Somehow many Americans think that their fellow citizens have no right to criticize the words, actions, and stated policies of their elected leaders. This is not just wrongheaded, it is inimical. The Founders made it clear that speech - honest dialogue - was not just a right but a responsibility, and that the public has the most vital role in making a democracy work: the burden of watching its public servants carefully and demanding them to be unswerving in their commitment to equal treatment of all persons under the rule of law.
What we have instead is a system that aggressively prosecutes the kid on the corner selling drugs because he can't find a decent job, and lets the wealthy drug lord with his house in the burbs go free, because the latter can buy justice through his fat cat lawyer.
What we have instead is a mother who is jailed for misrepresenting where her domicile is located, while not even charged, let alone prosecuted or jailed are the super-rich on Wall Street who stole billions of dollars from ordinary working people, forcing many, including the undersigned, out of their homes even though they work multiple jobs trying to cover the mortgage, and destroying any hope they might have had of a comfortable retirement.
What we have instead is the Koch brothers feverishly fueling the finances of falsehood - the so-called tea bag movement, which is in the business of lying and distorting those pesky little facts.
Yet, while no one dares truly speak out in the United States, still somehow Americans think they have the right to criticize (often without knowing the facts!) any other country on the globe - but, if another country dares criticize them - as France did, quite correctly as it turned out, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, Americans go all pious and say those dang foreigners have no right to say a word simply because they aren't American.
"Freedom Fries" indeed! That particular food item was invented at a restaurant called French's, in Buffalo. It has nothing to do with France.
Many times I have heard Americans insist that Muslims convert by force, that they have a different deity, that they are all, or mostly, untrustworthy, unsavory people who are plotting overthrow of the United States. And I've heard a lot worse that I won't repeat here. Sadly, people actually believe these things.
I have had the pleasure of knowing many Muslims. Among them are some of my dearest friends. They are as a group fine human beings. Frankly, I'd trust my life to one of them before I'd trust a lot of my so-called Christian friends.
I ask my Muslim friends how they can stand all this prejudice. They say they're used to it. They say they can't speak up because, if they do, people interpret their defensiveness as aggression, or "what they're told to say" by their imams, or both.
Men who come from a predominantly Muslim country often have a difficult time with police and their employers or customers because they "look Muslim". Muslim women have it even worse if they dress traditionally, say, by wearing a hijab (scarf) over their hair. Even liberals look down on them, assuming by the presence of the hijab that they are suppressed females. Rather, Muslim women have often assured me that for them the hijab is a kind of liberation: it is a signal saying, "Treat me with respect! Don't look at me for my physical charms, but look at me as an equal. Remember, when you look at me, that you wouldn't want a man to look in a certain way at your mother, your sister, your wife, or your daughter. So don't look at me that way, either."
Muslims must pray five times a day. When you are always close to prayer - when you either just prayed a few minutes ago or you are soon going to pray - you remain in your thoughts much closer to the Creator than if, say, you only pray on Sunday morning.
Muslims must give to the poor. It is not a suggestion or an option. It is a requirement. Even the poor must give to others.
Muslims read the Qur'an and the Bible - the Bible is Scripture for Muslims too, you know - frequently and carefully. They know all the Scriptures well; I am often amazed at Muslims who can quote the New Testament from memory at length. There is nothing in the Qur'an about converting by the sword. There is plenty about showing respect to people. There is one beautiful passage that says if you save one life it is as if you have saved the whole human race. There is more about Jesus in the Qur'an than in the Bible.
The word "jihad", despite the frequent misrepresentations of misinformed media people, does not mean "holy war". It means "struggle" - specifically, the struggle within the individual to overcome his or her temptations to do evil and become a better person. It means the struggle to submit ("islam" means "to submit") totally to the Creator of All. So often has this misuse been published in the Western news media that now, unfortunately, I see even Muslims use the word incorrectly.
Christianity has nothing to be smug about. Jesus says love your enemy. But so-called Christians bomb the heck out of their enemies. Jesus says forgive. But so-called Christians talk about how much they hate people unlike themselves. Jesus says those who follow him must practice peace. But so-called Christians are devastatingly warlike. How dare they say Muslims are warlike!
