Tortured Gospel

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Tornadoes? I don't see any tornadoes.

It is a little difficult to force yourself to think of tornadoes when you’re in sunny California. On my flight into Santa Barbara I could see the tail end of the gray whale migration from a few thousand feet in the air. Outside the tiny municipal airport (with its full-body scanner) I see palm trees swaying in the wind. The air smells like flowers. Life is too easy in California for me ever to live here. I need more angst in my diet. I can’t come to the sunny coast, however, without the Eagle’s “Hotel California” replaying endlessly in my head. It was the running joke at Nashotah House that the real Hotel California was located in the woods just outside Delafield, Wisconsin. The haunting lyrics by Don Felder, Don Henley, and Glenn Frey managed to capture the witch’s brew of mind control, humiliation, and desire that laced that little, gothic seminary in the woods. Yet even sitting in California with its full greenery in March, I see that Pat Robertson is blaming the devastation of the recent tornadoes on lack of prayer.

Blaming the victim is a classic fascist technique, and it is very easy to proclaim one’s own righteousness when not in harm’s way. Herein lies the darkest sin of the self-justified; they think themselves specially blessed and therefore not responsible to help the victims. While flying over the Santa Ynez Mountains, seeing the smoke from California wildfires climbing like the terminal flames of Babylon, I could hear a voice like a choir of fascists singing, “Alleluia And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.” Schadenfreude fuels too much of the evangelical worldview. According the Gospel writers, when Jesus foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem, he wept. WWJD, Rev. Robertson?

Tornadoes look so much like divine judgment that it is almost understandable how a naïve believer might see them as coming from God. We, however, are the gods destroying our own planet with the accompanying degradation of the weather. Neo-cons deny the fact of global warming. It is not a myth or a theory, there is inconvertible proof that it is happening. Still, it is more convenient to blame God. After all, chances of him showing up to deny false charges, as history repeatedly shows, are very slim. Ask any innocent woman tied to a stake in Medieval Europe accused of being a witch. Apparently the divine calendar is too full to worry about the troubles of hundreds of thousands, or even a few millions who are falsely accused. Why not send some terror from the sky? It is hard to think of such things in sunny California. Yet as the “good news” of the televangelists spreads to the ends of the earth, even those forever in the sun will need to stand in judgment before a very capricious deity.

Real Hope

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I’m doing something I seldom undertake: posting a second blog entry on a single day. Well, I’m in California and my time scale is all out of whack anyway; who’s to say what time it really is? Last night (or was it afternoon?) I checked into my hotel to find a message from Una McGurk, the colleague of Trina Paulus and coordinator of the Hope for the Flowers Kickstarter campaign. I mentioned Trina Paulus’ Hope for the Flowers in a recent post, as a way of summing up some thoughts on resurrection and societal change. I am a die-hard idealist, often to my own detriment, and I didn’t really elaborate on just how important a book Hope for the Flowers is. In all seriousness, it is a transformative book for those receptive enough to read it with an open mind. Sometimes we’re inclined to think that books that look as if written for children can’t have anything adult to say. We are so wrong.

In keeping with the spirit of the book, Trina Paulus and Una McGurk are attempting to raise funding to produce an independent animated version of the story. Since movies and books dominate my post topics, this is a cause I find worthy of support. A bit of a spoiler alert here—if you haven’t read the book, or if you simply need to be reminded, Stripe and Yellow are caterpillars in love. Stripe, however, is drawn to the world of what all other caterpillars do—climb. Forsaking his love, he climbs to the top of one of the countless caterpillar pillars in the world only to find that those at the top get there by throwing others off. The top of the pillar is empty. Nothing is there except the hollow feeling of having beat others to the pinnacle. Still, above the pillar, butterflies soar.

It is a simple story, but the message is profound. And necessary. Looking at the progress of corporate greed and heartless acts of personal promotion, it is difficult not to call Trina Paulus a prophet. In a day when Christianity is identified primarily with draconian restrictions on what “true believers” cannot do, I think we could all use a few more butterflies. Chances are, if you are reading this blog, you have some sympathy for the human race. If you do, visit the Hope for the Flowers website and consider pledging a donation, no matter how small, to spread this message further afield. Not only the flowers, but also the very survival of humanity could well depend on it.

A California caterpillar says yes!

