The Little Red Blog

"A Climate Of Contempt"

Having worked in the Nixon White House, Pat Buchanan knows the difference between a president who is up to his elbows in corruption and abuse of power and one who is merely ineffectual and unengaged, which is why he isn’t jumping on the “Impeach Obama” bandwagon.  But do not think that, in calling President Obama “the Spectator President,” Pat Buchanan is letting him off the hook.¹  After reviewing the various “scandals” that don’t seem to involve, much less incriminate, the President, and having acknowledged that “No, this is not Watergate or Iran-Contra. Nor is it like the sex scandal that got Bill Clinton impeached,” Mr. Buchanan still finds that Barack Obama is guilty not just of “presidential indolence, indifference and incompetence in discharging the duties of chief executive,” but of something even worse: the President helped create a “climate of contempt” that made such things possible, especially the IRS persecution of the Tea Party.  According to Buchanan (who knows a thing or two about creating a "climate of contempt" himself),

But whatever Obama knew, he and his allies in Congress bear moral responsibility for denying these Tea Party folks for years their right to participate fully in the politics of their country. For years, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other Democrats have slandered and slurred Tea Party people as enemies of progress—smears echoed by their mainstream press allies. Should we then be surprised that IRS bureaucrats, hearing this, thought they were doing what was right for America by slow-walking applications for tax exemptions from these same Tea Party folks?  Who demonized the Tea Party people? Who created the climate of contempt? Whoever did gave moral sanction to those IRS agents.  And the Spectator President is right in the vanguard.

What Pat Buchanan is saying is that rhetoric has consequences and that it’s possible to draw a link between words uttered by some people and actions taken by others.  There is surely some truth to that observation, though I’d love to see Buchanan cite a single instance of when the President actually “demonized” anyone, and I’d also love a debate about whether it was the Tea Party itself which created a “climate of contempt” against this president and his administration.  In any case, extreme and irresponsible rhetoric on anyone’s part ought to be condemned, which is why I eagerly await Mr. Buchanan's condemnation of this choice tidbit:

"Extremist radio host Pete Santilli is defending and reiterating his inflammatory attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stating on his program that he wants 'to shoot her in the vagina and let her suffer right before my eyes.'  In a May 17 rant captured by Right Wing Watch, Santilli called for the Bush family and President Obama to be shot and for Clinton to be 'shot in the vagina.' " ²

Yep—President Obama is sure responsible for escalating our political rhetoric.  See what he's made Pete Santilli go and say?  If Hillary Clinton gets shot in the vagina, she'll have no one to blame but the Spectator President himself.

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¹ "The Spectator President" at The American Conservative (5/21/13)

² from Media Matters (5/20/13)

See: "Barrel, Bottom Of"

It has come to this:

"On the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Senate impeachment hearings that eventually brought down President Richard Nixon, the right-wing has found yet another “Watergate” to try to pin to Obama. Not the Benghazi attacks, or even the IRS targeting scandal–but it does involve water.

"Republicans and right-wing talkers, gleefully embracing every bit of scandalous news they might be able to peg to the president, picked yet another issue to badger President Obama on Thursday.

"His umbrella.

"Specifically, his decision to have a Marine hold an umbrella for him while he spoke at a press conference alongside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan Thursday.

"Pundits like Sean Hannity and Eric Bolling used the moment as a metaphor to bash the president on Obama again. 'Wouldn’t it be nice if he had them covered the way they have him covered?' Bolling asked. Hannity said, 'They were protecting him and maybe in this case he should have been protecting them and the people in Libya.'"  [from MSNBC.com]

Seriously.  This is one demented nation. 

It's Lizard-Men All The Way Down

This “facts are useless” meme is getting out of control.

First there was Jesse Elias Spafford’s article “Just the Facts” at The New Inquiry which, as I detailed in an earlier blog,¹ said that we can’t rationally choose between Alex Jones’ “fact claims” and Ezra Klein’s documented facts, and therefore we should forget about facts and empirical data (so far as politics and public policy debates are concerned) and focus on values and psychology.  And now today, and (ironically) from Ezra Klein’s own “Wonkblog” at the Washington Post, there is this article:

“Scientists agree on climate change. So why doesn’t everyone else?”

