Trial & Error

WBC to Picket Paterno

2012-01-23T20:43:00.002-05:00

The odious Westboro Baptist Church has announced their intention to picket the funeral of the late disgraced Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

I am anticipating this with unfettered glee.

The Westboro Baptists are horrible excused for human beings but they have the right, per the First Amendment, to voice their appalling views. They also have the right, per the laws of civil society, to be protected from harm to their persons or property, and any assault made against them would be a crime and should be treated as such.

However, I really really really really want to see something violent happen. I don't ask for much: a few broken bones or knocked-out teeth will suffice. The only thing that diminishes my excitement is the great unlikelihood that Fred Phelps himself will be on site: he failed to show up when his minions picketed my synagogue two years ago.

The Westboro Baptists cause a great deal of emotional pain to their victims, but they never suffer any consequences. They have no sense of shame or decency, so if they are to pay it would need to be in the unimaginative but nonetheless satisfying form of physical violence.

The Phelpses would perversely welcome this because it would validate their persecution complex and give them plenty of matter for lucrative lawsuits. There is also the symbolic victory they would win if physically attacked for simply exercising their Constitutional rights. A gay group or a Jewish group or a gay Jewish group couldn't afford either the financial or propaganda toll that would be exacted, but Penn State is different. Football crazed college students - who already rioted and destroyed property when Paterno was mere fired - can get away with more, I think, than any other demographic. If they do attack the Westboro protesters and they do face criminal charges and lawsuits, I reason that it would have been their own choice to act and it would be fitting recompense for lionizing a man who won football games but turned a blind eye to the victimization of children.

In any event, either the protestors won't show up or there will be so much security that no one can break through to get at them. We can still dream, however.

Buy Girl Scout Cookies!

2012-01-11T15:42:00.003-05:00

This hateful little girl's video demand to boycott Girl Scout cookies in protest against the Girl Scouts of the USA's recent stand in favor of trans equality has gone viral today and is worth spreading further:

The smug little brat's argument is that GSUSA's decision to allow female-identified transgender children to participate in Girl Scouting somehow jeopardizes the safety of real Girl Scouts and that the national organization make this decision dishonestly without informing girls or their families. In protest over this, she is urging people to boycott the ever-popular Girl Scout cookies.

In interest of disclosure, I worked for the Girl Scouts of the USA from 2001 to 2006, first in the archives and National Historic Preservation Center as a temp and then in the Membership Credentials Department. I loved the Girl Scout organization both for the character-building informal education and activities they provide for girls but even more so for their inclusivity. Unlike the Boy Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of the USA does not discriminate against gays and lesbians and they even allow a girl to substitute a word that more closely reflects her own beliefs in place of "God" in the Girl Scout Oath, removing any barrier to participation based on religious belief.

I only learned about this expansion of their policy to include transgender youth from this attack video, and for that I am grateful. It only elevates Girl Scouting in my esteem. They recognize that gender and sex are two very different things and refuse to deny participation in their program to any girl who wants it, regardless of whether she was born with the right genitals.

Upon suggestion from the girl, I checked out the website wwww.HonestGirlScouts.com, where I learned the full scale of GSUSA's association with or support of such varied things as reproductive health and freedom, sexual education for girls, LGBT inclusivity, socialism, and "the progressive agenda." The girl - and the website that posted her video and no doubt provided her talking points - say that every box of Girl Scout Cookies you buy endorses this agenda.*

In that case, I'm going to call for an anti-boycott and pledge to buy as many boxes of Girl Scout Cookies as I can, and encourage everyone else that believes in the equality and inclusivity to do the same.

_________________________
*The idiocy of this boycott is revealed when you learn that the beneficiaries of Girl Scout cookie revenues are the local Girl Scout council, the troop that sells them, and the baker. In other words, none of the proceeds go to the national organization that receives the bulk of the video's and the website's ire. Buying Girl Scout cookies won't therefore directly benefit the national organization, but it will benefit the girls and their local councils and make a stand against bigotry.

Books of 2011

2012-01-05T14:31:00.003-05:00

I started this year with the best of intentions. I had joined a reading challenge that was mentioned on Salon and signed up to read a dozen books that had been sitting on my shelves for too long unopened.I started off well and actually got through three of the books on my list until something happened.A Song of Ice and Fire.Last fall, I was reading the witty library-themed webcomic Unshelved when I came across this strip. Unshelved had previously introduced me to the excellent Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold and so I put A Game of Thrones on my reading list. I was even able to download a specially-priced double volume of A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings on my Kindle.I started to read AGOT in winter (appropriately enough) of 2010 and I must confess that I was not impressed but I eventually changed my mind as recounted here.The five published volumes of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series were so good and so engrossing that they completely derailed me from my reading challenge. While all of the books on the list are probably very interesting, they had not managed individually yet to compel me to read them and collectively they actually provided a deterrent. I continued to work my way through Diarmaid McCullough's massive history of Christianity and I still have only made it up to the Thirty Years' War. My need for escapist fiction was particularly great this year, and was fed happily when I discovered that some of the gothic occult young adult mysteries by John Bellairs that I had devoured when I was a kid were now available in Kindle format. I had first discovered Bellairs when my mother picked up some books at a garage sale for me to read on the flight to London at the end of fifth grade. Among them was The Chessmen of Doom which involved the chess pieces discovered on the Isle of Lewis that I saw at the British Museum and which are now on display at The Cloisters. After zipping through that volume and enjoying both the 1950's nostalgia contained there in and the nostalgia of my own childhood, I felt compelled to download and read the remaining available books.The full list for 2011 is as follows:Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Graeme-SmithThe Trolley to Yesterday by John BellairsThe Eyes of the Killer Robot by John BellairsThe Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost by John BellairsThe Spell of the Sorceror's Skull by John BellairsThe Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt by John BellairsThe Curse of the Blue Figurine by John BellairsThe Chessmen of Doom by John BellairsLove Wins by Rob BellChristianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid McCulloughDivorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII by Karen LindseyA Dance with Dragons by George R. R. MartinI Don't Believe in Atheists by Chris HedgesWhy Marx Was Right by Terry EagletonA Feast for Crows by George R. R. MartinA Storm of Swords by George R. R. MartinA Clash of Kings by George R. R. MartinA Game of Thrones by George R. R. MartinThe Pacific War by Saburo IenagaEmpires of the Word by Nicholas OstlerHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. RowlingHarry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone by J. K. RowlingReason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry EagletonSocialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny

New Year's Eve 2011

2012-01-02T20:39:00.004-05:00

Until now I have never ventured anywhere near Midtown on New Year's Eve. I used to think that the raucous crowds that fill Times Square were the problem, but this year I found that it was the police crowd control tactics that filled the night with inconvenience. Despite this, I had a wonderful time.

Mark's employers had tickets to see David Hyde Pierce in Close Up Space at City Center but couldn't use them so they gave them to us. It is a good thing that we didn't have to pick up the tickets at the box office since we needed to show them to police at every corner in order to even get to the theater. The play was amusing and kept me laughing consistently despite being a bit uneven and losing momentum toward the end. We had excellent seats, though, and we were close enough for me to be surprised at how old Pierce looks.

We had dinner reservations afterward at Bar Americain, which was only 2 blocks away. It took us much longer to get there, however, due less to the gathering crowds than to the security measures. The restaurant had emailed us a letter documenting our reservation, and having to show these papers at so many barricades and checkpoints felt like being trapped in Cold War Berlin. Was all of this really necessary? We were 10 blocks away from Times Square, so it makes no sense for this to be related to concerns about terrorism - if you really wanted to set off a bomb or nerve gas or something for New Year's Eve youd could just book a hotel room in Times Square and set up your devise ahead of time. The more likely purpose was crowd control, and not physical control of movement. The mere presence of so many uniformed police officers and the excessive inconveniences projected an image of power and control that was probably more than enough to keep the fearful calmed and the potentially unruly cowed.

Dinner at Bar Americain was exceptional, both in flavor and expense. Our bill, plus tip, came to about $300 (but to be fair half of that was champagne). I felt very elegant and sophisticated in such a luxurious ambiance, and the hostess was very sweet in offering to take our picture together. We seemed to annoy the creepy man in his 50s sitting next to us with his call girl for the evening. That's what she must have been, being at least 20 years younger, dressed provactively, complimenting him effusively in her southern accent, and pawing all over him at every opportunity. After making snide comments to her about us, he told her before leaving to wait for him back in their hotel room while he went out. He must have paid for the whole evening.

The restaurant surprised me when my medium rare filet mignon came out medium well. They apologized profusely and returned with a properly cooked dish and comped a desert by way of restitution. That was the only hiccup of an otherwise excellent meal.

We left Bar Americain at 11:30 and didn't know what to do. We had in mind to go to ring in the New Year at Vlada or Therapy, but the barricades stood in our way. We were only two blocks away from Vlada, but were not allowed to cross Seventh Avenue. I politely asked one of the extremely hot police officers how we could get to the west side and he told us we could cross over at 57th Street. At 57th, however, the cops there told us to go to 59th. At 59th, with only 10 minutes to midnight, it was absurd to think we could get to a bar in time and, moreover, the crowds and barriers were even more impenetrable here. We gave up and decided to try to get to the A train back to Mark's apartment but the only potential way through was to go into Central Park.

And it was there, just as I was complaining about how inconvenient these crowd control measures were, that the clock struck 12 and we discovered we were in the perfect vantage point for the Central Park fireworks.

It was pleasant end to the old year and happy start to the new.

Great Way to End 2011

2012-01-01T18:54:00.004-05:00

UPDATED

Something I missed during the preparation of New Year's Eve festivities (of which more later) is that President Obama has signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 despite supposed "severe reservations."

These reservations, of course, were not severe enough to warrant exercising his Constitutional prerogative (and oath-bound obligation) to veto legislation harmful to the Republic. Instead, he issued a signing statement in which he promises to never actually use this authority.

Obama is correct that these provisions do not actually change anything. The powers to indefinitely detain alleged terrorists or accomplices to terror in military custody without charge or trial has been claimed by the Executive Branch since 2001 and has been upheld in court cases - it just hasn't been formally codified in law until yesterday. Obama's assurance that he will not authorize the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial is laughable since he also promised not to use signing statements like his predecessor did. Even if we can trust him on this, it does nothing to constrain any future president.

As time - and this deliberately endless War on Terror goes on - the powers of the President keep expanding. Obama in this regard is actually worse than Bush if only that a "constitutional scholar" should know better. Obama's continuation of Bush's foreign and national security policies has confirmed them as acceptable precedent and further entrenched them into American law and governance. No conceivable victor in the 2012 Presidential race is likely to reverse this trend, and given the huge organs of state and tremendous amount of wealth and power that both supports and is derived from this process, it is increasingly unlikely that a reversal will ever be possible. It is bad enough that the "imperial presidency" is no longer just a metaphor: the power of the office now attracts the character of individual that find imperial power attractive. History bears witness that this is never a good thing.

UPDATE

The Onion's faux "person on the street" comments feature "American Voices" on this development is so excellent one wonders if its creator might have an indefinite military detention in his or her future:

Despite having fought against many of its provisions, President Obama signed a defense appropriations bill that allows the military to detain American citizens indefinitely. What do you think?

- I don't see why this even matters. Why would we need to detain American citizens indefinitely when we already have the authority to shoot missiles at them from drones?

- Yes, but to be fair, he gave up because it was easier.

- I wonder what all those guys Obama beat out for the Nobel Peace Prize are doing now.

Princesses

2011-12-24T23:54:00.000-05:00

The Disney empire is adding to its already crowded stable of princesses with the inclusion of "Sofia the First" who is aptly named for being unique among her fellows by dint of her young age. While the other princesses are young nubile women of marital age, Sofia is a little girl. Lest anyone worry that this means a lack of pretty dresses and sparkly shoes, the character's creators assure us that the show will teach the universally applicable lesson that "what makes a real princess is what’s inside, not what’s outside."

What the hell does this mean?

What makes a "real princess" is either being born to someone of princely rank or higher or marrying a prince. From the Disney canon, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, and Jasmine fall under the first category and Cinderella and Belle (and most recently Tiana) qualify for the second.

That's it. Except in the rare occasions when a woman exercises a sovereign title suo jure her status is simply that of a decorative appendage to the court of her father or her husband. Women are princesses because they are caught up in structures of class and gender relations where power (or at the very least wealth and social prestige) is held by heredity within certain bloodlines.

One might claim that all of these considerations are external to the individual, that they are part of the "outside" of her character. However, to the extent that the class and gender relations that define the position of princess are also responsible for the princess' very existence - hat she would not be who she is without them - a dialectical philosophy of internal relations would then agree that what makes a real princess is on the inside.

Is that what Disney was going for? Or perhaps were they suggesting that one becomes a princess by internalizing the classism and sexism that defines the system? Or are they suggesting that a princess is a princess -and the ruling elite as a whole is a ruling elite - because on the inside they bear superior genes as a superior breed of human?

Which is it, Disney?

On Peoplehood

2011-12-22T09:34:00.005-05:00

It is with some regret I must finally reliquish the Kaplanian understanding of Jewish religious practices as the "folkways" of the Jewish people.

This is a tremendous conclusion to reach because for the longest time this was the prism in which I understood Judaism. The problem is that I no longer believe that "the Jewish people" exists.

The doctrine of "peoplehood" is itself problematic. It originated in the 19th century Romantic movements, the product of nostalgia, wishful thinking, and not a small amount of racism. The belief in organic "peoples" as families writ large served a useful pretext for Allied involvement in the First World War when British and American soldiers should both fight - without a trace of irony - for the freedom of small nations. The doctrine of national self-determination then was enshrined in international law with post-war creation of many new nations. The idea of peoplehood, though, was taken to its most extreme fulfillment though by Hitler. In the name of his people, he annexed Austria and the Sudetenland into the Reich and then sought "living space" for his people's expansion.

That the idea of a "people" has been used for some pretty horrific purposes does not mean that it is bad in itself. The existence of peoples is a historical fact. The problem arises, though, when the idea of a people conflicts with the reality on the ground of how people actually behave and their real life experience.

It is a common belief in the Jewish world (and even in the antisemitic world) that the Jewish people is, despite its internal diversity, a unifed whole. We are expected to believe and to give lipservice to the notion that the differences between us are superficial and that deep down there is more that unites us than divides us and we are all one tribe.

While I do preference material forces, I do not deny that ideas have significant influence on human life. Ideas and beliefs, however, are only historically significant to the degree that they influence or determine material action. Individuals may believe and say that they believe that the all comprise one people, but it is their actual behavior that determines the reality.

The reality among the Jewish community today is that if we are not yet a constellation of related yet distinct "peoples," we are at the very least well on the way in that direction. I can identify at least three "Jewish peoples."

First, there is the population of the State of Israel. The Israelis are the Jewish version of the standard model of traditional peoplehood. They are a collection of individuals living together in a common territory who share a common national and ethnic identitiy transmitted through a common language and culture and expressed through a state structure. These elements unite the Israelis and at the same time distinguish them from other "peoples" as well as from other Jews. Non-Israeli Jews may learn to speak Hebrew, may eat falafel and shnitzel and Israeli salad, may visit Israel all they like, and may attempt to import elements of Israeli culture into their daily lives, but at the end of the day they are not Israelis. The Israeli people's shared historical experience and political and cultural self-expression sets them apart.

I count the Orthodox as a second "Jewish people." The Orthodox rigorously maintain their distinctiveness not only from Gentiles, but also from other Jews: secure in their own superiority, their treatment of non-Orthodox Jews ranges from condescension to contempt. They are a continuation of the exclusionary trends of pre-modern Jewish life and intensified in reaction against emancipation and modernity. Their fundamentalist religion defines and reinforces their group identity and the educational institutions, houses of worship, and even the family life founded upon its priciples ensures cohesion. There is tremendous diversity within the Orthodox world, but the modality of their religious (and thereby community) life varies only by degrees of strictness and limitations of engagement with the non-Jewish world. A significant portion of the worldwide Orthodox population overlaps with the population of Israel, but there is a distinction between the Orthodox and the secular Israelis: the latter will generally view the Jewish state as the political expression of their national sovereignty; the former, to varying degrees, will see the State as means to an end for their religious worldview - an imperfect one at that. The same opinion applies to the government of the United States.

The third "Jewish people" I identify is liberal Diaspora Jewry, the people to which I belong. Many liberal Diaspora Jews are secular and nonreligious and thus view their Jewishness in ethnic and cultural terms not completely unlike secular Israelis. However, the liberal Diaspora Jews tend to view their Jewishness as just one element of their identity. Differences in religious practice set them apart from the Orthodox and differences in historical experience - the obvious difference of being citizens of a totally different country separate them from Israelis. Diversity must also be acknowledged. "Liberal" in this sense is a descriptor of religious attitude, not necessarily political ideology: there are plenty of secular or non-Orthodox religious Jews who are just as ferociously pro-Israel as their Orthodox fellow travelers. The general trend is for liberal Diaspora Jews in America (where most of them reside) to view themselves as Americans first whose ethnic background and/or religious expression is Jewish with their religious practice on a continuum from totally secular to fully engaged.

The divisions that I perceive are strongest between the Liberal Diaspora Jews and the Orthodox, with a lesser division between the Diaspora and Israel. As a Liberal Diaspora Jew, I feel distinct from the Orthodox on religious grounds. I do not believe in their formulation of Jewish law and I find many aspects of their religious practice and way of life offensive, just as they view my religious observance - such as it is - inferior and inauthentic. The Orthodox will not worship in non-Orthodox synagogues, do not generally enjoy cooperating with non-Orthodox clergy in community organizations, do not view non-Orthodox conversions as valid, and do not generally intermarry with non-Orthodox or secular families.

Americans and Israelis, despite whatever common religious traditions or ethnic heritage they may share, are nonetheless citizens of separate and distinct sovereign nations, each of which should have the total claim on their respective citizens' allegiance. The interests of those nations do not necessarily coincide. Israel has been known to conduct espionage operations within the United States (such as the case of Jonathan Pollard and the mysterious "dancing Israelis" of 9/11. The Israeli government also pursues unwise policies with regard to its neighbors and the occupied territories that contribute to the instability of the Middle East and the insecurity of the United States. Stereotypically, Israelis have been known to devalue Diaspora Jews (while welcoming their money) and disrespecting the authenticity of Diaspora Jewish life. Moreover, Israelis tend to view view Orthodoxy as the authentic Judaism and, despite being largely secular, the synagogues they don't go to are Orthodox. As a result, non-Orthodox Jewish movements have only a minuscule representation in the Holy Land.

Three Jewish peoples, rooted in a shared history yet also independent and distinct. This eliminates two of the most vexing problems caused by the doctrine of ahavat Yisra'el, the love that every Jew is expected to bear to every other member of his or her people. It is in some cases an unrequited love, though, that requires one to embrace the Orthodox and the Israelis despite the concerns outlined above. If those groups however are are not members of one's people then the contradiction is removed.

On the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

2011-12-16T14:07:00.003-05:00

After my absorbing (and disturbing) visit to Mr. Fiend's blog, I was inspired to finally sit down and read the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This document, which is the most successful piece of antisemitic and conspiracy theory literature in history, is proof that the paranoid conspiracy nut's mind is governed strongly by confirmation bias. Only someone predisposed to believe that it really is the minutes of a meeting of the leaders of international Jewry laying out their plan for global domination could read this document and accept it as true.

Even if the majority of the "Protocols" had not been plagiarized from a French pamphlet criticizing the policies of Napoleon III via an imaginary conversation between Machiavelli and Montesquieu in hell, the absurdity of the claims about this text would be evident from its form alone (not to mention a dose of common sense, a trait that conspiracy theorists generally lack).

If I were part of a secret evil conspiracy plotting to take over the world, I would not compose a long (there are 24 "Protocols" and they are exceedingly tedious) description of my evil plan and commit it to writing. That goes against the spirit of several items on the Evil Overlord List and it's just plain dumb.

The Protocols are supposed to be a secret internal document, not a manifesto, but they are written in a polemical and expository style not unlike the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, the Unabomber's bizarre neo-Luddite screed...or a pamphlet criticizing the policies of Napoleon III. One would presume that the inner circle of the Evil Zionist Conspiracy would not need to have their own evil conspiracy explained to them. Those other documents were all intended to be disseminated to the masses and thus needed to explain the background and fundamental ideals of their movements to the unfamiliar. An internal memo within the conspiracy would not need to go into so much detail. I have both prepared for and sat in on many meetings, many of them involving wealthy Jews, and one of the cardinal rules for meeting handouts is the shorter and simpler the better. If the Evil Zionist Conspiracy really needed to commit their evil plan to writing, a short list of bullet points would have sufficed, not the tedious verbiage of the Protocols.

The next question raised, though, is why the Evil Zionist Conspiracy would want to commit their plan to writing in the first place. Once information is externalized into a permanent form, it risks being leaked. If a plan requires the utmost secrecy and if there is no compelling need to put it in writing, a good rule of thumb would be simply "Don't." Share the evil plan orally, and - better - make sure that information about the plan is distributed on a need-to-know basis. The fewer people who know the full picture of the evil plan, the better its chances of remaining secret and uncompromised. If each cell only knows the part of the plan that concerns their specific tasks, then the capture or defection of one will not imperil the whole operation.

The Protocols themselves, and the imaginative conspiracy theories of Mr. Fiend and his ilk, portray the Evil Zionist Conspiracy as well-nigh omnipotent. They are also intelligent and cunning enough to have secretly taken over the world's governments and financial system and infiltrated and subverted our cultural institutions without anyone but a few enlightened individuals catching on. That is no mean feat, and it requires careful planning, discipline, and practically superhuman skills and smarts. If the conspiracy is that powerful and intelligent, one has to wonder how they could be so stupid not only to completely explain their evil plan but let it slip out of their grip to be divulged to the masses.

The logical explanation, of course, is that the document is fake and the conspiracy doesn't actually exist. But the conspiracy theorist, for whom belief in the evil plan has become practically an article of religious faith, cannot accept that and takes the document at face value as part of the canon of holy writ that supports his worldview. The omnipotent evil conspiracy would not be so incompetent as to let their evil plan get out by accident, so they must have deliberately let it slip out knowing that no one would believe they would be so stupid to do so that the majority would then dismiss the evil plan as a red herring while the truth went unheeded under their nose.

Unless that's what the evil overlords want us to think, and they know that we would guess that the plan must be true because most people would believe it was false and therefore it must really be disinformation distracting us from the real evil plan...

One could go on and on, but that way leads to madness - and probably also to the Lizard People.

Ding Dong the Hitch is Dead

2011-12-16T13:21:00.001-05:00

Christopher Hitchens is dead, and deserves just as much sympathy as he gave to Mother Theresa.

Hitchens' aggressive fundamentalist atheism irritated me, but beyond the stupidity of his logical positivist and reductionist worldview it did little real harm. No, my problem with Hitchens was his social and economic short-sightedness. With great relish (and with great financial remuneration), he unleashed his allegedly insightful critique and supposedly devastating wit to undermine the assumptions of religious belief - and given the danger posed to the world by fundamentalist religion, I cannot entirely disagree with his motivation even as I deplore both the style and substance of his arguments. My problem, however, is that in the comfort of his affluent (and decadent) bourgeois lifestyle, he did not feel any great compulsion to direct these talents of his toward questioning the social and economic assumptions that undergird systems that cause real material harm to actual people.

Even worse, his juvenile misotheism led him to interpret the September 11th attacks as a primarily religious act, a manifestation not geopolitical and anticolonial forces but instead fundamentalist religious belief. From this he proceeded to articulate an ugly anti-Muslim, anti-Arab ideology according to which he acted as cheerleader for the War on Terror, for the invasion of Iraq, and torture. He only rethought his opinion on "waterboarding" when he chose to undergo the procedure himself as a stunt, a change of heart that is less than impressive when reason and empathy alone should have sufficed to convince someone that the technique is a horrible thing to do to another human being.

I am pleased that all of the reactions on my social media feeds to Hitchens overdue passing have ranged from the critical to the scatological, but already the fellatory in memoriams are appearing online and in print from the so-called "liberal" press. Hitchens was a neocon who yoked himself to the atrocity of the Iraq War and deserves no praise or mourning but the condemnation he earned and the pity that he perhaps only grudgingly and too charitably deserves.

Insight on Antisemitism

2011-12-15T17:01:00.003-05:00

My experience last night, I think, might be illustrative of the mental and emotional processes that give rise to antisemitism.

My friend David and I had stumbled upon the coordinated network of pub trivia quizzes called "Geeks Who Drink," and we went to Pint (formerly Star Bar) in Jersey City to check it out.

There were only two of us, but I naively went in optimistic of our chances. However, there were many questions that left us completely stumped and it was very frustrating. At one point, we were dead last in the running and it made me resentful and mad. I'm smart! David is smart! We should have been doing so much better than we were! It wasn't fair!

There was a group of people near by who were having a much better time than I was. They had six people on their team, the maximum. I resented them because of their ability to recruit a larger and better team than I could muster. Their success (they ultimately won the night) made me suspect that they might be smarter (or at least more knowledgeable than me) and the sick little gears of my mind started turning. If they were smarter than me, then they must be superior to me. But I don't want them to be superior to me because that would mean that I was inferior! If they were winning, then they must believe that they are superior and they must therefore believe that I am inferior. How dare they exalt themselves over me! How dare they make me feel inferior.

Plus, they genuinely seemed to be having a good time. They cheered when they won, and I saw that as shoving their superiority in my face. I came to hate them for their success, for their strong team spirit, for their tight-knit group dynamic, and for the ugly superiority-inferiority crap I projected onto them through my own imagination.

If you replace "Winning pub trivia team" with "Jews," this starts to look like an old familiar story.

The next step, of course, would be to decide that the winning team had bribed the quizmaster or cheated as part of a grand conspiracy to take over the pub trivia world and cheat everyone else of their chance to win a $40 bar tab. But I didn't go that far, because I'm just severely emotionally disturbed and not completely insane.

Iraq War Ends

2011-12-15T16:05:00.003-05:00

The Pentagon declared today, 8 years after President George W. Bush stood in an absurd flight suit on an aircraft carrier and proclaimed "Mission Accomplished," that the US "mission" in Iraq is now over.

This is pretty much an arbitrary declaration given that the "mission" never had any clear objectives or conditions of victory and the rationale behind it kept changing from stopping Saddam Hussein from using his fictional Weapons of Mass Destruction to regime change and democratization to bringing the war to the terrorists.

What did we lose in this adventure? Brown University's Costs of War is a must-read. In the bottom line, the post-9/11 imperial expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost somewhere between $3.2-4 trillion dollars.

More importantly, per iCasualties, 4,484 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Per Iraq Body Count, somewhere between 104,000 and 113,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed (Brown estimates 126,000).

What do we have to show for it?

Saddam Hussein, a some-time puppet who had been a castrated nuisance since the early 1990s, has been removed. A brutal authoritarian, he will not be missed but we still turn a blind eye to the injustices and human rights abuses committed by China or Saudi Arabia.

Iraq now has a somewhat functioning republican government, but there is no history or tradition of respect for individual rights and the rule of law and its institutions - imposed effectively under duress - are of questionable legitimacy. A not-impossible scenario is that the "democratic" government could be captured by the same radical religious fundamentalists that Hussein's secular Ba'athist regime kept in check. The worst case scenario is that the rival factions within Iraq will not be able or willing to compromise and resolve their differences through non-violent political means and the country will devolve again into civil war.

The United States' reputation and prestige and regard on the world stage is still bruised and black-eyed from the Bush administration's unilateral military expeditions.

With the justification of wartime necessity, the powers of the President and the military have expanded tremendously with no apparent means yet to restrict them to their previous constitutional limits. The President can now, effectively, declare anyone anywhere a terrorist or "enemy combattant" and have them either imprisoned or even killed - even US citizens! - without due process or oversight of any kind.

All of that is apparently excusable, because a few people - the corporate elite of the military-industrial complex - made a metric shit-ton of money, and in the long run that's all that matters.

The monopolization of physical force - and its use to wage war - is one of the prerogatives of governments and governments exist to protect and promote the interests of the ruling class of the society in question. Wealth in our society is controlled by capital and capital is owned by the shareholders of the major corporations, which include the investment banks and private equity funds and venture capitalists. There interest has always been in anything which earns a return - both in the short term and the long. Wars are always profitable, as they require constant production and their provide opportunities for the rapacious appropriation of public funds through over-generous contracts. We are not leaving Iraq completely. Military bases remain - we still have such bases in Japan and Germany - for us to project our might when needed to bring the natives back into line of they get restless.

The disruption of the checks and balances system and the gross augmentation of the powers of the president mean that the capitalist class will in future only have to focus their influence on fewer individuals, fewer levers of power, to get the nation's political machinery to operate the way they desire. We have now in effect an emperor with term limits, an emperor that is the bought-and-sold property of his and his party's big campaign donors. As corporate influence over government increases, the freedom of the average citizen to participate in the democratic process decreases, especially now post-Citizens United when money is officially protected speech. It was always true that the American Republic was a pay-to-play system, but that used to be hidden behind obfuscation and ideology. We've entered a brave new world of greater, more brutal honesty.

Plutocracy and empire. That is what those 4,484 soldiers died for. That is what those 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed for. Mission accomplished.

Antisemitism and me

2011-12-15T00:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back.

A random reference to "dancing Israelis" on 9/11 puzzled me, so I googled the phrase and was thereby led to the blog of a 25-year-old man from San Diego. John Friend is a reasonably handsome young man who is a very prolific blogger (well, anyone who writes more than me qualifies as prolific in my book so that's not saying much).

His primary focus is 9/11 and his conviction that the official story is false and that the destruction of the World Trade Center was not brought about by the impact of two jetliners. As it turns out, I agree with him. Where we part ways, however, is that he thinks the attacks were orchestrated by Israel and carried out with the collusion of highly-placed Jewish traitors and dual-loyalists in the US government operating in Israel's interests.

But that's not all. The Jews control the media and the finance industry. The Holocaust was a lie. The Jews are responsible for the recession and somehow also for homosexuality. Israel is the center of a network of crime and terror that rules the world. And so forth.

And this guy is not alone. His comments threads and his links list are populated with hundreds of fellow-travelers who agree with him all or in part. While Friend didn't to my observation come out and say anything explicit himself, commenters that he failed to challenge and instead welcomed expressed the desire to eliminate the Jewish menace once and or all and recommended Mein Kampf as enlightening reading material.

How does this happen? How does a kid get born in 1986 in Nebraska and move to San Diego and end up not only a paranoid conspiracy theorist but an antisemite as well?

Let me clarify that word. I do not think it is antisemitic to criticize Israel. It is antisemitic, however, to treat "the Jews" as a monolith and blame us all collectively for the real or imagined crimes committed by some of us.

I knew people like Friend existed, but it was only an intellectual concept before today. Today I really felt the implications of a large interconnected group of people, enabled by the Internet, who would distrust, condemn, and hate me for no reason other than my religious affiliation. I found this blog irresistibly compelling. I couldn't stop reading and clicking links to find out more. Everything I read made me not angry, but deeply and profoundly sad.

Part of my sadness was in realizing the blogger was not a disheveled middle-aged kook holed up in a compound in Montana but rather a cute young guy in an ostensibly liberal city.

The rest, however, is due in no small part to the fact that Friend and his comrades validate by their existence the worst depraved rantings of the fanatical pro-Israel right - including the notion that the "Occupy" movements are antisemitic fronts. Whenever anyone even remotely suggests that Israel is not practically perfect in every way - even Jewish US Ambassadors to Belgium who have the temerity to opine that anti-Jewish sentiment among Muslims is connected to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - "the Israel lobby" foams at the mouth and demands punishment. These people, hyper-vigilant of any attempt to "delegitimate" the Jewish state, instead do more harm than good for their cause. Their stridency alienates me from Israel: if Orthodox Jews, Christian fundamentalist, Islamophobes, neocons, and Republicans are the Zionist entity's primary defenders, do I really want to be counted among them?

I resent feeling compelled to care about and support a country on the other side of the planet that I have never been to and have no connection with. Why can't Judaism simply be a religion and a way of spiritual life without messy geopolitical implications?

