuts. As much as you try to avoid it, as much as you refuse to go out of your way to go to Dunkin' Donuts, from time to time they're just going to show up at a meeting or somewhere you have to be, and they're there, glistening at you, and I just don't have the emotional resources to resist that sort of temptation.
I know I can get my outrage fix anytime by going to Fox News or MSNBC, I can got either left or right to find something that will enrage me. So I try to go for trustworthy sources only, this usually means traditional media sources like the NY Times or the Washington Post, which are now well established and accessible online. This morning though, two of my three outrages came via the bastion of boring moderation that is Bill Moyers, he's practically Jim Lehrer for the love of Cronkite. Great googly-moogly, this is PBS territory, this old time actual journalism. And the things, which I'm still not going to go on about, were pretty well investigated and detailed reports, not click bait.
But outraged I was, and am, and I'm feeling a little like this is only going to get worse from here on out, because the things that I find so outrageous are not easily fixed, and maybe cannot be fixed at all. They are tied into the confluence of money and power and that, unfortunately seems to be the way it is and was and ever shall be, world with out end. Amen.
The outrage inside me, which sounds like Lewis Black in case you need an audio aid, is saying that this is not okay. The outrage says that accepting this degradation of human society as unavoidable or inevitable is a horrible cop out, and probably precisely what the robber barons and super-thieves are banking on. I'm going to vote, I'm going to vote with my outrage and I'm going to try to transmute that outrage into hope instead of despair, but until then, I want some other actions to take. But what? What to do about the stew of genuinely outrageous things that confront us every day, whether it's some political boondoggle, some economic hornswoggle, or the latest mass shooting (which has no pithy colloquialism to describe it, thanks be).
That is, for me where the spiritual struggle kicks in, because the path to battling outrage begins with me, the same place that the struggle to eat healthy does. Back to that outrage: donuts analogy. Junk food is easy and fast and readily available, as is outrage. Healthy eating requires preparation and planning and education. Checking the available information, seeing if it's too high in fat or sodium, seeing how many calories you're actually shoveling down your gullet. It gets tedious and sometimes it's downright impossible, but there really aren't any shortcuts. And there are times that your willpower is going to flat out fail you, and that boston creme donut is going in no matter what.
I honestly don't think I can avoid being outraged about the way things are right now, but that means I need to make wiser and more conscientious decisions in other areas. I'm going to need to consume less junk, stay away from the slanted and biased, which are presented in gluttonous amounts. I need to eat a healthy balance from reliable sources and make sure I don't neglect viewpoints that differ from my own (veggies), make sure I get enough solid facts (protein), and make sure also that I read enough hopeful things to sustain my energy (good carbs) for the inevitable injustice, violence and greed that will pollute my diet eventually.
I have the feeling that it's going to be a long year.
I'm not even going into what my three morning outrages are, they all involve politics and quite frankly, I'm all outraged out.
I would like to reflect on the feeling that I have about the relative healthiness of all this outrage. I feel like it can't be good for me, or for anyone really. The thing is though, outrage is sort of like donuts. As much as you try to avoid it, as much as you refuse to go out of your way to go to Dunkin' Donuts, from time to time they're just going to show up at a meeting or somewhere you have to be, and they're there, glistening at you, and I just don't have the emotional resources to resist that sort of temptation.
I know I can get my outrage fix anytime by going to Fox News or MSNBC, I can got either left or right to find something that will enrage me. So I try to go for trustworthy sources only, this usually means traditional media sources like the NY Times or the Washington Post, which are now well established and accessible online. This morning though, two of my three outrages came via the bastion of boring moderation that is Bill Moyers, he's practically Jim Lehrer for the love of Cronkite. Great googly-moogly, this is PBS territory, this old time actual journalism. And the things, which I'm still not going to go on about, were pretty well investigated and detailed reports, not click bait.
But outraged I was, and am, and I'm feeling a little like this is only going to get worse from here on out, because the things that I find so outrageous are not easily fixed, and maybe cannot be fixed at all. They are tied into the confluence of money and power and that, unfortunately seems to be the way it is and was and ever shall be, world with out end. Amen.
The outrage inside me, which sounds like Lewis Black in case you need an audio aid, is saying that this is not okay. The outrage says that accepting this degradation of human society as unavoidable or inevitable is a horrible cop out, and probably precisely what the robber barons and super-thieves are banking on. I'm going to vote, I'm going to vote with my outrage and I'm going to try to transmute that outrage into hope instead of despair, but until then, I want some other actions to take. But what? What to do about the stew of genuinely outrageous things that confront us every day, whether it's some political boondoggle, some economic hornswoggle, or the latest mass shooting (which has no pithy colloquialism to describe it, thanks be).