Brad Plumer explains that, despite numerous surveys that have consistently shown an overwhelming consensus of scientific support for the reality of climate change (and for critical human contributions to that change), lots of perfectly intelligent people remain in denial—both about climate change itself and about the extent of the scientific consensus.  Plumer quotes from one of the authors of a recent survey: “the public is very misinformed on the issue, with the average American believing that scientists are split 50/50 on the cause of global warming.” (The actual “split” is more like 95/5.)

So what is to be done—more education?  No, says Plumer (and others): “In recent years, science communicators have tried to dream up all sorts of novel ways to talk about climate change. Kloor, for his part, suggests a ‘frank debate about future uncertainties, risks, and scenarios, and the
reconciliation of competing values.’ Grist’s David Roberts has suggested elsewhere discussing the topic in terms of values rather than endless lectures on scientific facts.  Either way, there does seem to be a fair bit of skepticism among science communicators that yet another study reiterating the expert consensus on climate change will change many minds.”

It doesn’t matter what the facts are.  It doesn’t matter what experts tell us the facts are.  Plumer explains that “people tend to arrive at these debates with their own pre-existing cultural values. If you’re not already inclined to accept the values that typically accompany belief in climate change — and if you’re not predisposed to agree with all the people who like to talk about climate change — then you’re probably not going to change your mind just because the media says there’s an expert consensus.”

Climate change is an issue associated with environmentalism, which has long been associated with the political left; which means many conservatives will continue to deny the reality of climate change because they see the whole thing as a nefarious anti-capitalism plot and because they just can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that liberals can ever be right about anything. We have become so polarized--not just in our politics, but in our ideologies and our worldviews--that we can’t even agree on facts.

As I said before: we’re in worse trouble than I thought.

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¹ "The Lizard-Man Cometh" (5/14/13)

Review: "FAMILIAR," by J. Robert Lennon

A note of praise this morning for J. Robert Lennon, a novelist who lives in Ithaca NY (one of my favorite towns) and who received his MFA at the University of Montana right here in Missoula.  Mr. Lennon's novels include MAILMAN, which I read a few years ago and found exhilarating; CASTLE, which I read recently and found difficult and disappointing (but it was much praised and is worth your time); and now his latest, FAMILIAR, which I just finished and found--well, let me just quote a cover blurb for the book, written by Elizabeth McCracken:

"J. Robert Lennon's FAMILIAR is so breakneck and harrowing, so grab-you-by-the-lapels astonishing, that you may not notice until nearly the end how many questions about you own life it makes you ask.  Haunting, beautiful, a horror story about parenting, complicated--it's a wonderful book."

Yep: what she said.  FAMILIAR plays with the notion of parallel universes--what would happen if you woke up one day and everyone and everything around you was...different?--but ultimately it seems to suggest that we already inhabit a kind of multiverse in which we are strangers to each other, to the ones we love, and even to ourselves.  I don't mean to make too much of the comparison (Lennon's book isn't the least bit sci-fi), but at some level FAMILIAR reminds me of Philip K. Dick: what if, the more we look for "reality," the more we realize it doesn't exist?

Martin Who?

I found this interesting, to say the least; it's from a recent article by Bob Allen, writing for the Associated Baptists Press:

“A Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor hailed the school’s president as a 'modern-day Martin Luther' during a recent ceremony in the seminary chapel.  'We owe much to this man,' New Testament professor Terry Wilder said of Paige Patterson, co-founder of a two-decade effort to lead the Southern Baptist Convention to a firm stance on biblical inerrancy, commonly called the 'conservative resurgence.' 

" 'Our president, whether you know it or not, is a modern-day Martin Luther, and we're thankful
for his leadership,' Wilder said.  Luther was a German theologian who died in 1546. His teachings inspired the Protestant Reformation, which in turn helped to reshape medieval Europe.”

Hold on just a gosh darned moment.  Is it Bob Allen’s opinion that his readers at ABP won’t know who Martin Luther was?  If so, and if he’s correct, that strikes me as much bigger news than the hyperbolic accolades extended to Paige Patterson, and it seems to indicate that the Southern Baptists need to do some educating beyond mere “biblical inerrancy”. 