In one sense, though, this was a positive experience for me. It is said that if you ever forget you're a Jew, an antisemite will remind you. The deep and thorough hatred for "the Jews" - always "the Jews" and not "the Zionists" or "Israel" - that fills Friend's blog and those of his allies really hit me in a visceral way. When he writes of how "the Jews" have taken over the country and are the source of all evil and injustice in the world, that bigotry includes me as its target. I'm not an Israeli or a banker or even a Zionist, but I'm still a Jew. If that means that I am part of the group that paranoid self-deluded narcissistic conspiracy theorists hate above all others, then it mustbmean that Jews are doing something right and I'm proud to be one.

Halloween Costumes

2011-11-01T11:57:00.003-04:00

1984 - Kindergarten

Alvin the Chipmunk

I recall being inordinately fond of this cartoon featuring the adventures of high-pitched musical rodents and so I elected to dress up as the lead character in Kindergarten. My mother ironed a large letter A onto a red nightshirt (I think) and I sported a red ball cap and a little black circle sticker for a nose.

1985 - First Grade

Clown

Yes, a clown. I don't remember how I got talked into this. Was I really that naive or did I just not have any ideas? Perhaps my mother suggested it and I didn't question her or come up with alternatives? All I remember about this costume is my mother and aunt gushing about how cute I looked - and my peers teasingly me mercilessly in school. This featured a colorful wig, ghastly makeup, and some form motley assembled by my mother's sewing machine.

1986 - Second Grade

Darth Vader

Fuck yeah! Now we're talking! Perhaps to wash away the shame and lingering greasepaint of the previous year's debacle, I chose the ultimate badass for the year I was 7. My enduring love of Star Wars had already begun and with it my affinity for the Empire and the Dark Lord of the Sith. The difficult here was the mask. I don't think Vader masks were easily available back then or, if they were, they were beyond my family's finances. Moreover, it was not within our skill level to make a replica out of papier mache or the like. Instead, we had to improvise and use the imagination. My dad got a motorcycle helmet somewhere and spray painted it black. My mother made me a cape and a mockup of the control box for the chest. I supplied the black turtleneck, black pants, black snow boots, and black mittens from my own clothes. When my dad surprised me with an actual red lightsaber toy from a garage sale, the costume was complete. I felt very cool and, as I recall, this year was an exceptionally good haul of candy.

1987 - Third Grade

King (Arthur?)

Third grade was complicated because I transferred from Most Holy Rosary parochial school to Danforth Magnet Elementary public school. After the success of Vader the year before, I remember having difficulty coming up with an idea. My mom had been working on Magi costumes for a Christmas pageant so it was easy to come up with a crown and a red cape. I think a plastic sword serving as Excalibur allowed me to claim to be Arthur King of the Britons ("King of the who?").

1988 - Fourth Grade

Pterodactyl

This costume idea was brilliant in theory but failed in execution and reception. Like most preteen boys I went through a phase when I was obsessed with dinosaurs. In one of the many books I read on the subject, I was struck by a particular artist's rendering of a pterodactyl and decided that's what I wanted for Halloween. With my mom's help we carefully made a headpiece and mask like the dinosaur's head, and she made wings attached to my arms out of either a black gauze or some kind of shiny material. Also, everything was very orange both because the picture I based my idea on was orange and out of the interest of nighttime visibility. Despite my wishful thinking and my mom's encouragement, I looked stupid and I earned another year of vicious teasing.

1989 - Fifth Grade

Napoleon

Bouncing back to imperial badassery, my lifelong obsession with the Napoleonic era had blossomed and so I wanted to be Little Corporal the year I was 11. I based my costume on the famous David painting of the Emperor in his study. I had a white shirt, white pants with white tub socks pulled up to the knee, and black loafers. My mom took a blue sport coat, trimmed it, lined it with red, and made gold epaulets for the shoulders. Some old medallions and key chains (one was the Chrysler logo) were hung from tricolor ribbons to make medals. A tricorn hat refolded to a bicorn and a plastic sword completed the ensemble. I felt exceptionally cool.

1990 - Sixth Grade

The Terminator (?)

My memory is hazy about this. I think this year I went as the T-500. This was probably another year of poor ideas, and I recall being amused and influenced by the comic strip FoxTrot: I identified a lot with the nerdy son Jason and during an arc this year he dressed as the Terminator. I wore a black t-shirt, black jeans, black boots, a black jacket that was not leather but looked kind of shiny, and sunglasses. I also tried to style my hair like Ah-nold and got a plastic shotgun. I don't remember actually trick-or-treating in this though: I think I went instead to a Halloween party as the Science Center in downtown Syracuse (the precursor to the Museum of Science and Technology).

1991 - Seventh Grade

The Phantom of the Opera

This will come as a shock, but I'm gay. I think this was the year I first really fell in love with musical theater, and I wanted to be the Phantom. This was relatively easy: white shirt, black suit coat, black pants, black clip-on bowtie, black cape and hat together with a hat. My dad cut a hockey mask into approximately the shape used for the show.

1992 - Eighth Grade

Bolshevik (?)

This is another year that is hazy. My uncle Ray (or maybe it was his son, my cousin Raymond?) had gone to Russia and come back with a black ushanka that somehow came to me. One constant of Halloween in Syracuse was that it nearly always snowed and more often than not a winter coat was a necessary addition to any costume. I think I combined the hat with a vaguely military gray winter coat and went as a Russian revolutionary. Whether I had a red star on the hat or carried a red flag, I don't remember.

1993 - Ninth Grade

The Phantom of the Opera

Yes, a repeat. A gay repeat. I was still obsessed with musical theater and for my 15th birthday my parents took me to Toronto to see Phantom at the Pantages Theater (we could just as easily have come to New York, but my mother was adamantly oppsed to this city). I augmented my costume from two years previously with an actual tuxedo jacked in place of a plain sport coat and a tuxedo shirt. I had bought souvenirs at the theater that came in a branded Phantom plastic bag, and I used this as my trick-or-treat bag.

This was not a happy experience, however. About midway through the night, I went to the house of a family friend. The door was answered by a teenage girl who proceeded to hand give out the candy. My mom was a few steps away from the porch and I was the only trick-or-treater. An older teenage boy wearing a red parka was also there and I think he may have been trying to flirt with the girl. I remember very clearly that he looked at me and I looked at him and he grabbed my bag and ran off. I was stunned and didn't move. I didn't let go of the handles and felt the plastic pull against my fingers, digging into the skin a little before snapping. My mom tried to stop him but he was long gone. That's when I started screaming for the bastard's blood for a while until I started sobbing. I didn't really care about the candy: I was wounded from being victimized and for having the bag stolen: I wanted to keep the Phantom bag as a souvenir of the Toronto trip.

My dad found the bag on the street the next day so I did get it back (with the handles ripped) but that was cold comfort. That was the last time I went trick-or-treating. That's probably for the best, as I was getting too old for it.

1997 - Freshman year of college

Stalin

My college had an annual campus Halloween party and I came up with a costume idea looking through my closet at home. At the Army and Navy store in Downtown Syracuse I had gotten a white Soviet military jacket that had gold buttons with the star and hammer and sickle. It also featured red and gold shoulder boards with gold stars on them. I wore this with a pair of black pants, a white shirt with a red gold and black tie, and an ushanka (not the one from several years ago but a new one featuring an authentic Soviet crest). A fake mustache and pipe completed the ensemble and I thought I looked very cool.

My social life on campus deteriorated quickly in succeeding years and I did not dress up any subsequent year.

2001 - First Halloween in New York

Hitler in Drag

This was a classic and pretty much untoppable. In 2001, aside from some unpleasantness in September, two Hitlerrific things hit pop culture. First, The Producers opened on Broadway to massive acclaim. Second, and less remembered, an ultimately disappointing psychobiography of the Fuhrer was released called The Hidden Hitler that claimed he was secretly gay.

In my collection, I had a pair of leather military boots, a gray East German officers jacket that looked similar enough to a WW2 Wehrmacht jacket, a grey cap with a Totenkopf insignia, an Iron Cross, and a riding crop (don't ask). A trip to a vintage clothing store found me a gaudy old cocktail dress with a black skirt and gold bustier. Panty hose, elbow length gloves, generous make-up, a mustache, and a red and black boa completed the look.

I marched in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and reveled in the reactions from the crowd: people who saw me were either laughing hysterically or gaping in horror. As I waited for my companion at the end of the parade, about a dozen people wanted to have their picture taken with me and a gaggle of drag queens complimented me on my makeup and outfit. I couldn't think of anything that could top this costume, and so I haven't dressed up since.

Blogger's Block

2011-10-31T22:39:00.002-04:00

I'm stuck.

I just don't have the inspiration, focus, or energy to write anything interesting and profound (of course, that assumes that anything I've written heretofore has been interesting and profound).

I have about a dozen incomplete posts in the hopper that will probably never see the light of day, so I'm just going to scrap them and start over.

I'll try and experiment for the month of November and try to write something each day, just to write and maybe thereby get myself into the habit again.

Yom Kippur with Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-11T12:58:00.002-04:00

As we approached Yom Kippur, I had a nebulous idea that it might be nice to take some time off from the services in the late afternoon doldrum between Musaf and Neilah and join the Occupy Wall Street protest at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street.

Through the magic of Facebook, I learned that there was an initiative to organize a Kol Nidre service to take place as part of the protest and I didn't have to think twice before deciding to join. The original Facebook event page asked for volunteers willing to help lead the service and so I offered my meager abilities; fortunately they recruited enough rabbis, rabbinical students, and cantors that they didn't need to take me up on the offer.

One might question the propriety of appropriating the most sacred day on the Jewish calendar for a political stunt. Any doubts one might have, however, can be assuaged by reading the haftarah traditionally assigned for the morning service of Yom Kippur:

"Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?"
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress all your laborers!
Because you fast in strife and contention,
And you strike with a wicked fist!
your fasting today is not such
As to make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when the Lord is favorable?
No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

Then shall your light burst through like the dawn
And your healing spring up quickly;
Your Vindicator shall march before you,
The Presence of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then, when you call, the Lord will answer;
When you cry, He will say: Here I am.
If you banish the yoke from your midst,
The menacing hand and evil speech,
And you offer your compassion to the hungry
And satisfy the famished creature —
The shall your light shine in darkness,
And your gloom shall be like noonday.

Yom Kippur is not just a day of private personal instrospection but also one of communal soul-searching and recommitment to righteousness. The High Priest in ancient times would make atonment for himself, the Jewish people, and the whole world and so the litany of sins we recite and confess - in the first person plural - point to societal ills as well as individual transgressions. The point was driven home by one of the service leaders who reminded us that the 10th of Tishrei according to the Midrash was the date when God forgave the Israelites for the sin of worshipping the Golden Calf: that is, the sin of believing that gold is God.

I had not personally experienced the Occupy Wall Street protest before and I was initially overwhelmed by the crowds and the noise and the intensive police presence. The service was not held in Zuccotti Park itself - there was simply no room for that - but in the plaza in front of Brown Brothers Harriman across the street. As the sun sank behind the skyscrapers of the financial district a large congregation gathered around the Red Cube art installation. I was joined by my coworker Jocelyn, who forewent services at her Upper West Side congregation because she believed her father would have wanted her down on Wall Street that night instead.

The roar of the crowd of protestors and the incessant symphony of drum beats and chants made it very difficult to hear, so the service leaders instituted a telephone-game style of public address : they would shout short phrases from the center of the gathering which everyone who could heard would repeat to spread the word. It worked reasonably well. The other unique element of the environment was the smell of roasting lamb and chicken from the five halal meat trucks parked along the street behind us. Fortunately, the fast had only just begun and no one was yet so hungry that the smell would prove distracting. I imagined that it was a hint of what it must have smelled like in the Temple as the offerings were incinerated on the altar.

As I looked around at the hundreds of people gathered in that space, I had two thoughts. First, I did not recognize a single person there. Second, it didn't matter because because I felt a powerful sense of belonging and togetherness and unity of purpose with these strangers that I have not felt in any Jewish event in a long, long time. There was a spirit to the service that I cannot describe in words, just an intense sensation deep within my soul that said "These are my people and this is where I belong." The only thing I think that can compare was the feeling I felt at my very first Yom Kippur in 2003. During the three recitations of Kol Nidre, as the cantors attempted to make themselves heard in the center of the group, we all chanted along softly to ourselves to follow along. I really did feel as if our congregation below was joined with the congregation above.

That feeling sustained me through the service, which is good because it was very difficult for me to maintain any kind of focus on the liturgy. The acoustics were terrible and I had a hard time keeping up with the service (the multiplicity of machzorim didn't help matters, and the Reconstructionist Movement's edition is probably the most poorly organized prayer book I've ever used). To add to the fun, the wound I'd inflicted on myself that morning, slicing open my thumb accidentally while slicing a baguette, decided to open up again and start bleeding. Fortunately, one of my neighbors had some Kleenex and my coworker's friend had a Band-Aid.

After the service was ended, I took a stroll through the protest area to listen to the music, read the signs, and take in the experience. I was impressed with the idealism on display and how orderly and unified the demonstration was. I drank in the atmosphere of the protest and felt that it shared some of the same spirit I had felt in the minyan earlier and headed back home with my cynical heart enlivened a little bit by the inspiration of the evening.

My only disappointments are that I could not have been more involved in organizing the event (I just don't know enough people and don't have enough connections or influence to make such a thing happen) and that of all the pictures that were taken of the event and posted around the internet, only one shows only the back of my head.

Regardless, this will be an evening I will never forget.

On Capital Punishment

2011-09-21T23:45:00.005-04:00

As of 11:08 PM, Troy Davis was judicially murdered by the State of Georgia.

I do not and cannot make any statement as to Davis's actual guilt or innocence in the death of Mark MacPhail. I simply suggest that if there is any question as to the legitimacy of the conviction then perhaps a permanent and irreversible sentence is perhaps not the best of available options.

That is the crux of the matter. Humanity is fallible and prone to error. We cannot be relied upon to make the correct decision in every situation. When the life or death of another being hangs in the balance, a simple humility and recognition of the limits of our faculties should encourage us to seek other means of enforcing justice.

It is for that reason that I oppose capital punishment. I can respect the notion in the abstract that those who make war upon society do not deserve to live within society, but I accept that we do not have the capacity to guarantee that only those who are truly guilty suffer the ultimate punishment. It is better to let an infinite number of guilty men live than to kill one innocent man.

I would like at this time to propose an alternative.

The welfare of society is gauged to its collective wealth, and the wealth of a society is measured by the value it enjoys. Value is the product of human labor, and the unique source of human labor is the labor-power that resides in every human being. Value is in one sense relative, since use value depends on the needs or desires of any given individual; exchange value, however, upon which the entire system of commodities is founded, presumes and equivalency of value based on the labor socially necessary to produce it. All human labor therefore is equal and so are all human beings as sources of labor power.

A murderer kills a human being and destroys a source of labor power. Moreover, the murderer robs from society by depriving it of the potential value created by that source of labor power. Is the solution, then, to kill the murderer and thus double the depletion of society's wealth?

The drive for vengeance is ancient and rooted deeply in our psyche. In law and custom, we find the notion of "an eye for an eye" in the Bible together with the stipulation that the murderer should die for his sins. Yet the lex talionis was intended rather to limit retribution and ensure that the punishment fits the crime while the laws regarding the execution of murderers were based on the belief in the sanctity of the land and the defiling contaminant of bloodshed: only the blood of the killer was believed to be remove that stain.

We have evolved, in culture and religion, far beyond these concepts and so one questions why they should be necessary. The murderer, in killing another human being, deprives society of the labor-power he or she could potentially have contributed and therefore of the wealth he or she could have created. Do we then put the killer to death? In so doing, we deprive society even further, compounding the loss of one human life with two.

If we consign the murderer to life in prison as currently formulated, very little changes except that the murderer remains alive. However, he remains idle within his cell. His labor-power goes unactualized and no value is created. The net effect, from society's perspective, is the same as execution: two lives are lost and two sources of labor-power are removed from the wealth of society.

Would it not be better, then, to abolish the infantile absurdity of the death penalty? Is clearly does not function as a deterrent. The argument is made that an executed murderer will never post a threat to society again, but that same effect can be achieved through life imprisonment. As a form of societal vengeance it does not benefit the collective good in any demonstrable sense. Would it not be better to put the convicted criminal to work?

I propose the elimination of capital punishment and the root-and-branch reformation of the penitentiary system in this country. Those who are convicted of crimes against society - up to and including murder - have harmed society by their actions and should therefore be compelled to compensate society through their labor. I propose that in place of death we institute penal servitude for life (with lesser terms for lesser offenses). It would be important to make sure that the jobs given to convicts be unappealing or hazardous enough so as to discourage any Americans who might be in need of work from applying, but there are plenty of niches that could be filled and plenty of tasks that can be performed by such a captive labor force.

The labor-power and thereby the value created by a given convict laborer cannot compensate entirely for the labor power lost by the murder of his victim, but it can at the very least mitigate the loss. Constructive labor, also, can have a power rehabilitative effect on the convict: in investing his labor-power into a project he thereby buys into society and acquires a stronger incentive to ensuring stability and the rule of law. This does not occur in prisons today, where convicts exercise and bulk up and learn how to be better criminals.

Let us reason together and agree that capital punishment is impractical and destructive. Let us institute a new system whereby the punishment of crime reflects its actual social impact and where a man alive is always and everywhere valued above a man dead.

Troy Davis did not need to die nor can I say that he deserved to die. In this system I propose, he would have been put to vigorous but healthful work until his guilt or innocence could be determined. He might suffer the effect of the denial of freedom if he were in fact not guilty, but he would have had the opportunity by his labor to contribute to the general welfare and perhaps even be compensated financially for his work. If an error was made, it could be reversed - which is sadly more than he enjoyed in this world.

The death penalty is outdated, unnecessary, barbaric, and impractical. It should be abolished before more innocents are wrongly condemned and a new system should be implemented that does not so disastrously deplete society of its most valuable asset, human life.

Sending a message?

2011-09-15T14:37:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, Republican Bob Turner defeated David Weprin to fill the vacancy in New York House District 9 recently and ignobly vacated by Anthony Weiner. Turner will only fill out the remainder of Weiner's term and his district will most likely be eliminated before the next election. Moreover, since the Republicans already control the House this does not in any significant way affect the political status quo.

Since this election had no substantive importance, it has widely been interpreted as carrying symbolic weight. Specifically, former mayor Ed Koch, who is remains a Democrat in registration only, urged residents of District 9 to vote against the Democratic candidat toe "send a message" of rebuke to the ostensible leader of the Democratic Party, President Obama.

What kind of message? A large segment of the constituents of District 9 are not hideous crawfish-like aliens but rather Orthodox Jews, and the Orthodox community is extremely pro-Israel. One might even say absurdly and maybe even treasonably pro-Israel. I have encountered far too many members of that demographic for whom Israel is their highest concern and for whom the welfare of the United States - the nation which should claim their primary allegiance as citizens - matters only so far as is impacts Israel.

President Obama, of course, is the most rabidly and radically anti-Israel President in history. Obama's deep loathing of the Jewish state was made clear for all to see when he urged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to respect international law and common decency and halt the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied territories. If that wasn't to prove that Obama is secretly plotting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the map, the clearly antisemitic President actually called for a negotiated two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreed-upon land swaps.

Clearly, Obama's extremist anti-Israel agenda could not be allowed to pass unopposed(let's not quibble about how it's the exact same position that every American administration has previously taken). As urged by Koch and the Republican leadership it seems clear that the large Orthodox community in District 9 decided to use this election as a referendum on President Obama's leadership, especially his Israel policy.

The question is, how effective and meaningful a message is this?

American political parties in general - and the Democratic Party in particular - are not organized like their counterparts under parliamentary systems. There is no "party line" or unified platform to which all members of the party adhere. The leader of the party never holds the highest office in the land. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a member of the House of Representatives. Tim Kaine before her was the sitting Governor of Virgnia while Howard Dean before him was the former Governor of Vermont. Terry McAuliffe before him never held any political office.

Contrast this to the parliamentary system where the head of government holds that positions specifically because he is leader of the majority party. Stephen Harper is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Conservative Party controlls a majority in the Parliament in Ottawa: that is why Harper is Prime Minister. David Cameron is leader of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom and the Conservative Party controls the largest number of seats in the Parliament in Westminster, and he is Prime Minister as a result of the power-sharing coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Barack Obama is not the leader of the Democratic Party. All members of the Party are not obligated to agree with him or to vote as he suggests. If a significant number of Conservative MPs were to vote against Harper's legislative agenda, that could be taken as a vote of no confidence and he might be pressured to resign his leadership. The same does not happen in the US where the relationship between the Executive and the Legislative Branches is adversarial and defined by checks and balances.

A member of Congress and a President may be nominated by the same party and in general they share at least some ideological positions (otherwise they would not belong to the same party). However, there is no guarantee nor expectation nor requirement that a Representative in Congress will vote according to the instructions of the President. Neither Obama's position as President nor Weprin's seat in Congress (assuming he had won) would have depended on them agreeing about Israel. Thus, even if Obama were plotting the annihilation of the Jewish state, voting for a member of the opposite party in no wise could impact his policies or send any kind of message. Only if the majority in the House hinged on one seat could such a vote have any meaning.

This election, then, proves nothing. It is an atypical district with an atypical population that cannot be expanded to any national significance. Bob Turner's victory proves nothing but the stupidity of Democrats.

Anthiny Weiner was stupid to get himself into his scandal and he was stupid when he tried to cover it up. He had made his resignation inevitable by his stupidity.

The leaders of the Democratic Party in New York were stupid to run a non-entity like David Weprin to fill the seat, especially when his opponent had the backing of the rabble-rousing Tea Party. Democrats in general are stupid to perpetually allow Republicans to frame the debate. For some reason that defies explanation, Democrats allow Republicans to define their policies for them and then spend all their energy attempting to disprove the Republican smears. They allow Republicans to declare that their President is anti-Israel and then they are forced with the all but impossible task of removing that meme from the public's imagination.

Weprin's loss does carry a message: not that the American people reject and rebuke Obama's policies, but that the Democratic Party is in serious trouble through no fault but its own weakness.

Why is there a Department of Education?

2011-09-12T16:15:00.003-04:00

On the campaign trail last week, Rep. Michelle "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann expressed her desire, if elected, to get rid of the Department of Education.

Because the Constitution does not specifically enumerate nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education that historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state governments.

*sigh*

Let's go over this again.

1. The Constitution was ordained and established among other things "to provide for the general welfare...and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

2. Article II Section 8 grants Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes...to...provide for...the general welfare of the United States."

3. Article II Section 8 also grants Congress the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" to carry out the above.

The United States Congress made a policy decision that a federal Department of Education was in the interest of the general welfare of the United States to "superintend" (in Bachmann's phrase) over education of the nation's children (1, 2)

Congress then passed the necessary and proper laws to create and authorize the Department of Education (3) and allocate its budget from federal revenues (2).

The Department of Education was created for a purpose allowed by the Constitution by the powers granted by the Constitution through the process authorized by the Constitution. The inescapable conclusion, then, is that regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the necessity or value of the Department of Education, you must admit that ite existence and function is unquestionably constitutional.

Honestly, if the Department of Education is unconstitutional because the word "education" doesn't explicitly appear in the Constitutional, then what does that mean for the Air Force?

Superman: Class Warrior

2011-09-08T17:13:00.003-04:00

In Action Comics #1, released yesterday, Superman makes his first real debut in the rebooted DC Universe.

He barges into the private sanctum of a very influential, very wealthy individual who is guilty of various injustices including corruption and illegal labor practices. He holds the man aloft over the edge of a skyscraper's balcony as police barge in, demanding that he put the plutocrat down.

"Sure, officer, I'll put him down," he replies, "Just as soon as he makes a full confession. To someone who still believes the law works the same for rich and poor alike...

...because that ain't Superman!"

Thus begins Grant Morrison's intriguing reimagining of Superman. Traditionally, the hero stood for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" but its gradually become clear that the first two have very little to do anymore with the third. In previous incarnations, when Superman interacted with social justice issues before, it always seemed to me that he stood for the status quo: the rules of the game were upheld and only those who cheated were punished. This new Superman - by suggesting that justice is not blind and the law favors the wealthy - seems to challenge and perhaps may even subvert that status quo. I'm very excited to see in what bold new directions this may lead.

Time Travel

2011-09-08T11:26:00.007-04:00

The foregoing post was prompted by The Big Lie, a comic book released yesterday by Image Comics. Written by Rick Veitsch and drawn by Gary Erskine, it places a question-and-answer about the 9/11 attacks in the midst of a taut emotional drama that I found very affecting.

The subject matter is a just a wee bit emotionally heavy so I think I need to escape by geeking out over the plot.

The appropriately named Dr. Sandra Statton, whose husband Carl worked for a risk management firm in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, has been studying tachyons at the Large Hadron Collider and has worked out a means of practical time travel. She decides to go back to September, 2011 armed with her trusty iPad (!) to find her husband and warn him of the impending disaster. She also hopes to find proof of the real nature of the catastrophe and bring it back with her to 2011.

She materializes in the Chambers St-World Trade Center subways station but finds out that her calculations were off by hair's breadth. Instead of her target date of September 6, she has actually arrived on the morning of 9/11 itself a mere hour before the first plane is set to hit. She knew that her husband had been called into an early meeting that morning and so she rushes to his office.

Unfortunately, the meeting in question involved a proposal from Stephen Spielberg for a film involving war in the Middle East and the destruction of a real sky scraper. When Sandra arrives to share her warning and urge the evacuation of the building, Carl and his colleagues do not believe her. They do not even believe that she is who she says she is. What follows is a debate between Sandra from the future and the risk management team from 2001 about the feasability of the devastation she assures them is about to happen. It is a race against time and Sandra, like her Trojan namesake, is not believed. She is escorted out of the office in tears by security, telling her husband Carl one last time that she loves him and hopes to see him when she goes back to the future. She then travels back to 2011 just before the plane impacts. Too late, Carl realizes that Sandra was who she said she was and that her story was true. He and his surviving colleagues realize their fate is sealed when the South Tower collapses and they find the thermite installed in their own building.

So what happens next? It all depends on the nature of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

Sandra has developed a time machine and it apparently allows for two-way travel. There are also apparently no problems with conservation: the matter that makes up Sandra's body, clothing, and iPad can be substracted from the universe in 2011 and added back to the universe in 2001 without any negative consequences. Nothing suggests that this is a one-shot deal, so why can she not try again? She can check her calculations and attempt to recalibrate the machine to deliver her to an earlier date when she would have more time to convince Carl and and try to prevent the disaster.

It was just bad luck that she arrived just when Carl and his coworkers were discussing a movie proposal that uncannily bore superficial resemblance to what Sandra had come to tell them. They were predisposed to distrust her. Had she reached Carl alone before the meeting, he would not initially be hostile to the idea and might have been more easy to convince.

If there is one universe and one timeline, then things are extremely complicated. If she is successful in saving Carl and, moreso, in preventing or at least exposing the tragedy of 9/11, how could that not alter the future to the point that she does not develop her time machine and make the journey in the first place? If she could change the past, would that not erase her motivation for going back and changing it? At the very least, wouldn't the survival of people who would have otherwise died have send out massive ripples in causality that would interfere with her developing her time machine and using it when and how she initially did?

It is questions like this that cause me to doubt that time travel to past is even remotely possible. However, in the context of the story time travel is a fact, so we need to determine which is the most likely scenario. Perhaps there is some kind of control factor that is either built into the nature of space-time or is perhaps external to it (God and/or Fate). This control could prevent any interference with the flow of history, which would then necessarily require that history is predetermined and immutable. Another possibility is that some key events act as cardinal nodal points in history that cannot be changed, but other lesser events can be altered without triggering a catastrophic collapse of the timeline. A third possibility is that certain kinds of events - like the span of human lifetimes - are foreordained even if the exact manner of their termination is not. Sandra for example could have saved Carl from the terror attack on September 11th, but then he could very well have suffered some other kind of fatal accident that would cause his death on that day. There are perhaps limitless possibilities.

All of them, however, are suspicious in light of Occam's Razor. Parsimony in theories is a virtue.

A neater possibility is that there is no time travel per se within a single universe. Travel though time may indeed be accomplished but is necessarily accompanied by travel between alternate universes. This removes the threat of a paradox and, if Sandra's travel from our universe into the alternate one is accompanied by an exchange of matter and/or energy, that would also resolve the conservation problem hinted at above. Air at the least would be displaced by the sudden appearance of a body in another universe, and in the comic the transition is marked by light phenomena. Indeed, Sandra's appearance the 2001 universe goes unnoticed by busy commuters in the subway while her return stuns the office assistant and security guards with radiant light.

The only problem is that the emotional impact is muted somewhat when one realizes that the Carl Sandra implores to save himself is not the Carl she was married to in her universe of origin. They are very similar, almost identical except for whatever point of departure caused the 2001 universe to diverge from our own. Some versions of multiverse theory hold that the points of departure can be as minute as quantum fluctuations. So the Carl she meets in 2001, while completely identical to her Carl in every perceptible way, but in some fundamental sense he is not her Carl. Her Carl perished in the World Trade Center in our universe; this Carl - whether she saves him or not - is married to another Sandra. This would also mean, sadly, that even if she managed to avert the disaster and save her husband, he would not be waiting for her when she returned to her own universe.

At the very least, however, the development of this interdimensional transport alone would be a incomprehensibly vast scientific achievement that would more than guarantee Sandra the Nobel Prize, and she would also be central to the greatest scientific and philosophical revelation about the nature of reality itself.

But that is no antidote to grief, nor can heal a broken heart.

9/11: Ten Years Later

2011-09-08T10:05:00.004-04:00

As time has gone by, my discomfort with the official narrative of the September 11th terror attacks has grown. I used to routinely dismiss the "Truthers" as crackpots and cranks, delusional conspiracy theorists whose arguments have no basis in fact.

However, once one dismisses the more absurd claims ("The planes were holograms!") there do remain issues that trouble me and prevent me from accepting the conventional wisdom.

My primary issues are with the collapse of the three World Trade Center towers, the odd behavior of the government and the military prior to the attacks, and how convenient the attacks were to those in power.

When I watched both towers collapse from the 17th floor of the Girl Scout headquarters in Midtown, my thoughts once the shock and disbelief dissipated were how much it looked like a controlled demolition. I know that the official explanation holds that the heat of the jet fuel weakened the structural steel and that the weight of the top of the tower triggered a chain reaction which flattened the tower from above. However, that just has never made sense to me. The planes did not impact in the exact center of the towers. By necessity, one side of the building had to have been weaker than the others. If any part of the tower were to collapse, it would seem more natural for the top of the tower above the impact site to gradually lean forward in the direction of the impact and then perhaps break off and fall in that direction. Anyone who has played Jenga would understand how this works. I cannot fathom how airplane impacts could cause such an even and almost directly downward collapse. Even if the planes had been carrying an explosive compound I don't see how this could happen. I believe now that the only somewhat convincing explanation is that the building had been prerigged with thermite to trigger a controlled demolition. Moreover, how could the barely damaged WTC 7 have likewise collapsed in so smooth and direct a manner without some additional preparation?

Many, many, many other websites have detailed the bizarre compilation of ignored warnings and how most of our air defense forces were occupied with war games (some featuring a hijacking theme) on the morning of 9/11. Many, many others have explored how the attacks played so well into the hands of an administration which was eager for war, key members of which had either collaborated in or signed onto a policy document expressing the wish for a "new Pearl Harbor" to serve as catalyst to a new era of American imperialism. The inauguration of the War on Terror provided a replacement for the Cold War and a guarantee of continued profits for the military-industrial complex through government largesse. I don't need to go into that here.

Based on the evidence, my theory of the 9/11 attacks is as follows.

I think there really was an Al Qaeda plot orchestrated by Osama bin Laden that trained hijackers to pilot planes into buildings. In the realm of Biblical criticism, a cardinal rule is that the more potentially embarrassing material is, the more likely it is to be true. People creating a narrative for their own benefit would not deliberately fabricate material that undermined their case. The same rule would seem to apply here. That the Bush administration had Iraq in its sights from the beginning is undeniable; why, then, would they make up threats from a Saudi terrorist? Why would they fabricate a list of hijackers that was predominately Saudi with zero Iraqis?