That is, for me where the spiritual struggle kicks in, because the path to battling outrage begins with me, the same place that the struggle to eat healthy does. Back to that outrage: donuts analogy. Junk food is easy and fast and readily available, as is outrage. Healthy eating requires preparation and planning and education. Checking the available information, seeing if it's too high in fat or sodium, seeing how many calories you're actually shoveling down your gullet. It gets tedious and sometimes it's downright impossible, but there really aren't any shortcuts. And there are times that your willpower is going to flat out fail you, and that boston creme donut is going in no matter what.
I honestly don't think I can avoid being outraged about the way things are right now, but that means I need to make wiser and more conscientious decisions in other areas. I'm going to need to consume less junk, stay away from the slanted and biased, which are presented in gluttonous amounts. I need to eat a healthy balance from reliable sources and make sure I don't neglect viewpoints that differ from my own (veggies), make sure I get enough solid facts (protein), and make sure also that I read enough hopeful things to sustain my energy (good carbs) for the inevitable injustice, violence and greed that will pollute my diet eventually.
I have the feeling that it's going to be a long year.
Monday, March 7, 2016
The End of an Era
Our long running involvement with Victorian England came to an end last night, well at least the Downton Abbey part of it did. What perhaps was not always obvious to fans of the show was the way that the fictional Crawley family was in fact a parable for a very real transition that is in some ways still ongoing.
Part of the charm of the show, in addition to the delicious snark of the Dowager Countess, was the way that we were able to look, with sufficient chronological distance, on the habits and customs of an era that has since vanished from the earth. If I have any quibbles with the show it is simply that it sometimes took the paradigmatic differences between the historical setting and the audience rather for granted. The most likable characters were also the ones who accepted our modern values (think Tom Branson, and Cora Crawley, who was literally an American with many of the attendant libertine values). The most definitively Victorian characters (The Dowager, and Carson) took time to get to like, even if they were amusing. And to the very end of the show there were still instances where modern audiences were left wondering what in the actual world was motivating people. With regard to the central drama of the final season: the romance between Edith and Bertie Pelham with the complication of Marigold (a child born out of wedlock to Edith), the whole scenario seems rather like a mountain being made out of a molehill to modern sensibilities, and Bertie's mother calling Edith "damaged goods," practically makes you want to slap her upside her aristocratic head, hard.
Why compassion and just plain common sense can't seem to take precedent over propriety and appearances is, I think, part of why the drama is so intriguing to folks these days. We get to feel just slightly superior to these people who, had we lived in the era, been certainly considered our betters.
I found Victorian sensibility infuriating at times, but I also glimpsed its value, and so was able to mourn the passing of an era with the characters of Downton. The value came in terms of dignity of human beings. The servants had dignity, the peasants had dignity, and the Lords and Ladies had dignity of a sort that had become so inflated that it was brittle. Admittedly part of this assumption is based on the particular slant allowed to us by fiction, not all Lords were as beneficent and gracious as Lord Grantham, nor as personally concerned with the struggles of their tenants and servants, but I think Grantham gives us a rather good sketch of what the ideal was supposed to be: a man of privilege who understood and felt the weight of his responsibility for those to whom he was Lord. Dissolving that bond has not eliminated the aristocracy, but it has put the rest of us on shakier ground. These days it is rare to find an aristocrat that feels such a powerful sense of responsibility towards the "little people." Perhaps it was rare then too, but history tells us that it certainly was a value that many of the landed class took rather seriously.
The way of life was, in a word, spectacular, and largely mutually beneficial, but it was, as I said, brittle. Scandal was so dangerous because it dropped the mask of superiority. Common townspeople could have affairs and illegitimate children and simple deal with some tongue clucking from the neighbors, but for a daughter of the Lord to be proved "immoral," threatened the very order of things. The commoners had to accept that the aristocracy was of a higher quality than themselves. American ideas like equality and democracy were a death knell to those assumptions. The Dowager and Isobel Crawley had a conversation about moving into the future during the finale last night, where Isobel, ever the chipper foil to Violet, was talking about how things must always move forward. The Dowager in her typical wry way, said something along the lines of, "If only we had a choice." The clear implication was that if she had her way she would gladly retreat into the past, back to the time when the order of things was not quite so uncertain.