"Truth Is The Issue"

The following is from an essay “The Imaginative Conjurors” by Dr. Michael Bauman, who teaches Theology and Culture at Hillsdale College; it was published at The Imaginative Conservative, to which Dr. Bauman is a regular contributor.  I’ve often taken issue with Dr. Bauman’s writings, but I can’t find anything here with which to disagree:

“There’s only one good reason to believe an idea, and that’s because it’s true.  There’s only one good reason to reject it, and that’s because it’s false.  Therefore, if you tell me that you chose your worldview because of its beauty, or the grandeur of its attendant architecture and art, or because you are attracted to its history, or because it is quaintly old, or because your grandmother believed it, or because by believing it you discovered comfort and a sense of belonging, then I tell you now that I will not find your reasons compelling.  Neither should you.  If it’s true, believe it.  If it’s not, don’t.  It doesn’t matter what you or I like or prefer.  It doesn’t matter if we find it ‘meaningful’ or ‘comfortable’ or ‘beautiful’.  That’s not the issue.  Truth is the issue.  Truth, not beauty, will set you free.” 

I’ve frequently cited Dostoevsky’s “Beauty will save the world” without, frankly, having the slightest idea what it means.  I’d like to believe it regardless, but beauty is every bit as elusive in this world as is truth; worse, as Dr. Bauman’s essay argues, beauty can be (and often is) fatally seductive and misleading.  Its ultimate seduction may lie in persuading us that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know” (Keats).  I’m grateful to Dr. Michael Bauman for reminding me that, however poetic such sentiments may be, they just aren’t true. 

Now, if someone can just answer for me the question, “What is truth?” I think I’ll be able to proceed.

 

Another Reason Why Inequality Matters

I’ve been reading a book by World Bank economist Branko Milanovic titled THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-NOTS, and it’s chockfull of interesting data about income inequality around the world and even throughout history.  The book is divided into three sections—“Unequal People,” “Unequal Nations,” and “Unequal World”—each of which features a primary essay followed by a series of related short vignettes.  Mr. Milanovic answers such interesting questions as: “Who Was the Richest Person Ever?” and “How Much of Your Income is Determined at Birth?” and “In What Parisian Arrondissement Should You Live in the Thirteenth Century and Today?”  The book has, it’s clear, in additional to a wealth of statistical data, a certain quirky charm.

One particular vignette caught my attention: “Income Inequality and the Global Financial Crisis”.  Since people are still disputing even now the causes of, and solutions to, the 2008-09 economic crash, it’s of interest to hear Milanovic’s take.  He begins by saying,

“The current financial crisis is generally blamed on feckless bankers, financial deregulation, crony capitalism, and the like.  Although all of these elements may have contributed, this purely financial explanation of the crisis overlooks its fundamental reasons [which] lie in the real sector, and more exactly in the distribution of income across individuals and social classes.  Deregulation, by helping irresponsible behavior, just exacerbated the crisis; it did not create it.”

Milanovic reminds us that income and wealth inequality began to rise sharply in the late 1970’s: “In the United States, the top 1 percent of the population doubled its share in national income from around 8 percent in the mid-1970’s to almost 16 percent in the early 2000’s.”  It wasn’t just that the rich were getting richer; it was also that “The increased wealth at the top was combined with an absence of real economic growth in the middle.  The real median wage in the United States has been stagnant for twenty-five years, despite an almost doubling of GDP per capita.”  

The consequences of this maldistribution of income were two-fold.  First, for the wealthy, “a huge pool of available financial capital—the product of increased income inequality—went in search of profitable opportunities to invest.”  This investment binge required “intermediaries, the financial sector.  Overwhelmed with such an amount of funds, and short of good opportunities to invest the capital as well as enticed by large fees attending each transaction, the financial sector became more and more reckless, basically throwing money at anyone who would take it.” 