What I think is more likely is that the Al Qaeda plot was real and was discovered by our intelligence network but was allowed to proceed. Someone made the decision not to interfere and perhaps even to lend assistance. That the terror attack took place when our military was distracted with training exercises could only have happened with inside information passed between the government and the hijackers: either the government leaked the date to the hijackers or the government scheduled the exercises based on the hijackers' plans. That the war games and exercises featured hijacking scenarios and that other government agencies were running simulations about planes crashing into buildings would have provided confusion when the first reports of the hijackings took place. There would be a crucial few moments when it would not be clear whether the alerts were real or part of the drill.

If the plane crashes were the whole story, it would certainly be a dramatic display. It would have killed hundreds of people and left two ugly scars in the Manhattan skyline that would linger for a long time until repairs could be made. At worst, the top sections of the towers would have fallen off and caused terrible destruction and loss of life around the footprints of the buildings. Would that have been enough to provide a catalyst on par with Pearl Harbor? I don't know. I think that it would have been tragic, but something about it would seem incomplete. I think the total eradication of those buildings cemented the psychological effect. Architects and engineers had claimed both before and after the attacks that the WTC towers could withstand the impact of a fully-loaded jetliner. Perhaps it was decided that the plane imapacts alone would not be enough to achieve the full desired effect and thus preparations were laid to bring the towers down artificially. Simply detonating the buildings would have been too suspicious and the plane impacts alone would not have been enough. This combined effort allowed not only the desired terrible destruction but also the distracting appeal of terrorism as the cause.

As much as I disliked George W. Bush, I do not think he was behind this nor do I even think he knew about it. I wouldn't put it past Cheney, however. The identity of the conspirators and the full details of the plot will probably never be known: any evidence that might conclusively prove anything has long since been destroyed. This means that no one responsible for the great atrocity of September 11th will ever be brought to justice. The hijackers died, of course, in the attack but that was their intent all along. Osama bin Ladin has been killed, but he never stood trial for his crimes. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad may someday stand before some kind of military tribunal (since the Obama administration caved on giving him the civil trial that would have been highly preferable) and when that happens he will most assuredly be executed, but will that somehow atone for the 3,000 people who died on 9/11? For the more than 4,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq? For the uncountable hundreds of thousands of people that have been killed or maimed so far in the War on Terror?

No, it won't. This will remain an unhealed scar in human history forever.

Judge Your Neighbor Favorably

2011-09-01T14:41:00.004-04:00

In July, the New York Jewish Week ran a story about Congregation Beit Simchat Torah's purchase of a its own synagogue space.

In that story, former synagogue president Michael Levine, who had been a member of the community since its founding. shared his excitement and the deep personal meaning this milestone held for him:

Levine, who grew up in a Modern Orthodox household, said he always becomes overwhelmed with emotion whenever he carries one of the congregation’s five Torah scrolls. The emotion surfaces because he recalls his very first service at CBST, when the congregation used a borrowed Torah. “And now,” he added, “I can imagine that I’ll be carrying one of our five Torahs into our own space.”

It was all in all touching but otherwise unremarkable piece. It no doubt brought great pleasure to Levine and the synagogue's members and their friends and family.

It had another impact on certain other segments of the population.

In this week's edition, a letter to the editor was printed from a Barry J. Koppel from Kew Gardens, Queens:

Congregation Beth Simchat Torah member Michael Levine was quoted as saying that he becomes overwhelmed with emotion when he carries one of the synagogue’s five Torah scrolls (“CBST Purchases First Home,” July 29).

The Torah does not call eating “treif” an abomination. The Torah does not call the desecration of Shabbat an abomination. The Torah does, however, call the homosexual act an abomination. Do the five Torah scrolls owned by CBST and carried by Levine omit that part of the Torah, or is that part just whited out?

What I would like to know is, does Barry Koppel fuck his wife during her period?

Taharat HaMishpachah - "family purity" - is one of the three cardinal pillars of Orthodoxy. The Torah even goes so far as to include sex during menses to make both husband and wife liable for kareit, the mysterious punishment of being "cut off from one's people" that is unknown but universally considered very, very bad.

But one doesn't generally ask another Jew if they have sex when their wives are menstruating. Not only is it an obscenely personal question but it also violates another core Jewish principle: judging your neighbor - especially your fellow Jew - favorably. Unless presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, we are supposed to assume only the best of each other and to not suspect our fellow Jews of grave wrongdoing.

Mr. Koppel is correct that the Torah in Leviticus 18:22 describes a given act as a to'evah. I've addressed this issue before but let's pretend that he's right and that it does universally condemen male-male anal intercourse.

So what?

I've known Michael Levine for 6 years now and I don't know what he does in bed. I haven't asked and he hasn't told. I sincerely doubt that Barry Koppel knows, either, so why does he assume based on Michael's sexual orientation that he must be into anal sex? Barry even calls it "the homosexual act" (emphasis mine), as if there weren't a whole panoply of activities that two men can engage in together. Moreover, I have met a good share of gay men who don't like anal sex, either giving or receiving.

Traditional sources do interpret Leviticus 18:22 to prohibit anal sex between men. However, it is up to the individual to determine whether those sources are correct and to make up one's own mind on what the verses mean and how to act on them. My point here is not to delve into Biblical exegesis; I've done that already. My point here is that unless Michael or anyone else is having anal sex out in the open in full view of witnesses, then Barry has no place to make judgments or assumptions about anyone else's behavior. The immediately leap from "gay" to "butt sex" is also logically unfounded and offensive.

This shows a rather unhealthy and prurient interest on Barry's part into Michael's personal life. It also showcases a fundamental lack of the respect that should be the foundation of any community's life. As the years have gone by, that respect has eroded and a sense of superiority and "holier than thou" status has become the defining element of a large chunk of the Jewish world - and it is doing nothing but driving the various streams of Judaism further apart.

Mr. Barry Koppel of Kew Gardens, Queens, is another proof of my thesis that there is no singular unified Jewish people. Barry's lack of respect and charity for Michael and our synagogue shows that he and I do not belong to the same religion or the same people.

One might say that I'm judging Barry and making assumptions about him, and you'd be right. But the difference is that I have hard evidence of his bigotry and douchebaggery to indict him as bigoted douchebag.

Disaster that never was

2011-08-30T10:53:00.002-04:00

Once-luxurious Manhattan highrises with blown-out windows.

The Freedom Tower crumbled into a flooded pit at Ground Zero.

The mangled bodies of hipsters caught in trees and floating in the East River.

These were some of the visions of doom I gleefully anticipated with the advent of Hurricane Irene. Alas and of course, I was to be disappointed.

Mark and I were supposed to have gone to Fire Island this weekend but it became clear as the week progressed that this was not to be. He was alarmed by the possibility of being trapped in his apartment without electricity or mass transit and did not want to be alone during the crisis. With my roommate's office being drafted to augment the city's emergency response, I needed to stay home to keep an eye on the house and the dog. Therefore, I invited him to join me in Queens and ride out the storm as a refugee in my house. After some resistance and hesitation, he agreed and I met him at Main Street on Saturday morning and escorted him home.

On Saturday, we were faced with an odd predicament. There was the threat of impending doom hanging over the city and the subways and buses began shutting down at noon. However, with exception of an overcast sky and a few brief drizzles, there was no evidence yet of the oncoming apocalypse. We had brunch at the Whitestone Diner and then after a nice nap we were hungry again and went for an early dinner to Five Guys, stopping at a liquor store on the way back.

I had gone through the trouble of bringing all the plants and furniture off the front porch into the living room and of securing all the possible projectiles in the back yard. Flashlights and candles were distributed around the house and the bathtub was filled with water. With nothing else to do, we hunkered down in the basement den to watch Steel Magnolias, the season premiere of Doctor Who, and then weather disaster porn masquerading as news. Even at this late hour the talking heads on TV were predicting a Category 1 hurricane to hit New York City head-on with unpredictable results. Mark was equal parts terrified and enthralled; I was shrugging it off, expecting the whole thing to be revealed as a colossal joke.

Of course, as we know, I was right. We woke up around 9:00 AM on Sunday morning to the sound of silence. The ceiling fan was still spinning so I knew we hadn't lost electricity during the night. Looking out the window I saw some tree branches littering the road but no obvious signs of devastation. It wasn't even raining and the wind gusts, while momentarily impressive, were few and far between. We later learned that the storm had pretty much fallen apart over night, downgrading into a tropical storm and leaving us relatively unscathed.

This then left us with the problem of being stuck at home for no good reason, as the mass transit system would not be up and running for another day. We made the most of our enforced staycation by playing Clue and watching old TV shows on Roku and ordering pizza - I ended up eating far too much this weekend and I'm afraid of how much weight I must have gained. At the very least, we had fun.

I just wish there could have been even a teensy bit of devastation for the upper classes to make the preparations and the panic and the massive inconvenience worthwhile.

Natural Disasters

2011-08-25T10:19:00.002-04:00

Having come down with a cold on Monday, I was so miserable Tuesday morning that I could not face going into work. I called in sick and spent the rest of the day napping and watching TV.

I was pleasantly dozing in the afternoon when I felt Jed wake up startled next to me. As I gradually drifted into consciousness, I realized the bed was shaking and picture frames were clattering on the wall. It was over in a minute and left me with a very weird sensation. What could have caused it?

As a sign of the times we live in, I immediately posted to Facebook on my phone, saying "Holy Shit! Did anyone else just feel an earthquake?"

Suddenly, everyone was posting similar reactions. This were followed quickly by links to news stories and at least 3 videos of Carole King singing "I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet."

It was a minor earthquake that fortunately did very little damage. No one was hurt or killed. Nevertheless, it was both humbling and awe-inspiring to realize how a tremor in Virginia could be felt by people all over the East Coast. The world is very small and very interconnected our hold on its surface is precarious and fleeting.

Now the East Coast is facing another natural catastrophe in the shape of Hurricane Irene. Irene has impeccable timing: she is expected to make landfall on Fire Island just exactly when Mark and I have non-refundable guest house reservations.

At this point, we still cannot make accurate predictions. Weather is such a complex system that long-term forecasts usually amount to little more than wishful thinking. As of yesterday, the path of the center of the storm was charted as hitting Montauk; this morning projections have Irene aimed somewhere between Fire Island and the city. Yesterday, Irene was predicted to still be a Category 1 hurricane when she passes by Long Island; now there's an indication that she will be downgraded to a tropical storm.

I'm not worried. This is not the first time that people have freaked out needlessly over a hurricane approaching New York. Weather is also one of those topics that just seems to breed speculation, and our 24-hour news demand gives ample opportunity for people to articulate their fears, worries, theoriest, half-assed guesses, and utter bullshit. Finally, people tend to get giddy with excitement over the threat of disaster. There does seem to be a psychological itch that is scratched by talking about how bad an impending storm is going to be.

If it turns out that on Saturday night we find out that the Sayville Ferry had been suspended or, worse, that Fire Island itself is to be evacuated, then obviously we will have to postpone the trip. The guest house will generously allow up to rebook the reservation for a similarly-priced night.

Like with the earthquake, which was massive and demonstrated how powerless we still are before nature, the hurricane demonstrates the truth of the adage a man trakht un Got lakht or "The best way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plans." Whatever happens, happens, and there's no sense in getting stressed out about it.

The Constitution and Herman Cain

2011-08-17T13:33:00.004-04:00

Republican Presidential hopeful/cartoon Herman Cain has shared yet another tidbit about the Constitution that exists entirely in his own imagination.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said it would be "great" to impeach the president, but that the Democratic controlled Senate would prevent such action.

On a conference call with bloggers Tuesday night, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO called the health care law and the Obama administration's stance over the Defense of Marriage Act impeachable offenses.

The news was first reported by POLITICO and later confirmed to CNN by the Cain campaign.

"There are a number of things where a case could be made in order to impeach him, but because Republicans do not control the United States Senate, they would never allow it to get off the ground," Cain said on the call. "The president is supposed to uphold the laws of this nation … and to tell the Department of Justice not to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act is a breach of his oath."

Earlier, Cain had expounded his opinion that local communities have the right to ban the construction of mosques within their jurisdiction.

This would seem to be contradicted by the First Amendment of the Constitution in our reality, which explicitly forbids Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Cain's bizarre rationale was based on the premise that while the Constitution does enforce a separation between church and state, Islam somehow combines church and state and so therefore the First Amendment does not apply. The closest thing to an explanation for this unique interpretation is that Islam has laws - the dreaded Shari'ah - and states have laws, so there. In the recent Republican primary debate, however, Cain denied that he ever made the mosque-banning statement so the status of other religions such as Judaism and Roman Catholicism remains undecided. We may never know if the existence of halakhah and canon law gives communities the right to ban synagogues and Catholic churches.

Today, Cain has now expressed an opinion on the topic of impeachment, which in the Constitution in our reality is touched upon in Article II Sections 2 and 3, and Article II Section 4.

A President can be impeached for "treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors."

According to Cain, Obama is liable for impeachment because of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and his direction to the Justice Department not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.

Article III Section 3 of our Constitution prescibes that "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." Hyperbole and rhetoric notwithstanding, it would be take an extreme leap of the imagination to accuse Obama of this. There is likwiese no evidence of bribery. That leads the vague category of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Breaking a law is, depending on its seriousness, a crime or misdemeanor; law-breaking by a President can have severe enough consequences that it could qualify as a "high." Andrew Johnson was impeached largely due to the alleged violation of the Tenure of Office Act; Bill Clinton was impeached due to alleged perjury.

Cain's first example has me scratching my head. The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (oddly dubbed "Obamacare") was, as its name suggests, an Act of Congress. Conservatives may argue that the rules of parliamentary procedure were abused to enable the act to evade a Republican filibuster but the rules were nonetheless validly followed and adopted. When presented with legislation passed by Congress, it is President's prerogative to sign the bill or veto it. While questions have been raised as to the constitutionality of the Act (specifically the individual mandate), it is absurd to accuse a President of violating the Constitution for signing an Act passed by Congress. The against unconstitutional laws is the court system, and the health care act is currently making its way through the judicial branch through the legitimate channel of court cases.

The issue about the Defense of Marriage Act is likewise absurd. The President's oath at inauguration is to "faithfully execute the office of President" and to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Article II Section 3 says "he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

To whom should the President be "faithful?" Not to Congress. Unlike the parliamentary system, where the executive is derived from and accountable to the legislature, the relationship between the President and the Congress is at best collaborative and at worst antagonistic. The President is elected by the people of the United States and swears to uphold the Constitution. History has shown that Presidents have tremendous leeway in determining policy allegedly for the good of the people and the defense of the Constitution.

DOMA's constitutionality is dubious at best. Not only does it appear to violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause, but it can also be said to arrogate powers to the federal government not delegated to it by the States. An unconstitutional law cannot be faithfully executed, and if a President truly believes that a law is unconstitutional then he is not being unfaithful by ordering it not to be enforced.

In Cain's Constitution, apparently, the President is subordinate to Congress and must execute laws exactly as Congress (or conservative pundits) dictate. Failure to do so for any reason is a "high crime" or "misdemeanor." I wonder, then, how Cain's constitution would treat President Bush's numerous signing statements which often completely negated or reversed Congress's intent? Bizarrely, in Cain's world Congress is also subordinate to the President and the President is liable for Congress's unconstitutional acts, not the legislative body itself.

A final quibble: Cain says that it would be "great" to impeach Obama but the Democrats who control the Senate would not allow it. This is perhaps a minor cavil but it is significant. The composition of the Senate is irrelevant for the impeachment of a President. It is the House of Representatives that passes articles of impeachment to indict the President; the Senate acts as the jury to convict the President of the crimes alleged by the House. So, the Republican-controlled House is free to impeach Obama if they wish: Clinton was likewise impeached by House Republicans. The Senate's purview is whether or not to convict and remove from office.

We can gain further glimpses of what the Constitution looks like in Cain world through the omissions on his list of impeachable offenes. I should think that launching a totally unauthorized attack on a sovereign country that posed no threat to our national security and authorizing the assassination of American citiznes would deserve mention somewhere, but it's clear that in Cain's reality those things are perfectly fine.

Cain is a buffoon and stands no chance of winning the White House, but how many people agree with him? That's a very scary though.

America's Most Hated

2011-08-11T10:37:00.003-04:00

E-Poll Market Research released its latest scoring of celebrity likeability yesterday and revealed that acquitted murder suspect Casey Anthony is the most hated person in America.

Also on the hate list:

2. Spencer Pratt
3. Nadya Suleiman
4. O. J. Simpson
5. John Gosselin
6. Levi Johnston
7. Jesse James (the ex of Sandra Bullock, not the Wild West outlaw)
8. Paris Hilton
9. Heidi Fleiss
10. Howard Stern

Anthony was accused of murdering her daughter but was acquitted in a court of law. I understand that her case generated interest and resentment, but this is absurd. Murders just as foul as the one she was tried for happen every single day. Meanwhile, people are still being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I have to confess that I have no real idea who Spencer Pratt is, but he is apparently enough of a prat to warrant inclusion. John Gosselin and Levi Johnston just seem to have overstayed their welcome in the pop-culture consciousness. Jesse James stands guilty of cheating on and abandoning his wife.

Paris Hilton, as an embodiment of the mindless of our vapid materialist celebrity culture certainly has earned opprobrium as a symbol of all that is wrong with America, but what has she really done personally to make the list?

Finally, Heidi Fleiss and Howard Stern in the top ten of America's Most Hated? Really? Have we somehow been tesseracted back to the mid-1990's?

Actually, it wouldn't be so bad to go back in time before the people who really deserve to be on this list had the chance to do perhaps irreparable damange to our country. Noticeably absent are Republican members of Congress or presidential hopefuls or any Wall Street financiers. Whatever personal sins they may have committed, these 10 celebrities have caused no real harm of the body politic beyond some minor annoyance and irritation. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachmann, and the investment bankers who played fast and loose with other people's livelihoods to reap massive fortunes heedless of the consequences are guilty of far greater injuries and injustices.

That none of these real public enemeies were deemed more hateful than Casey Anthony is a sad commentary on our national priorities and attention span and only reconfirms my lack of faith in our nation's future.

A New Low for the Post

2011-08-10T10:11:00.003-04:00

"Class" and "taste" are rarely things one associates with the News Corporation tabloid The New York Post. It's sensationalist headlines (often employing a bafflingly juvenile vocabulary) had been a subject of mockery for decades (I remember first encountering the concept in a collection of Letterman Top Ten Lists in the early 90s).

So The Post wasn't starting from a very high level of quality to begin with. Today, however, they reached a brand new trashy low:

To highlight a story on the volatile stock exchange, someone at the The Post actually decided that this was an appropriate headline:

Crazy stox like a hooker's drawers... UP, DOWN, UP

The pointless misspelling of "stocks" seems to have been chosen to accommodate a racy picture of a scarlet woman seductively smoking a cigarette.

This level of blatant unsubtle sleaze and casual misogyny - totally unncessary and unconnected with the story - is not new, but it is rather astonishing to see it on display in newstands and newspaper boxes throughout a major city. I guess it's just sign of the times we live in.

Political Summer Camps

2011-07-26T08:58:00.002-04:00

The ever-classy Glenn Beck, who never saw a Nazi reference he didn't like, pontificated about the recent terrorist massacre in Norway:

In a seven-minute segment Monday morning on the Premiere Radio Network’s “The Glenn Beck Program,” Beck described the attack “as a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth. I mean who sends their kids to a political camp?”

Who indeed?

Perhaps these good people in Tampa:

Tea party group offers summer camp

TAMPA — Here's another option now that the kids are out of school: a weeklong seminar about our nation's founding principles, courtesy of the Tampa 912 Project.

The organization, which falls under the tea party umbrella, hopes to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to principles that include "America is good," "I believe in God," and "I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable."

Organized by conservative writer Jeff Lukens and staffed by volunteers from the 912 Project, Tampa Liberty School will meet every morning July 11-15 in borrowed space at the Paideia Christian school in Temple Terrace.

"We want to impart to our children what our nation is about, and what they may or may not be told," Lukens said.

He said he was not familiar with public school curriculum, but, "I do know they have a lot of political correctness. We are a faithful people, and when you talk about natural law, you have to talk about God. When you take that out of the discussion, you miss the whole thing."

Tampa Liberty is modeled after vacation Bible schools, which use fun, hands-on activities to deliver Christian messages.

One example at Liberty: Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the "banker" will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.

"Some of the kids will fall for it," Lukens said. "Others kids will wise up."

Another example: Starting in an austere room where they are made to sit quietly, symbolizing Europe, the children will pass through an obstacle course to arrive at a brightly decorated party room (the New World).

Red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown. But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.

Still another example: Children will blow bubbles from a single container of soapy solution, and then pop each other's bubbles with squirt guns in an arrangement that mimics socialism. They are to count how many bubbles they pop. Then they will work with individual bottles of solution and pop their own bubbles.

"What they will find out is that you can do a lot more with individual freedom," Lukens said.

While the Liberty school is the first of its kind in the Tampa Bay area, Lukens said a group in Kentucky ran a similar school, and he learned from their ideas.

There is room for 40 students in the Tampa school and as of Monday, eight had signed up. The fee is $15.

"We've had classes for adults," said Karen Jaroch, who chairs the Tampa 912 Project. "Now we want to introduce a younger generation to economics and history, but in a fun way."

If the school is successful, Jaroch and Lukens will look for ways to run more sessions, either during the summer or after school resumes. In fact, Jaroch said the group might try to bring its curriculum to the public schools during Constitution Week in September.

"We definitely teach the Constitution, especially during Constitution Week," said Linda Cobbe, a school district spokeswoman. She said the district would need to make sure the organization does not have a political agenda, and that they would need to be approved by SERVE, a nonprofit agency that clears volunteers in the schools.

Lukens said it is too early to speak in detail about what will happen after July 15. But, he said, "we plan on coming back and coming back and coming back."

Paul McCartney

2011-07-17T14:54:00.002-04:00

Friday night, Mark and I and 50,000 other people saw Paul McCartney in a sold-out out Yankee Stadium for the first show of his On the Run Tour.

It was an incredible, unforgettable experience.

Our seats were on the field level, between home plate and third base. We were far from stage, but we had a great view and the gigantic hundred-foot tall screens remedied any lack of visibility.

For 69 years old, Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE put on a tremendously energetic show. He sang 35 numbers with barely a break in between. His world-famous voice was in prime form and his stage presence was magnetic - and at times endearingly goofy and silly. After the first three numbers, he took off his shiny blue jacket and, rolling up his sleeves, announced that that was the big costume change of the night.

We were blessed with perfect weather. There was no threat of rain and it was neither too hot nor too cold. I was overwhelmed by the experience, to be united with so many, many people in communion with one of the most famous musicians in history for almost three hours. I have not attended very many concerts. In fact, this was my third after Cher's Living Proof farewell tour in 2002 and Lady Gaga's Monsters Ball last July. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them, but there was something almost transcendent about the experience Friday night that will make this extremely difficult to top. Whereas Lady Gaga is a phenomenal artist and Cher is a cult icon, McCartney is a universal superstar who has personally and in collaboration with the other Beatles had a world-changing effect in popular music. Cher has been a cultural fixture for decades but plays largely to a niche audience and Gaga has only exploded onto the world stage in the past few years; McCartney has entertained and inspired audiences of all demographics for fifty years. The opportunity to see him live in concert is something I will always be grateful to have enjoyed.

Atheists can be sexist, too

2011-07-09T11:27:00.001-04:00

This article on Salon is a lovely example of my greatest criticism of the atheist movement. If one listens to Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens rant long enough, one gets the impression that all of the evils that plague humanity - war, terrorism, bigotry - could all be done away with if everyone would give up their silly religious beliefs and live rationally. Once religion is out of the picture, we would all be living in paradise.

One major area where religion's track record is far from good (actually, downright deplorable) is that of the rights and status of women. One thing that the "traditional" or "fundamentalist" forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree upon is that women are inferior to men and are not capable or qualified of leadership positions within the faith. Worse, their sexuality is dangerous and must be controlled through the dominance of men who know better how a woman should maintain her own body. The end result is that women are treated as second-class citizens at best and chattel property at worst and are vulnerable to horrendous abuse and mistreatment all either enjoined or passively condoned by the religious system that speaks for God. These are facts on the ground and I am totally in agreement with the truth of these claims, and the atheists are right to condemn and speak out about this issue.

The fact that they have correctly identified this fault in others, however, does not conversely mean they are blameless themselves as this article shows.

The facts are that a woman publicly shared her discomfort with being approached in a sexual manner and her desire to be left alone and go to sleep. She was joined in an elevator my a man who invited her back to his room to "talk." She then felt uncomfortable.

Most women can probably relate to that experience. Nothing physical happened to her, but for a few brief moments she was subjected to psychological discomfort and fear. Would she be allowed to back to her room alone? Would he try to touch her or worse?

Dawkins opined that the woman should quit whining. What does her brief moments of discomfort matter when women are being mutilated and oppressed and killed by religious fundamentalists?

For a man who claims to champion reason, his logic is terrible. It is not OK that something bad happens to one person while something worse is happening to someone else. Neither the woman uncomfortable in the elevator nor the woman having her clitoris cut out or getting stoned for adultery deserve what befalls them. That one woman is being killed or mutilated does not excuse the fact that another woman is being psychologically intimidated because they are all points on the same continuum.

As an affluent white men, Dawkins has never had to face the kind of innate fear that goes with being a socially subordinate person. As a middle-class white man, I've also been largely immune from the dangers implicit in our society, although I have experienced moments of fear and trepidation lest my sexuality be perceived in the wrong environment. Context is key, and this elevator encounter took place when the woman was alone with another person who on average is likely to be bigger and stronger than she is. She was sexually propositioned after having expressed her desire not to be sexually propositioned in a society that preferences male right. Finally, when she had the nerve to actually express her disapproval of this situation, she was belittled and derided by other males who devalued and discounted her point of view.

It wasn't Dawkins who trespassed on her boundaries in that hotel elevator but he violated her dignity and that of all other women when he essentially told her to quit whining and get over herself, silly little girl that she is.

Dawkins has condemned such displays of male right, sexism, and subordination of women when committed by religious persons and societies but he is one of the "rock stars" of the atheist movement. If even he has been contaminated by such unrepentant sexism, is it possible that it is not caused by religion after all? Could it really be that the situation is more complicated than some would have us believe, and that taking religion out of the equation will not make evils like misogyny disappear?

This reductionist worldview that denies complexity and obsessively cites religion as the greatest source of social evil conveniently allows one to take a supposedly rebellious position that for all its shock value does not question the deeper and more pervasive inequalities that exist. The Salon author hits the nail on the head when he turns Dawkins' own argument against him, questioning why Dawkins is arguing about the non-existence of God when there are children starving in Africa. Have Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Myers or any of their ilk - after dissecting and dismissing the assumptions of religious belief - ever given the same treatment to the assumptions of property rights, class relations, and sexual expectations that underlie our civilization? To the extent that this particular atheist movement gives its adherents a sense of self importance and superiority and also glosses over and distracts from deeper systemic problems, it seems to follow the same classic MO as a religion.

God Save the Queen

2011-07-03T22:56:00.002-04:00

On the eve of the 235th anniversary of American independence from Great Britain, I would like to examine the text of the British anthem, God Save the Queen.

Rather than a national anthem per se, this is a declaration of loyalty to the Monarch. This is sensible, given that the personal rule of the Monarch is the only thing that knit the various polities of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland together as a unit. The text is instructive, though, in key features of constitutional government.

God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen!

This first verse, the one most commonly sung, is a standard proclamation of fealty to the sovereign, accepting her as the rightful ruler and wishing her long life, salvation, and victory - not just for her but for the whole nation symbolized by her as its figurehead.

O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks;
On Thee our hopes we fix!
God save us all!

The notion of the Sovereign standing in for the nation as a whole is more developed in the second verse, as the enemies of the Monarch are identified as the enemies of the nation and the closing line expresses the wish not just for the salvation (and perhaps also the earthly deliverance) of the Monarch but of all her people.

They choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour!
God save the Queen!
May she defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To shout with heart and voice:
"God save the Queen!"

This third verse is the most important. In parallel to the first and second, it begins with prayers for Divine favor for the Monarch. Yet, it then proceeds to make several astonishing declarations.

"May she defend our laws": the law is "ours," not hers. It emanates from the people, not the Sovereign. Moreover, the people's acclamation of the Queen as Sovereign and their wishes for her salvation and well-being are contingent upon her defense of the laws. It is only through the Sovereign's acceptance of the sovereignty of the people and the performance of her constitutional duties that she enjoys the the title of Monarch. The Sovereign reigns with the consent of the governed, and should she fail in her duty to defend the laws and the people's ultimate sovereignty, the people may lose cause to acclaim her, replacing her as necessary.

"God Save the King/Queen" was first popularized at the time of the Jacobite rebellion, and understandably so is based upon the theory of government that was devised in justification of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the deposition of the House of Stuart. This theory of social contract and justified revolution is also what underlay the rebellion of the 13 American colonies from a Crown that no longer defended their laws, and thus no longer gave them cause to acclaim its sovereignty.

Battlestar Trivia

2011-06-29T23:29:00.003-04:00

Last night, my friend David and I attended a Battlestar Galactica TV Party hosted by Secret Formula at the Bell House in Gowanus. It was a lot of fun.

They showed three episodes projected on a movie screen, which involved a drinking game as detailed below:

In between episodes, however, there was BSG-themed pub trivia. I love pub trivia contests, and have had a great deal of fun with my friend Mike at Van Diemen's and The Big Quiz Thing. The only thing I don't like is trying to come up with a team name. Generally, my ideas always suck but after a while I came up with "Inappropriate DRADIS Contact" which got a lot of laughs.

On my team were David, a young woman from Manhattan named Cassie who works in book publishing and has only seen up through Season 3, and another Dan who lives in Brooklyn and is one of the organizers of a sci-fi/fantasy marathon meet-up group that I am looking forward to checking out. A young guy named Adam who lives in the Village and just graduated from Vanderbilt University was also briefly with us before he and his friend had to leave.

I found the questions were a good mix of easy and challenging. The questions I can remember were:

Where was Laura Roslin in the Presidential line of succession? 43rd.

This number never really made any sense to me. It seems really low for a Cabinet secretary. Our own Secretary of Education is 16th in line. I don't think this was ever explained in the show, but maybe the 12 members of the Quorum of Twelve figure into the succession somehow. Anyway, I was nervous about this because after I wrote it down, I wondered whether it was 33rd instead. Always go with the gut instinct.

What was the name of the drinking establishment aboard the Galactica? Joe's Bar.

We got this one wrong. David knew it was a person's name and I thought it started with "J." We guessed "Jake's."

Who of the following has not had sex with Gaius Baltar: Athena, Starbuck, DeAnna Beers, Tory Foster? Athena.

Which Cylon model number was Leoben Conoy? 2

What colony was Tom Zarek from? Sagittaron.

What ship did Laura Roslin escape to after the coup? Cloud 9

This was a tough one. I was blanking totally on the name; all I knew was that it was a resort and a hotel. Cassie was the one who remembered and gave us the point.

Who destroyed the Cylon raider known as "Scar?" Kat.

Another point Cassie won: I was torn between Starbuck and Kat but she was certain it was Kat.

Who was the commander of the Battlestar Pegasus? Admiral Helena Cain.

Who killed the commander of the Pegaus? Gina Inviere.

At the end of the night, they announced that two teams were tied for first place: "Fit to be Tigh-ed" and "Inappropriate DRADIS Contact." I knew we knew our stuff, but I still couldn't believe it!

I went up to the stage to represent the team in the sudden death round. One of the hosts got down on his hands and knees in front of me and the other contestant with his hand raised in the air in place of a buzzer. I was nervous but excited.