But the character of the Dowager was often one of the most powerful counter-agents to the true Victorian code. She would often encourage her grand-daughters or even her Butler (in the finale) to do things that were quite out of order from a traditional way of thinking. She was both a lament of the passing of Victorian society, and a symptom of that passing.
I sometimes wonder if we haven't kept the worst of the Victorian ethos and discarded the better aspects. Because it seems that inequality, prejudice and class conflicts are still very much alive and well, and we have much worse manners about all of it than we used to.
In the end, I'm not sure that Downton Abbey really balanced its perspective with regard to the central theme of the ending of an era. The modern prejudice against the rigidity of class was always there, with only a few glimpses here and there to how it actually worked, and why it endured as long as it did. It let us celebrate and then mourn a little for something most of us never even knew about, and it always helped us learn a little bit more about human beings and the various faces of dignity.
Good show old chap.
Part of the charm of the show, in addition to the delicious snark of the Dowager Countess, was the way that we were able to look, with sufficient chronological distance, on the habits and customs of an era that has since vanished from the earth. If I have any quibbles with the show it is simply that it sometimes took the paradigmatic differences between the historical setting and the audience rather for granted. The most likable characters were also the ones who accepted our modern values (think Tom Branson, and Cora Crawley, who was literally an American with many of the attendant libertine values). The most definitively Victorian characters (The Dowager, and Carson) took time to get to like, even if they were amusing. And to the very end of the show there were still instances where modern audiences were left wondering what in the actual world was motivating people. With regard to the central drama of the final season: the romance between Edith and Bertie Pelham with the complication of Marigold (a child born out of wedlock to Edith), the whole scenario seems rather like a mountain being made out of a molehill to modern sensibilities, and Bertie's mother calling Edith "damaged goods," practically makes you want to slap her upside her aristocratic head, hard.
Why compassion and just plain common sense can't seem to take precedent over propriety and appearances is, I think, part of why the drama is so intriguing to folks these days. We get to feel just slightly superior to these people who, had we lived in the era, been certainly considered our betters.
I found Victorian sensibility infuriating at times, but I also glimpsed its value, and so was able to mourn the passing of an era with the characters of Downton. The value came in terms of dignity of human beings. The servants had dignity, the peasants had dignity, and the Lords and Ladies had dignity of a sort that had become so inflated that it was brittle. Admittedly part of this assumption is based on the particular slant allowed to us by fiction, not all Lords were as beneficent and gracious as Lord Grantham, nor as personally concerned with the struggles of their tenants and servants, but I think Grantham gives us a rather good sketch of what the ideal was supposed to be: a man of privilege who understood and felt the weight of his responsibility for those to whom he was Lord. Dissolving that bond has not eliminated the aristocracy, but it has put the rest of us on shakier ground. These days it is rare to find an aristocrat that feels such a powerful sense of responsibility towards the "little people." Perhaps it was rare then too, but history tells us that it certainly was a value that many of the landed class took rather seriously.
The way of life was, in a word, spectacular, and largely mutually beneficial, but it was, as I said, brittle. Scandal was so dangerous because it dropped the mask of superiority. Common townspeople could have affairs and illegitimate children and simple deal with some tongue clucking from the neighbors, but for a daughter of the Lord to be proved "immoral," threatened the very order of things. The commoners had to accept that the aristocracy was of a higher quality than themselves. American ideas like equality and democracy were a death knell to those assumptions. The Dowager and Isobel Crawley had a conversation about moving into the future during the finale last night, where Isobel, ever the chipper foil to Violet, was talking about how things must always move forward. The Dowager in her typical wry way, said something along the lines of, "If only we had a choice." The clear implication was that if she had her way she would gladly retreat into the past, back to the time when the order of things was not quite so uncertain.
But the character of the Dowager was often one of the most powerful counter-agents to the true Victorian code. She would often encourage her grand-daughters or even her Butler (in the finale) to do things that were quite out of order from a traditional way of thinking. She was both a lament of the passing of Victorian society, and a symptom of that passing.
I sometimes wonder if we haven't kept the worst of the Victorian ethos and discarded the better aspects. Because it seems that inequality, prejudice and class conflicts are still very much alive and well, and we have much worse manners about all of it than we used to.
In the end, I'm not sure that Downton Abbey really balanced its perspective with regard to the central theme of the ending of an era. The modern prejudice against the rigidity of class was always there, with only a few glimpses here and there to how it actually worked, and why it endured as long as it did. It let us celebrate and then mourn a little for something most of us never even knew about, and it always helped us learn a little bit more about human beings and the various faces of dignity.