Religion Undisclosed

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I’m getting to be a pat-down connoisseur. In Raleigh-Durham it was a more intimate affair with Mr. TSA—I don’t even have his name or number—narrating the intimate details. “I will move my hands up your thigh until I encounter ‘resistance,’” he said. At Newark the pat-down was quicker, more business-like, almost as if Mr. TSA were embarrassed. In Raleigh-Durham, nobody batted a lash when I said full-body scanners were against my religion. At Newark, they laughed. The gate attendants began asking me what my religion is. Private. My religion is as private as my “resistance.” And I was being ridiculed for it. This is the Patriot Act vision of America. Regular readers of this blog know that I have never revealed my religious convictions. They are a very private matter with me, and I had supposed that I’d been born in a nation where that was respected. Instead, I am laughed at.

We extend religious liberty to those who wish to handle rattlesnakes. To men who wear black dresses and have an historic penchant for young boys. To people who believe the world was created in six days. To people who believe golden tablets only seen by one man through rose-colored glasses are the basis for sacred scriptures. To the traveler who believes in the integrity of the human body and cannot divorce it from the respect and dignity of human modesty, this does not apply. Religions arm military forces. Religions rape women. Religions murder children as well as adults. Who’s laughing at them?

I wonder if I might have a legal case here. When has the free practice of my religion—which decrees that full-body scanners are immoral—been opened to public scorn? And don’t tell me it’s the price of security. I walked through “security” with my eyes open; first class passengers do not get scanned like hoi polloi. It’s not a matter of security—it’s about control and money. When will the people take back control of their own country from officials inebriated with power? I feel no safer with a stranger’s latex-gloved hand on my resistance. I feel no safer when people who couldn’t cut college get jobs in the US government and look at their fellow citizens naked. You’ll blank out my face? That makes it even worse. If someone’s going to violate my dignity I want him to look me in the eye and realize that it’s a human being he’s humiliating, not just a hunk of meat. Or in the language of the TSA, mere resistance.

First, show me yours

I Pledge Allegiance

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It would only be with the most tentative and hesitant of reservations that a person might call her or himself an intellectual. The denotation carries with it such possibilities and potentialities of arrogance that even being seen reading Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in public could be cause for considerable timidity. The end result, however, is so rewarding that it is worth the risk. Seldom have I read a single book that explained so much of what continues to define our society. As an historian, Hofstadter was acutely aware of American self-perception—so much so that it seems foolhardy to distrust him. Although the book was published in 1962, it seems as though the five decades of my life haven’t had time to transpire—things are shockingly similar to the myth of the 1950s that still drives the Religious Right. Hofstadter could be lurking in the corner with his pen even now. I turned to this book because I had grown weary of having felt set upon by a society I have only ever wanted to improve. In tracing the roots of anti-intellectualism Hofstadter clearly demonstrates that the distrust is felt on both sides of the divide. Having not had the dubious benefits of an affluent rearing, I simply followed where my limited talents led. What future is there for a poor boy who likes to read and write? My earliest and most honest aspirations were to become a janitor. At least in that job you can see the filth being scrubbed away.

Expecting an objective historical account of intellectual history, I was surprised to discover that the first section of the book dealt with the privileged place of evangelicalism in early America. I’m not so obtuse as to have overlooked the obvious mockery that the intellect receives so freely from the coffers of Christendom; one need only glimpse the headlines or listen to street-corner evangelists for a fraction of a minute to learn that. I had supposed that my limited experience had made me naïve in assuming religion stonewalls free inquiry. The problem, it seems, is endemic. Those who would suggest that brains are actually meant to be taken out of the box and played with incur the wrath of the almighty.

Hofstadter resisted keeping the gaze too long upon the faithful, for there are clearly other forces at work. The rugged, self-made individualism of a nation that consisted of frontier until comparatively recent times also plays into this suspicion against the self-proclaimed sages. We have all had the displeasure of knowing the self-impressed, and their sticky indulgence in immodesty clings to many who simply can’t turn off the motor in their heads. Instead of walking away from the book feeling justified, I instead felt reflective. My own perceptions have led me down the path of trusting the guidance of the soul (whatever it may be), but the perceptions of others raised in different circumstances lead to materialistic assumptions, or the hunger for power. Deep down inside, though, I know that I shifted perceptions by the slow, steady influence of education. There is no unlearning that. And education has brought us this far. And a little intemperance in appreciating intellectual life may be the most venial of sins.

Book Me

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I’m a reader by nature. I grew up, however, with television. I recall somewhat precisely when reading really grabbed me. Starting in fifth grade I began to stash cheap books in an old duffle bag in the room I shared with my brother. We lived in humble circumstances and bookshelves were a luxury, but I kept my precious books together so that I could always find the one I wanted. Eventually I upgraded to a suitcase made out of what appeared to be cardboard. This fascination with books would stay with me my entire life. So would the television side of my education. When I wasn’t watching cheesy B movies or World Federation Wrestling, I was watching documentaries. A few weeks ago, I posted about a documentary site on the web, and I have discovered another site as well, Documentaryz.