Second, Milanovic explains, the middle-class, because of stagnating wages, was forced into debt, and even encouraged to take the plunge:  “A way to make it seem that the middle class was earning more than it did was to increase its purchasing power through broader and more accessible credit.  People began to live by accumulating ever-rising debts on their credit cards, taking on more car debts or higher mortgages.  President George W. Bush famously promised that every American family, regardless of its income, would be able to own a home.  Thus was born the great American consumption binge that saw the household debt increase from 48 percent of GDP in the early 1980’s to 100 percent of GDP before the crisis.”

Milanovic sums it up: “The root cause of the crisis is not to be found in hedge funds and bankers who simply behaved with the greed to which they are accustomed (and for which economists used to praise them).  The real cause of the crisis lies in huge inequalities in income distribution…” It didn’t have to be that way. “Without thirty years of rising inequality, and with the same overall national income, the income of the middle class would have been greater [and] there would have been more equitable and stable development that would have spared the United States and the world an unnecessary crisis.”

In short, you can’t run an economy on the conspicuous consumption and reckless investments of the wealthy plus the over-leveraged debts of everyone else: at least you can’t do it for long.  In America, we managed to keep the economy afloat that way for about twenty-five years; let’s hope it doesn’t take us that long to get things set right again.  It's true, as conservatives love to say, that a rising tide lifts all boats; but it's also true that the wake generated by large vessels can swamp smaller ones.

The Lizard-Man Cometh

I recently read an amazingly provocative and counter-intuitive essay by Jesse Elias Spafford (at The New Inquiry).  Since then, I’ve made several attempts to compose a response, but none of them have been successful.  Frustrated, I turned to one of my frequent conversational partners (a fellow who goes by the name “Harold Weasel”) and asked him to weigh in on it.  Here’s my report.

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I was talking to one of David Irving’s secret lizard-men (“Harold Weasel”) the other day, and he was infuriated by an article he’d read at The New Inquiry.  Titled “Just the Facts” and written by Jesse Elias Spafford, the article argued that reliance on facts and empirical data in public and political discourse is pointless, because everyone has his or her own set of facts and there’s no way to distinguish whose facts are more reliable. Mr. Spafford specifically equated Alex Jones, the fiery founder of Infowars and one of America’s leading conspiracists, with Ezra Klein, one of MSNBC’s many mild-mannered, bespectacled nerds: Jones and Klein may disagree on what the facts are, said Spafford, but they both insist (in rather different tones of voice) that facts will set us free, if we’re willing to dig deep enough to discover them.  As Spafford explains, their trust in facts makes Jones and Kleins two identical peas in an empirical pod, however different their styles (and their "facts") happen to be.

According such respectability to Alex Jones is what had the lizard-man so upset. “Alex Jones is one of the few Americans smart enough to see through the mainstream media’s lies and the cover-ups of the New World Overlords—meaning, you know, lizard-men like me.  He's been trying to blow the whistle on us for years.  If people realize that Jones’ claims are every bit as legitimate as Ezra Klein’s, he may get a bigger and bigger audience.  Jesse Elias Spafford doesn’t know what he's getting into,” the lizard-man went on.  “If Alex Jones gets more traction because of this article, then I wouldn’t want to be in Spafford’s shoes, or what's left of them.”

I pointed out that Spafford, while saying that Klein and Jones were alike in claiming to deal in facts and empirical data, also made it clear that Jones engages in heated, hyperbolic conspiracizing, making use of "spurious empirical claims about, say, the role of the U.S. government in orchestrating the 9/11 attacks or the desire of elites to create a world government.” Spafford also notes that Jones, like other conspiracy mongers,“will dismiss conflicting testimony as part of the conspiracy and cherry-pick pieces of ambiguous evidence that confirm their beliefs. They can thus present themselves as enlightened empiricists who, through sustained diligent analysis and research, have come to understand the reality that eludes the ignorant masses.” 