Good show old chap.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Enough
Enough with the fear.
Enough with the hate.
Enough with the anxiety.
Enough with the name calling.
Enough with the illogical rhetoric.
Enough with the false prophets.
Enough with idols and emptiness.
The curve of a bare winter hill is enough.
The morning sun on a glossy black raven is enough.
The skeletal trees pinking with buds is enough.
The quiet of a church is enough.
The purr of a cat is enough.
The wiggly greeting of a dog is enough.
A kiss from your love is enough.
A hug from your kids is enough.
Enough is a word we don't use often enough.
Enough is Enough.
Enough with the hate.
Enough with the anxiety.
Enough with the name calling.
Enough with the illogical rhetoric.
Enough with the false prophets.
Enough with idols and emptiness.
The curve of a bare winter hill is enough.
The morning sun on a glossy black raven is enough.
The skeletal trees pinking with buds is enough.
The quiet of a church is enough.
The purr of a cat is enough.
The wiggly greeting of a dog is enough.
A kiss from your love is enough.
A hug from your kids is enough.
Enough is a word we don't use often enough.
Enough is Enough.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Lessons to Be Learned and Schadenfreude
Disclaimer: This is still not me defending Donald J. Trump.
Welcome to Schadenfreude Wednesday. The day after Super Tuesday. The Trump train is still cruising down the track, and the pundits are starting to "do the math," that tells them that it's going to be hard for Rubio to catch him. Trump continues to defy logic and now has both liberals and conservatives soiling their trousers. Let's be honest though, this is much more embarrassing for conservatives. If Hilary manages to avoid indictment for the next few months, Dems who have been feeling the Bern are just going to sigh and vote blue, with maybe a bit of a sad backward glance at an chance we almost had at "political revolution." But it will be much, much worse for Republicans if they have to face the choice between Hilary and the Donald (or Ted Cruz, more on that in a minute).
I'm no political expert, but Rubio seems like the last hope for the GOP. But he's got problems with the way the game is played these days. I disagree with Rubio's general ideology, but I will give him a nod as seeming at least a bit sincere in his desire to actually be in the political game. I also find him, well, a little bit annoying. If Trump is that arrogant blowhard that's always talking about his Camaro and how much ass he kicks, Rubio is... well... Brainy Smurf, you know the one who always reminds the other Smurfs what "Papa Smurf always says..."
Rubio is also not much older than me, and in the political game that's still wet behind the ears. He lacks gravitas, I could seriously see Donald Trump and Chris Christie shoving him into a locker and giving him a wedgie (the way this campaign is going that is probably not outside the realm of possibility). Trump has drug this campaign into a pro wrasslin mindset (see previous post), and that is not a world where sincere little mama's boys play really well except as fodder for a butt kicking.
I can't really root for Rubio, because I fundamentally disagree with the heartlessness of many of his conservative doctrinal positions. If I needed a reminder of the fact that the Republican race is basically a competition between two different types of repugnance, I need look no further than the, "Hey I won my home state" victory speech of Raphael Edward Cruz. Cruz launched into a diatribe of Tea Party talking points that makes me absolutely cringe, particularly because they concern our involvement and misadventures in the Middle East.
First was Israel, which I'm aware is a major can of worms. Cruz is of the opinion that the only truly American position vis-a-vis the modern nation state of Israel is unconditional support. Never mind that the settlements are against international law, never mind all the humanitarian problems. Never mind that our unthinking and unyielding support for what has been happening is actually the fuel of so many terrorist groups that... okay, let's just say there are problems. (Disclaimer: I am not saying Israel has no right to exist, they do, but things need to change, and for better or worse, we're probably the only nation on earth that has the influence to make those changes happen, but "unconditional support" precludes that option.) And furthermore, I happen to know that Tedward's rabid support of such things is due to a peculiar brand of apocalyptic Christianity that has influenced the politics of this issue for decades. Cruz worries me because he is a true believer, a zealot if you will. I'm not ever sure what Trump believes in, except for the power of hair spray. I know what Ted Cruz believes and it's freaking cray cray.
Cruz's follow up to his "Screw the Palestinians and all this wimpy neutrality" plank, was his promise to "Tear up this Iranian nuclear deal on day one." Now I get really serious really fast whenever I hear the words Iran and nuclear in the same sentence. I am also of a mind that I really would prefer not having another war in the Middle East. I have two young men that I am fairly fond of who are in the Marines at the moment, and I don't want them getting in harm's way.