Take the Crusades. Supposedly they were to wrest control of the Holy Land away from the Muslims. Under those awful Muslims, there was religious freedom. When, following the only Crusade actually to reach the Holy Land a Christian monarchy was established, religious freedom was choked off and Muslims and Jews viciously subjugated. Every other Crusade failed even to reach the Holy Land - instead, these Roman Catholic Christians brutally attacked Orthodox Christians.
Africa was decimated by the empire of slavery. The Americas were stolen from its inhabitants only occasionally by conquest, and far more often through the use of outright, deliberate chicanery. The Holocaust saw the lives of six million Jews go up in smoke - and millions of Gypsies, Christian Scientists, gays, and ordinary Germans who dared to speak the truth in the face of Naziism.
Recently someone suggested to me the view that Native Americans are genetically disposed to a warlike nature. This brings to mind the lie promoted ever since Europeans set foot in the Americas, that Native Americans are uncivilized savages. What? This was an invasion, folks! Can you blame people for trying (unsuccessfully) to protect their homes and families and land from wave after wave of well-armed invaders? And, you know, scalping - often cited as an example of Native American savagery - was introduced by the British and French during the French and Indian War as a means of establishing whether the bounty paid for killing an enemy soldier should be at the lower rate, for an Indian, or the higher rate, for a European.
History, you say? You didn't take part in these evil deeds? You're not responsible? Think again. You (and I) are living on the fruits of indentured servitude and slave labor. And today, where nearly all wealth is held by the top one percent of American citizens, you are being victimized by the economic slavery of today - and you have it far better than the sweatshops of Asia and the maquiladoras of Latin America. The criminals on Wall Street got bailed out while millions of Americans lose what little worth they had managed to accumulate over a lifetime of hard work.
The United States Constitution was directly based on the Kaianek'go:wa, the Great Law of Peace, the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy - the world's oldest constitution and probably its most poetic. But some of the advice that the Rotinoshon:ni Chiefs gave the Founders was ignored - that freedom of religion did not mean government should be without some sort of spiritual foundation, for a government without a spiritual foundation is like a body without a soul in it, and, like the body, it will become corrupt before too long. Stinking corrupt.
But we're talking a spiritual foundation here, not an organized religion. The Founders were right to reject a "state religion" and ensure religious freedom for all people. And the religious conservatives of today are wrong for demanding the establishment of the United States as a "Christian nation"; this would put the United States on a path toward behaving like certain countries in the Caribbean and Africa, where religion (not spirituality) is used as a club of fear and repression to weaken and destroy the opposition to those in power.
America supports democracy around the world? Think again. America supports dictators - ruthless, bloody dictators - Ngo Dinh Diem, Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet, Qaddafi, Saddam and Noriega, and many more - or at least until they offended the powerful. Name one real democracy that the United States has founded anywhere in the world. Just one. ... Yes, I'm still trying to think of one, too.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Monging of Pseudonews
Some people angrily tell me to stop talking about all the bad news unless I am going to offer something that they can do to help counter or or repair the issue.
But the problem is that the pseudonewsmongers have lost all control of objectivity and of verifying the facts. When I was a practicing journalist, I would have been fired if I had printed anything that wasn't clearly and documentably true. But (everywhere on the political dial) people are following the advice of one well-known twentieth-century political leader.
This chief executive taught: "All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."
"The art of leadership," said this leader, "consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention."
And, finally, he declared: "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." For, he concluded, "It is not truth that matters, but victory. ... Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."
This famous leader? Adolf Hitler.
If every one of us doesn't do our very best to hold to reality, to the truth, then these mendacious pundits will be the only source for people to learn what is going on. Therefore, we have no choice but to do everything we can to spread the truth.
<><><><>
It shames me when Americans decry the way the press is controlled in certain countries - little realizing that their own media are likewise controlled by the rich and powerful. It shames me when Americans condemn other countries for having only one party and one candidate for each office, or for holding obviously rigged elections - little realizing that, thanks to gerrymandering and yellow polling and lying media and big-bucks political contributions, their votes are already known and accounted for long before they pull the curtain on the voting booth, and the outcome already arranged to the satisfaction of the powers-that-be.
Polling is a science; everybody knows that. But few realize exactly what kind of science it is. It is the science of getting the results desired by whoever is footing the bill.
Do you want a more conservative response? Take your poll during the day, when students and workers, more likely to give the answer you don't want than retirees, are most likely away from home.