When the other host, dressed as Baltar, read the question "What was William Adama's command prior to the Galactica?" both I and the other contestant hesitated. Nothing came to me right away, and the other guy didn't seem to know either. After a few seconds the word "Valkyrie" bubbled up to my conscious mind. Since the other guy hadn't given an answer yet and since I didn't have anything to lose, I slapped the host's hand and answered, and I was right!

We won 5 free drinks. However, David and Cassie had left already and so I tried to share the tickets with Dan but he only wanted one. So, I was left with 4 free drink tickets, and I'll be damned if I wasn't going to use them. Consequently, I suffered today from a colossal hangover, but it was worth it!

They are planning to have another BSG party in a month or two, so that will give me time to work on a costume. I'm also looking forward to checking out the sci-fi/fantasy meetup.

Give it a rest, NOM

2011-06-25T13:33:00.003-04:00

Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization of Marriage, is outraged by last night's historic enaction of marriage equality, which will go into effect in 30 days.

He insists his anger isn't fueled by spite and bigotry, however, but by concern for the rights of the people. You see, when the New York State Legislature, the law-making institution constitutional established and elected by the people of New York did it's job and passed a law, they robbed the people of their right to vote on the issue of marriage equality.

Please, NOM. Give it a rest.

First, the charge was that activist judges and special interest lobbies were abusing the court system to legislate from the bench. This was supposed to be bad, since the people's representatives in the legislature are the ones who are supposed to make laws, not judges.

Now, the people's representatives in the legislature have made a law that homophobic bigots like Brown, Maggie Gallagher, and the rest of NOM are not happy with. As we have seen time and again with conservatives who profess to revere the Constitution and the rule of law, their commitment to the democratic process only goes so far as it lets them get what they want.

Since the State Legislature has failed to uphold "traditional marriage" by elevating same-sex couples out of second-class citizenship to legal equality, the legislature must be by-passed. Brown says the people should have decided the question of marriage equality by referendum, because he knows there is a good chance that a majority of Upstate New York's conservative Republican voters (together with Downstate Orthodox Jews) could very probably have voted down such a measure.

There are a few problems with that, however.

First, the New York State Constitution does allow for some matters to be decided by the vote of the people in referendum, but the range of topics that can be submitted to popular vote is very narrow, limited largely to bond acts and Constitutional amendments. Unlike California, whose tissue-paper Constitution can be amendment essentially willy-nilly, New York does have an initiative and referendum option for legislation.

This is a deliberate, and a central element of American democracy. It is a compromise to ensure the rights of the minority against the whims of the majority and to strike a balance between popular sovereignty and its dark side, mob rule. It seems NOM would be perfectly fine with mob rule, provided that they are the ones leading the mob.

I am thoroughly delighted at how upset Brown and Gallagher must be. I only wish them further consternation as the arc of history continues to bend toward freedom and marriage equality becomes the norm across the nation. It will be a happy day when they finally are so outraged they tear themselves apart like Rumplestiltskin and go the way of all other fairy tale monsters.

Marriage Equality victorious

2011-06-24T22:33:00.003-04:00

I honestly didn't believe it would happen, but the New York State Senate has just voted to extend marriage to same-sex couples.

This is a historic achievement and a tremendous milestone in expansion of equality.

I have never subscribed to the conservative opinion that marriage equates to a State endorsement of sexual behavior; however, the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples created a negative endorsement that penalized families not founded on the heterosexual binary hegemony. It wasn't so much that heterosexual couples were held up as special but that gay and lesbian couples were denigrated as inferior and second-class, less than ideal. That has been swept away. It truly is a cause for celebration.

Yet we should remain aware that we are celebrating the winning of a significant battle, but the war is far from over. There are still families, actual and potential, who still will not enjoy the benefits of civil marriage but it's clear our society is nowhere near as enlightened or advanced to consider extending privilege any further than it just has done. Then there still remain the deeper inequalities of gender and class that will most likely require revolution to achieve.

Nevertheless, congratulations, New York! And suck on it, religious right!

Obama on Marriage Equality

2011-06-24T15:05:00.002-04:00

At a LGBT fundraiser event last night (which snarled up traffic in Midtown and delayed my trip home by an hour), President Obama danced around the question of marriage equality and declined to endorse the right of same-sex couples to have their relationships recognized and secured by law.

What is his problem?

An elected official has to appeal to a broad segment of the population to win votes. It's understandable, therefore, that a politician might eschew "extreme" positions ("extreme" being measured relative to the average opinion of his base) to avoid alienating voters.

In Obama's case, however, our country is so polarized at this point that I think most people have already made up their mind whether they'll vote for him or not next year.

More to the point, anyone who opposes gay marriage probably already believes that Obama is an atheist Muslim Nazi Communist who is bent on destroying America. I really don't see how holding back on marriage equality is going to help him in any way. What does he really have to lose?

Obama did indicate that marriage, being a matter reserved to the States, is not really in his purview at the federal level, but that seems like a disingenuous dodge to me. Since when have presidents declined to opine on matters not technically in their sphere of responsibility?

I think it may just be that Obama himself personally just is not comfortable with marriage equality and he won't endorse it because his conscience won't let him. As I've been fond of saying, the closest thing we have to a moderate conservative these days is Barack Obama.

Marriage Excitement (or Lack Thereof)

2011-06-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

The possibility that New York may become the latest state to recognize same-sex marriage is an exciting prospect, and intellectually I am in complete support of the measure, as I have expressed on this blog.

Emotionally, I just can't get invested in it.

I think marriage equality is very important both practically and symbolically than. Symbolically, it removes an unjust distinction in law that preferences the love and commitment of one sort of couple as superior to and more valuable than others. It would elevate gay and lesbian couples - and the lives and loves of all gay men and lesbians - to equal footing before the law to those of the heterosexual hegemony. Practically, it would provide gay and lesbian couples with very real and very necessary rights and privileges that are otherwise either difficult or impossible to attain, providing security and stability to their families.

I appreciate all that in my head, but my heart is cold.

Partly I think think this is because it does not affect me directly and personally. I have no desire to get married, and do not imagine that changing in the future. Also, there is the fact that very little is at risk in this question. It is a matter of rights being granted rather than take away. Should the State Senate ultimately not vote to effect marriage equality, the status quo - badly ideal but not really all that bad - remains unchanged. It's like placing a bet knowing that you will at least break even.

Mores, though, I think the problem for me is marriage itself. It is essentially a public declaration that a pair of people are having sex. The conservatives who argue that marriage is intended to assist procreation and childrearing are not completely wrong, since the implicit assumption is that married spouses, regardless of the gender combination, are also sexual partners. That goes a long way toward explaining why the right wing is so opposed gay marriage: because they are grossed out by gay [male] sex and assume that all married gay couples will be having sex. Dov Hikind and the ultra-Orthodox bigots who have joined their Christian fellow travelers in protesting at the State Capitol claim that gay marriages prohibited by the Torah, but that is not true. According to a major interpretation, the Torah prohibits anal sex between men. They assume that all male couples who get married will be having butt sex, which squicks me out.

I can sympathize to a very small degree because I disapprove of public displays of affection. I think that our private sexual lives should remain private and not be foisted unwillingly on other people who might not care to be exposed to our private sexual behavior. When straight couples show off they children or sport their wedding rings or publicizes their weddings, they are saying to the world, "Yeah, we're totally doing each other!" I just don't think there is any need or call for such behavior; much less do I think the State has any role or place in individual's private lives.

I suppose the only emotion I can feel regarding marriage is spite and a little bit of Schadenfreude. The right wing has made gay marriage into such a life-or-death issue that they seem to really believe that two men getting married would bring about the Apocalypse, just like they thought the same about the election of Obama. I was never all that thrilled with Obama and was skeptical of the fanatical devotion he inspired in so many, but I rejoiced in his victory because it meant I could shove it into the faces of those who fretted about him being some kind of international socialist radical. To those who claim that allowing gay men and lesbians to get married will somehow cause human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria, the legalization of same-sex marriage would be a very satisfying "fuck you!" message, especially when the predicted catastrophic fallout fails to occur like the May 21 rapture.

That at least is something I can look forward to!

Arguments against Marriage Equality

2011-06-19T23:57:00.002-04:00

When the New York State Assembly voted last week to grant marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples, members had the opportunity to speak both for and against the measure. I was not able to watch the debates live, and when I tried to view the streaming feed on the Assembly's website, I was told that the servers were overloaded. Fortunately, I was able to find a short video that digested some clips from various Assemblymember's remarks, three for and three against. The quality of arguments presented by the anti-gay side is instructive.

Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Smithtown) 7th district

The traditional definition of marriage in my opinion should not be changed. There will be unforeseen and unintended consequences from this action.

No one can ever specify what these terrible consequences of marriage equality would be. If granting same-sex couples the rights and privileges of marriage might possibly lead to human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria, then how can our elected representatives in Albany take any actions at all on any topic for fear of mysterious but definitely negative possible outcomes?

The same is pretty much true with the "changing the definition of marriage" argument. Marriage is already a complex of laws that confers special legal status on two people, granting them each special rights and privileges relative to each other and to both of them relative to the State. Marriage equality changes none of those rights and privileges and only expands the field of beneficiaries to include same-sex couples. The function remains the same; the only that changes is that the data set plugged into the equation is expanded. I just don't comprehend how this "changes the definition," unless people would really have us believe that there exists some Platonic form of "marriage" that all marriages participate in, and that legislation (or worse, court orders!) can somehow alter that form and thereby modify and denigrate individual existing marriages.

Donald Miller (R-Clay) 121st district

This bill, this vote is about marriage and I am not prepared tonight to redefine that institution. Because I am not as compassionate as the God that I serve. I am not as forgiving, I am not as understanding, not as intelligent. I cannot look into the hearts of others and know what He knows and see what He sees.

This makes no sense to me. He is also concerned about "redefining" marriage, but he at least has the honesty to admit his lack of compassion, intelligence, and understanding. I get that he is clearly a very religious man, but I have no point of reference for understanding his worldview. If the issue were abortion, I could see his point of view since abortion does entail negative consequences for a person (whether one views said human person to be potential or actual). Marriage equality, however, affects no one but the couples who wish to marry. Why does he need to see into others hearts? Why can he not simply accept that other people's private lives are none of his business, regardless of what he personally believes about what he imagines their sex lives to entail?

If he really believes that homosexual acts are wrong, and if he really believes therefore that same-sex relationships are immoral then clearly he can't condone the State legitimating something he believes is contrary to his moral code. I just hope his moral commitment to his Christian faith explicit and repeated commands in both the Old and New Testaments to care for the poor and needy and do justice for the marginalized of society; if the Bible truly is the Word of God, then it would seem that the God Donald Miller serves thinks that social and economic injustice are worse sins than two people of the same sex having consensual relations with one another.

Last and least, there is Dov Hikind, the alleged Democrat from Brooklyn's 48th district.

After a pathetic and nonsensical digression about Lady Gaga, Hikind had this to say while waving Chumash in the air:

I wish that it wasn’t in the book because if it wasn’t, I'd be standing right next to you over there pushing this, supporting it, because there would be no reason not to.

I would really love to know where Hikind finds marriage equality "in the book."

Does he refer to Leviticus 18:22 and its correlary, Leviticus 20:13? Because those are the only verses "in the book" that might have any bearing on the issue whatsoever, and a generous interpretation limits their prohibition solely to male-male intercourse. Nowhere "in the book" are two men or two women prohibited from loving each other, from expressing that love physically, or from building a home and a family together. Moreover, there is nothing "in the book" that mandates the State to recognize or assign legal benefits and privileges to marriages nor to deny such legal benefits and privileges to same-sex couples.

By Hikind's own argument, then, there must not be any reason not to support marriage equality, which makes him either a bigot or a fool or both.

Weiner Resigns

2011-06-16T14:18:00.002-04:00

I have changed my opinion regarding the sad case of Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Before this absurd scandal got blown way the hell out of proportion, I endorsed his decision not to resign. So what if he traded naughty pics of himself on the internet? He's allowed to have a personal and private sex life. So long as no laws were broken, it's no one's business but his own.

Granted, Weiner demonstrated a not insignificant lack of judgment in his pic-trading escapades to begin with. First, as a high-profile elected official he should have known that the consequences of his naughty pics being discovered would be at best embarrassing. I have indulged in the same salacious hobby for years, and even I - a lowly insignificant peon - have the foresight not to connect my erotic photos to identifying information. There are pictures of me on the internet that are much more explicit than anything so far released of Weiner, and I have not shied away from showing my face. It actually makes me smile when I'll be trolling a Tumblr blog, for example, and come across a picture of myself. I am not a member of the House of Representatives, however, nor am I ever likely to hold such a high-profile position. I also keep a separate email account and user name for naughty communication. Could it be that I am overly cautious? I've not been accused of that before. Rather, Weiner seems to have shown any sense of perspective or perspicacity.

That is unsettling enough from an elected representative, but the PR catastrophe he bungled himself into is truly damning. Someone who has appeared on as many cable news shows as he has should have been aware of the media's lust for titillation. He should either have refused to feed the sharks at all or just admitted up front that the boxer brief bulge was his own and then moved on. By attempting to lie and blame this on a "hack" or a "prank" only made the story more sensational. The corporate media bears a large share of manufacturing this sideshow, but Weiner's behavior is the equivalent of running into a tiger cage wearing Lady Gaga's meat dress.

I can forgive the porn pic sharing largely because I don't think there is anything that requires forgiveness. His handling of the subsequent fallout, however, was worse than the cleanup job at Chernobyl. If he is so incompetent that he destroys his career in a sex scandal without ever actually getting laid in the process, then he really should resign.

On Marriage: A Debate

2011-06-16T01:51:00.002-04:00

In response to the previous post, Brandon writes:

I have to completely disagree with you, here. Marriage, insofar as I can determine, is an action and a covenant that has been created in the history and tradition of religious groups. The State Senate of New York, and any other group of legislatures, has no right to set parameters for religious discourse. The Archbishop is absolutely correct. The state government should not recognize the marriage of homosexual persons. And since the state legislature has no jurisdiction to evaluate, determine, or legislate the validity or minutiae of religious legal precepts, the state has no right to recognize or discriminate on the basis of heterosexual marriages, either. Since the Archbishop's atlas suggests that we do not live in a totalitarian regime, it is high time that we stop treating human property contracts of various religions as traditional precepts for the institution of marriage. The Archbishop can keep his definition of marriage, and he can keep it out of the public sphere of the civil society.

I agree and disagree.

I agree that marriage as such should not exist in the secular public sphere and should be reserved to the private religious sphere.

I disagree however that a construct of laws called "civil marriage" DOES exist and is a categorically different thing from the sacramental marriage the Archbishop professes.

To say that marriage was created in the context of religious groups is to miss the point since the earliest human cultures made no distinction between the civil and the religious spheres. The gods were invoked to avert perjury and favor transactions with their blessing. Marriage, as just one of the many possible contracts between individuals, was given a religious dimension that is not essential to its nature. While the political and ecclesiastical authorities were either one and the same or closely allied, the sacramental and the secular could not be practically separated; in the wake of the bourgeois revolutions the secular state has taken over much of what was previously the purview of the church. The religious and the secular marriages coexist and intermingle, but are distinct. Civil marriages in the State of New York can be dissolved by divorce; sacramental marriages in the Church of Rome can be dissolved only by death. An individual who had previously been party to a civil marriage dissolved in divorce can remarry; a Catholic wed in the Church remains married to his spouse until death does them part and remarriage is adultery.

The question, though, is whether a secular republican democratic state has the authority to create an institution such as "civil marriage." Regardless of whether the creation of such an complex of laws is advisable or necessary, I assert that it is completely within a state's power to do so. A state can legitimately enact any laws imaginable provided that they are in accord with the basic values and principles and procedures established in its constitution and that the action is done with the consent of the governed and reflects the general will.

This doesn't mean that the law or the institution created is therefore necessarily right and proper and good in any moral sense, only that it is a legitimate act of government.

Marriage in New York

2011-06-15T16:04:00.005-04:00

UPDATE:
I've just joined the long list of Jews censored by the Catholic Church. I posted a respectful abbreviated version of this post on the Archbishop's blog. Originally, it was listed as pending moderation. Then it was published. Now it is nowhere to be found.

***************

The New York State Senate is once again set to take up the question whether to extend the privileges and responsibilities of civil marriage to same-sex couples. It is a very close call and there is still no guarantee of how things will turn out.

Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, however, knows how it should turn out. In a a post on his official blog, he expresses his concern that in even considering the question of marriage equality the State government is overstepping its authority:

But, really, shouldn’t we be more upset – and worried – about this perilous presumption of the state to re-invent the very definition of an undeniable truth – one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children – that has served as the very cornerstone of civilization and culture from the start?

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.

But, please, not here! Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.

In considering the possibility of extending marriage to same-sex couples, the State of New York is not "presuming omnipotence." It is acting within its constitutionally determined parameters.

The Archbishop no doubt confused between sacramental marriage, a topic in which he is properly an authority, and civil marriage, the topic which is actually up for a vote by the State Senate.

Sacramental marriage may very well have an eternal and immutable definition that no earthly authority can change. If the State did attempt to alter the definition of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, then it would most definitely be "presuming omnipotence."

As any honest individual will admit, however, that is not what the push for marriage equality is about. Civil marriage is a construct of laws, and in a republican system of government the power to make, alter, or repeal laws is delegated by the people through the constitution to their elected representatives in the Legislature. Regardless of whether the Senate confirms or rejects the bill passed today in the Assembly, the Legislature will not be arrogating any undue powers to itself but instead performing its function.

That's really all there is to it. What we call "marriage" is in reality a collection of rules and instructions and provide benefits and impose responsibilities on a defined set of individuals. The Legislature is the instrument by which those rules are changed or the set of individuals affected is altered. And marriage equality, should it come to pass, will not alter the rules and instructions but simply expand the range of beneficiaries. For all the pathetic bleating about the "redefinition of marriage," no one has ever been able to demonstrate how a heterosexual couple's marriage is changed if gay men and lesbians are allowed access to the same rights.

What it boils down to are the "noble values" the Archbishop cites: "life, home, family, marriage, children, faith." Marriage equality will extend the State's protection of these values to segment of the population to whom they are currently denied.

The Archbishop asserts "We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought." I agree, and it is in the interest of true freedom that we ought not to confuse our religious beliefs with secular law and we ought to treat all citizens equally in rights and dignity.

Anthony Weiner

2011-06-06T15:52:00.002-04:00

"Weinergate" should not be a scandal.

Rep. Anthony Weiner is an adult. He has taken suggestive pictures of himself and shared them with another adult with her consent. The picture sharing has not been reported as harrassing or abusive. The other adult in question, a 21-year-old woman, is not an employee of Weiner's nor in any other position of power-imbalance or subordination. This should not be an issue. Why should we be shocked? Why should we even care? I've taken pictures of myself and shared them online, pictures even more explicit than anything that has come to light so far from Weiner.

Does it make a difference that Weiner is a member of Congress? We elect our representatives to represent us. They are to be our proxies in the legislative process. They are not supposed to be paragons of virtue or role models or saints. They are citizens whom other citizens delegate the responsibility of making laws. They are no different from us, no better and in some cases a damn sight worse. Millions of Americans take sexy pictures of themselves and share them on the internet. It betrays no public trust, it displays no lack of ethics or breach of the law for a Congressman to do the same.

Does it make a difference that Weiner is married? I can understand the argument: if Weiner is unfaithful to his wife - in thought if not in deed - how can we expect him to be faithful to the people who elected him? This was an argument raised during the Clinton era, and it feels just as wrong and unconvincing now.

Before the democratic revolutions, governments were generally headed by heritary monarchs of one kind or another. The monarch ruled simply because it was his job to rule; his quality as a ruler was measured by his actions on behalf of his realm and his subjects. History is replete with adqequate, even good monarchs who governed their territories well while carrying on liaisons with mistresses, lovers, prostitutes, and paramours. The doctrine of the king's two bodies distinguished between the persona of the ruler and the person who played the role. Why can Americans not make the distinction?

This all-or-nothing approach to morality and ethics is contrary to the reality of lived human experience: we have a remarkable ability to compartmentalize our lives and prioritize our attention. A man can keep a tidy office at work but live at home in a pig sty. A woman can manage her company's finances adeptly but be totally clueless about her own checking account. Moreover, according to the theology at the root of America's Puritanical Christian ethic, we are all sinners and we have all fallen short of moral perfection. It would seem that the only political philosophy that can guarantee a purely righteous leadership is anarchy.

This assumes that Weiner is actually committing an ethical violation in his internet chatting. We don't know the internal dynamic of his marriage nor do we know what rules he and his wife have set for themselves as a couple. It's really not our place to pass judgment. His record as a legislator has been good enough for the people of his district to consistently re-elect him to the House of Representatives, so that should be enough.

I don't think Rep. Chris Lee should have had to resign because of a shirtless pic he posted on Craigslist in an attempt to get laid. That is even less questionable than Weiner's alleged actions since there is no shadow or question of harrassment. As a "family values" Republican, however, it was a display of hypocrisy and he probably could not have maintained the support of his moralistic right-wing constituents once his peccadilloes came to light. I'm pleased that Weiner has announced that he has no intention of following suit, but I'm disgusted that he felt the need to go through the whole "I apologize to all the people I've harmed" dog-and-pony show.

In an ideal world, his statement would be "Yes, the pics are of me, but it's none of your damn business what I do in my private life" and leave it at that. But no, not in Christian America, where we have to pay lip service to an unrealistic code of sexual morality that only very few people actually live by and that our popular cultural expressions explicitly contradict. In our world, politics has devolved into a tribal bloodsport aided and abetting by the sensationalist media what promotes the salacious in place of the truly newsworthy and allows gossip-mongers likes Andrew Breitbart to be taken seriously.

I just give up.

Diary of Disappointment

2011-05-22T01:32:00.001-04:00

Harold Camping and his acolytes are the not only ones form whom May 21 was a severe disappointment. Not a single thing today went right for me.

I had a full itinerary today. My first stop was to be the birthday/graduation party formJason, a casual acquaintance whom I've met a few times but whose company I have always enjoyed. It was to be held at the Studio Square Beer Garden in Astoria, which would mean a bus and two trains from Whitestone.

However, the MTA in their infinite wisdom decided to to don track work on Saturday and so I was not allowed go go directly to Astoria; I had to go from Jackson Heights to Queensboro Plaza and then double back to Astoria. I had to wait about 20 minutes for the train and my total trip ended up being 90 minutes.

I reached the Beer Garden and found it a lovely place. It had a great ambiance and I wouldn't mind going back. However, i didn't see a single person I recognized. There was one table full of strangers who had NYU-colored balloon, but the guest of honor was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the crowd and and waited, draining a pitcher of Spaten in the process, and still no sign of anyone I knew. Time was running out and I had to reluctantly leave to make it to my next appointment.

In met my friend David at the the Penn Plaza for the Big Apple ComicCon Sping Edition. I have to say sadly that I was underwhelmed. I did manage to get within 10 feet of James Marsters, but that was really the only thing that made the admission fee even remotely worthwhile. We had seen everything there was to be seen in under and hour, and we still had a lotmof time to kill before the Geeks Out Afterparty at Vlada.

One thing I did want to get was a Dalek action figure for my desk at work. However, shockingly, there were no Daleks to be had at the ComicCon. The lovely people manning the booth for St Marks Comics said they had a lot of Doctor Who themed merchandise at their store downtown. After making reservations for dinner at Grand Sichuan nearby, David and I headed downtown in search of Daleks. The store had a two $75 collector sets of figures from Revelation of the Daleks and Resurrection of the Daleks, but no one-off pieces like I wanted.

We enjoyed a lovely meal, however, and I realized we were very close to Forbidden Planet on Broadway and 13th. They did have a Dalek like I was looking for and more besides. Indeed, I had a better time at this one store than at the Con.

After shopping, we headed back up town to Vlada for the Geeks Out party. It was the same problematic situation I've faced before: everyone else seemed to know everyone else and stayed within their own circle of friends. There was not enough mixing going on.

For fun, skin-tight Lycra superhero costumes were available to rent for a mere $5. After some other guys started the ball rolling, David and I decided to give it a try. I was disappointed, though, because inbound the costumes did not enhance my figure or attributes at all. I was the only costumed person who did not get groped.

When the promised raffle never materialized, I decided to head home. This meant another 2 hours of mass-transit hell to get home.

In all, I suppose I have the following to be thankful for:
1) I spent a fun day with my closest friend.
2) I was within spitting distance of an actor whose work I have enjoyed
3) I got the toy I wanted, eventually
4) I reconnected with a cool guy I had met at a party in January 2010 and now can build on that reacquaintance next time I see him.

I guess that's not so bad, but did everything really need to be so stressful?

The End

2011-05-20T23:52:00.001-04:00

The world is going to end tomorrow, for some people. That is a guarantee.

No, I do not mean the deluded followers of Harold Camping, although it's perfectly possible that it may happen to some of them.

People are going to die at 6:00PM tomorrow. People are dying now and, for them, the world is ending.

The obsession with general eschatology, the dread of events that cannot be predicted and may very well never happen, is a distraction from and really a denial and reaction against the particular eschatology that likewise cannot be predicted but which each one of us is guaranteed to experience. The Talmud teaches that when one kills a human being, it is as if one has destroyed the whole world. I remember a rabbi cite this passage in the ecumenical memorial service after 9/11; he added that 3,000 worlds ended that day. Worlds will end tomorrow as well. In traditional Christianity, the Four Last Things are not the Rapture, the Tribulation, and the rest of the fevered imaginings of 19th century end-times prophets and modern-day hucksters but Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

Yet the people who preach the imminent Rapture are hoping that they will escape this individual end of the world. They believe that only the unsaved will die; they will be whisked away up into heaven to escape the sting of mortality and live forever. I can't really fault them for it. Death is frightening because it is the ultimate unknown. It is the abyss that stares back. The desire to defeat death or at least to delay it or hold it at bay has inspired many of our break-throughs in medical science. Our standards of beauty and obsession with youth are the flip side of this, attempts to deny or cover up the inevitable reality that awaits us all. The vindictive desire for vindication and the glee many Rapture enthusiasts express when contemplating the fate of those left behind is less defensible, however, but still all too human.

It is easily to laugh at these people, but I have no doubt that many of them are sincere. They don't appear to be making any money off this campaign and have instead exposed themselves to inevitable discredit, humiliation, and mockery. I've mocked them myself, if only for the laughably tortured illogic of their arguments. They do, however, provide fodder for useful reflection, an inadvertent memento mori. What if tomorrow were the end of my world? What would I do differently? How would I appreciate today and the people in my daily life? How would I use my time differently if I new for certain when my supply would run out?

Heavy stuff. Thank God "no one knows the day or the hour" of our own personal yet guaranteed and inevitable eschaton. We can't live our lives from the vantage point of their end, but it is helpful to detach from time to time, to take stock and make sure we are headed in the right direction.

Focusing on the general and collective eschaton, however, seems also a reaction against that introspection. To be raptured, apparently, it doesn't matter if you're a good person or if you made the most of your time on earth; all that matters is accepting Christ as your savior. Do that, and maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones who get to check out of this world and skirt the responsibility of wrestling with it and struggling with it and trying, against all odds, to make it even marginally a better place by your passage through it. It's a desire for escape, to end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. The May 21ers do not deserve so much mockery as they do pity.

The world is not going to end tomorrow. As the great philosopher Jim Morrison said, "The future is uncertain and the end is always near." Any day could be our last so we should try our best to live each day as mindfully and engaged as we can, so as to meet the inevitable with as few regrets as possible. That is a goal I am committing to strive for.

More info on the May 21st Judgment Day

2011-05-16T21:43:00.002-04:00

I finally was able to decipher the bizarre Biblical chronology promoted by Harold Camping and the people who seem to earnestly believe that either the Rapture or Judgment Day will occur next Saturday (that part seems a bit murky still).

In this scintillating text, titled Adam When?, Camping explains his theory that the "begats" in Genesis 5 and 10 are a secret code of the history of the universe. He notes that in some instances, one person is described as both "begetting" his successor and also "calling his name." Convinced that not a single a word of the Bible is there without God specifically intending to reveal something in it, this sporadic use of "calling the name" must mean something. Camping assumes that it means that only those instances where the ancestor "calls the name" of the descendant refer to direct father-son relationships; the other instances indicate not that the ancestor directly "begat" the descendant, but rather fathered the ancestor of the next person on the list. This allows Camping to extend the lifetimes of these "patriarchs" much longer than a simple reading of the text would allow, which is how he arrives at his date for the Flood at 4990 BCE.

The example he uses, in the text cited above, is Genesis 11:16-19:

And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:
And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.

Since Eber did not "call the name" of Peleg, Camping insists that this means that Peleg was not Eber's son but rather a more distant descendant, grandson or great-grandson or the like. When Eber "begat" Peleg when he was 34, Camping says that this really means Eber fathered Peleg's ancestor and that Peleg wasn't born until the end of Eber's life.

There is a problem with this that I did not find Camping address. Camping is a Christian (allegedly) and thus he must accept the New Testament as the Word of God no less than (and in fact more than) the Old. The Gospel according Luke contains a genealogy of Jesus that traces his lineage back to Adam. Luke 3:35 clearly says that Peleg was the son of Eber. Lest anyone try to play linguistic games with this like Camping does with his "called the name" theory, the exact same usage is used for David as the direct son of Jesse and Shem as the direct son of Noah and Noah as the direct son of Lamech. The Gospel and Camping's theory about the Genesis begats cannot both be true. If the Gospel is wrong on the genealogy of Jesus, what else is it wrong about? The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy - on which this whole Doomsday prediction is based - evaporates. If the Gospel is correct and Eber was the literal son of Peleg, then Camping's calculation of the date of the Flood is way, way off and so the all-too-convenient math that leads up to next Saturday being the 7,000th anniversary of the Noachian Deluge falls apart.

I look forward to sharing this with the next group of May 21sters I happen to come across.

Bad Omens

2011-05-16T10:36:00.002-04:00

When walking the dog this rainy morning, I was watching him and not wear I was going. A sickening crunch told me I had just stepped on and killed one of the small snails that creep along the walkway to my house when the ground gets wet.

Further along the walk, at the corner of 14th Avenue and the Whitestone Expressway, the tiny carcass of a robin chick lay on the pavement. Not yet able to fly, it must have fallen out of its nest. I can only hope that it died upon impact, because otherwise it's a pretty horrible fate.

Game of Thrones

2011-05-15T22:02:00.003-04:00

I am really enjoying HBO's series Game of Thrones, based on the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin.

I had heard about this series and seen volumes of it in bookstores for years, but never paid much attention. Then, in reading the archives of the witty library-themed webcomic Unshelved, I came across their recommendation of the first book in the series. Since Unshelved had also introduced me to Lois McMaster Bujold's fantastic Vorkosigan Saga, I thought it worth a shot to check out this book.

I downloaded the first two volumes, A Game of Thones and A Clash of Kings on Kindle and was at first not impressed. I am usually wary of sword and sorcery epics and I tend to overanalyze things. I want worlds and systems to make sense, and I just was severely bothered by this kinda-sorta medieval Europe where everyone had names that were almost-but-not-quite typical English names. I read a few chapters and got up to the point where Bran Stark discovers the incest between Queen Cersei and her brother Ser Jaime Lannister and gave up. I just wasn't feeling it.

But then I saw ads for the HBO series everywhere. I initially laughed it off, wondering if Sean Bean's turn as Borormir in The Fellowship of the Ring had type-cast him (seriously: his Ned Stark looks just like Boromir). However, a good friend whose judgment I trust recommended I give it a second try, and I am glad I did. I am impressed by Martin's descriptive writing and his chracterization, and he certainly knows how to weave intrigue and suspense. I finished the first volume and am now halfway through the second. I think Kindle and iPad help: if I had to lug around the actual books, I am sure I would be daunted by the page count and thickness.

So far, the HBO series has marvelously complemented my reading of the books. I am very impressed with how the HBO writers have constructed scenes that convey essential information without resorting to slavishly copying the text of the book. Tonight's episode was exciting largely because it makes explicit the gay relationship between Renly Baratheon and Ser Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers.