I am of the opinion that brokering any kind of deal with Iran on the subject of their nuclear capability was practically an act of diplomatic sorcery, and I give my long-faced, boring friend John Kerry big ups for getting that done. Is the deal perfect? No, no diplomatically negotiated treaty ever is, but it makes us all a lot safer for quite a while, and thaws out one of our last truly frozen international relationships. It also leads to fewer Iranians suffering privation, which, I believe, eventually leads to fewer terrorists and less violence.
But the Cruz missile thinks it's a bad deal. Why? Well, Obama for starters, oh and money. I can't do anything with the first part because haters gonna hate, but the second part is easy. First of all, even if I buy the $150 billion dollar price tag that Cruzites have slapped on this (which is difficult to substantiate and involves mainly what Iran will gain as a result of lifted sanctions and the restoration of frozen assets not some check that we are going to write them). By contrast, the war in Iraq cost us from $1.7 TRILLION to over $2 TRILLION. A TRILLION is a thousand billions. And that, by the way, was financed by the American taxpayer. I'm no math whiz, but that seems like a pretty thin pretense for calling a diplomatic agreement a disaster.
The thing is that many people in the GOP are so afraid of Trump that they're forgetting that Cruz is the second place guy right now. It would be trading an arrogant narcissist for a certifiable sociopath.
Now look, if you've got yourself one nutjob that's pretty normal. If he's the front-runner you can make lots of excuses, but when you, as a political party with a long history of being the rational voice of conservatism are faced with this sort of situation in which both options are really bad, maybe you have done something wrong. Maybe your flirtations with people's fear and prejudice have actually blown up in your face. Maybe in your rush to have God bless America you have let in some of the most cracked and cynical forms of Christian dogmatism. Maybe the stench of your constant obstruction of our duly elected chief executive finally wafted into the noses of your own constituency and maybe they're supporting Trump, not because they're uneducated rubes, but because they're simply tired of you sitting on your hands while they wrestle with real problems. Maybe they realize that something is better than nothing. Maybe they're so fed up that they're just going with the man who entertains them the best. Any way you slice it, put down the fiddle Nero, Rome is burning.
As much as I enjoy watching you squirm through this, I'm also a little worried about where this is going to go from here, so you know, maybe learn from this? Just a little? Pretty please?
Welcome to Schadenfreude Wednesday. The day after Super Tuesday. The Trump train is still cruising down the track, and the pundits are starting to "do the math," that tells them that it's going to be hard for Rubio to catch him. Trump continues to defy logic and now has both liberals and conservatives soiling their trousers. Let's be honest though, this is much more embarrassing for conservatives. If Hilary manages to avoid indictment for the next few months, Dems who have been feeling the Bern are just going to sigh and vote blue, with maybe a bit of a sad backward glance at an chance we almost had at "political revolution." But it will be much, much worse for Republicans if they have to face the choice between Hilary and the Donald (or Ted Cruz, more on that in a minute).
I'm no political expert, but Rubio seems like the last hope for the GOP. But he's got problems with the way the game is played these days. I disagree with Rubio's general ideology, but I will give him a nod as seeming at least a bit sincere in his desire to actually be in the political game. I also find him, well, a little bit annoying. If Trump is that arrogant blowhard that's always talking about his Camaro and how much ass he kicks, Rubio is... well... Brainy Smurf, you know the one who always reminds the other Smurfs what "Papa Smurf always says..."
Rubio is also not much older than me, and in the political game that's still wet behind the ears. He lacks gravitas, I could seriously see Donald Trump and Chris Christie shoving him into a locker and giving him a wedgie (the way this campaign is going that is probably not outside the realm of possibility). Trump has drug this campaign into a pro wrasslin mindset (see previous post), and that is not a world where sincere little mama's boys play really well except as fodder for a butt kicking.
I can't really root for Rubio, because I fundamentally disagree with the heartlessness of many of his conservative doctrinal positions. If I needed a reminder of the fact that the Republican race is basically a competition between two different types of repugnance, I need look no further than the, "Hey I won my home state" victory speech of Raphael Edward Cruz. Cruz launched into a diatribe of Tea Party talking points that makes me absolutely cringe, particularly because they concern our involvement and misadventures in the Middle East.