But for all that, notes the lizard-man, Spafford says that, depending on your ideological and psychological bent, Ezra Klein is doing (or can be accused of doing) the very same thing: cherry-picking data, massaging and manipulating statistics (or merely being a credulous dupe of the government that puts out the statistics in the first place), and presenting himself as an enlightened empiricist who can pierce the veil of public ignorance and misunderstanding.  Jones and Klein are either distorted mirror images of each other, says Spafford, or two sides of the same empiricist coin; and that, the lizard-man said, gives Alex Jones just the credibility he needs to finally persuade the general public about the truth behind such things as Benghazi (Obama himself ordered the attack), the Oklahoma City bombing (“false flag”), 9/11 (“inside job”), the Newtown shootings (“government operation”), and the Boston bombings (“false flag”).  Jones will also be able to illuminate people about fluoride, AIDS, vaccines and autism, the Federal Reserve, the Davos meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bohemian Grove conclaves, and all the rest of the lizard-men’s agenda. 

That would not be good for anyone: not for the public, which is better off not knowing the truth, not for the real powers that be or their willing flunkies, and certainly not for Jesse Elias Spafford.  “I don’t know who this guy Spafford is,” said the lizard-man, “or what he thinks he’s up to.  But he’s in over his head. We've left Alex Jones alone all these years because it was obvious to everyone that he was loonier than a fruitcake or whatever, but now Spafford comes along and says, 'Hey, invented facts are still facts just the same'.  That's not a very smart thing to do.  We can't touch Jones at this point, but if Spafford's not careful, he’s gonna end up like Vince Foster and like those three members of Trinity United Church.”  Then the lizard-man carefully re-arranged his “Harold Weasel” mask and slithered walked away; he had a meeting, he explained, with George Soros, and he didn't want to be late.

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I still don’t know what to think about Jesse Elias Spafford’s article.  But I know this: if Spafford is right that there is “simply no rationally justifiable way [to distinguish] the Kleins from the Joneses,” and that our preference for one or the other can only be “a matter of faith and subjective taste, resting on an intuitive but irrational sense of what is true”: then we are in much worse trouble than I thought.

Brief Notes

Following a weekend of computer problems and watching golf, and following a ten-hour power outage today, I am back at work, such as it is.  A few items briefly:

--I said this during the Clinton administration and it holds true today: Republicans since 1974 have been suffering from impeachment envy, and they will not rest until they get their pound of flesh.   If you're as tired as I am of hearing about Benghazi, then cheer up--we'll also be hearing now about the "Obama IRS" (which was run by a Bush appointee at the time in question) and its horrible doings (which were, in fact, pretty objectionable).

--I have resigned from the Alexandria blog community in which I'd been participating for the past three months or so.  My impact on discussions there was nil, and it became clear I had nothing to contribute--at least, nothing in which folks there were interested.  I can brook disagreement and debate--that was, after all, one reason for accepting the invitation to  join Alexandria--but I'll be honest: incivility, hostility, rudeness, insults and name-calling wear me down.  I guess I just wasn't able to stand the Alexandrian heat, so I got out of the Alexandrian kitchen.

--If there is a God, then please God do not allow Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic nomination for President in 2016, and especially do not let that election be contested between Ms. Clinton and Jeb Bush.  The country could no doubt survive the rancor of such a campaign, but I don't think I could.

--On a matter of significantly less importance: Sergio Garcia is not just a world-class golfer; he's a world-class whiner.

--Also of only personal relevance: I watched a movie last night called "Engagement".  If anyone can tell me what it was about, please do; I actually had dreams based on it last night, and have spent a good part of my electricity-less day today going over it in my head and trying to make sense out of it.  It wasn't even that good, but it was perplexing.  (I have to contact my daughter Laura about it; she's good at figuring such things out.)

--If you believe that there is a world of difference between the feverish rantings of Alex Jones and the mild-mannered wonkery of Ezra Klein, then you are mistaken, according to Mr. Jesse Elias Spafford, whose article "Just the Facts" (at The New Inquiry) is the oddest, most counter-intuitive piece I've read in a long time.  By all means check it out; I'm still formulating my own response to it.

Review: "JESUS WARS," by Philip Jenkins

Philip Jenkin’s JESUS WARS is the story of how, some four hundred years after Jesus died on the cross, Christians settled—sort of—on an understanding of just who or what Jesus was.  The Council of Chalcedon (451 C.E.) declared that Jesus was both fully God and fully human, possessed of two distinct natures joined together in one person “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person.” That authoritative declaration regarding the unique and unprecedented nature of a man whom no one at the council had ever met became, and has remained, the basis of orthodox Christology; it also led to the fracturing of Christendom, sealed the primacy of the Roman papacy, and arguably paved the way for the rise of Islam. 