Do you want poll results supporting the incumbent? It's all in the wording. "How strongly do you appreciate ___'s efforts to protect the American way of life?" Opposing the incumbent? "How strongly do you think it's time to replace ___?"
As a journalist I watched efforts to gerrymander out of existence an enclave of strongly Democratic minority voters in one small city. The Republicans who controlled the county legislature at the time got to draw the districting maps, and strove to split up the neighborhood into several districts, destroying any chance of electing a Democrat. And, yes, I've seen Democrats do the same thing.
But the problem is that the pseudonewsmongers have lost all control of objectivity and of verifying the facts. When I was a practicing journalist, I would have been fired if I had printed anything that wasn't clearly and documentably true. But (everywhere on the political dial) people are following the advice of one well-known twentieth-century political leader.
This chief executive taught: "All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."
"The art of leadership," said this leader, "consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention."
And, finally, he declared: "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." For, he concluded, "It is not truth that matters, but victory. ... Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."
This famous leader? Adolf Hitler.
If every one of us doesn't do our very best to hold to reality, to the truth, then these mendacious pundits will be the only source for people to learn what is going on. Therefore, we have no choice but to do everything we can to spread the truth.
<><><><>
It shames me when Americans decry the way the press is controlled in certain countries - little realizing that their own media are likewise controlled by the rich and powerful. It shames me when Americans condemn other countries for having only one party and one candidate for each office, or for holding obviously rigged elections - little realizing that, thanks to gerrymandering and yellow polling and lying media and big-bucks political contributions, their votes are already known and accounted for long before they pull the curtain on the voting booth, and the outcome already arranged to the satisfaction of the powers-that-be.
Polling is a science; everybody knows that. But few realize exactly what kind of science it is. It is the science of getting the results desired by whoever is footing the bill.
Do you want a more conservative response? Take your poll during the day, when students and workers, more likely to give the answer you don't want than retirees, are most likely away from home.
Do you want poll results supporting the incumbent? It's all in the wording. "How strongly do you appreciate ___'s efforts to protect the American way of life?" Opposing the incumbent? "How strongly do you think it's time to replace ___?"
As a journalist I watched efforts to gerrymander out of existence an enclave of strongly Democratic minority voters in one small city. The Republicans who controlled the county legislature at the time got to draw the districting maps, and strove to split up the neighborhood into several districts, destroying any chance of electing a Democrat. And, yes, I've seen Democrats do the same thing.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Relentlessly Yours
I love humanity. I don't care what citizenship a person holds; that person is my sibling. And, no matter how G-d has constituted that person (tall or short, young or old, left- or right-handed, dark or light, male or female, gay/lesbian or straight, etc., etc.), I will stand in support of that person's natural human rights, and stand opposed to those arrogating lying bigots who would take those rights away.
My personal view is that if one truly loves a people, then one can find sufficient motivation to want the best for them, to see them rise to their highest potential - and one important way to do that - the human right of loyal opposition - is to critique that people's government when it goes astray from its proper ideals and function.
Some accuse me of "attacking the United States" or some other country - or, for that matter, of attacking Christianity, or some other religion.
Let me state this clearly: I am a retired Christian clergyperson who served several churches as pastor. And I am an American citizen living abroad - because I cannot afford to live in my own country as a retiree.
I want to see both that religion and that country (and all others) rise to their potential, and I will not help them reach that potential if I keep my mouth shut in the face of evil, arrogation, hypocrisy, and cruelty. Therefore, I speak out. I find it distasteful for some people to criticize those who speak out from altruism and loyalty to the best in humanity, and moreover declare them guilty of the very evil and hypocrisy that they decry simply because they decry evil and hypocrisy.
Some people take that love-of-country too far, and act like it has some preeminence over the others, and can jolly well do what it likes. There should be no competition among countries - rather, cooperation. I don't care if a person is from the USA, Iran, Lesotho, Haiti, or whatever. That person deserves the SAME rights and opportunities as any and all others.
"My country right or wrong" is foolishness twice over. If my country is wrong, it is my duty as a citizen, as one of those who employs its public servants, to correct that wrong! Moreover, countries should not be competitors. We are on this planet together. Countries come and go, and the borders between them are evanescent political realities only.
Like you, I love what is best in humanity and thus, whether I agree with you or not, I respect you for your courage when you state eloquently how you feel.
Jesus was relentless. Mohammed was relentless. Gandhi was relentless. Martin Luther King Jr. was relentless. Relentlessness in the truth, motivated by love, is a virtue, not a sin.