First was Israel, which I'm aware is a major can of worms. Cruz is of the opinion that the only truly American position vis-a-vis the modern nation state of Israel is unconditional support. Never mind that the settlements are against international law, never mind all the humanitarian problems. Never mind that our unthinking and unyielding support for what has been happening is actually the fuel of so many terrorist groups that... okay, let's just say there are problems. (Disclaimer: I am not saying Israel has no right to exist, they do, but things need to change, and for better or worse, we're probably the only nation on earth that has the influence to make those changes happen, but "unconditional support" precludes that option.) And furthermore, I happen to know that Tedward's rabid support of such things is due to a peculiar brand of apocalyptic Christianity that has influenced the politics of this issue for decades. Cruz worries me because he is a true believer, a zealot if you will. I'm not ever sure what Trump believes in, except for the power of hair spray. I know what Ted Cruz believes and it's freaking cray cray.
Cruz's follow up to his "Screw the Palestinians and all this wimpy neutrality" plank, was his promise to "Tear up this Iranian nuclear deal on day one." Now I get really serious really fast whenever I hear the words Iran and nuclear in the same sentence. I am also of a mind that I really would prefer not having another war in the Middle East. I have two young men that I am fairly fond of who are in the Marines at the moment, and I don't want them getting in harm's way.
I am of the opinion that brokering any kind of deal with Iran on the subject of their nuclear capability was practically an act of diplomatic sorcery, and I give my long-faced, boring friend John Kerry big ups for getting that done. Is the deal perfect? No, no diplomatically negotiated treaty ever is, but it makes us all a lot safer for quite a while, and thaws out one of our last truly frozen international relationships. It also leads to fewer Iranians suffering privation, which, I believe, eventually leads to fewer terrorists and less violence.
But the Cruz missile thinks it's a bad deal. Why? Well, Obama for starters, oh and money. I can't do anything with the first part because haters gonna hate, but the second part is easy. First of all, even if I buy the $150 billion dollar price tag that Cruzites have slapped on this (which is difficult to substantiate and involves mainly what Iran will gain as a result of lifted sanctions and the restoration of frozen assets not some check that we are going to write them). By contrast, the war in Iraq cost us from $1.7 TRILLION to over $2 TRILLION. A TRILLION is a thousand billions. And that, by the way, was financed by the American taxpayer. I'm no math whiz, but that seems like a pretty thin pretense for calling a diplomatic agreement a disaster.
The thing is that many people in the GOP are so afraid of Trump that they're forgetting that Cruz is the second place guy right now. It would be trading an arrogant narcissist for a certifiable sociopath.
Now look, if you've got yourself one nutjob that's pretty normal. If he's the front-runner you can make lots of excuses, but when you, as a political party with a long history of being the rational voice of conservatism are faced with this sort of situation in which both options are really bad, maybe you have done something wrong. Maybe your flirtations with people's fear and prejudice have actually blown up in your face. Maybe in your rush to have God bless America you have let in some of the most cracked and cynical forms of Christian dogmatism. Maybe the stench of your constant obstruction of our duly elected chief executive finally wafted into the noses of your own constituency and maybe they're supporting Trump, not because they're uneducated rubes, but because they're simply tired of you sitting on your hands while they wrestle with real problems. Maybe they realize that something is better than nothing. Maybe they're so fed up that they're just going with the man who entertains them the best. Any way you slice it, put down the fiddle Nero, Rome is burning.
As much as I enjoy watching you squirm through this, I'm also a little worried about where this is going to go from here, so you know, maybe learn from this? Just a little? Pretty please?
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Just Desserts
Disclaimer: This is not me defending Donald Trump. I have been observing the catastrophe that has overtaken our democracy of late, and have seen this coming for a while. There is still a part of me that thinks Trump is deliberately trying to sabotage the process and show it for the sham that it has become. There is still a little voice inside my head that suspects that he can't possibly be this crass and clueless. Part of me remembers the Donald Trump of the feud with Vince McMahon in the world of professional wrasslin'. It is a sad, sad commentary that the world of foreign objects, blatant cheating and impotent referees is more or less analogous to our national electoral process.
But wrasslin' does teach you some important things about human nature. One of those things is that Heels (bad guys) are mostly more fun to watch than Baby Faces (good guys, called faces for short). Growing up the best heels were Rowdy Roddy Piper (may he rest in peace), Ric Flair, Terry Funk and of course the master of slimy conniving: Bobby the Brain Heenan (manager). Wrasslin' has always had a flair (pun intended) for giving us villains, and also making sure that eventually they were brought to justice. I was a wrasslin' fan in the 1990's when a paradigm shift happened courtesy of one Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) and one Stone Cold Steve Austin. Up until these two, almost any wrassler of consequence had to fit into a mold of Heel or Face, they could very easily switch back and forth, because wrasslin fans have an amazing talent for suspension of disbelief, more so than even Sci-Fi fans. Predicting a Heel turn or a moment of redemption for a Heel was really the most interesting part of being a fan who was no longer a little kid. Little kids grow up rooting for the faces, getting emotionally involved with the farcical drama and really hating those lying, cheating heels.