Christian orthodoxy did not emerge, either before or after Chalcedon, without fierce conflict—and not just the conflict of theological debate.  People were killed not just for holding the “wrong” belief about Christ but for holding not precisely the “right” belief.  Mr. Jenkins makes no effort to whitewash the record or to minimize the violence that accompanied Christianity’s development; in fact, he makes a noble effort to remind us that “Just a century after the conversion of the Roman empire, Christian churches were acting precisely on the lines of the most extreme Islamic mullahs today...which suggests that none of the violence or intolerance commonly seen in modern-day Islam is, so to speak, in the DNA of that religion but just reflects particular social and political circumstances.” ¹  Whatever you may think of that comparison, the fact remains: more Christians died at the hands of other Christians as the result of theological quarrels than died as the result of all the fabled Roman "persecutions".²

Patriarchs, emperors, queens, bishops; personal ambitions and feuds; local and regional  rivalries; maneuverings and manipulations; coups and anathemas; shifting alliances; corruption and intimidation; Attila the Hun; and yes, plenty of violence: all these are the stuff of JESUS WARS, along with theological disputes so arcane that it’s hard to credit that people were willing to kill and to die over them—over, for example, the difference between believing that Jesus existed “in two natures” or “of two natures” and over whether or not it was proper to refer to Jesus’ mother Mary as theotokos“ (God-bearer,” or literally “the mother of God”).  Jenkins acknowledges that “past theological debates seem so abstruse that their memory can be embarrassing to modern churches.  Did churches in the distant past really tear themselves apart over what today seem such verbal minutiae?”  Sadly, the answer is “Yes; yes they did.”  And today’s Christians are the heirs of both the “verbal minutiae” that eventually crystallized into orthodoxy and of the violence that accompanied its “triumph”. 

In large part, Jenkins explains, Chalcedon (and the whole centuries-long debate preceding it) was an attempt to answer, once and for all, the question that Jesus put to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”  But in claiming to provide a definitive answer, Christian authorities utterly overlooked the existential emphasis of that question: Jesus had first asked, “Who do men say that I am?” and only then did he issue the challenge, “Who do you say that I am?”  The implication is that a believer must answer Jesus’ question personally and not on the basis of others’ opinions or on received authority.  By establishing an orthodox Christology, the Church saved its members the trouble of having to work one out for themselves; should Jesus pose his question to them, they could fall back on “According to the Council of Chalcedon, you are both fully God and fully human.”  Of course, should Jesus then press the issue—“Yes, but who do you say that I am?”—we’d be right back where we started.

Philip Jenkins tries very hard, towards the end of JESUS WARS, to argue that the events he has so ably narrated vindicate “the idea of Providence, of God’s intervening in history, often through highly improbable agents.”  It’s true, he says, that “the process of establishing orthodoxy involved a huge amount of what we might call political accident—depending on the outcome of dynastic succession, on victory or defeat in battle, on the theological tastes of key figures.” Moreover, “these issues of process look much more troubling [in retrospect]—so troubling, in fact, that they must raise questions about why the churches believe what they do.”  Despite which, Jenkins gamely insists that “the outcome of the religious debate was, in worldly terms, so very unlikely”: ergo, God must have been involved.  That, of course, presupposes that the formulation of Chalcedon was theologically correct; but as Mr. Jenkins himself acknowledges, the apparent correctness of the outcome may only reflect the fact that we’ve had over 1500 years of Chalcedonian “orthodoxy” (I won’t say “indoctrination”) under our belts. It’s funny how, given enough time, orthodoxy can come to seem so, well, orthodox.

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¹ Or perhaps violence and intolerance are “in the DNA” of all religions, or even simply in the DNA of human beings regardless of social and political circumstances. 

² After Chalcedon, the inter-nicene violence abated, though it never entirely disappeared; eventually, of course, following centuries of wars with Islam, European Christians would get back to killing each other over religious differences.