The greatest and wisest members of our species yearned for humanity to reach its fullest potential and did not hesitate to condemn those who opposed that potential. Jesus, for example, harshly condemned Pharisees and Romans and even his own disciples when they abrogated their responsibility to be truly good. He was "unfailingly critical" of the boot of Rome grinding down on Israel, as he had to be.
And yet, when a Roman Centurion, probably a member of the Mithraist religion, asked him humbly to heal his dying son, Jesus did that and, what is more, praised the Centurion for his faith. Jesus clearly did not hate Romans as a class - he hated the evil that was being perpetrated by its government and army.
Today, no less, we must do the same: speak out when governments, armies, religions, and multinational corporations do evil. And we must be relentless.
As a preacher for 35 years, the pressure was always on to tell the parishioners what they wanted to hear - to tell them that their lifestyle is just fine, and so what if there are homeless people starving and cold in the inner cities and co...untryside. But I insisted that THEY were not my boss, but G-d, and that I had to say what G-d commanded me to say.
Sadly, most Americans are ignorant of what is happening in the world other than what the vapid entertainment-driven media tell them about this or that movie star or singer. More sadly, most Americans are no longer being truly educated in the classics, and taught discernment, the ability to think for themselves, and not just believe the oft-repeated lies dished out on Fox News. Sadly - I speak as a career journalist - real journalism, investigative journalism, has given way to faux news shocks and titillates but does not inform.
What is more, political leaders in the United States evidence a penchant for outright, outrageous lying, and the people show an equally sad willingness to accept these lies at face value. Gone, it seems, is the ability to ask good questions and demand good answers, to loyally challenge, to demand service.
And we should do the same - serve all our sisters and brothers - not just those in our country, not just those with the same skin color, not just those who worship as we do or vote as we do or dress the same as us, but ALL our sisters and brothers. And to demand the same of those we trust with custodianship of the public good.
My personal view is that if one truly loves a people, then one can find sufficient motivation to want the best for them, to see them rise to their highest potential - and one important way to do that - the human right of loyal opposition - is to critique that people's government when it goes astray from its proper ideals and function.
Some accuse me of "attacking the United States" or some other country - or, for that matter, of attacking Christianity, or some other religion.
Let me state this clearly: I am a retired Christian clergyperson who served several churches as pastor. And I am an American citizen living abroad - because I cannot afford to live in my own country as a retiree.
I want to see both that religion and that country (and all others) rise to their potential, and I will not help them reach that potential if I keep my mouth shut in the face of evil, arrogation, hypocrisy, and cruelty. Therefore, I speak out. I find it distasteful for some people to criticize those who speak out from altruism and loyalty to the best in humanity, and moreover declare them guilty of the very evil and hypocrisy that they decry simply because they decry evil and hypocrisy.
Some people take that love-of-country too far, and act like it has some preeminence over the others, and can jolly well do what it likes. There should be no competition among countries - rather, cooperation. I don't care if a person is from the USA, Iran, Lesotho, Haiti, or whatever. That person deserves the SAME rights and opportunities as any and all others.
"My country right or wrong" is foolishness twice over. If my country is wrong, it is my duty as a citizen, as one of those who employs its public servants, to correct that wrong! Moreover, countries should not be competitors. We are on this planet together. Countries come and go, and the borders between them are evanescent political realities only.
Like you, I love what is best in humanity and thus, whether I agree with you or not, I respect you for your courage when you state eloquently how you feel.
Jesus was relentless. Mohammed was relentless. Gandhi was relentless. Martin Luther King Jr. was relentless. Relentlessness in the truth, motivated by love, is a virtue, not a sin.
The greatest and wisest members of our species yearned for humanity to reach its fullest potential and did not hesitate to condemn those who opposed that potential. Jesus, for example, harshly condemned Pharisees and Romans and even his own disciples when they abrogated their responsibility to be truly good. He was "unfailingly critical" of the boot of Rome grinding down on Israel, as he had to be.
And yet, when a Roman Centurion, probably a member of the Mithraist religion, asked him humbly to heal his dying son, Jesus did that and, what is more, praised the Centurion for his faith. Jesus clearly did not hate Romans as a class - he hated the evil that was being perpetrated by its government and army.