But let me tell you, there is a moment of swelling glory when someone does something noble and right in order to fulfill honor. The classic example is a Heel, having just lost the inevitable finale to a long feud, where he had won all earlier contests by dubious means, finally extending his hand for a congratulatory handshake. Sometimes the handshake is "real," a sign of hard won respect, and basically a truce, maybe even the beginning of a mixed and redemptive partnership. Other times the handshake is just a ruse so that the vanquished heel can get in a couple of cheap shots before running away to more dubious shenanigans.
This is how professional wrasslin' works, everybody but small children and the exceedingly stupid know it, but it doesn't matter because that's the way we are entertained, often by feeling morally and intellectually superior to the actors. Nobody said it was highbrow entertainment, but it was entertainment. When the Stone Cold/ Rock paradigm shift happened, things got confusing, characters no longer had to fit the molds of heel and face, they could be dishonorable cheaters one minute and gallant heroes the next. They could flaunt authority, drink beer, insult the audience and still draw plenty of cheers. It was reflecting a postmodern perspective before almost anything else the world of entertainment that had mass appeal. I know that sounds weird, but I believe it bears weight. TV shows started reflecting the same ambiguity: NYPD Blue and Law and Order, showed us that the good guys weren't always good and that maybe the bad guys story was a little more complicated than it was in Magnum PI.
Donald Trump is a creature of this reality. Literally, he was actually involved with wrasslin' during this era. He played the part exceedingly well, and no, he wasn't a wrassler, he was a character, he was basically himself, but he was also playing a part in a drama, where he demonstrated his ability to out power-broker Vince McMahon, which he did, with Vince's full cooperation. One could tell that they were birds of a feather. Men who would do anything, make people love them or make people hate them, if it served the story they were telling and made them money in the process.
I have been watching Trump staging a real life episode of Piper's Pit for almost a year now, and I'll tell you, I have often been suckered in to the act, despite the fact that I know better. But now the danger is growing real, it's like this time where Brian Pillman seemingly lost it on an episode of Raw and went to someone's house (I believe it was Steve Austin) and Pillman seemed to not be acting all of the sudden. Now it was obviously not a total shoot (as they say in the business about a scene that gets out of control and goes off script), but it did seem kind of disturbing and real. .
Trump has turned the Republican Primary into a shoot, and now the people who thought they were in control of the script are in a panic mode. The problem right now is that all they've got is a couple of stooges to ride to the rescue. Cruz is every bit as unnerving as Trump, but not as likeable and Rubio is the definition of an untested rookie baby face. Neither one of them knows anything about the game that Trump is actually playing here, which is not nice politics.
Even if my theory is true, and Trump really is trolling the system, the disturbing truth has been revealed: large numbers of people are willing to support and vote for a man who embodies our most shameful and base instincts: fear, anger, hatred, the will to power, (I can almost hear Yoda saying, "The path to the darkside are they). Several people have observed that Trump is essentially the candidate we deserve for all of our sins as a nation. Others have said that they (optimistically) suspect that Trump will moderate once he runs the gauntlet of the primary which now has even the Republican establishment sharpening their knives against him. I used to sort of trust that second one, but I also know that sometimes the role you play runs away with you.
As far as the first charge: that Trump is the candidate the Republican Party and we as a nation really deserve, if that is at all true than we need to learn some very hard lessons. Has our fear run away with us? Have we sold out too many of our ideals? Are we really a nation that is that much about surface and bluster? Are we really that disingenuous?
I'm asking myself these questions, even though there was never really a chance that I would ever vote for Trump (or Cruz, or Rubio for that matter) because even if I'm rooting for the other side, heel turns can happen at any time, and even stranger things than that (if Rocky Maivea can become The Rock, and Stunning Steve Austin can become Stone Cold, anything can happen). I just hope we're not all headed for some sweet chin music from the Heartbreak Kid.