One thing I did find surprising, though, was that the young child playing Robert Arryn was shown suckling at his mother's breast, as described in the book. I just found that a trifle unsettling. It's supposed to be unsettling, but it seems very strange to make a real-life child actor perform such an act for a TV series. I'm going to need to sort that out some more.

[ETA: the Internet reveals it was a fake boob, a "prosthetit" as my friend David said. Whew.]

Still, I am eagerly awaiting next week's episode, which out to be the big game-changer.

College Regrets

2011-05-14T23:09:00.005-04:00

I went to the Upper West Side today, a region I usually disdain as a bourgeois wasteland, to celebrate a friend's birthday.

Specifically, he had sponsored the kiddush after services at one of the minyanim at Congregation Ansche Chesed. When he invited me, I was initially alarmed and afraid it was the minyan my boss belongs to. Fortunately, it was a different crowd altogether.

It was nice to see him, but being in that neighborhood always makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel like an outsider who doesn't belong, inferior. This is largely due to the sad fact that I cannot afford to live in that area and probably never will.

My friend had fond feelings toward that area, however, stemming from his college days at Columbia. I agree that I most likely would have a better appreciation of the Upper West Side also if I had been so fortunate as to attend that Ivy League university. However, I did not go to Columbia. I didn't go to NYU, either, and I feel the same sense of longing and regret - and resentment - whenever I find myself near that campus, as well. I didn't attend these schools and I didn't even apply. That is one of my biggest regrets.

The first weekend in June (assuming the world doesn't end next Saturday) I will be attending my 10-year college reunion. I attended Le Moyne College in my home town of Syracuse, a small Jesuit college that few people have ever heard of. I got a very good academic education even if my social education was less than stellar (I still remember some idiot RA on my orientation weekend prattling on about how we would all make friendships that would last a lifetime. Ha!). It just hasn't done me any good in my later life or career.

My home life as a child was extremely sheltered, deriving no doubt from my status as the only surviving child after two tragic miscarriages. I was bound with very tight apron strings, and my mother's opinions had brainwashed me against visiting large cities like New York. It was an unspoken assumption that I would attend a local college, and I only obtained applications from Syracuse University, Le Moyne, and Hobart in Geneva, New York (thank God I didn't end up there!).

It's clear that in a choice between SU and Le Moyne the first is the better school by far, an internationally respected university. In hind sight it would have been much better for me socially as well: with a large student body, I would have enjoyed a degree of anonymity not possible on Le Moyne's tiny campus. Moreover, it had a large and active GLBT student organization; Catholic Le Moyne would allow only a pathetic issue-based organization called "People Against Homophobia." In my senior year of high school I was so far in the closet I was in Narnia, so this was not a factor in my reasoning.

What was a significant factor was money. My parents were far from wealthy but somehow they had managed to save enough to provide a significant proportion of my college education. Neither of them had gone to college and they were proud for me to have opportunities they did not. While I was accepted at both SU and Le Moyne, the former gave me no financial aid at all while Le Moyne awarded me a generous scholarship that combined with my parents' savings gave me a full ride. SU's hefty tuition would require significant loan assistance, and from a financial standpoint Le Moyne made the most sense.

I also had my heart set on Le Moyne for another reason. It was the alma mater of my 10th grade European history teacher, on whom I had the most obscene crush (yet somehow I was able to convince myself that I was really straight!). If I couldn't get into his pants, then I suppose the next best thing was to become as much like him as possible. I wanted to go to his school and follow in his footsteps with a degree in history and a concentration in education.

So, I went to Le Moyne. I had a roommate for two weeks with whom I had nothing in common and thereafter lived by myself. I had a few acquaintances with whom I tended to hang out and dine with but made no lasting friendships. I was socially awkward and did not handle the whole coming out thing very well, although that is hardly my fault since the college provided essentially no resources to help in that regard. My professors taught me useful skills and knowledge, but did not prepare me for the realities of graduate-level education or the job market for history Ph. D.s.

More importantly, I made no social connections to assist me later in life. I can only wonder how my life would have turned out differently had I gone to SU, or if I'd had the imagination and courage to try applying elsewhere, like Columbia or NYU. I have no illusions about the likelihood of getting accepted at either of them and even if some miracle had occurred I can't imagine I could have afforded either school. But if I had spent the formative years of young adulthood down here, either in Morningside Heights or the Village, I would have had had the romanticized New York experience that I see so often in movies and TV and wish I had enjoyed. I would have had greater opportunities for social connection and I would have had the outlets and support to deal with coming out in a more healthy way. It might not have made that big a difference in my life in the long term, but even a one degree shift in the trajectory of life can have tremendous impact long enough down the line.

I can't turn back time, and I can't undone what has been done. I can't even blame myself at 18 for making the decisions I did. I just have to accept that I am where I am and that life isn't fair. I am not entitled to live on the Upper West Side just as I was not entitled to have gone to Columbia or NYU or SU. I have so far had a decent life. There has been much to complain about, but I have food, shelter, and good health and that is more than most people on this planet can claim. I just can't shake the feeling, though, that life has passed me by and that I had the potential for greater things but either never saw the opportunities or let them slip away.

Where do we go from here?

2011-05-02T11:44:00.003-04:00

Sweet: Big smiles, everyone! You beat the bad guy.

What a lot of fun!
You guys have been real swell!
And there's not a one
Who can say this ended well!
All these secrets you've been concealing,
Say you're happy now,
Once more with feeling!
Now I gotta run,
See you all...
in hell!

Dawn: Where do we go from here?

Buffy and Spike: Where do we go from here?

Giles: The battle's done and we kinda won

Giles and Tara: So we sound our victory cheer...
Where do we go from here?

Xander and Anya: Why is the path unclear?
When we know home is near?

All: Understand we'll go hand in hand
But we'll walk alone in fear.

Giles: Tell me -

All: Where do we go from here?

When does the end appear?

Spike: Bugger this!

Closure

2011-05-02T08:53:00.002-04:00

I was savaged on a friend's Facebook wall for my less than unbridled joy at the demise of Osama bin Ladin. Apparently, the fact that I did not join with the throngs metaphorically dancing in the streets at the news somehow means I have no sympathy for the victims of 9/11.

If I had been killed on that day, I can't say that I expect I would care all that much about yesterday's news. However, I can appreciate that the families and friends of those who died in the attacks or were killed in the rescue efforts afterward may feel some sense of the all-important "closure." Similar feelings are reported by those who witness the execution (or sentencing to life in prison) of a loved-one's murderer. It ties up a loose end. Crime meeting punishment appeals to our sense of justice and makes the circle feel complete.

The circle can never be complete, however, since the victims are still dead. Bringing the killer to justice - or simply just killing him - may give a momentary thrill of eye-for-an-eye retribution, but the death of one man does not somehow cancel out and redeem the death of 3,000 - much less 900,000.

My interlocutor was not even among those who lost relatives and friends on that day; rather, he says he witnessed people jumping to their deaths from the burning towers and feared for his own life. His ten-year-old grief from that experience, he felt, entitled him not only to rejoice at the death of the mastermind of the attacks but also ridicule and dismiss as dishonest, disingenuous "intellectual nonsense" the reactions of persons like myself whose feelings are more circumspect.

Grotesque celebrations were reported across the country, like a morbid mini VJ Day. On that occasion, the exuberant explosion of joy marked the end of the most lethal and destructive conflict that humanity had ever experienced, a war that had laid waste to entire continents and killed over 60 million people. Yesterday marked the demise of a mass murderer, yes, but his death changes nothing.

I will celebrate when our troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq. I will celebrate when the PATRIOT Act and FISA and the other infringements on our civil liberities justified by 9/11 are repealed. I will celebrate when the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay is closed and its inmates are either charged and tried or released and compensated for their detention. I will celebrate when air travelers are no longer suspected as terrorists unless proven innocent and subjected to humiliating and invasive searches. I will celebrate when the fear of bad brown-skinned people who practice a different religion is no longer used to divide the nation against itself and justify the further erosion of our republic. I will celebrate when the wounds - physical, emotional, and otherwise - from our invasions, occupations, bombings, raids, and assassinations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere are healed and no longer foment distrust and hatred of the West among the peoples of the Middle East.

Because until then, Bin Ladin has still won and there can be no real "closure."

Bin Ladin Dead

2011-05-01T23:10:00.003-04:00

Well, they finally got Osama bin Ladin.

According to sources, he was killed by US forces in a mansion outside of Islamabad.

So does that mean that the War on Terror is over and we won? The Big Bad has been defeated, we saved the world, and now we can all go to the mall?

I shed no tears for Bin Ladin. He was a mass murderer and thereby deserved to die. My first reaction upon hearing the news was "It's about bloody time." However, it would have been preferable for him to have stood trial for his crimes in a court of law, to be convicted on the evidence of his guilt according to law, and given the just and appropriate sentence according to law. That would have been a powerful statement of the superiority of democracy and rule of law over fanaticism and fundamentalist terrorism, but I understand that things don't always work out the way we would like. I can appreciate the visceral feeling of satisfaction that killing Bin Ladin must give to a lot of people, even if it signifies nothing more than our superiority of force.

In the midst of the barbaric tribalist cheering going on now across the country, it would be wise to assess the cost.

About 3,000 people were murdered on September 11, 2001. On the pretext of those attacks, however, we have:

launched two full-scale wars which have together entailed the deaths of at least 900,000 people
invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, deposing the leader of one and propping up a corrupt petty despot in another
inflicted incalculable damage to the long-term stability of Pakistan, an acknowledged nuclear power
undermine the financial stability of the United States through reckless military spending
and allowed fear, panic, and paranoia - the goals of terrorism - to take hold among our population and wreak irreparable damage onthe democratic foundations of the American republic.

When measured against this butcher's bill, killing the bad guy before kidney failure caught up with him is a pretty hollow victory. The President in his address to the nation spoke of the pain inflicted by the 9/11 attacks: the empty chairs at empty tables and the loved ones taken far too soon - with no acknowledgement that the tragedy of 9/11 was experienced 300-fold by families on the other side of the world who blame not Al-Qaeda, but us for their losses and sorrow. We celebrate the death of one man, while we are currently blowing people up in Libya under the pretext of a humanitarian mission.

The lack of context in these celebrations is appalling. Lady Gaga posted on Facebook that this is a "historical [sic] moment in the fight against hatred." Arianna Huffington called this a symbolic victory that transcends the left/right divide. The Philly-Mets game was interrupted for the announcement followed by cheers of "USA! USA!" A vigil is currently being held at "Ground Zero" and fireworks have been reported in various locales.

This lack of perspective, which treats war like a football game, is deeply troubling. The taking of human life is an awesome thing, one to be done humbly. Monsters like Bin Ladin kill with glee; we should be better than him. Moreover, Osama bin Ladin has ceased to matter since March of 2003 and the invasion of Iraq, and I really can't see what this changes. It's not that I regret shuffling him off his mortal coil; I just can't find any reason to be happy when there is so much else wrong with the world. If this had happened 9 years ago, there probably wouldn't have been any problem; indeed, with Bin Ladin out of the picture it might have been harder to justify going into Iraq. We will never know.

With Bin Ladin dead, does that mean the wars are over? We can pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan completely and bring the troops home? We can repeal the Patriot Act and close Guantanamo and get the porno scanners out of airports? We all know the answers to these questions are "no," and therefore I can find no cause for celebration.

Judgment Day in Three Weeks

2011-05-01T20:41:00.002-04:00

Evangelists promoting the notion that the end of the world will begin on May 21 of this year were in position near the escalators at the Grand Central-42nd Street subway station this Saturday, disseminating their pamphlets.

I had encountered them a few weeks previously, after having written an extremely painful check to the State of New York for the privilege of living here. When I was approached with the proposition that the end of time was nearer than anyone could have suspected, I was disappointed. Why could they not have informed me of this prior to Tax Day?

In any event, I had some questions for the good people at Grand Central, and I was shocked - shocked! - that none of them were willing or able to answer my simple concerns with their scriptural hermeneutics.

If you really want to peruse their arguments, you can do so here.

The calculation of the end of the world on May 21, 2011 is based on the following three points:

1.) They date the Flood in 4990 BCE. I have tried in vain to understand where this number comes from. When following the literal text of the chronologies in the Hebrew Scriptures, most Jewish and Christian traditional sources come up with a date somewhere in the 24th century BCE; the May 21st-ers, however, base their date on a hideously complicated close reading of the "begats" to find missing years in narrative. It seems entirely too convenient and a cynical person might think that the date of 4990 BCE was deliberately chosen in order to reach a numerologically significant number when added to 2011. The dating of a Flood that probably never happened, however, is a murky business and it is simpler just to accept this point as valid and move on. The argument still fails when the other two points are examined.

2.) They interpret Genesis 7:4 to be a secret message about the long-term history about the cosmos:

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

A sane person would read this verse in context and take it as signifying nothing more than God telling Noah that He's planning to start the Flood in seven days' time. But for the May 21st-ers, 2 Peter 3:8 is the key to the cipher:

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

See? It's so clear! One day for God is like a thousand years! This isn't a metaphorical attempt to describe eternity from God's perspective, but a secret code for unraveling the timetable of history hidden in the Bible. It's so obvious! God wasn't just telling Noah that the Flood would begin in seven days, but that the end of the world would come 7,000 years after the Flood!

Moreover, this is different from the "day equals a year" principle employed by most other Biblical prophecy junkies, based not only on the sentence of the forty years wandering in the wilderness for the forty days of the scouts' journey (Numbers 4) and Ezekiel's weird visions about the siege of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 4).

It takes a serious leap of faith to see this prophetic meaning in Genesis 7:4, and no proof or evidence is advanced why this point should be accepted.

This is a huge problem because it is only through this verse that the figure of 7,000 years between the Flood and the end of the world can be derived, and it is only by adding these 7,000 years to the putative date of 4,990 BCE that one can arrive at an date of 2011 CE for the apocalypse.

3.) Genesis 7:10-11 gives the exact date of the end of the world:

And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the Flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened

In the Hebrew calendar, months are numbered from the spring, the month we have known since the Babylonian Exile as Nisan. The second month is Iyyar, which will begin Thursday, May 5 (better, on Wednesday night). May 21 will indeed be 17 Iyyar, the 17th day of the second month. Yet, again, the May 21st-ers desperately want to find meaning in the Genesis text for the present day. They do not explain, then, how the information that the Flood allegedly began on 17 Iyyar means that the world will also end on 17 Iyyar.

A confusing and uncertain date combined with illogical and counterintuitive mathematics make for a very unconvincing prophecy. None of the pamphleteers could give me any answers to why they feel their assumptions are correct. I asked them if they had a fall-back plan just in the off chance May 21 comes and goes without an apocalypse, and one of them said that's not possible: there are too many proofs and all the information is in the pamphlet. That was their standard reply. I explained that I had already read the pamphlet and have questions, but to no avail.

I plan to give the office number on the pamphlet a call on May 22 and inquire what happened. Will they follow the Jehovah's Witnesses and claim that Judgment Day really did happen but it was secret and invisible and we all missed it? Will they follow the Seventh Day Adventists and claim that they must have gotten the calculations wrong but the end of the world is really coming soon? Or will they just cop out and hide and refuse to answer?

I have to assume that these people really, sincerely believe this crap. Printing pamphlets and t-shirts isn't cheap and it's asking a lot of people to stand out in public and be ridiculed. They don't seem to be selling anything, so I can't see any obvious profit motive. I just don't get what is behind this except for the possibility that they really actually hope the end of the world is at hand. As life gets progressively harder and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the world becomes grimmer and more complicated than we could ever imagine, the idea that it can all just end can seem very appealing. That appeal, however, is also what leads many people to suicide.

An English monarchy at last?

2011-04-29T13:20:00.002-04:00

The marriage of Prince William and the new Princess Katharine of Wales promises that the British royal family may, in the not-too-distant future, actually be British again.

King George VI and all his predecessors since the death of Queen Anne were German through and through, first the dynasties of Hannover and then of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. King George VI, however, married to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who came from English and Scottish nobility of long standing.

HM The Queen, as the product of that union, is thus half German and half Anglo-Scottish.

She married Prince Philip, however, another German, of Danish background. HRH The Prince of Wales, then, is one quarter German, one quarter Anglo-Scottish, and one half Danish-German for a total of 75% Germanic and 25% English.

The Prince of Wales' late wife, Diana, had a lengthy pedigree of English noble descent. Prince William, as her son, is thus 5/8 of British ancestry. When he accedes to the throne, he will be the most British sovereign since Queen Anne and any child of his and commoner Kate Middleton's will be 13/16 British, making this future King or Queen the most fully British since the Tudors.

Royal Y-Chromosomes

2011-04-29T12:44:00.003-04:00

Watching footage of the royal wedding this morning, I was struck by the differences in appearance between Prince William and his far sexier brother, Prince Harry. That got me thinking about their geneology and their genes. I have also always been fascinated and a bit awed by the fact that the same Y-chromosome (with mutuations, of course) is passed down from father to son. Whatever the reality of his younger brother's paternity, it is clear that Prince William is clearly the son of HRH The Prince of Wales. When either Prince Charles or Prince William succeeds to the throne, they will be bearers of the 7th line of Y-chromosomes that have reigned over England since 1066

These lines are listed below, traced back as far as this morning's internet research could take me. Female sovereigns of England and the United Kingdom are not included since they, of course, did not possess Y-chromosomes. Kings Stephen and William III are omitted because their houses reigned for only one lifetime and left no heirs. Actual British sovereigns are bolded. The intensive Germanness of the royal lineages is easily apparent:

The Oldenburg Line

1. HRH Prince William of Wales
2. HRH The Prince of Wales
3. HRH The Duke of Edinburgh
4 Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
5. King George I of Greece
6. King Christian IX of Denmark
7. Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg
8. Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
9. Karl Anton August, Prince of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
10. Peter August, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
11. Friedrich Ludwig, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
12. August Philip, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
13. Alexander, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg
14. Johan II, Duke of Schlesswig-Holstein-Sonderburg
15. King Christian III of Denmark
16. King Frederick I of Denmark
17. King Christian I of Denmark
18. Dietrich, Count of Oldenburg
19. Christian V, Count of Oldenburg
20. Conrad I, Count of Oldenburg
21. Johan II, Count of Oldenburg
22. Christian III, Count of Oldenburg
23. Johan I, Count of Oldenburg
24. Christian II, Count of Oldenburg
25. Moritz I, Count of Oldenburg
26. Christian I, Count of Oldenburg
27. Egilmar II, Count of Lerigau
28. Egilmar I, Count of Lerigau

The Wettin Line

1. King George VI – also King Edward VIII
2. King George V
3. King Edward VII
4. Prince Albert, The Prince Consort
5. Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
6. Franz Friedrich Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
7. Ernst Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
8. Franz Josias, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
9. Johan Ernst IV, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
10. Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Altenburg
11. Johan II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar
12. Johan Wilhelm, Duke of Saxe-Weimar
13. Johan Friedrich I, Elector of Saxony
14. Johan, Elector of Saxony
15. Ernst, Elector of Saxony
16. Friedrich II, Elector of Saxony
17. Friedrich I, Elector of Saxony
18. Friedrich III, Landrave of Thuringia
19. Friedrich II, Margrave of Meissen
20. Friedrich I (the Bitten), Margrave of Meissen
21. Albert II (the Degenerate!), Margrave of Meissen
22. Heinrich III, Margrave of Meissen
23. Dietrich I, Margrave of Meissen
24. Otto II, Margrave of Meissen
25. Conrad, Margrave of Meissen
26. Thimo II, Count of Wettin
27. Dietrich II, Margrave of Lower Lusatia
28. Dedo I von Wettin
29. Dietrich I von Wettin

The Este-Welf Line

1. Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn – also King George IV and King William IV
2. King George III
3. Frederick August, Prince of Wales
4. King George II
5. King George I
6. Ernst August, Elector of Hannover
7. Georg, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
8. Wilhelm, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
9. Ernst I, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
10. Henry I Duke of Lüneburg (and Margaret, daughter of Ernst of Saxony, #15 above)
11. Otto V, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
12. Friedrich II, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
13. Bernhard, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
14. Magnus II, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
15. Magnus I, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
16. Albert the Fat, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
17. Albert the Tall, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
18. Otto I, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
19. William of Winchester, Lord of Lüneburg
20. Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony
21. Henry II, Duke of Saxony (Henry X, Duke of Bavaria)
22. Henry IX the Black, Duke of Bavaria
23. Welf I, Duke of Bavaria
24. Albert Azzo II of Este, Margrave of Milan
25. Albert Azzo I, Margrave of Milan
26. Otbert II, Margrave of Milan
27. Otbert I, Margrave of Milan
28. Margrave Adalbert

The Stuart Line

1. King James VII and II – also King Charles II
2. King Charles I
3. King James VI and I
4. Henry Stuart, Duke of Albany, Lord Darnley
5. Mathew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox
6. John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Lennox
7. Matthew Stewart, 2nd Earl of Lennox
8. John Stewart, 1st Earl of Lennox
9. Sir Alan Stewart of Darnley
10. Sir John Stewart of Darnley
11. Sir Alexander Stewart of Darnley
12. Alan Stewart of Dreghorn
13. John Stewart of Bonkyl and Garlies
14. Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward of Scotland
15. Walter Stewart, 3rd High Steward of Scotland
16. Alan fitz Walter, 2nd High Steward of Scotland
17. Walter fitz Alan, 1st High Steward of Scotland
18. Alan fitz Flaad, Lord of Oswestry
19. Flaad, Steward of Dol
20. Alain, Steward of Dol

The Welsh Line

1. King Edward VI
2. King Henry VIII
3. King Henry VII
4. Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond
5. Owen Tudor
6. Maredudd ap Tudor
7. Tudor Fychan, Lord of Pemmynydd
8. Goronwy ap Tudor, Lord of Pemmynydd
9. Tudor Hen, Lord of Pemmynydd
10. Goronwy, Lord of Trefgastell
11. Ednyfed Fychan ap Cynwrig
12. Cynwrig ap Rhiwallon

The Plantagent Line

1. King Edward V
2. King Edward IV – also King Richard III and King Henry VI
3. Richard Plantagent, Duke of York – also King Henry V
4. Richard of Conigburgh, Earl of Cambridge – also King Richard I and King Henry IV
5. Edmund of Langley, Duke of York
6. King Edward III
7. King Edward II
8. King Edward I
9. King Henry III
10. King John – also King Richard I
11. King Henry II
12. Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou
13. Fulk, King of Jerusalem
14. Fulk IV, Count of Anjou
15. Geoffrey, Count of Gatinais
16. Fulk III, Count of Anjou
17. Geoffrey I of Anjou
18. Fulk II, Count of Anjou
19. Fulk I, Count of Anjou
20. Ingelgerius, Count of Anjou
21. Tertullus d’Anjou, Count of Gatinais
22. Hugues, Count of Bourges
23. Hugh III, Count of Tours
24. Luitfride II, Count of Alsace
25. Luitfride I, Duke of Alsace,
26. Adelbert, Duke of Alsace
27. Adalrich, Duke of Alsace
28. Lendisius, Mayor of the Palace
29. Erchambaldus, Mayor of the Palace
30. Ega, Major Domo

The Norman Line

1. King Henry I – also King William I
2. King William I
3. Robert I, Duke of Normandy
4. Richard II, Duke of Normandy
5. Richard I, Duke of Normandy
6. William I of Normandy
7. Rollo/Hrolfr/Rolf/Robert

Implications of Marriage Laws

2011-04-26T12:44:00.002-04:00
Marriage laws in all 50 states allow individuals who have been divorced to remarry. The marriages of divorced people are recognized as just as legal and valid as those between individuals who have never been wed. Federal law supports this right.

This must mean, then, that the Catholic Church MUST sanctify the marriages of divorces, and if a Catholic priest refuses to preside over such a marriage, the aggrieved parties have can sue. Right?

No? Why not?

Oh, right. That First Amendment "free exercise" clause stuff.

It's really sad to see that people are still making the claim that extending marriage rights to same-sex couples will somehow harm or - better - "persecute" churches who consider such relationships sinful.

If there really were any truth to this argument, then someone a long, long time ago would have sued the Catholic Church for the right to have their second marriage solemnized in a sacramental wedding. I cannot say for sure that no one has ever filed such a suit, but it is an unquestioned and unquestionable fact that no such suit has ever prevailed and that there does not even exist any possibility of the Church being required by the State to officiate its sacraments contrary to its doctrines.

Likewise, nothing in civil law requires two individuals who seek to dissolve their marriage to obtain a writ of divorce from their local Orthodox rabbi to enable future remarriages. The case of agunot is distressing, but it is entirely a religious issue outside the State's purview. Despite the legality of civil remarriage for divorced people, no government act has ever forced an Orthodox rabbi to validate such a marriage as halakhic and kosher, and no government law ever will.

Likewise, once same-sex couples are finally accorded the right to marry, religious groups who do not condone homosexual behavior will never have to worry about being forced to sanctify same-sex marriages against their will.

Excused

2011-04-25T15:42:00.001-04:00
All of this was so needlessly traumatic.

I went to the Central Jury Room in Kew Gardens as directed at 9:00 am this morning. I had to go through a metal detector and then sit in a big room where 5 TVs blared Regis Philbin going on about the royal wedding. There was no guidance or instruction until a uniformed troglodyte gave instructions about how to fill out the summons form.

If we had any questions or concerns, we were told to form a line. I did so, and explained that I totally did not understand the interactions and that I was not prepared to serve today. Not only had I not given any notice at work, but I also cited that today and tomorrow are Jewish holidays.

The clerk told me I could leave but I was out the door before I realized he hadn't taken my name or number or anything. I was concerned that this was the functionL equivalent of never having shown up at all. I finally got through to the Division of Jurors office and they explained that an excuse is counted as an absence and that I would get a new summons in 6-8 months. They reassured me, though, that I would not get in trouble for not serving today.

That was a relief, but now I wonder why I bothered to go at all in the first place. This system is so fucked up!

Jury Duty

2011-04-25T00:58:00.001-04:00
I have to report to the courthouse in Kew Gardens tomorrow at 9:00 AM for jury duty and I am furious.

I got a notice of my status as a telephone standby juror two weeks ago. The only instructions however were to begin calling a phone number after 5:00 PM on April 22nd. There was nothing I this document that gave me any indication or reason to believe that in would be expected to serve on a jury at a specified time, so I made no arrangements at work.

I went out Friday night with my friend David to see a cabaret performance at the City Winery and so I didn't get around to calling the number until Saturday. That's when I learned that I was expected to report for jury duty on Monday morning. No postponements are apparently possible. The Division of Jurors Office is closed until 8:00 AM Monday, the online service wouldn't let me apply for a postponement because it was within 7 days of my reporting date, and no postponements will be granted on the day of service. So I have no choice but to the courthouse tomorrow morning.

I'm so mad because our office is closed Monday and Tuesday for the 7th and 8th days of Passover. These are supposed to be days off that I was looking forward to. I have no problem with doing my civic duty as a juror, but in was hoping that I would be asked to serve when I otherwise would need to be at work. Sitting around a courthouse for hours on end is infinitely preferable to being at my office, but it really sucks to have a day of freedom stolen from me.

At least it's Kew Gardens and not a less pleasant neighborhood like Jamaica and at least it gets me out of the house. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll get dismissed at the end of the day and will still get to have Tuesday free. That' all I have to cling to, though, because I have no choice but to suck it up and report for duty tomorrow. I always have such rotten luck!

The Wicked Child

2011-04-25T00:43:00.001-04:00
Unsurprisingly, given my mood of the past few months, I have been unable to approach the holiday of Passover with anything even remotely approaching the proper spirit or intention. Indeed, other than the seder I reluctantly attended solely out of consideration for a long-time friend, I did nothing to prepare for the holiday nor anything to mark it.

During the seven (or eight) days of Passover, the obsessive-compulsive tendencies at the heart of the Jewish religion reach levels that should justify institutionalization. The house must be cleansed to the quantum level to eradicate even the slightest most imperceptible presence of leavened grain. Moreover, the food prepared and consumed during the festival must not contain even the minutest trace of leavened grain or its derivatives. Somehow, this remnant of Bronze Age apotropaic superstition is tied into the Jewish people's founding myth and we are expected to celebrate freedom through subjecting ourselves to the slavery of ritual observance.

In earlier years, I could come up with some reason to justify the effort. These are among the folkways of the Jewish people and participating in them actualizes and expresses one's Jewish identity and one's communion with the Jewish people around the world and throughout history.

That is all well and good, but it ignores the fundamental question of what value there is in a Jewish identity in the first place. It is not without reason that several high-profile Jewish organizations have launched campaigns attempting to answer the question of "Why be Jewish?"

The language of expressing identity implies that there is some core of Jewishness that exists objectively and inherently in individuals - a Jewish neshamah perhaps? - whose existence is made manifest through Jewish action. That is immensely problematic because it implies that there is something inherent and objective in an individual that makes him or her distinct as a Jew from everyone else. Talk of "Jewish neshamot" or " Jewish souls" leads, in its logical extension, to the hateful doctrines of the Chabadniks' Tanya. My belief in the equality of all human beings forces me to reject this idea completely; such a notion is contradicted even at the very beginning of the Jewish sacred text which asserts that all human beings are created in the image of God.

I have previously asserted that "peoples" and even "religions" do not exist as abstractions ini the own right but as collections of individual human beings who share common beliefs and recognize in each other a common identity. One is a Jew if one believes oneself a Jew and is accepted by ones community as a Jew. One participates in the "folkways" of the Jewish people by joining with other Jews in the traditions that inform and undergird Jewish identity. It is a tradition among the Jewish people to eschew leavened grains during this time of year and to hold a festive meal in which the founding myth of the people is recounted. Jews participate is these traditions to express and affirm their identity as Jews.

But why? Why be Jewish?

One can ask the same of any other people. Why be Irish? Why be German? Why be Japanese? The answer is simple. As humans we create cultures to organize and give structure to life. We create symbols and rituals to give sense to the world. These are part of the matrix in which we are all born and raised. Why not participate in the folkways of the peoples out of which we emerge?

Perhaps one simply does not find meaning in them. In that case, it is really hard to formulate a positive obligation to actively take part in these folkways unless negatives consequences are built into disobedience or disengagement per the social contract. In some nations, for example, compulsory military service or voting in national elections are among their "folkways"; failure to follow these prescribed rules is met with a fine or imprisonment. Except for unusually vague threats of Divine retribution, the Jewish people lacks any such negative reinforcements and thus has no authority to command obedience.

Another claim is that the Jews owe some debt or obligation to the prior generations who both gave them life and from whom they inherited the traditional folkways of the Jewish people. A person who adopts Orthodox observance by conscious choice instead of having been raised in that milieu is called a baal teshuvah, not just one who repents of his lax observance but one who returns to a putative primordial status. The notion of carrying on traditions in honor of and out of gratitude for one's ancestors is loaded with emotive power, but it lacks any commanding authority. While they live, one's parents and grandparents may be saddened or offended by their offspring's choices, and their feelings should certainly not be disregarded. However, they cannot veto an adult's free decisions while they live, much less once they have passed on; the dead likewise cannot be harmed by the actions of the living, no matter of what one may believe about life after death.

Finally, one might consider that a Jew owes some obligation to the next generation. More than the previous two suggestions, this holds some weight. There seems to be a universal human need to know where we came from, our history and heritage and origins and even the smallest detail of a parent's upbringing contributes their own identity and thereby influences their children. Parents then can be said to have a responsibility to share their heritage and history with their children since it is their heritage, too. However, an obligation to impart information does not equal an obligation to perform actions. It may be that a child will not put much value in actions that his parents do not practice, but one cannot command or force individuals to find value or meaning in a thing against their will.

With no plausible obligation to descendants, ancestors, or the Jewish people as a whole, there is no external reason or purpose to Jewish living and Jewish being. The only rationale can come from within and therefore can only be subjective and personal.

I did not inherit Jewishness from my parents. I chose it as an adult. There are several reasons why I made this decision.

I had become dissatisfied with a Catholicism that devalued me as a gay man, disappointed me in its modernized lack of ritual beauty, and provided me with theological problems in could not resolve. The last point prevented me from finding a home in the Episcopal Church, which does not pose the previous two challenges.