Today, no less, we must do the same: speak out when governments, armies, religions, and multinational corporations do evil. And we must be relentless.
As a preacher for 35 years, the pressure was always on to tell the parishioners what they wanted to hear - to tell them that their lifestyle is just fine, and so what if there are homeless people starving and cold in the inner cities and co...untryside. But I insisted that THEY were not my boss, but G-d, and that I had to say what G-d commanded me to say.
Sadly, most Americans are ignorant of what is happening in the world other than what the vapid entertainment-driven media tell them about this or that movie star or singer. More sadly, most Americans are no longer being truly educated in the classics, and taught discernment, the ability to think for themselves, and not just believe the oft-repeated lies dished out on Fox News. Sadly - I speak as a career journalist - real journalism, investigative journalism, has given way to faux news shocks and titillates but does not inform.
What is more, political leaders in the United States evidence a penchant for outright, outrageous lying, and the people show an equally sad willingness to accept these lies at face value. Gone, it seems, is the ability to ask good questions and demand good answers, to loyally challenge, to demand service.
And we should do the same - serve all our sisters and brothers - not just those in our country, not just those with the same skin color, not just those who worship as we do or vote as we do or dress the same as us, but ALL our sisters and brothers. And to demand the same of those we trust with custodianship of the public good.
Ranting the Truth, not Gassing Political Platitudes
How about you? Are you sick and tired of everybody screaming and nobody listening? Are you fed up with boneheads insisting they, and only they, are right and anybody who doesn't just fall down at their feet to worship must be the bonehead? Are you tired of name-calling, of personal attacks, replacing good honest respectful (even friendly) discussion of real issues about real people?
Then join me here.
I don't care if you think of yourself as liberal or conservative or any other label. Me, I eschew labels altogether. My own views are far too complex to go under somebody else's label, especially when it, like all the other labels, has been dragged through mud and twisted and pulled until it doesn't mean anything any more. I am an individual, and my views are my views - from my perspective, based on my experiences and reading and conversations and observations and prayers. Not anyone else's.
I live in a country where 99 out of 100 local people have never heard of Sarah Palin, but whose lives are not stunted and deprived as a result. There is more to life - they would tell us - than convincing the other side that Palin is (take your pick) a brilliant public servant or a moron who thinks she sees the presidency knocking on her bedroom window.
Except for the filthy rich, who are redesigning the world to better serve them and their bank accounts, everyone in the world is hurting. Even here in Panama I see signs of the corrosiveness of American money and power, and even here I see the effects of pollution from industrialized nations. What saddens me is how many people actually believe these mendacious arrogant hypocrites who gerrymandered and political promised their corporate funded way into public office, and promptly forgot (if they ever knew it) that their boss is the people, not the party boss, that they are there to serve the people, not the CEOs.
Am I mad? You betcha. Do I want to yell and scream like everybody else - an ineffectual bellowing against incontrovertible forces? Nope.
I just hope that one by one people who are actually awake and aware, will band together and put a stop to all this nonsense and demand - THE TRUTH.
Then join me here.
I don't care if you think of yourself as liberal or conservative or any other label. Me, I eschew labels altogether. My own views are far too complex to go under somebody else's label, especially when it, like all the other labels, has been dragged through mud and twisted and pulled until it doesn't mean anything any more. I am an individual, and my views are my views - from my perspective, based on my experiences and reading and conversations and observations and prayers. Not anyone else's.
I live in a country where 99 out of 100 local people have never heard of Sarah Palin, but whose lives are not stunted and deprived as a result. There is more to life - they would tell us - than convincing the other side that Palin is (take your pick) a brilliant public servant or a moron who thinks she sees the presidency knocking on her bedroom window.
Except for the filthy rich, who are redesigning the world to better serve them and their bank accounts, everyone in the world is hurting. Even here in Panama I see signs of the corrosiveness of American money and power, and even here I see the effects of pollution from industrialized nations. What saddens me is how many people actually believe these mendacious arrogant hypocrites who gerrymandered and political promised their corporate funded way into public office, and promptly forgot (if they ever knew it) that their boss is the people, not the party boss, that they are there to serve the people, not the CEOs.
Am I mad? You betcha. Do I want to yell and scream like everybody else - an ineffectual bellowing against incontrovertible forces? Nope.
I just hope that one by one people who are actually awake and aware, will band together and put a stop to all this nonsense and demand - THE TRUTH.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)