But wrasslin' does teach you some important things about human nature. One of those things is that Heels (bad guys) are mostly more fun to watch than Baby Faces (good guys, called faces for short). Growing up the best heels were Rowdy Roddy Piper (may he rest in peace), Ric Flair, Terry Funk and of course the master of slimy conniving: Bobby the Brain Heenan (manager). Wrasslin' has always had a flair (pun intended) for giving us villains, and also making sure that eventually they were brought to justice. I was a wrasslin' fan in the 1990's when a paradigm shift happened courtesy of one Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) and one Stone Cold Steve Austin. Up until these two, almost any wrassler of consequence had to fit into a mold of Heel or Face, they could very easily switch back and forth, because wrasslin fans have an amazing talent for suspension of disbelief, more so than even Sci-Fi fans. Predicting a Heel turn or a moment of redemption for a Heel was really the most interesting part of being a fan who was no longer a little kid. Little kids grow up rooting for the faces, getting emotionally involved with the farcical drama and really hating those lying, cheating heels.
But let me tell you, there is a moment of swelling glory when someone does something noble and right in order to fulfill honor. The classic example is a Heel, having just lost the inevitable finale to a long feud, where he had won all earlier contests by dubious means, finally extending his hand for a congratulatory handshake. Sometimes the handshake is "real," a sign of hard won respect, and basically a truce, maybe even the beginning of a mixed and redemptive partnership. Other times the handshake is just a ruse so that the vanquished heel can get in a couple of cheap shots before running away to more dubious shenanigans.
This is how professional wrasslin' works, everybody but small children and the exceedingly stupid know it, but it doesn't matter because that's the way we are entertained, often by feeling morally and intellectually superior to the actors. Nobody said it was highbrow entertainment, but it was entertainment. When the Stone Cold/ Rock paradigm shift happened, things got confusing, characters no longer had to fit the molds of heel and face, they could be dishonorable cheaters one minute and gallant heroes the next. They could flaunt authority, drink beer, insult the audience and still draw plenty of cheers. It was reflecting a postmodern perspective before almost anything else the world of entertainment that had mass appeal. I know that sounds weird, but I believe it bears weight. TV shows started reflecting the same ambiguity: NYPD Blue and Law and Order, showed us that the good guys weren't always good and that maybe the bad guys story was a little more complicated than it was in Magnum PI.
Donald Trump is a creature of this reality. Literally, he was actually involved with wrasslin' during this era. He played the part exceedingly well, and no, he wasn't a wrassler, he was a character, he was basically himself, but he was also playing a part in a drama, where he demonstrated his ability to out power-broker Vince McMahon, which he did, with Vince's full cooperation. One could tell that they were birds of a feather. Men who would do anything, make people love them or make people hate them, if it served the story they were telling and made them money in the process.
I have been watching Trump staging a real life episode of Piper's Pit for almost a year now, and I'll tell you, I have often been suckered in to the act, despite the fact that I know better. But now the danger is growing real, it's like this time where Brian Pillman seemingly lost it on an episode of Raw and went to someone's house (I believe it was Steve Austin) and Pillman seemed to not be acting all of the sudden. Now it was obviously not a total shoot (as they say in the business about a scene that gets out of control and goes off script), but it did seem kind of disturbing and real. .
Trump has turned the Republican Primary into a shoot, and now the people who thought they were in control of the script are in a panic mode. The problem right now is that all they've got is a couple of stooges to ride to the rescue. Cruz is every bit as unnerving as Trump, but not as likeable and Rubio is the definition of an untested rookie baby face. Neither one of them knows anything about the game that Trump is actually playing here, which is not nice politics.
Even if my theory is true, and Trump really is trolling the system, the disturbing truth has been revealed: large numbers of people are willing to support and vote for a man who embodies our most shameful and base instincts: fear, anger, hatred, the will to power, (I can almost hear Yoda saying, "The path to the darkside are they). Several people have observed that Trump is essentially the candidate we deserve for all of our sins as a nation. Others have said that they (optimistically) suspect that Trump will moderate once he runs the gauntlet of the primary which now has even the Republican establishment sharpening their knives against him. I used to sort of trust that second one, but I also know that sometimes the role you play runs away with you.
As far as the first charge: that Trump is the candidate the Republican Party and we as a nation really deserve, if that is at all true than we need to learn some very hard lessons. Has our fear run away with us? Have we sold out too many of our ideals? Are we really a nation that is that much about surface and bluster? Are we really that disingenuous?
I'm asking myself these questions, even though there was never really a chance that I would ever vote for Trump (or Cruz, or Rubio for that matter) because even if I'm rooting for the other side, heel turns can happen at any time, and even stranger things than that (if Rocky Maivea can become The Rock, and Stunning Steve Austin can become Stone Cold, anything can happen). I just hope we're not all headed for some sweet chin music from the Heartbreak Kid.
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