I had a long-standing interest in Judaism and Jewish culture. Judaism was at once both familiar and foreign, the romanticized Other but also something that seemed to resonate very deeply with my personality. The use of a foreign language as the medium of liturgical expression and the emphasis on ritual action to encode and communicate values appealed to me in a way that post-Vatican II vernacular Catholicism could not. Through the rituals of Jewish religious practice, I believe I felt a sense of connection to what I believed to be the Divine and thereby derived some spiritual satisfaction.

The history of the Jewish people, as a hated and outcast minority that maintained its dignity and self-worth despite unspeakable hardship, resonated with my own personal experiences from childhood to adulthood.

This will be shallow and perhaps will brand me a narcissist or worse, but the stereotypical image of a Jewish man - nerdy with glasses but also with significant body hair and, of course, circumcised - is a image that I both identify with and find extremely arousing.

Attempts to forge a sense of belonging with the ethnicities I actually inherited turned out fruitless. I had very little interest or success bonding with the Polish heritage of my father. I had more success and become deeply involved in the Irish heritage of my mother, but my full embrasure by that community was hampered by the diluted nature of my connection. It is common-place in Irish American circles to compare the purity, as it were, of one's Irish background; I can only claim at most 25% Irish ancestry and my unmistakably Slavic surname certainly stands out. In Jewish communities, that had not been a problem. It also gave me a sense of belonging to something bigger and more important than myself.

It is here that I reach my stumbling block. Not belonging, but purpose. What is the Jewish people's raison d'être? Are Jews "chosen" (or do Jews choose) for a mission, whether to "repair the world" or make God known to the other peoples of the earth or the like? Does the Jewish people have some special reason for existing unlike the Germans or the French or the Chinese or the Zulu beyond their own survival? The history of the Jewish people as recorded in its sacred texts does not betray any hint of a special mission (at least not one that was ever acted upon during the Jewish people's brief times of political sovereignty and historical agency; the State of Israel since 1948 has not demonstrated itself to be a messianic utopia, either. The oft lip-serviced doctrine of tikkun olam is a relatively modern and recent marriage of left-wing politics with Jewish religious language. Outside the feverish and often disturbing imaginings of religious zealots, the Jews are a people like any other, no better and no worse, not more special but no more insignificant than anyone else. This brings us back to subjective personal choice being the sole reason to be Jewish and participate in Jewish ritual actions like the laws of Passover.

I see Jews and Judaism at their worst in my work and that does not inspire me to identify myself with the religion on my personal time. The religion has many features that I admire also but a tendency towards Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that I find both frustrating and offensive. I cannot believe that God would command people to purge their leavened grain and prohibit eating it on such strict terms, and I can't think of any good reason other than obeying a divine order to do it. Thus, I find myself in the position of the wicked child, asking "What is this service to you?" and not getting a decent answer.

Burqa Ban in effect

2011-04-12T09:16:00.003-04:00
France has now begun enforcing its controversial ban on face-covering in public places.

I admit to being torn about this. It is a little bit unsettling for a government to interfere in private religious practice. Also, this can be - and is - seen as a stigmatization of Muslims and part of the "clash of civilizations" mentality that demonizes Islam as "the Other."

However, I simply cannot endorse or defend the very idea of the burqa (or, more properly, the niqab). It's not, at root, a religious expression. It is found nowhere in the Qur'an and its real origin lies in the subordinate position of women as the sexual property of men in Middle Eastern culture. The Jewish doctrine of tzniyut or "modesty" is cut from the same cloth, as it were. The beauty and sexual attractiveness of women are viewed as the property of their husbands and are not to be shared with anyone else. The full niqab is just the most extreme logical extension of the same trend manifest in more simplistic kerchiefs or headscarves. It's the same trend by which Orthodox Jewish women wear scarves or, absurdly, wigs to cover their hair in the presence of men who are not their husbands.

Religious conservatives and women who have internalized the misogyny of their faith traditions can give all kinds of bullshit responses about how hijab or tzniyut enhances their dignity or what-have-you, but that does not change the reality that no such demands are imposed on men. That dichotomy and imbalance makes the whole system illegitimate.

The French law, however, is not directly about equality for women. First, it is a valid government interest to restrict the ability of people to go about business in public with their identities completely concealed. More questionably, the law is also intended to reinforce the national character of France.

That has some unsettling associations, but consider the reality of non-Muslim women visiting or working in Saudi Arabia. From the State Department's travel guidelines:

Islam is the official religion of the country and pervades all aspects of life in Saudi Arabia. Public display of non-Islamic religious articles such as crosses and Bibles is not permitted...

The norms for public behavior in Saudi Arabia are extremely conservative, and religious police, known as Mutawwa, are charged with enforcing these standards... To ensure that conservative standards of conduct are observed, the Saudi religious police have accosted or arrested foreigners, including U.S. citizens, for improper dress or other alleged infractions, such as consumption of alcohol or association by a female with a male to whom she is not related. While most incidents have resulted only in inconvenience or embarrassment, the potential exists for an individual to be physically harmed or deported...

The Saudi Embassy in Washington advises women traveling to Saudi Arabia to dress in a conservative fashion in public, wearing ankle-length dresses with long sleeves and not pants. In many areas of Saudi Arabia, particularly Riyadh and the central part of the Kingdom, Mutawwa pressure women to wear a full-length black covering known as an Abaya, and to cover their heads. Most women in these areas therefore wear an Abaya and carry a headscarf to avoid being accosted. Women who appear to be of Arab or Asian origin, especially those presumed to be Muslims, face a greater risk of being confronted.

Some Mutawwa try to enforce the rule that men and women who are beyond childhood years may not mingle in public unless they are family or close relatives. Mutawwa may ask to see proof that a couple is married or related. Women who are arrested for socializing with a man who is not a relative may be charged with prostitution. Some restaurants, particularly fast-food outlets, have refused to serve women who are not accompanied by a close male relative. In addition, many restaurants no longer have a "family section" in which women are permitted to eat. These restrictions are not always posted, and in some cases women violating this policy have been arrested. This is more common in Riyadh and the more conservative central Nejd region.

I'm not saying that two wrongs make a right, but if Saudi Arabia is permitted to make such impositions on the personal conduct of newcomers to their state, why can France not do the same? Public secularism and equality of the sexes is just as fundamental to French culture as public piety, "modesty," and the subordination of women is to conservative Islamic societies. Those who violate Saudi social standards can expect verbal and physical abuse and police intimidation and brutality. Or worse. Those who disobey this French law face a fine and maybe a community education seminar.

More to the point, each person is entitled to have his or her opinion of this French law but the only people whose opinions matter are the French people. This law enjoys broad support in France and was passed through the legitimate constitutional organs of the French government and had its constitutionality verified through the legitimately-constituted bodies intended for that purpose. France, unlike Saudi Arabia, grants extensive protections to the personal freedoms of its citizens with the proviso that the exercise of personal freedoms cannot be allowed to disturb the civil order. Even in the United States, religious practice is not an absolute freedom. Animal sacrifice, for example, is generally frowned upon by most municipalities. Lines are drawn everywhere between acceptable and unacceptable behavior; the debate is where the line should fall.

Because France, unlike Saudi Arabia, is a democracy the French Muslims affected by this law have options. They can choose to protest the law through a variety of means. They can contact their representatives in the National Assembly, they can start letter writing campaigns, they can stage marches and demonstrations. They can even resist the law through non-violent civil disobedience. This is a far cry from Jim Crow, but perhaps a niqabi Rosa Parks may inspire the French people to change their mind.

The French Muslims can also choose to investigate their practice and determine whether wearing the niqab is really so essential to their faith that it outweighs all the tremendous benefits that living in France affords them. The niqab is not mandated by the Qur'an, and Islamic jurisprudence can be surprising flexibile when it wants to be. To paraphrase a Jewish quip, if there is an Ulemmic will, there is a Shari'ah way. They can choose to compromise in this area and amend their practice for greater social harmony.

Alternatively, of course, they can choose the course of violence and go on a murderous rampage like that ignited by the stupid Danish Muhammad cartoons. The ball here is really in the French Muslim's court.

I do maintain sympathy for French Muslim women who face fines for going out veiled in public but face the worse threat of violence from male members of their community if they should flout this socio-religious dictate. It is the responsibility of the French government and law enforcement to protect them in this regard.

Human and Animal Rights Part 2

2011-04-06T03:07:00.000-04:00
It is generally accepted by the majority of people that it is permissible for human beings to make use of non-human animals for labor, experimentation, resources, and food. It is also generally accepted that human beings may kill animals not only for food and resources but also for sport or the control the population. Not everyone agrees that all of these actions are right or good and there are a variety of opinions as to which actions or combination of actions are morally right. However, all of these actions are commonly accepted as permissible when applied to non-humans but are considered moral atrocities when done to members of our own species.

Why? Is there any principle that makes this dichotomy coherent?

1.) Divine Command

The Bible seems to offer one. God, as Creator of both animals and humans has the authority to ordain how they may live and behave. God grants humans dominion over the other animals of the world, which enables us to use them for labor and resources but also requires us to steward and care for them. After the Flood, God allows humans to satisfy our bloodlust by eating animals for meat. God also prohibits humans from murdering other humans but does not explicitly oppose slavery and in some cases positively mandates capital punishment and war.

As the sovereign will of the Creator, these laws do not need to conform to a coherent system. The only problem with this explanation is that it requires the religious faith to believe it's account is true. It is attested only in the sacred scriptures of one religion (well, two) and cannot be verified. The problem with basing ethical behavior on religious belief is that ethical behavior is only as reliable as the individual's faith.

2.) Might Makes Right

This rationale is also pretty simple and straightforward. Our greater intelligence allows us Homosexual sapiens to take dominion over nature for ourselves and exert our will over other species simply because we can. Since we can overpower and control other animals, we can use them to provide labor, sport, or food however we see fit because no one can stop us.

What justification though exists for limiting this behavior to other species? Is it permissible to treat other human beings in the same manner, not just enslaving them but even going so far as to kill them for sport or food if they happen to be weaken than us? Black slavery was justified by reducing Africans to subhuman status or exalting White Europeans above them and the Aryans supposed racial superiority was the basis for the Nazi conquest and enslavement of Slavs and extermination of Roma and Jews. Even if those racial theories were based on utter bullshit, the fact remained that white slavers and the Third Reich held an insurmountable advantage of force over their victims; they did what they did because they could and in both cases it ultimately required. Greater show of force in the form of extremely bloody and destructive wars to stop them. Unless we want to cross the moral event horizon by endorsing slavery and Nazism, we need to try to find some other distinction between Homo sapiens and other animal species.

3.) Consciousness and Consent

If one ignores any metaphysical elements, then perhaps the basis of a right to life is the desire of the individual not to be killed. If each individual member of a group wishes to not be killed then they can each renounce the freedom to kill each other to create the socially-constructed liberty from being killed that is part of the foundation of civil society.

Non-human animals are incapable of communicating their consent or lack thereof. They cannot express their desire not to be killed (or enslaved) and it is doubtful if they even understand the concepts. If an animal is incapable of objecting to being treated in a certain way then does that make the treatment permissible?

This assumes a default condition or "state of nature" in which everything is permitted unless expressly forbidden. This condition taken to its extreme would result in the war of all against all that Hobbes inferred would make human life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. In Hobbes's view - much more pessimistic and therefore much more likely than the optimistic view of Locke and his fellow travelers - humans choose to submit the rule of governments in search of protection against others. This is actually the foundation of the feudal regime, and given that modernity emerged out of the womb (or perhaps better the corpse) of feudalism this would seem to apply still today. Humans can express their desire not to be killed. In order to protect ourselves and satisfy this desire we create governments and laws to prohibit and punish murder. The "right to life" in this system is not natural but socially constructed: the right to life is enjoyed by humans who do not wish to be killed and who submit to the government that safeguards that right. In the more optimistic views of Locke and Rousseau, humans choose to form governments to preserve their rights, subscribing to the social contract by which they voluntarily limit their freedom to violate the rights of others in exchange for the liberty that their rights will not be violated.

Can animals who lack the power to articulate desires and form governments do the same?

The problem here is that there are plenty of humans who are incapable of expressing their desire not to be killed and who do not have the capacity to articulate such complex philosophical notions. I refer not just to the mentally ill or the developmentally disabled but also to children who in many cases do not attain an advanced and mature sense of self and political and social awareness until well into their 20's. That human lives may be terminated in a window of varying length between conception and some point prior to birth is a present reality but an extremely controversial one; everyone agrees that killing humans between birth and the attainment of mental maturity or at least rational self-consciousness is wrong. While certain regimes have acted to the contrary, it is also generally assumed that the mentally ill and developmentally disabled must be cared for and protected and cannot be killed or made use of for resources or labor.
4.) Fear and Suffering

Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer has written extensively on the rights of all sentient beings, human and otherwise, to avoid suffering. He has not precluded that humans may not kill animals, but he has argued very convincingly that we must not harm them to the point of causing suffering.

Suffering is a common denominator that encompasses all living things. All living things feel pain an most animals will more developed minds experience fear and other forms of psychological suffering. Our empathy for our fellow creatures ought to make prevent us from inflicting suffering on them and it is generally true that persons who inflict pain and suffering on non-human animals will generally have little few qualms doing the same to other humans. In our treatment of animals, we must strive to reduce suffering and if suffering can be avoided both in the way they are treated while alive and the way they are killed, the we can morally and humanely make use of them for labor, resources, and food.

The question then remains why the same cannot be done to other humans. If one can kill another human without inflicting suffering - perhaps with a sudden and surprising delivery of a fast-acting and painless poison so that they suffer no physical or psychological pain - why can one not do so? Perhaps the loved ones of the victim may suffer at their loss. What of the case of those in permanent vegetative states with no hope of recovery, or the severely developmentally disabled or mentally ill who have no hope of enjoying a full human life. Might it not be a mercy to help them shuffle off their mortal coils and might the end of their suffering be a relief to their worried loved ones? Less lethally, if human beings can be made use of for labor without inflicting any physical or psychological harm, could not slavery be permissible?

5.) Covenant of the Wild

So far, I have assumed that there is no fundamental difference between the species H. sapiens and the other species with which we share this world. I have eschewed appeals to unprovable and problematic concepts such as the possession by humans of a soul lacked by other animals. I have also ignored differences in cognitive ability since there are humans whose cognitive abilities may be equal to or less than animals due to illness or disability or even age and maturity.

Is it possible that the history of a species may condition it to certain treatment that mit otherwise be impermissible?

Think of the animals upon which we rely for the majority of our food and labor. Cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and horses have all been irrevocably altered and conditioned and domesticated by their close association with humans over thousands of years. Our primary livestock animals - cows and chickens and pigs - have not next to no natural defenses. If the more extreme animal rights activists were to have their way and the farms were liberated like German death camps, it is extremely doubtful that cows and chickens and the like would survive in the wild. They would either be unable to fend for themselves or quickly fall prey to wolves, coyotes, and other predators.

Without human intervention, without being bred and raised and used by humans for labor, resources, and food, it is extreme,y doubtful if cows and chickens and other species would even exist. Their use by humans in essential and integral to their very nature.

Proponents of slavery and the Nazi racial theories made similar claims. The black Africans or the Slavs were predisposed to labor and servitude for more advanced races and thus is was natural, right, and fitting for the superior races to make use of them to this end. However, this is disproven by the history of the black Africans and the Slavs in their own environments: they have built and maintained cultures just as great and noble as their conquerors'. Left to themselves, they would have progressed even further and the conquest and enslavement by outsiders inhibited their growth and development rather than enhanced it.

The same is not true of cows and chickens and horses and the other animals that humans have domesticated. Perhaps this is the answer to the question. We can make use of animals even to the point of killing them because their use by humans is essential to their existence. Humans, on the other hand, cannot be killed or enslaved because that is not integral to our history and nature. The mentally ill and developmentally disabled are exceptions to the rule and must be cared for because they cannot care for themselves, and they remain human and must be treated as such.

The avoidance of suffering fits into this nicely. Suffering is not essential Io the use of animals for labor, resources, and food and so we can morally and legitimately use them if we avoid suffering.

What then about bestiality, the topic that so consumed the Orthodox mothers on that web forum on which I was quoted? The abuse of animals for sex would qualify as inflicting suffering if pain in inflicted in the sexual act. The Torah defines bestiality as penetrative sex either by a man on an animal or by an animal onto a woman. One can assume that pain and suffering would be inflicted on an animal by a man who attempted to penetrate it if the animal were not designed to receive the insertion of the average human penis. I cannot (and choose not to) think of suffering experienced by an animal that a woman (or perhaps also man) may choose to be sexually penetrated by.

Thus I find that bestiality is immoral and wrong if it causes suffering to the animal and is certainly neither a moral good or evil if performed without suffering. The religious convictions of the individual make bestiality of all kinds immoral for the individual.

The Status of Al-Qaeda

2011-04-05T07:19:00.001-04:00
In response to Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other Al-Qaeda operatives implicated in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks would not be given a civilian criminal trial in federal court:

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a written statement that it is "unfortunate that it took the Obama administration more than two years to figure out what the majority of Americans already know: that 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a common criminal, he's a war criminal."

I find this fascinating and confusion. If Muhammad is a war criminal, that would imply that he represents a sovereign entity with which the United States is at war. Slobodan Milosovic was a war criminal, but he was also the head of state of first Yugoslavia then Serbia and was responsible for waging wars against the other constituent member states of Yugoslavia. Hermann Göring was a war criminal, but he was also the highest-ranking member of the Nazi government captured by the Allies and was integral to the planning of Germany's wars and its crimes against humanity.

Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is a member of a stateless terrorist organization. He is not the representative or leader of a nation-state but of a transnational group of people who conspire and commit murder and other crimes. In what way is he different from a highly-placed leader in an international drug cartel, or a capo in a Mafia crime family?

I do not understand why the Republicans feel the need to honor scum like Muhammad by elevating them to status they do not deserve. Ignoring the differences in the background, one would expect them to take a page from conservative icon Margaret Thatcher who stripped IRA prisoners of their political status and treated them as common criminals. The purpose of this was to send an unambiguous message that the government of the United Kingdom considered the IRA and other nationalist militant groups to be nothing more than murderers and thieves and not freedom fighters or political prisoners. The policy ultimately backfired for Thatcher due the 1981 Hunger Strikes, but that is not a situation that could arise in the case of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.

It's very hard to see this as anything other than a disparagement and lack of confidence in our civilian court system, not to mention pandering and fear-mongering for political ends. The Republicans are creating (and the Democrats are not doing enough to combat) the impression that our Constitution is not strong enough to protect us from the Bad People and instead we need to resort to tactics that Milosevic and Göring would have approved of to keep the Homeland safe.

Why I Am Not A Christian

2011-04-05T00:21:00.001-04:00

I have just finished reading the controversial book by Christian pastor Rob Bell titled Love Wins. It was a quick read and little of the content struck me as revolutionary. Indeed, Bell would insist that nothing in his book is revolutionary or new. He simply takes the God that Christians believe is revealed in their Bible at His word and trusts that God is all-powerful and all-loving and thus rejects the notion that such a God would subject human souls to eternal conscious torment in Hell for failing to choose the right religion.

He does a very good job of rescuing the Good News of the Christian gospel from the hellfire-and-brimstone perversions of the past and together with Terry Eagleton's summation of orthodox Christian doctrine in his Reason, Faith, and Revolution, this could form the basis of a Christian faith I could truly take to heart.

There is a problem, however, that prevents me from embracing Christianity. Contrary to Paul's assertion that the crucified Christ is a stumbling block for the wise and worldly, I have no issues at all with the Passion and the Resurrection. The mythic self-sacrifice out of love that cannot be defeated even by death is a powerful idea that has given comfort, strength, courage, and inspiration to millions over the centuries. It is, rather, the Incarnation that stands in my way.

Orthodox (small O) Christianity is a credal faith and is founded upon the statement of principles hammered out at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, the relevant portion of which reads:

1. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ
2. The only Son of God
3. Eternally begotten of the Father
4. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God
5. Begotten, not made
6. One in being with the Father
7. Through Him all things were made.
8. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven;
9. By the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary and became human.
10. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered, died, and was buried.
11. On the third day He rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures
12. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
13. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end.

These 13 elements, these 13 Principles of Faith as it were, summarize the basic minimum of Christology that adherents of orthodox Christian churches are expected to accept.

Items 1-7 and even 13 are open to reinterpretation. "Christ" could be viewed no so much as one individual person but as God manifest and indwelling in every human soul, comparable to the "Buddha-consciousness" that allows people to attain enlightenment. This "Christ-consciousness" could be viewed as the presence of God in all people who orient their lives to love and negation of the self, a mystical union that transcends space and time and links individuals to God's own essence. There need not be a "Trinity" as such but the One God incarnate in all of the billions of human souls that have ever been. Item 7 links the indwelling Christ-consciousness with the creative power of God that brought the universe into being and thus links the individual human being to the fundamental unity that underlies all existence. Item 13 need not refer to a real, literal parousia but the reunion of the individual with the Whole and the World-To-Come in which all things have once again been made one in God.

The central sacred rituals of the Christian religion can be reinterpreted in this light. Baptism is the death of the individual living for himself alone and his resurrection to new life for others in unity with God. In the Eucharist, the Real Presence of Christ - the self-giving affirmation of union - is found not in some magical attribute of the bread and wine but in the sharing of a meal by the community.

Items 8 through 12, however, pose a very real problem. They require belief that the Jesus or Yeshua who lived and died in Roman-occupied Judea was a qualitatively different being than any one else who has ever lived. It is not enough to believe that Jesus showed a new way to live or gave a revolutionary dispensation of teaching - he really didn't, since there was nothing in the content of his doctrines that could not be found elsewhere in contemporary Jewish or even non-Jewish texts. Orthodox Christianity requires its adherents to believe, as the earliest disciples of Jesus did, that God was present and acting in the person of Jesus of Nazareth in a thoroughly revolutionary and unprecedented and cosmic way. Aside from affirming belief in the Virgin Birth, a doctrine based on a faulty translation from Hebrew to Greek, it requires one to assent to the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the only-begotten Son of God: not that he was the first to set forth on a new path of enlightenment like the Buddha but rather that he is the path of enlightenment and salvation.

While there are Christian denominations that do not require such strict doctrinal adherence (the Quakers, for whom I hold a great deal of admiration, preach "the Christ within" or "the Inner Light") the uniqueness and divinity of Jesus is a sine qua non of orthodox churches and pervades their liturgies and their teachings over the centuries. One would not be able to enjoy a Catholic Mass or an Anglican Eucharist or an Orthodox Divine Liturgy without being confronted with this tenet numerous times. Even Rob Bell's book affirms the uniqueness of Christ and asserts, implicitly, that while those who live Christlike lives despite adhering to other faiths benefit from Jesus's salvific grace, Christianity remains nonetheless the truth.

If Jesus truly was God and did, as the Creed asserts, come down from heaven for us and our salvation, my first question is "Why then?" I share the confusion of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar:

Every time I look at you I don't understand
Why did you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?
If you'd come today you could have reached the whole nation:
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.

Human beings had existed for hundreds of thousands of years before Jesus appeared. Why could he not have come earlier to spare millennia of suffering? Why could he not have come later when the technology to disseminate his teaching and attest to his miracles would have been available?

Secondly, I question the content of Jesus's ministry. He allegedly performed miracles to heal the crippled and give sight to the blind and so forth; all well and good. Yet he was in theory in a position to give us knowledge to cure illnesses on our own. At the very least he could have told us about the germ basis of disease. Simple instructions about personal and civic hygiene would not only have demonstrated knowledge unknowable for someone of his era but would have prevented untold suffering over the ages. Instead, he voided even the ceremonial hand-washing that the Rabbis ordained prior to eating bead meals on account that nothing that comes into a person from outside a person can morally defile him.

At the very least he could have foreseen how his words might be twisted by later generations and stated some things a bit more clearly - like whether salvation is by grace or works, whether we are predestined for salvation or damnation, how Jews and other people of other religions should be treated and so forth - to likewise prevent suffering and horror down the road.

I'm not even going to broach the subject of what "salvation" is even supposed to mean and how Jesus's death and resurrection are supposed to have achieved it for us. What I have cited above is enough to explain why I cannot worship Jesus as God and why I cannot accept him as Lord or view him as anything more than what he was: a 1st-century Jewish preacher who had some very good ideas and who challenged the Roman imperial system and paid the price. I remain a well-meaning admirer of the Christian tradition, but it is not the path for me.

Reconstructing Judaism 2: Blessings

2011-04-01T00:12:00.001-04:00

The simplest yet perhaps most distinctive element of the Jewish religion is the act of "blessing," or berakhah. Unlike the more common association from Christian practice, a Jewish blessing does not invoke divine favor on a person nor imbues objects with sanctity; rather it is a declaration of God's sanctity which is manifest in the object or action that elicits the blessing.

The meaning of the verb barekh is revealed near the very beginning of the Tanakh in the stories of creation:

And God blessed [the birds and sea creatures] saying "Be fruitful and multiply..." (Genesis 1:23).

This same blessing is repeated for humans and all other land animals, indicating that blessedness is the abundance of life.

Jewish blessings always begin with the same formula: "Blessed [barukh] are You, Eternal One our God, Sovereign of the Universe," followed by the cause of the blessing. The word "barukh" is complicated when applied to the Deity. It seems to mean "characterized by the abundance of life" with humans being the recipient and God being the source. Grammatical complications aside, a blessing boils down to "You, God, are the source of abundant life and I acknowledge this because of X."

Blessings are the most frequent Jewish religious acts with a minimum of 100 recited each day seen as the ideal. Tefillah, or prayer - the central core of Jewish worship - takes the form of a litany of 19 blessings. Interestingly, though, they are entirely of Rabbinic origin. Precedent exists in the Tanakh of course for thanking and praising God, but the only instance where blessing is commanded in the Torah is in Deuteronomy 8:10:

When you eat and are satisfied, bless the Eternal One your God on account of the good land that God has given you.
.

This is the basis of the Birkat HaMazon or Grace After Meals, although the form of this set of blessings was determined by the Rabbis.

The act of blessing is profound despite its frequency since it serves to constantly remind the individual of the presence of God in one's life and the world, requiring one to acknowledge the common fundamental Source shared by all things. It provides language and a ritual structure for expressing awe and wonder as well as gratitude, and for that reason I am choosing to start my reconstruction of Jewish practice with the simple act of reciting blessings of thanks and praise as appropriate. I trust it will fulfill a real spiritual need as well as provide a wedge in the door toward reengagement with the formal practices of the Jewish religion.

I love you, iPad

2011-03-27T00:02:00.001-04:00
I know that about a year ago I wrote on this blog of the frustration caused by the conflict between my desire for Apple's magical tablet computer and the lack of any real need for it in my life.

That latter fact remains true, but since my brand new iPad 2 arrived on Thursday morning, I have found dozens of uses for this device that make it well worth it's $499 price tag.

The beautiful high-definition retina display makes watching videos a pleasure. I can watch Hulu and Netflix from the comfort of my bed without the need to go to my computer or Roku device. Surfing the web and reading Salon and other websites has never been more enjoyable; yes, I could do this with my iPhone but the larger screen makes it so much easier.

I can also subscribe to magazines again without worrying about paper issues piling up. The digital editions of National Geographic, The Economist, and Wired are affordable and beautifully displayed. I am also thrilled by the word processing capabilities and the surprisingly comfortable virtual keyboard which I hope will give me the opportunity to write more often and more easily. It is essentially everything I could want in a laptop in a small sleek futuristic package.

So, yes, I've drunk the Kool-Aid and let Steve Jobs make me his bitch. And I love it.

The Jewishness of Elizabeth Taylor

2011-03-25T19:33:00.001-04:00
The Forward had a beautiful article this week about the late Elizabeth Taylor and her story as a Jew-by-Choice. As was to be expected, the comments section of this article provided an opportunity for religious fundamentalists to opine that she was not really Jewish; even the most charitable Orthodox commenter was unable to accept the validity of her Jewishness for fear of compromising his principles as a "shomer mitzvoth Jew."

Was she a Jew?

Let's look at the facts:

She expressed interest in converting to Judaism of her own accord. She had already been married to one Jew without converting and her marriage to Eddie Fischer was not yet on the horizon. She expressed an interest an admiration for the Jewish religion and traditions.

She studied under a rabbi, a recognized leader of a Jewish community. Under his auspices, she pledged her commitment to the Jewish religion, underwent the conversion rituals of that community, and was welcomed into that community as Elisheva Rachel bat Avraham veSarah.

She retained her affiliation with this community and others like it for the rest of her life. She never adopted another religion and as the article shows she defended the Jewish people on numerous occasions. Moreover, she demonstrated Jewish values by her acts of charity and advocacy for the poor and marginalized.

She remained affiliated with the Jewish community until the day she died and she had a Jewish funeral.

Elizabeth Taylor expressed the commitment to become a member of a Jewish community through word and action. The community accepted her through ritual. That's all it takes.

She did not ask to join the community of the fundamentalist who showed no honor to the dead, nor did she ask to join the community of the "shomer mitzvot Jew" who came to her defense to a point. These individuals do not represent the totality of the Jewish people because no one can. There is no one Jewish people throughout the world but instead communities of Jews who have more in common with some communities than with others. Just as communities don't exist except as groups of individuals, "peoples" only exist as groups of communities.

Elizabeth Taylor was a Jew. She would not have qualified for Jewish status in Israel and she was not a member of the fundamentalists' people and religion, but she she did belong to mine. Zikhronah livrakhah.

Reconstructing Judaism

2011-03-23T08:50:00.002-04:00
That didn't take long.

I am the kind of person who needs some kind of spiritual structure in life. The various Judaisms that exist offer such a structure and they are as good as any other out there. I might as well stick with them since they are what I am most familiar with.

Yes, the plural - "Judaisms" - is intentional. It is related to an understanding that I have reached that partially precipitated this year's existential crisis.

I've read through some of my previous posts on Jewish religion and especially the older ones make me cringe. I sincerely believed everything that I wrote when I wrote it, but I can notice a progression of how experience has dulled my idealism into cynicism.

I bought into the whole notion of "peoplehood" hook, line, and sinker, and I based a lot of my opinions on the Jewish religion on the premise that there exists a group of people called "the Jewish people" and that all people who call themselves Jews have some fundamental things in common, this common "peoplehood" the foundation of all. The Jewish religion, in this model, are the "folkways" of the Jewish people (to use Kaplan's term) or the system of symbols that the Jewish peoeple have created to express their identity and their connection to the Sacred as they understand it (to use phrases I've employed since religious studies courses in undergrad).

These posts I've written are not entirely full of shit. In an ideal world, they would be spot on. The problem is that reality does not conform to the ideal in that there is no one singular "Jewish people." Rather, there appear to at least three different Jewish peoples and many more.

The first two are the Orthodox throughout the world and liberal religious Jews outside of Israel. What does a Hareidi living in Me'ah She'arim or even a Modern Orthodox person on the Upper West Side have in common with a Reform Jew living in the suburbs? The third I count is secular Israelis. There is overlap, yes, but there are significant differences. There is a common history, but cultures behave like animal species: we all have a common ancestry but eventually enough differences arise that require the separation into two different taxonomic categories.

In attempting to make everything fit into the "peoplehood" model, I was running up against the same problem as one finds with the "God said so" model: an external body of rules that I as an individual am expected to conform to without really any say in the matter. Either God or "the Jewish people" determines the parameters of behavior and I have to choose to go along with it, or not. I've never had the faith to believe the absurdities the "God said so" model requires; if there is no one "Jewish" people, then any commanding authority evaporates.

I had been operating from the assumption that there was a set list of things one is supposed to do if one is a Jew and the default setting is that one does them unless one has a very good reason not to. My process had been to take the traditional laws and observances, research and analyze them, and try to discover if they made sense 1.) in context of the tradition's own fundamental assumptions and 2.) in general in themselves. If the answer to 1.) was "no," then I would feel justified scrapping it altogether; if I could answer "yes" to 1.) but "no" to 2.) then I felt I should try to see if the observance in question could be "revaluated" or reinterpreted in order to make sense or be relevant. If successful, I would then have not excuse not to do it. That was the process I was trying to go through in the "Rational Judaism" posts and I never actually got to posting the practical implications thereof; actually living it was just too exhausting both in the actual performance and in the growing cognitive dissonance between my ideas and my practice.

I'm starting over. I've torn the house down to the foundation and I'm going to begin again with a clean slate. I continue to associate myself with the group of people that call themselves "Jews" based on bonds of friendship, loyalty, employment, subjective enjoyment, and shared history. I'm rejecting the notion of "citizenship" in a "people" and any kind of mystical (in the common sense; I retain my interest in the formal sense) communion distinct from that shared by all living things. I accept that Jews throughout history have created a variety of religious expressions to inform their own lives and those of their communities, and I will draw upon those expressions and determine what if any of them may be meaningful and useful to me. "The Jewish people" has no power to compel obedience, and the absence of evidence to the contrary (and rational thinking) leads me to believe that God is indifferent to what we do and, if anythings, cares more about what how we treat ourselves and other people. Either way, the only person who is has the authority to command my behavior in this regard is myself as an autonomous individual.

In other words, I guess you could say my ideology has shifted from Reconstructionist to Reform. The implications of this will be interesting to explore.

Losing My Religion

2011-03-20T21:26:00.002-04:00
For quite some time now, I have grown increasingly disengaged with Jewish practice.

A clear example is the morning prayer. For many years I used to get up extra early so I would have time to put on my tallit and tefillin and daven shacharit before going to work. Over the past couple of months, that became harder and harder. Sometimes I couldn't wake up early enough, preferring to snooze the alarm over and over until the latest possible minute. Other days I would take too long surfing the internet or reading the paper so I would not have time before I would have to run out and get on the bus. I would bring my tallit and tefillin with me to the office, thinking that perhaps I might have a chance to take care of this observance during the day; the opportunity never materialized. When I would force myself to go through motions of ritual, I felt like I was slogging through a chore I did not want to do, an exercise that took out energy and gave nothing back.

This holds true for all other areas of Jewish life.

I haven't studied Torah is weeks. There's just nothing new or interesting that engages me. I haven't observed Shabbat beyond a token prayer over a glass of wine. Attending services at my synagogue has become torture. I can't connect to the prayers and there are too many people there I just don't like. Leyning has lost its appeal since I just can't get interested in the subject matter and can't focus enough to prepare.

This isn't a crisis of faith; faith and belief have nothing to do with it. My beliefs remain unchanged and in fact actually support me. I refuse to believe that any being Whom it is right to call God would care about what people ate or what we did on our weekends or what words we said in prayer. I have long been convinced that the entirety of Torah is a human response to the Divine, rather than divine commands to humans. The only one who can obligate a Jew to any religious observance is the individual Jew himself and the purpose of ritual observance is to facilitate a connection with God and to bring holiness into one's life as a support to the ethical laws that govern our interaction with the world. If a practice does not fulfill that end and cannot be reinterpreted or reconstructed, then one is not obligated to perform it. I feel like I've gotten to the point where the entirety of Jewish religious practice no longer works for me.

One contributing factor is certainly depression, which can cause us to loose interest in things we once enjoyed. Another cause is certainly transference from my job. There are so many people in my office that I hate who are obsessive in their observance of the minutiae of halakhah and I know that my disgust and exasperation with them has carried over to Jewish practice itself. For a long time now I have been overwhelmed with work that provides essentially no sense of reward or fulfillment and drains my soul; that this is associated with Hebrew and Israel and the history of world Jewish communities just makes those topics (in which I once was interested) painful to me.

Jewish religious practice no longer delivers a sense of connection or belonging or spiritual fulfillment that it once did. It is now a series of chores that take energy out of me and give nothing back. I feel nothing any more except tedium and irritation, like I am going through the motions of a dance I don't want to be part of. Worse, I feel like I have developed an allergic reaction to Judaism in general. I am fed up, Jewed out, and unable to tolerate it any more.

If I believed that any kind God cared what people ate or what words they said in worship or what they did on their weekend, that would be a different story. The fear of disappointing God might be enough to force me to muddle through until my mojo returned. If I suffered from such extreme Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder as the colleagues I mentioned above, then the rigorous structure of Jewish observance would be a respite from psychological distress rather than the cause.

Alas, I am too rational and too cynical and, surprisingly, too mentally healthy for that.

I need to detox. I need to get the Judaism out of my system and let myself recover. That is going to to be tough given the nature of my employment, but I will do my best. I have already resigned from my leadership position in my minyan. That was impulsive and I'm not entirely sure I made the right decision, but there needs to be a clean break. Then, after my soul has had time to heal, I can reassess matters and decide what and how much I want to do and gradually ease myself back in. I'm just not at that place yet. I need to keep my heart and my mind open, because it may in fact be the case that Judaism isn't right for me at all in the long run. Perhaps some other religion may more closely meet my needs. I did feel a great sense of tranquility and peace during the silent hour I spent at the Friends Meeting House in Flushing last fall.

We will see. All I can really do is trust that there is Something that cares about me and wants what is best for me and will lead me where I am supposed to be.

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler

2011-03-18T10:32:00.005-04:00
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler.

This book proved my first roadblock in my 2011 To Be Read challenge. This one took me much too long to complete and I fear I've faller behind on my book list.

I had bought this volume a while ago because the premise sounding very interesting and the book did not disappoint in that regard. The problem, though, is that it is very dense. Ostler is describing the rise and fall of the world's major languages over a period of about 6,000 years and so there is a lot of detail to cover. His style is open, witty, and engaging and the book is never boring; the weight of information, however, did however make reading it exhausting.

It seemed as if the supporting and additional material was more engaging to me than the main text. Each chapter is generously supplied with examples of texts in the languages under examination and I enjoyed puzzling out the meanings and guessing at the laws of linguistic change demonstrated therein. The part which impressed me most was a long footnote about Sanskrit grammatical sutras and how three simple nonsense words turned out to be the meta-instructions referring to completely different lines of text that coded the phonological rules of consonant shifting and only could be decoded when compared against another sutra with a carefully arranged list of input values. I had to read it three times before I understood and I am amazed as the obsessive intensity of the classical Hindu grammarians. It made the Hebrew Mesorah look like a Dick and Jane primer.

Other than gleaning new interesting facts, I'm disappointed that I didn't learn anything new on the larger picture. Languages grow and expand either because their populations increase in depth through organic growth or in breadth through migration, commerce, trade, and war. I knew as much before picking up the book.

This would be a very good read for someone without any prior knowledge of linguistic history, however, and for that audience I highly recommend it. Ostler's scholarship and his style are both first-rate, and that is a very rare and precious combination.

Human and Animal Rights

2011-03-14T14:53:00.003-04:00
Googling this blog's URL on a whim, I found that my expose on The Non-Orthodox Jew's Guide To Orthodox Jews received a lot of attention, including a discussion forum for frum Jewish mothers.

The discussion on the thread (to which I am deliberately not linking) eventually came around to the question of bestiality (as all discussions of homosexuality seem condemned to do) and one otherwise well-meaning person said that bestiality was clearly wrong because animals - like minors and rape victims - cannot give consent to the sexual act.

Another poster tried to highlight the admittedly huge problem with this. If bestiality is wrong because animals cannot give consent, how then can one justify exploiting them for labor or transporation, killing them, eating their flesh, or making consumer goods out of their carcasses? The consent issue is an effective dismissal of the bizarre argument that legalizing same-sex marriage will lead to people marrying their pets or a goat (it's always a goat) since marriage is a legal contract and contracts depend upon consent. Sexual acts however are an entirely different matter.

From the frum mommies' perspective, the answer is relatively simple. The opportunities of human action is limited only by the individual's imagination and ability and is divided into three categories: actions positively commanded by God (mitzvot), actions negatively prohibited by God (aveirot), and everything else. The specific boundaries of the commanded and the forbidden have been expanded upon significantly by the rabbis but the basic divisions remain. Sex with animals, along with sex with members of the same sex, are forbidden by God and/or the Rabbis in God's name; using animals for labor or food are neither prohibited nor commanded, but if you're going to do them there are laws and rules to follow. Bestiality and homosexuality are wrong just because God forbade them. Using and eating animals is at our discretion because God gave humans dominion over all other creatures and allowed us to eat their meat after flood - provided we slaughter them properly and obey the rules of kashrut and so forth. Causa finita est.

In all moral decisions, a line must be drawn somewhere and having the lines clearly drawn by an external authority is very attractive. It saves the individual from the struggle and uncertainty of trying to identify where the lines lie for himself.

What moral principles exist that allow Homo sapiens to exploit and kill other species for labor, resources, and food while prohibiting the same treatment to other members of the H. sapiens species? Do non-human species have rights? What are rights and why do humans have them?

These are questions I'd like to explore over the next several posts.

What Is To Be Done?

2011-03-11T09:22:00.004-05:00
Wednesday, the Republicans in control of the state of Wisconsin revealed their hypocrisy. After proclaiming that the curtailment of collective-bargaining rights for state employee unions was a necessary cost-cutting measure to resolve the state's budget crisis, they changed course completely and declared the union-busting elements of the legislation to be non-budgetary in nature. This allowed the State Senate to pass a bill eliminating the unions' right to collective bargaining over benefits with a smaller quorum, rendering the absense of the 14-member Democratic caucus irrelevant. Governor Walker signed the bill into law today.

Despite the protests and despite the public opinion polls, the side of labor lost this battle. The political options look grim. The working class has too few allies in the present crop of elected officials to make any difference through parliamentary tactics. Governor Walker cannot be ousted in an election until 2014 and the members of the State Legislature and Senate responsible for this travesty cannot be voted out until 2012 at the earliest. The Governor and members of the Legislature and the Senate can be recalled, but recall votes have historically been unsuccessful with only a few sensational examples. As Jefferson noted, experience has shown that people will put up with a lot of abuse from their elected officials and from their governments before they reach the point where they are willing to exert the effort to effect change.

What, then, is to be done?

The protests can and should continue. Walker's disdain for the working class and his hypocrisy must not be allowed to recede into the collective amnesia caused by the 24-hour news cycle. 2 years is a long time to wait, but perhaps the anger and the momentum can be sustained long enough to make a meaningful electoral statement in 2012.

Political terms of office are deliberately long and our news media seems almost conspiratorily committed to making sure the population has as short an attention span as possible. Wednesday's naked use of political power for class interests should be just one more piece of evidence that the political system is weighted in favor of the wealthy and the powerful and that the working class can never really expect to win when playing by the house's rules.

What is really needed is to play outside the rules. The unions could go on strike, to demonstrate their power and their worth to the state by depriving it of their labor in return for it depriving them of respect. That can backfire, though, because the ruling classes and their media lackeys can use the necessary inconvenience a strike would cause as propaganda to turn the general population against the strikers. Moreover, since public employees provide services - often vital services - directly to the people, the only one's really harmed by a strike are the people. It's not like a private industry where the victim is the shareholders' profits.

Instead, all working men and women should recognize that an attack on the rights of some workers is an attack against them all. The surviving and remaining unions should get active and start protests and agitation in support of the public employees. Where are the SEIU intimidation squads that the Teabaggers are always whining about when you need them?

This would need to rise above a trade-union issue, however, if there is to be any hope of change. The goal of labor should not be just a bigger slice of pie: we should demand the whole bloody pie itself. As long as the working class does not wield both full political and economic power and sits secure in charge of its own destiny, the Walkers of the world will continue to run roughshod over our rights and dignity.

Evolutionary Intent

2011-03-09T15:35:00.004-05:00
CNN's website featured a story today on a study to explore why chimpanzees (and other mammals) have small pointy projections or "spines" on their penises and we, whose DNA is 97% similar, do not.

What followed was a somewhat interesting explanation of the differences in regulatory regions in the human and chimpanzee genomes and their influence on androgen receptors.

I felt an immense sense of gratitude to God and/or Nature that the human penis (of which I am quite fond) lacks these unpleasant bumpy nodules and resembles instead what I consider a tremendous work of art. Of course, if our penises did feature "spines" like the male chimpanzee exhibits, I would be conditioned to find the spiny penis attractive and consider our spine-free members an abberration. Being circumcised, the first penis I ever encountered and the one of which I am most fond lacks a foreskin so "cut" seems to me to be the norm and thus "uncut" penises still strike me as alien and weird. If my reaction to a culturally-determined differentiation is so strong, I can presume that my reaction to a naturally-arising one would be even more intense. No, I did not google for pictures of chimp dicks. The image created in my mind by the article alone is horrific enough.

Everything was fine with this article until I reached the following paragraph:

The basic idea of natural selection is that over many generations, an animal species loses some traits that do not contribute to survival or reproduction, or are disadvantageous, and develops features that do. In humans, this process takes place over hundreds of thousands to millions of years. So, there must be a good reason that the guys you know look different.

If this is what a major media outlet like CNN is putting out there to explain how natural selection and evolution work, then it is a sad comment on the state of science education and the scientific literacy of the American population. No wonder there are so many people who still deny the reality of evolution.

Evolution is driven by transcription errors in the copying of genes from one generation to another. All of the offspring of a given population - especially those that reproduce sexually - are guaranteed to have differences in their genome from their parents and from each other. Over time these transcription errors or mutations build up. Many are harmful, others less so. If the mutation inhibits the ability of the individual to survive and reproduce, that mutation will be less present in the next generation of the population; a mutation that increases the bearer's ability to survive and reproduce will be more represented in the resulting gene pool. Mutations that are neutral just get passed along indifferently: they can be lost, they can combine with other genes to form new harmful, beneficial, or neutral variations, and so forth. That is the basic mechanism of evolution: the change in the gene pool of populations over time. Natural selection is the theory that environmental factors determine what makes a mutation beneficial based on how many bearers of the gene in question survive into the next generation. That question of survival is not limited to genes, though; the make of future generations of a population can also be affected by natural disasters or disease or any host of other factors.

There does not need to be "a good reason" why human penises lack these spines. Perhaps the first of our ancestors who lacked this trait gained some kind of selective advantage over the rest; however, it's entirely possible he might have had other advantages such as being a stronger fighter or a better hunter/gatherer or was deemed "hotter" by the females of the species. It's also possible that he was just luckier: perhaps he was somewhere else when the rest of his troop was wiped out by a flash flood or attacked by predators or contracted a new disease.

This teleological view of evolution really gets on my nerves, but it is everywhere, including the very next paragraph:

In fact, speculation abounds about what purpose the spines serve. One theory is that they are used in sperm competition; if the male's goal is to get his mate pregnant, he will want to take out her previous partner's sperm if she's recently had sex. The bumpy penis may be better for removing that sperm from the female, scientists theorize.

This writer assumes that a male animal or human ancestor had a "goal" of impregnating his mate with his own genes and to support that goal the author assumes that this extraordinarily sentient creature would then try to remove rival males' sperm from the female's uterus to give his own an advantage.

There is absolutely no justification for attributing such deliberate goal-oriented intentionality to non-sentient animals including our ancestors. Humans have achieve self-awareness, future-time planning, problem-solving, and goal-based decision making. No other species has.

We know that a male and female having sex can lead to a baby, and we consciously choose to engage in sex either for recreation, procreation, or both. What proof is there that animals do the same? Human beings experience urges and feelings and desires that they cannot adequately name or explain as they go through puberty and don't know until they learn about "the birds and the bees" that these are conditioned by their sex hormones. Most boys learn to masturbate because they are driven by their urges and because it feels good before they learn about reproduction.

"It feels good" comes before all of that, and is honestly still the reason most people have sex despite our ability to understand consequences and prepare for them (unplanned or unwanted pregnancies notwithstanding). If a human adolescent can learn the mechanics of sex based solely on the pleasure principle without any knowledge of genes or reproduction, why should a non-human non-sentient animal be any different?

Chimpanzees - much less their evolutionary ancestors - do not have a "goal" of impregnating their mates. They have sex with their mates because it feels good and because they are driven to it by hormones and pheromones and other sexual instincts. This pleasure and these instincts arose out of an accumulation of mutations which encouraged their bearers to have more sex and thereby to reproduce more, thus ensuring that more subsequent generations would experience the same drives. There is no urge to breed, to pass on genes - even humans didn't even know genes existed before the 19th century! It is just the happy coincidence that act of passing on genes came to be associated with a pleasurable feeling. The pleasure is the incentive to engage in the act which has the side effect of passing on genes. It doesn't have to be anything more complicated than that.

As for the "sperm competition," are we really expected to believe that proto-chimpanzees know how reproduction works and understand that semen from the male somehow gives rise to a baby when injected into the female? Is it really rational to assume that these creatures also are aware of their genes and place some value in passing them on? That is absurd. There is probably some truth to the theory that the penis spines on chimpanzees (and the broad mushroom-shaped glans of the human penis or the cork-screw shape of the pig penis) have the effect of drawing out semen previously deposited by another male and thus giving a quantum of advantage to the latter male's sperm. That truth, however, exists only because the particular mutation in the penis allowed relatively more of the genes of its bearer to survive compared to others who competed without this advantage. There was no conscious intent in this, just random chance filtered through natural selection.

These sloppy science writers, in an attempt to make a concept more accessible, do a disservice to science and their audience. Effect does not equal or imply purpose and consequence does not equal or imply intention.

Child Pornography? Really?

2011-03-08T11:37:00.004-05:00
A 21-year-old comedic musician from Muskegon, MI named Evan Emory has been charged manufacturing and distributing child pornography.

Specifically, he got himself invited under false pretenses to perform funny kids' songs for an elementary school class and videotaped the performance and the audience's reactions. Then, after-hours, he recorded another video of himself alone in the classroom performing a sexually-explicit song. Finally, with the magic of video-editing software, he digitally added the children from the first innocuous performance into the video of the second lewd song. This created the intentionally humorous disconnect between the children's reactions to the silly fun song paid with the extremely adult content of the second. Emory then played this video in a night club act and posted it on YouTube.

One thing needs to be said upfront: Emory is definitely guilty of using the images of minors without their parents consent, images obtained under false pretenses. That is a serious offense and he deserves to face the consequences for that transgression.

But that is not child pornography.

It is famously difficult to define what pornography (and the related term, obscenity) actually means. However, I am very familiar with pornography and - like Justice Stewart - I know it when I see it. Depictions of nudity or sexual activity is porn. Nudity or sexual activity depicting or involving children is child pornography. Anything else is not child pornography.

In Emory's video, there was no nudity or sexual behavior. There were sexually-explicit lyrics, but the children never heard them. If the children had actually been present for the second performance, that might have been a different question entirely and other criminal charges could be filed.

The charges that were filed, however, were child pornography and charging Emory with this heinous crime serves no purpose but to take away just a little bit of the force and meaning of the word. Do we realy want "child pornography" or "child sexual abuse" to go the same way as "fascism?" Clearly, whenever children are involved, reason and common sense go right out the window. With the exception that child sexual abuse and child pornography actually do exist, this is the modern-day equivalent of being accused of witchcraft.

Portents of the End: Does any of this sound familiar?

2011-03-08T09:36:00.004-05:00
As predicted, the furor over the Muslim Community Center Not At Ground Zero faded significantly after November elections and despite the strident screeching of Pamela Geller and her ilk the issue is no longer front-page material.

That doesn't mean, however, that the relentless drive to identify American Muslims as the enemy in our midst has not continued. At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last month, American Conservative Union board member Suhail Khan was repeatedly questioned by the audience about his patriotism and his supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Then, on February 13, this happened in Orange County, CA:

Anyone who did not find this video chilling is either a monster or ignorant of history. This combination of incessant chanting of nationalist and bigoted mantras accompanied by chest-beating proclamations of patriotism and the fetishization of the national flag has been seen before. The victims were attending a fund-raising dinner for an organization that raises money and awareness for women's shelters and the homeless, but being Muslim is all that is needed to equate them to terrorists. By shouting "Go back home!" the protestors - who were missing everything but their brown shirts - were unequivocally declaring that the dinner attendees did not belong in this country, that the US was not their home, just because of their religion. By shouting "USA! USA! USA!" and draping themselves quite literally in the flag (and, disturbingly in one scene, the flag of Israel), the protestors were arrogating to themselves the mantle of patriotic American citizenship and denying it to the targets of their bile.

And elected officials took the stage to support them. Deborah Pauly, a city councilwoman declared that the event in progress - again, raising money for women's shelters and the homeless - was "evil" and joked about how she knows US Marines would be happy to expedite their journey to Paradise. US Congressman Ed Royce also gave a ringing endorsement to the protesters actions. This whole sick affair differed from a Nuremberg rally in nothing but scale.

Today, the New York Times ran a story about Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-American who has become a rising star in the conservative lecture circuit. Her shpiel can be summed up quite nicely in just two quotes:

America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.

“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream,” [Gabriel] wrote. She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. [sic] This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”

A cancer is threatening the health of the nation, she says. And what does one do with cancer? One cuts it out of the body, or kills it with chemicals or radiation. This is likewise an analogy that has been made before - with catastrophic results.

The Orange County rally was just one event and this fascist hag is just one person. That is true, but they are not alone. Attacks on Muslims and mosques are quietly growing, the rancor of political propaganda - demonizing Muslims to provide a scapegoat - is not decreasing, and beginning Thursday the United State House of Representatives will begin a series of hearing investigating the supposed radicalization of Muslim citizens (and only Muslim citizens) and the threat they pose to America. It's as if the shade of Joe McCarthy has been let loose from hell to lurk in the shadows of the Capitol once again. How many "isolated incidents" does it take to create a pattern, and how long before a pattern becomes a movement that brings down our Republic and replaces it with some atrocity that millions of brave men and women died to remove from the earth?

Solidarity Forever

2011-02-27T20:18:00.002-05:00
It seems to me that my most recent post was not as supportive as it should be for the women and men fighting in Madison for the rights and dignity of the working class. Let me underscore my absolute and unconditional support for the Wisconsin protesters by encouraging anyone reading this to donate at least just $15.00 to the Working Families Party, which is collecting money to feed them.

This struggle is crucial for many reasons, but these are the two that stand out most strongly to me:

1. The Dignity of Labor

The issue of pension contributions is important (see below), but is really only secondary to Governor Walker's desire to strip the public service unions of their collective bargaining ability. It is only together, as a unified block, that the workers can hope to match the power of their employers and the ability to collectively bargain is the very core of the union's strength. Unions have suffered greatly over the 20th century and their once considerable influence has waned; if Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans are allowed this victory, the remaining strength of unions will be reduced even further. It is the ability of workers to organize and collectively pursue their class interests that raises the proletariat up from the status of wage slaves to something approaching a class of free men and women determining their own destiny.

2. The Value of Public Service

It is a shame, perhaps, that the strongest remaining unions are those in the public sector. Teachers, firefighters, police, mass transit workers, government employees - they incur a great deal of resentment from employees of the private sector both for their in many cases enviable benefits and their willingness to strike to advance their interests. When public employees do go on strike, the result is a tremendous amount of resentment from the population who depends on the services they provide. That inconvenience, however, should be seen rather as a demonstration of the significant value that public employees provide. They teach our children, protect us from crime, save us from fire, clean up our garbage, take us where we need to go, and keep our cities and states running. People honestly think that these public employees are too highly compensated for these services? It is symptomatic of the severe problems in our society when we make millionaires out of grown men who chase balls around a field but begrudge the people who quite literally are responsible for our lives and our future a paltry pension. If Wisconsin really is facing a fiscal crisis, then the solution is to raise more money from those who can afford it rather than slashing the jobs, benefits, and salary of the people who can't. Lest anyone accuse me of wishing to "punish" the successful, I should point out that it is only because our state and federal governments exist - supported by taxes - that law and order exists and allows the wealthy to acquire their wealth in the first place.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin is not a worker's state and the government there does not exist to secure and promote the interests of the working class. Rather, it is a bourgeois capitalist state and Governor Walker is doing just what he was elected to do: to use the organs of state to benefit the capitalist class, a goal that can only be achieved by attacking and further impoverishing the working class.

Even if the Wisconsin protesters themselves are not acting on revolutionary consciousness, their defiance to the Republican regime is still of vital importance to keep faith with both the victories of the past and the promise of the future, to testify that government can and must be used as a tool for the welfare of all citizens and not just the narrow class interests of the wealthy.

Wisconsin

2011-02-22T12:02:00.001-05:00
As the peaceful democratic military junta is settling into power in Cairo, another popular uprising of sorts is taking place in Madison, Wisconsin.

The Republican governor, to resolve the state's alleged deficit crisis, is pursuing legislation that would affect the retirement benefits of public employees and more importantly remove the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

As public sector employees, with the teachers' union at the forefront, are staging a large-scale protest in the state capital, the predictable resentful carping is being heard among other sectors of the working class.

The teachers are being greedy, one hears. They are asking for more than their fair share from the public treasury while other people are out of work. They are bleeding the state dry with generous pension and benefit plans that other private-sector workers don't get to enjoy. The same resentment was heard in New York a few years ago when the transit workers union went on strike, crippling buses and subway trains and inconveniencing people's commutes.

Unions of public employees are, of course, not the only target of this opprobrium. When the stagehands union went on strike a few years ago and shut down Broadway, irate tourists were furious that they were denied their evening's entertainment. I remember the local FOX affiliate had a particularly nauseating interview with a little girl crying because she wouldn't get to see The Little Mermaid. The mean old unions make children cry!

What we are seeing here is the limitations of what Lenin termed "trade union consciousness" and how it can never lead to revolutionary action.

Our economy is based fundamentally on the exchange of commodities. Specifically, the worker exchanges his labor power to the employer for money. While as individuals the two in theory approach each other as equals, the concentration of capital gives employers a much stronger hand than the individual worker: employers can replace workers like spare parts to a machine; workers can change jobs only with difficulty and then only as the market allows.

If workers are to have any strength as opposed to the employers, they must unite and present a common front. If labor is as concentrated and unified as capital, there is much greater parity and workers are in a much better and more powerful position to get what they want out of the exchange.

If the union is too narrowly focused, however, and promotes the agenda only of its own industry and not the working class as a whole, then the resentment we see brewing in the Wisconsin situation can ferment and divide the working class against itself. We are already seeing people complaining that the teachers unions and other public-sector employees should "share in the sacrifices" that other workers have had to make in this economic climate, yet there is no call for the wealthiest Americans to sacrifice their generous tax breaks or pay according to their ability to support the system that has allowed them to accrue their wealth. Instead, billionaires like the Koch brothers are making large contributions to the Wisconsin governor and other groups fighting the unions.

Instead of complaining about the "good deal" the teachers unions are supposedly getting, those among the proletariat feeling resentment should organize and get active themselves and demand the same treatment or better - not just for themselves but for all workers everywhere. The employers will push back and retaliate, and will threaten to pull up stakes and transfer their capital to more agreeable locales - which is what has happened with the automotive and other major industries, which in turn undermined and weakened the power of the unions. The fight in Wisconsin is important because the state, if successful, will weaken unions even further. It is an important battle that must not be lost, but it is not the war.

To win the war, the real need is for revolutionary class consciousness, the will of the working class as a class to seize political power to claim the ownership and control of capital for themselves. That is the only thing that can stop the continued impoverishment of the American people and our work force's demotion to service industries or total redundancy, but that is also what our consciousness-creating industries in the media and the education system are designed to prevent. "Divide and rule" preserves the status quo and continues the enrichment of the wealthy at everyone else's expense; "Workers of the world, unite" is the only solution.

Egypt

2011-02-03T15:37:00.005-05:00
The recent turmoil in Egypt has provided many faux-intellectual douchebags the opportunity to offer their sage opinions on a topic they most likely hadn't given a single thought to before last week. Suddenly anyone with a New York Times subscription and who watches The Daily Show thinks of himself as qualified to make allegedly insightful comments about foreign affairs. I find it immensely irritating that such people are using the plight of 80 million people as an accessory to enhance their image as a member of the cosmopolitan informed smart set.

I am not an expert on Egypt. I was, in fact, surprised to learn that Hosni Mubarak is only the third or fourth President of Egypt (depending on how you count) since its independence and I was not aware that he had been in power for 30 years. I did know, however, that he is an autocrat whose record on political integrity and civil liberties is questionable - but given that he is head of state and government of a Middle Eastern nation, that really should not come as a surprise.

That opinion is probably going to get me labeled a cultural chauvinist or an Islamophobe or whatever, but to pretend otherwise requires a willful self-deception about the historical and political context of the region. It's like being surprised that the Russian government is secretive, corrupt, and heavy-handed or that the Chinese are not fond of political dissent.

I have encountered a surprisingly polarized dichotomy of opinion among my acquaintances. The hard-core lefty set are in full support of the popular uprising; the Zionists are uneasy because they are worried about what a revolution in Egypt will mean for Israel.

I cannot place myself in either group.

I am, of course, in support of democracy. I support the idea of a people claiming the power that is rightfully theirs to collectively decide the fate of their nation. The trouble is that democracy is neither an absolute objective good nor an end in itself. Democracy is a tool and like all tools it must be used with the proper consciousness: to be used truly effectively, democracy requires all citizens to respect and revere the equality of all other citizens and the rights of minorities. When democratic systems are employed without strong commitment to those ends, we get events like the rise of the Tea Party and the fall of the Weimar Republic. One of my primary objections to the Iraq War (aside from its total lack of justification) was the possibility that removing an autocrat who posed no serious threat to the stability of the region and imposing democracy on an unready population would allow for the election of an even worse threat down the line. In reaction to the constant comparisons between Saddam Hussein and Hitler, I was of the opinion that Saddam would be more like the Kaiser who is removed to make way for a future Hitler. I am gratified that my worst-case scenario has not come true yet, but I am not sure we can sound the all-clear. After all, there were 15 years between the fall of the Second Reich and the rise of the Third.

While I trust that a new democratically-elected government in Egypt, perhaps led by the Muslim Brotherhood, will not be as bad as a Nazi regime, I cannot in good conscience consider a government that would impose political restrictions on female citizens and establish its policy on theocratic beliefs a good thing just because it allegedly represents the will of the poeple. I am not confident that the people of Egypt, taken as a collective, have the proper consciousness to effect a true bourgeois democratic revolution, much less a worker's revolution to establish a socialist state. I suspect that the best that can be hoped for is another autocrat like Mubarak but maybe one more sensitive.

The Zionists annoy me because their interest and concern seem in my opinion to be misplaced. Their primary interest is what is good for Israel, and if I were Israeli I would probably share their concern about what a democratically-elected government in Egypt would mean for Israel's stability. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt has been, next to American support, the corner stone of Israel's foreign policy and national security.

But I am not Israeli. As a Jew, I'm supposed to subscribe to ahavat Yisra'el, the obligation to love and seek the welfare of all other Jews. I'm fine with that intellectually, and so I suppose that I support right of the people of Israel to stability, security, and self-determination - but I also support the same rights for the Palestinians. I am an American, and so my primary concern is, as it should be, the welfare and interests of the people of the United States.

The United States remains the global hegemon and that cannot be wished away overnight. The Middle East, being the primary source of the fuel that undergirds our entire civilization, remains the area of the most crucial geopolitical importance. That, too, cannot be wished away over night. Instability in the Middle East affects us, and not just in trivial concerns like gasoline prices (which, admittedly, are not trivial to the very many people who depend on their cars for their livelihood). Given this nation's track record, can we really doubt that the US will launch yet another war in the region should our rulers decide it is necessary? Instability in Egypt can lead to instability elsewhere. In Egypt, as in other nations ruled by secular authoritarian governments, there are religious radical parties itching to follow the example of the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran. Any significant change in the balance of power, any realistic threat to Israel, will inevitably draw the US into the fray and lead to the death and dismemberment of even more American soldiers. Only Republicans and military contractors could view that as a good thing.

A friend of mine commented, "Color me Stalinist, but if I have a choice between a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood and a stable autocrat, I'll choose the latter." I have to agree with him. I wish the people of Egypt well, and I hope they do the right thing. The study of history, however, does not habituate one to optimism.

Hogwarts Class of 1998

2011-02-03T14:06:00.003-05:00
Having recently returned from a visit to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando and in anticipation of the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I've begun rereading the Harry Potter saga to experience how the whole series hangs together as a unit.

In one sense, the Harry Potter saga stands as much outside time as we know it as the wizarding world stands for the most part outside the surrounding Muggle world. There are precious few details which will prevent anyone reading the books from becoming immersed in the story as if it were taking place today. This was perhaps necessitated by the constrast between the in universe time-line (each book chronicles one year) and the real world publication history (there was a three-year gap between books 3 and 4 and two years between each subsequent volume). This is a tremendous benefit to the story, however, because it will prevent the story form becoming dated as it would if had been tied more closely to any real-world happenings.

One of the few concrete dates in the series is found in the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and his friends attend the "deathday party" for the Gryffindor House ghost Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, otherwise known as "Nearly-Headless Nick." This is Sir Nicholas' 300th deathday and the tombstone-shaped cake gives his date of death as October 31, 1492. That tells us that Harry, Ron, and Hermione's second year at Hogwarts begis in September of 1992.

Therefore, Harry starts Hogwarts on September 1, 1991 having turned 11 on July 31 of that year. Hogwarts students apparently receive the notice of their acceptance in the week before their 11th birthday and they begin school on the following September 1.

I was born on September 25, 1979 and my 11th birthday was September 25th, 1990. If I were a wizard child in the Harry Potter universe, then I would have received my letter of acceptance that week. Since I would have been still too young at the start of the present year, I would have been eligible to attend Hogwarts in the year beginning September 1, 1991 - the same year that Harry Potter does.

In other words, if Harry Potter were a real person he would be essentially the same age as me. It's very strange to think about this, since in the books he will remain forever whatever age he is when the story takes place. The film version is complicated by the fact that he's portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe who, despite having grown up on screen into a very handsome young man, is still in real life 10 years my junior. This contrast between fictional time and real-world time is more and more intriguing to me as I get older; it was weird enough to realize last year that Suzanne Sugarbaker is supposed to be 30 in the first season of Designing Women.

So, if I had been a student at Hogwarts, which house would I have been sorted into? I had an initial inclination toward Slytherin because I certainly can have ambitions and have a desire to prove myself and make connections, but I'm not very good at it. Also, my natural reaction against elitism and aristocracy and my Muggle ancestry would make me an uncomfortable fit (Have there ever been any Muggle-born Slytherins?). Given my personality and interests, both now as I've (allegedly) matured and back when I was 11, I think Ravenclaw would have been a more natural home for me, and that's the chose I based my excessive souvenir shopping on at Hogsmeade!

Final Thoughts on Caprica

2011-02-02T15:52:00.001-05:00
The other night I finally had the opportunity to watch the "final five" episodes of the abruptly cancelled Caprica.

I have to give them the benefit of the doubt because I'm not sure how much notice they had that they had reached "end of line." It's probably not very easy to try to tell your story when you find out you only have a few more episodes left but were assuming at least maybe another season.

That is why I cannot fault them too much for failing to explain how we get from the Centurions saving the day at Atlas Area in 58-57 BCH to rebelling against their creators in 52 BCH. The coda to the final episode, "The Shape of Things To Come," takes place five years after the events of the episode proper, which would put us right on the eve of the First Cylon War.

We see Cylon construction workers and Cylon dog walkers, but what we don't see are Cylons being oppressed. They are being exploited, yes, and they are being used as sources of involuntary labor. However, that is simply because they are machines and are being "exploited" or made use of the same way one "exploits" a bulldozer or a computer or a toaster. We are told the Cylons are sentient, but we are not shown their sentience being communicated but disregarded.

A comparison is worthwhile to the "The Second Renaissance" from The Animatrix collection of short animated films set within The Matrix continuity. Like Caprica before the Fall, Earth before the Matrix featured robot laborers integrated into all ares of life. Robots had apparently somehow achieved sentience but were still treated as machines rather than persons. This does not pose problem until a robot butler learns that its owner plans to have it deactivated. When faced with the prospect of being destroyed, the robot kills its owner in self-defense (it also kills the owner's dogs, something I cannot forgive). The debate over robot sentience and rights leads to the robot being put on trial. It is, eventually, deactivated and this triggers a downward spiral of robot insurrection and human repression that eventually ends with the conquest of humanity by the machines and our enslavement into the Matrix. If Ronald D. Moore intended anything like that to have occurred in his universe, then it was not very clearly communicated.

What we were shown, however, is the Cylons adopting the monotheism preached to them by Sister Clarice. The way the Colonial monotheists were presented in this series annoyed me. Their costumes were silly, it never made sense to me why their headquarters was located on Gemenon, the world that had been presented to us previously as the most fundamentalist and scriptural-literalist of all the Twelve Colonies.

I'm really dissatisfied, however, with humans like Clarice (whose character rapidly deteriorate from awesome to psychobitch in the second half of the season) proselytizing the Cylons. Not even their religion, which was supposed to have been the inspiration of their liberation, was their own creation but rather a belief system imported to them from humans.

To be fair, it was understood that the Cylon monotheism was a version of human monotheism once the first details of the Zoe Graystone backstory were leaked. I had assumed, and the first couple episodes of Caprica seemed to confirm, that this was unintentional and accidental. With Daniel Graystone using his monotheist daughter's avatar as the basis for the Cylon operating system, I had thought that the origin of the Cylon religion would have been as a palimpsest of Zoe's beliefs that got lost and buried amid millions of other lines of code. This would have been an excellent example of how the tiniest unforeseen circumstances can have world-changing (world-ending, even) consequences and would have been rich in irony. That the Cylons had a religion seemed to be new information for the Colonials who survived the Fall of Twelve Colonies.

It is a pity that we weren't shown more of how the First Cylon War began, because the Cylon adoption of the human monotheist creed would seem to complicate the question of who is on whose side. Did the Cylon rebellion intend the genocide of humanity from the beginning with monotheist humans slated for extermination as well? Did monotheist humans ally themselves with other humans or with their mechanical coreligionists? Did the Cylons decide that all humanity was fallen from God's grace and after sufficient repression and resistance decide that the human monotheists likewise could not be trusted? Or was the whole genocide plan really just the brainchild of a really twisted and emotionally stunted John Cavil? It doesn't look like we'll get the answer that.

A main theme of BSG is the lack of meaningful distinctions between human and Cylon, but in this earlier chrome-plated "By Your Command" era I have a hard time imagining a toaster weighing the options of belief versus non-belief and opting for faith and the monotheist variety of it to boot. I would have preferred to see the Cylon religion begin in the accidental way I described above and to see them reach out to the human monotheists for help once things started to get bad for them only to be rejected as heathens. That would be tragic, and it would serve to reinforce the idea of ingrained human bigotry and arrogance that would cause some to question whether humanity really deserves to survive. Oh well.

While I found the human monotheist church and it's military arm the Soldiers of the One implausible I don't think the attention focused on them was misplaced. The fact that all of these people and their grand schemes of rebuilding the Twelve Worlds would be swept away in a nuclear inferno in sixty years was a nice comment on the futility of human endeavor. To have invested so much time and attention to a plot only to know it will vanish like dust on the wind creates a real sense of loss.

That applies, however, only when the loss is meaningful serves a constructive point to advance the plot. That is decidedly not the case in the shocker in the penultimate episode of the death of William Adama.

The only explanation for this must be that someone decided "Let's throw in a twist for the hell of it because we're cancelled anyway."

We were lead to believe that the son of Joseph Adama that we had seen and come to know in all previous episodes of the series would grow up and become the Admiral who leads the survivors of humanity to their new home. This provided context and a necessary link to the subsequent series, but it was not to be. Some people had pointed out that the kid playing William had brown eyes but the older Adama's eyes were blue. I hadn't noticed it, nor did I think it relevant: the only reason the naturally brown-eyed Edward James Olmos wore blue contacts for BSG was to create at least some physical resemblance between the dark-skinned and obviously Latino Olmos and his blue-eyed, pale-skinned and obviously English son Jamie Bamber.

Instead, the the ocular discrepancy was supposed to be a clue. It could have been worse. When it became clear that William was really, actually dead and when the Graystones were talking about creating real humanoid bodies way too soon for plausibility, I feared that the end result would be that Leoben was not lying for shits and giggles when he said "Adama is a Cylon." That would have sucked even more, so I guess I have to congratulate the writers for not heading down that path.

So Caprica is finished, and our window in the backstory of BSG is closed. There is supposed to be a miniseries titled Blood and Chrome in the works set during the First Cylon War, but if it makes it to fruition I will be very surprised. Until Moore decides to reveal any more tidbits of information, the questions I've been pondering about - How does the war begin? What becomes of Zoe-A and Tamara-A? What is Virtual Zoe's plan? - will have to remain unanswered with their solutions up to my own imagination.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate

2011-02-01T10:19:00.002-05:00
Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton.

I have just completed the first item on my 2011 To-Be-Read Challenge. To get the ball rolling I picked the shortest and perhaps least intimidating volume, which is essentially a collection of four essays redacted from lectures given by Terry Eagleton, a professor or literary theory who is at the same time both a Christian and a Marxist.

As the title suggests, these essays - written in an informal and witty conversational style - are largely an answer to the strident and radical atheism of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (whom Eagleton often conflates into "Ditchkins"). Although this distinction is not explicitly spelled out until the concluding pages, Eagleton's general theme is to contrast the "liberal humanism" of Dawkins and Hitchens with the "tragic humanism" that he finds at the heart of both Christianity and Marxism. The greatest flaw of the former, in Eagleton's view, is its lack of imagination. Dawkins and Hitchens would have us believe that we stand at the threshold of utopia and everything would be perfect if only we could rid of a few lingering problems of gross injustice and bigotry that are all the fault of religion. Remove religion from the equation, Ditchkins seems to claim, and we will arrive at the End of History, a messianic age of sorts which will be just like the world today only a little bit better with more options. These faithless and godless polemicists have made Progress their god and put their faith in liberalism as the roadmap to the future.

Eagleton is at his best in tearing the foundations out from beneath his opponents' triumphalist claims, particularly when he shows up their ignorance of what the core Christian message actually is as well as the hypocrisy their monomaniacal obsession requires: it seems rather odd to decry the evils of the Spanish Inquisition when rationalism and science have given us the threat of nuclear and chemical warfare. Eagleton also reminds us exactly why Marx described religion as "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless situation": it has been religion more than any other human ideological construct that has declared that things are not as they should be, given a hope for a better world, and challenge to create it. Eagleton presents a convincing restatement of orthodox Christian theology that puts the religion of Jesus fully in the revolutionary camp, requiring as it does the literal feeding of the hungry and setting captives free. The "otherworldly" religion that encourages acceptance of oppression and exploitation on Earth in exchange for reward in heaven - the real "opium of the people" - is a corruption and perversion of the Gospels.

Eagleton does not sweep under the carpet the fundamentalist atheists' very real and very valid allegations of the harm that religions and religious people have done over the centuries; in fact he agrees with them. He points out, though, that it is short-sighted to assume that religion is the cause (and, instead, the pretext) of these evils and that his opponents for all their self-claimed radical iconoclasm do not present any real substantive remedy for the world's problems besides an extension of the comfortable bourgeois liberalism that has lined their pockets while millions die of hunger. Eagleton also makes the case, as I have done, that the fetishization of reason and empiricism is not the guarantor of absolute truth that Dawkins and Hitchens claim since even these powerful tools of knowledge are ultimately based on arbitrary assumptions and leaps of faith.

Also, Eagleton reminds us that "faith" is not, as Ditchkins seem to think, a cognitive process. Faith is not an assent to doctrines and belief in God is not a scientific hypothesis but rather a relationship of trust upon which belief may then be built. This is old news to any serious scholar of religion, and it shows the shallowness of pop atheists' arguments that they are not aware of this.

The weakness of this book, besides its loose structure, is the absence of a strong positive argument. It does not appear to have been his intent or thesis to argue positively for religion and belief in God in reaction to Dawkins' and Hitchens' arguments to the contrary, but rather simply to puncture the balloon of their smug superiority. He also does not the idea of revolution, which the title seems to promise as his third major theme. He demonstrates well enough how the "rational" liberalism of Dawkins and Hitchens can lead to acceptance of and accommodation to the status quo and how faith in a better future - even if it should never come to pass - instead inspires revolutionary action. However, he never connects the dots and if one is looking for a program for revolutionary change one will be disappointed.

And that essentially sums up my reaction. I found it an enjoyable read and encountered many insightful points and witty turns of phrase but it was ultimately unsatisfying. As a series of reflections on a contentious issue, though, it is a worthwhile contribution to the debate.

Workers' State

2011-01-26T15:33:00.003-05:00
The last post reminded me of a crucial distinction that is generally lost on those who cry "Socialism!" at the slightest government intervention in the nation's economy. It is a subtle point, yes, and it makes sense that it would not occur to the average American who, it has been said, "can no more accurately define socialism than they can explain the infield fly rule in Sanskrit." Subtle or no, it is essential to the very meaning of socialism as an ideology and a system.

Socialism is, properly, the negation of capitalism. Under capitalism, the means of production are owned privately by individuals or corporations (fictious legal individuals) and the government is generally made up of individuals from the capital-owning class and makes and enforces laws to uphold the property rights of the capital-owning class and to advance their interests. Modern nations are capitalist states or bourgeois states. The United States, for example, originally afforded the franchise only to property-owning men; the franchise was expanded over the next two centuries because such extension of political participation both posed no threat to the status quo and also forestalled resentment that could have otherwise boiled over into a threat to the status quo. The bottom line is that money talks, the bigger your bank account the louder your voice. Last year's odious Citizens United decision is just the latest confirmation that our government is, in reality, a government of the people by the corporations for the corporations.

Socialism would be the negation of capitalism, and so it would require that the means of production are owned publicly rather than privately. Since socialism is still concerned with issues of "ownership," that implies the existence of laws which implies and requires the existence of a state. The state would be the instrument through which the social ownership of the means of production is exercised.

The key point, though, is that government ownership of the means of production is not really socialism if the government itself is not socialist. In traditional Marxist terms, all governments are dictatorships: all governments are entities which impose their will through the exercise (or more generally the threat) of coercive force. The type of government - and the type of economic system on which it rests - is connected to the class for whose benefit government or dictatorship acts. Medieval feudal polities were dictatorships of the feudal nobility. Modern nations, generally run by and operating to the benefit of the capital-owning class, are dictatorships of the capitalist bourgeoisie. A socialist state will be the dictatorship of the proletariat: it will be run by and for the benefit of the working class.

The difference is significant and tied to the economic relations the systems are founded upon. Capital is owned privately and labor is a commodity that only capital has the means to purchase. The laws of private property as upheld by the capitalist governments make autocrats out of employers who wield absolute power over their employees and can hire and fire them at will. Government in capitalist nations exists in a similar antagonistic way against the people in whose name it claims to rule. Much of the conservative reaction against government ownership of wealth is based on this legitimate perception that democracy is at best an illusion that masks the reality of the dictatorship of the bourgeoise. Rather than a res publica, "the people's affair," government in our era really is - at base - an alien other that exists over and above and separate from the citizenry. It is not an instrument of the citizenry at all but rather an instrument of the capitalist class. It is this disconnect between the professed democratic ideals of our society and the autocratic and dictatorial reality of both our economic and political spheres that is one of the primary contradictions at the heart of our civilization.

True socialism would resolve that contradiction by establishing true democracy in both the economic and political systems. Social ownership of the means of production would need to be accompanied by social ownership of political power, and this means that a socialist workers' state would need to be radically democratic with the mass of the people educated, informed, active and engaged in all levels of government and with government under the supervision of and fully accountable to the people it serves.

That is plainly not what we have in this country, and therefore all the hysterical paranoiacs on the right who live in fear of "socialism" taking over have very little to worry about.

Obama: A Socialist Failure

2011-01-26T14:46:00.003-05:00
Barack Obama has been President of the United States for 2 years, and so far he has proven an abysmal failure as a radical communist revolutionary.

As a point of comparison, here is what Lenin achieved in the first two years of his leadership:

overthrew the Kerensky government and claimed leadership over Russia in the name of the Communist Party

declared Russia's resolve to make a separate peace and withdraw from World War I

decreed the confiscation of land from the nobility

established the Cheka secret police

created the Red Army

adopted the Gregorian calendar

made good on pledge to end war with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

imposed war communism to nationalize all industrial and food production

promulgated the constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic

ordered the execution of the Tsar and his family

inaugurated the "Red Terror" to crush the counterrevolution and repel the foreign invaders

hosted the first congress of the Comintern

So far, the only thing that Obama has done which can even remotely be considered anything even approaching socialism -- that is, social ownership of the means of production mediated through the government of a worker's state -- is the bail-outs granted to a handful of banks and automakers to keep them from going under and bringing the rest of our tottering economy down with them.

While these bailouts did technically make the federal government majority shareholder in several of these firms, the Obama administration failed to take advantage of the situation and did not capitalize (as it were) on this influence and nationalize these companies as full state-owned enterprises. This is very disappointing coming from the administration whose maxim, the right wing assures us, is to never let a crisis go to waste.

We cannot know what the future will hold, but based on his track record so far, Barack Obama will go down in history as one of the worst and least successful Marxist socialist revolutionaries who ever lived - which is just about the equivalent of saying that Elton John is the worst and least successful NFL quarterback in history.

Book Challenge 2011

2011-01-14T11:16:00.005-05:00

I'm committing to participate in the 2011 TBR Pile challenge sponsored by RoofBeamReader.net and get through at least 12 of the books that have been sitting on my shelf, unread, for much too long.

My list is as follows:

1. Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries 1776-1871 by Adam Zamoyski

2. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker.

3. Rousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment by David Edmonds and John Edinow.

4. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

5. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

6. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler - completed 3/15/11

7. The Pacific War, 1931-1945: A Critical Perspective on Japan's Role in World War II by Saburo Ienaga

8. History and Class Consciousness by Gyorgy Lukacs

9. Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

10. Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology by Howard Zinn

11. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition by George Mendenhall

12. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton -- completed 1/28/11

Alternates (in case I can't get through one or more of the above)

A. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy

B. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII by Karen Lindsey

The Inevitable Conflict

2011-01-12T13:07:00.003-05:00
Sarah Palin is not backing down from her violent speech. In fact, she has taken the extreme and absurd step of equating the charge that violent eliminationist rhetoric - coming exclusively from her camp - has created a climate where atrocities like the massacre in Tucson are more likely with the "blood libel" that the Jews murder Christian children for religious rituals.

When presented with the reasonable suggestion that perhaps painting your political opponents as dangerous threats to liberty that must be dealt with in extreme ways, the right wing has effectively rejected that idea. They have proclaimed that ideas and speech such as this and this are perfectly fine and dandy.

OK, then, fuck it. Let's not reduce the violent rhetoric in our political discourse. Let's increase it.

I want to see liberals take the same tone. I want to see liberals portray conservatives as traitors, as fascists, and Nazis, as terrorists who want to destroy America. I want to liberals constantly decry the ways in which Republicans are seeking to shred the Constitution and sell our children into slavery. I want to see liberals call into question the legitimacy and qualifications of every conservative politician. I want to see liberals demand to see birth certificates and credit reports and DNA samples of every Republican elected to office.

More importantly, I want to see liberals armed. I want to see liberals buy up assault rifles and armor-piercing ammunition. I want to liberals brandishing automatic weapons at protests. I want to see liberals forming militias and drawing crosshairs over Republican candidates.

It was foolish to think that Palin and the conservatives would step back from the brink. It was foolish to think they might stop to think about the good of the nation as opposed to their own personal benefit: I don't believe they can separate the two in their minds. The conservatives have become convinced that the only things that matter are their own power, their own wealth, and their own agenda however they may need to achieve them. If they are not willing to tone down their language for the good of stability and healing a polarized nation - if instead they are claiming the victim card and whining about liberals attacking their freedom of speech - then it's time for liberals to man up and make them victims.

A showdown is coming eventually. That apparently cannot be stopped now. If liberals want to survive, if we believe in the ideals of individual rights and individual liberty, equality before the law, and liberty and justice for all that so many have fought and died for, then we need to be ready to do the same. The conservatives are never going to stop in their jihad to crush the spirit of liberty, and when they attack we can either be ready for them or we can dig our own graves and let liberty and justice be killed and buried with us.

Our commitment to America and to liberty requires us to uphold the Constitution at all costs, but liberals too must keep an eye toward Second Amendment remedies. Let the conservatives fire the first shot to bring down the Republic. Let them be the ones to shit upon the Constitution and our freedoms. We will not and we cannot start this war, but if war is forced upon us then we must finish it. Otherwise, America will fall and government of the people by the people for the people will perish from the Earth. And if that means we have to take up arms and fight for our rights, then so be it. We did not seek the first Civil War, but we did what we needed to do to win. We can do it again.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
Should a home and a country leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

The Shape of Things to Come?

2011-01-08T21:04:00.004-05:00

I hope not, but I am not so sure.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), and over a dozen others, were shot today in a constituent-greeting event in Tucson. Giffords is apparently going to pull through, but federal judge John Roll, Gifford's Director of Community Outreach Gabe Zimmerman, and a 9-year-old girl have been killed.

The suspect, 22-year-old Jared Loughner, does not appear to have been a Republican partisan. Rather than attacking liberals specifically, he seems to be an all-around lunatic ranting about government mind-control through grammar and bizarre theories about a currency plot. Appears to have been an isolated act but an single mentally-deranged individual.

Yet:

Giffords was one of the 20 House Democrats marked by a gun-sight crosshairs in an infamous image on Sarah Palin's webpage (an image which the Quitter from Wasilla took down today in an unusual but too-late expression of taste).

This comes after Sharron Angle made numerous comments about people looking to "Second Amendment remedies" during the 2010 campaign. Let's also not forget the numerous reports of people brandishing firearms to protest Obama, and the rumors of ammunition flying off the shelves since 2008. None of this is helped by the Glenn Beck/Tea Party rhetoric of "revolution" and "taking back the country" from a "tyrannical" "socialist" government that is "destroying America."

The Tucson Tea Party, for the record, has refused to tone down its rhetoric and, predictably, is pointing fingers at a vast left-wing conspiracy.

The Republicans and their Tea Party minions are not directly to blame for today's tragedy, but they have fomented a situation in which the political rhetoric in this country has become ever more violent and polarizing. Is it really too hard to see how violent words plant violent thoughts that can reap violent actions?

The Constitution is not a magic document nor is it holy writ. It is, however, the rules by which we all agree to play to make this country work. All it takes to bring down a nation, however, is for enough people to decide that the current rules aren't getting them what they want. It's like when a poor sport knocks over a board game when he loses, except that in this case people get killed.

Sometimes, violence is necessary. When the rules of the game benefit the few and harm the many, when there is no other alternative, and when there is a reasonable chance of success, such upheavals can be good things. Our nation was founded in just this way.

However, when the rulebook is being tossed out in favor of a new game that only preserves and increases the benefits to the powerful few and the exploitation and oppression of the weaker masses, the result is entirely different - like what we saw in Germany leading up to 1933.

I fear that today's attack is just the first step in a disturbing and frightening trend. It's entirely possible that control of the House of Representatives will give the Tea Partiers enough of a taste of power that their frustration and resentment will only be exacerbated by the fact that Democrats still control the Senate and the Presidency; if the Democrats do not simply roll over and play dead and actually offer resistance to Republican initiatives and prevent them from getting what they way Constitutionally, will this frustrate and infuriate enough people that they seek "Second Amendment solutions?" Jared Loughner has just shown how easy it is to shoot a Democrat.

We are creeping awfully close to the edge of the abyss.

Reading the Constitution

2011-01-06T09:32:00.002-05:00
As promised (or threatened as the case may be) the Republican-controlled House of Representatives staged a reading of the US Constitution this morning as they begin the 112th Congress. Also, new House rules adopted in this session will require each piece of legislation to contain as statement as to its Constitutional validity and to be posted online for public review for 72 hours before being voted upon.

These are not bad ideas. The online posting of proposed legislation is a good step toward transparency in the law-making progress. The outcomes of this are unforeseeable, since Bismarck's pithy statement about the making of laws and sausages is truer than ever today.

I also support the idea of an explicit statement of why a proposed bill is constitutional. If lawmakers had actually been required to make this case prior to passing any bills into law, there is a chance - albeit infinitesimal - that abominations such as the Defense of Marriage Act and the Patriot Act might never have happened.

Reading the Constitution is also important, and this may in fact be the first time some of these freshman Representatives have ever actually learned what the founding document actually contains.

My concern, however, is that the understanding of what is or is not "constitutional" differs greatly depending on whether or not one happens to be a Tea Partier.

My greatest irritation is the claim that any given law or agency is unconstitutional because it is not explicitly mentioned in the text of our founding document. A long-standing grievance on the right is the Department of Education, with the argument being that Article I Section 8 - which lists the powers delegated to the federal Congress - does not anywhere include the power to regulate education. Similar arguments against last year's health insurance reform act also aver that the Constitution does not explicitly empower the federal government to provide health care or insurance to citizens. The Tenth Amendment states that the federal government does not have any powers that are not delegated to it by the Constitution.

They are correct, in away: education and health insurance do not appear anywhere in the Constitution. What the neo-Constitutionalists overlook, despite their deification of the Framers, is that the people who created the Constitution were not idiots. They knew better than most that the business of running a country never runs smoothly and rarely follows predictable paths. Thus the Constitution grants considerable leeway to the Congress in two very important and very powerful clauses:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States..."

and

"To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."

All that is needed is for Congress to determine that something like the regulation of education quality or providing health insurance for needy citizens contributes to "the general welfare of the United States," and the Constitution grants them the power to enact laws toward these ends provided they conform to other Constitutional restrictions and guarantees.

There is a case to be made that Congress does not have the power to force citizens to buy health insurance from private companies, but the idea and purpose behind the health care law is clearly allowable by the Constitution and thus is "constitutional."

This narrow literal-mindedness (which is perhaps not too different from how these champions of the Constitution read the Bible) also gives us claims like "the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution." They are correct: that phrase does not appear in the text, but the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from endorsing or supporting any religious institution, teaching, or practice and also from preventing citizens from freely practicing (or not practicing) their religion (or lack thereof). Article VI prohibits any religious test being imposed for office-holding, and the 14th Amendment extends these limitations to the State governments as well.

This kind of self-serving stupidity can perhaps be expected from the likes of Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin and the Tea Party-backed candidates who were actually elected in November, but it is really disturbing when coming from people who really should know better, such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opining that the "persons" to whom the 14th Amendment grants equal protection of the law do not include women and GLBT people. And this is the man that Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Crazytown) wants to teach study sessions on the Constitution to her caucus.

The thing about the Tea Partiers is that their reverence for the Constitution is disingenuous. They do not care about the document itself or the process that it establishes. They only care about it to the extent that it enables them to get what they want. This fetishizing of the founding document began when our electoral process, established by the Constitution, delivered control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to a President and a party they do not like. When Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress began taking actions that were "necessary and proper" and for the "general welfare of the United States" - like the stimulus package, bailing out the banks, and providing help and relief for people in danger of losing their homes - the right wing erupted in fury at these alleged abuses of federal power. They ranted and rallied against this alleged "tyranny" and "socialism" and claimed that the Constitution and our sacred rights and freedoms were under attack.

Unhappy with the policies of the liberal (that is, corporate centrist) faction, which were fully legitimate according to the Constitution, they turned to attack the interpretation of the Constitution that justified those policies. They draped themselves in the flag and dressed up in wigs and tricorn hats and proclaimed that they alone know what the true meaning of the Constitution is, and by God they will fight to restore it!

That is what we are seeing now. The question is what will happen if by some miracle they still don't get their way, if the Democrats - who still control the Senate and the veto power of the President - should have the courage to stand up to them? That is a scary proposition.

Russian Bath

2011-01-04T23:20:00.002-05:00
With my few days off this past holiday season, I've spent some time exploring different neighborhoods in Queens. I've really taken a liking to Forest Hills, which has a charming downtown section with a lot of shops and restaurants all in red brick.

S works in Rego Park, so I went to the Rego Park mall one day and met him for lunch. There I saw a sign advertising a "Russkaya Banya" at the Forest Hills Spa. I like spas (the Korean Spa Castle in my neighborhood is phenomenal), and I like Russians, so I decided to give it a shot. I had to pick up my new Costco card not too far away, so I would be in the neighborhood and I thought a Russian bath would be a great way to unwind on a cold winter's day.

I arrived at the location, which was underneath a big housing complex. I walked down the step to the underground entrance and walked inside. Immediately my glasses fogged up and the man at the counter waited patiently while I cleaned them off. There was a hamsa-shaped tzedaka box on the very top of the reception desk, so I gathered that at least some of the clientele would belong to the Russian Jewish community (I had passed the Bukharian Jewish Community Center earlier that day in my travels).

I paid my entrance fee, locked up my phone and wallet in the lockboxes behind the counter, and went to change in the locker room. Unlike Spa Castle, this place was co-ed so unfortunately I would have to wear my bathing suit instead of my birthday suit. I was a little nervous of feeling out of place, but fortunately I look Slavic enough and my chest is hairy enough that I seemed to fit in.

The facility was not very large. The main room contained a swimming pool with a jacuzzi off to the side. There was a tiny steam room, and in the back were two traditional banya saunas with wooden benches and brick ovens. The amenities were spartan, but the saunas were hot and it really felt good to sweat. The saunas at the New York Sports Clubs I go to are never as hot as they should be (perhaps because other activities go on there) and the saunas as Spa Castle are positively infernal. It was the people, though, that defined the place.

Apart from the reasonably friendly desk clerk and the quiet woman that ran the bar/canteen, and the hot cleaning guy, there were three groups of people at the spa that afternoon. First, there were two or three families with children, about three generations a piece. They seemed to be having a good time.

Then there was the crowd that I can only describe as the male cast of the Russian Jewish Jersey Shore. There were six of them, all of them with ripped muscular bodies but with ridiculous hair. They all talked like ghetto trash, however, and it was only their discussion of planning trips to Israel during Passover that tipped off their background. I was intimidated by them and did my best to avoid letting on that I was looking at them, and they kept to themselves. The only thing good I could say about them was that unlike the real Jersey Shore guys they didn't have any tattoos; also, they wore their baggy board shorts low enough that that V of muscle was clearly visible on either side of their groins as was the top of their pubic hair.

The group that really intimidated me, though, were the older guys who seemed to run the place. They looked very Russian, and they lounged around either in bathing suits or fully dressed, playing cards and drinking tea. I went to the little restaurant area and sipped a class of Baltika beer and watched the other patrons. The third group had some very attractive members, thickly muscled guys with hairy pecs. They also had members wearing expensive looking track suits and gaudy gold jewelry. I realized that I've lived in Whitestone long enough and watched enough movies and TV to recognize that uniform. I definitely didn't want any of them thinking I was looking at them funny!

To avoid suspicion, I finished my beer and went back to the jacuzzi tub and then spent another 15 minutes in the traditional banya before heading out. I don't think I'll be back. The water and heat were relaxing, but the ambience and clientele were anything but. At least it was an adventure!

Books of 2010

2011-01-02T23:04:00.002-05:00
Most of the past year was devoted to escapist science fiction.

Thanks to the delightful webcomic Unshelved, which really brings back memories of my work in the college library, I was introduced to Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice. My first taste of the Vorkosigan Saga was enough to get me hooked.

I took a brief hiatus from the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan and his family to revisit David Weber's Honorverse in advance of the release of the latest installment of the Horatio-Hornblower-in-Space saga of Honor Harrington, Mission of Honor (which I brought with me to Chicago). I needed to get caught up on the details of the ancillary story lines - the Wages of Sin series focusing on Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat and the Shadow of Saganami series focusing on Helen Zilwicki and otheryoung graduates of the Royal Manticoran Naval Academy - to be able to appreciate the new novel, which was full of action, suspense, pathos, and enough to unanswered questions to have we eagerly awaiting the next one.

The other major topic I delved into this year was the history of religion, both of Islam (No god but God) and Christianity (Reformation and Christianity: The First 3000 Years).

What lies ahead for 2011? I've started reading Social Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny. The weather and playing Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 have put me in a very Soviet mindset, so I would like to read some of the books on my shelf on Russian history and Marxist theory that have been collecting dust for far too long.