One of the benefits of the web is the access to free information. I regret not having the time to watch all the quality material that can be found with a bit of poking around. Documentaryz has several categories of shows available including, as befits this blog, religion titles. The documentary has clearly become an art form as well as a source of information. The problem with the web, however, is so little material is peer reviewed. I can imagine a better world where political speeches and sermons would have to stand before a board of peers to justify their often phantasmagorical claims. A world where someone can make no claims to special knowledge because an old man laid hands on his head or because he has too much money and wishes to run other people’s lives.

So it is that I come back to my books. On the bus, or in the airport, or train station, I often feel hopelessly outmoded as I sit among people with beeping, chirping, or rhythm-and-blues spewing devices. I sit holding a book. It’s bulky, and sometimes requires both hands to keep open. It doesn’t make any noise. I am the librarian of public transit. Sometimes well-wishers suggest that I might cull the herd a bit, get rid of some of the books I’ve spent a lifetime gathering. I think back to a little kid in a stuffy room with a duffle full of paperbacks and I realize that books are a lifestyle choice. They are a part of me. As much as I enjoy watching documentaries, I begin and end my day with books. It may be a parody or some bizarre irony, but the only room in our apartment without books is the bathroom. They are not the waste products, but the stuff of life itself.

Hope for the Flowers

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Resurrection can become a tired trope, but it is the stuff of both religion and science. Last week it was reported that Russian scientists revivified a plant frozen on the tundra 30,000 years ago. Quite apart from proving that Siberia was already in place 24,000 years before God got around to creating the planet, this amazing feat teaches us lessons about life and its resilience, and also of the possibilities beyond the great pale. The scientists regrew the plant without the benefit of using seeds, making this a kind of virgin birth of the florid kind. Using plant versions of stem cells (the kind of science forbidden in the USA: “won’t somebody think of the seedlings!”), the dead plant was rejuvenated and is alive and healthy in a world vastly different than the mammoth-infested, frosty plains of northern Russia where it first saw daylight. Still, that environment was less hostile to science than the Religious Right. This resurrection shows that we don’t need miracles to bring inert matter back from the dead. No doubt there are covert Creationists trying to sneak into Russia with travel-sized bottles of Roundup in their carry-on bags.

Science has brought us to incredible places by its continued, self-critical process. Religion, preferring no critique, has given us characters like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Rick Santorum. And a really big book. Looking at the religious scene today it is difficult to believe that religions began as exercises in optimism—the world could be better if only we’d progress. Regress now characterizes the religion in the public eye—men (occasionally women) claiming that things were better when we were tilting with mammoths than they are now with people advocating equality for people of other genders, races, and sexual orientations. Science represents our progress, and the vocal theocrats claim we should be going backward. Back to when men were measured by the size of their spears.

Back when I was a teenager I discovered the book Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus. Not really a graphic novel, and not really a children’s book, it tells the story of two caterpillars with the courage to reject the constant, heartless climbing so often required by the world. In the end, of course, they become butterflies. The story has a religious subtext, naturally, but it was for a religion that believed butterflies should be valued rather than smashed between the pages of a heavy Bible. Butterflies bring the pollen that allows flowers to thrive. We live in a world where butterflies have become soft and defenseless while religion is aggressive and offensive. Science has shown us the way to bring flowers back from the grave, but old-time religion is waiting in the shadows with its rusty scythe.

Attack of the 50-Foot Women

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A society will be remembered by its lowest common denominator. At the mention of the Roman Empire many people immediately think of the decadence of that once mighty power in decline. Rome ruled the world at one time—or so it seemed—but Nero had his fiddle and Caligula favored his horse Incitatus as a senator (today we’re more accustomed to seeing asses in government than horses). The madness of Napoleon. The insanity of Hitler. Mighty powers crumbling under their own weight. Walking through Times Square is an education. Recently a fifty-foot woman appeared, looming over the heads of commuters, tourists, and the homeless. Unlike the classic 1958 sci-fi flick, this woman is apparently happy, smiling broadly, and nearly naked. She is an advertisement for Sports Illustrated’s soft porn swimsuit edition. Stories above us all, she pulls back her hair and, if she weren’t a fantasy, I’m sure she’d be chilly dressed like that in a New York winter.

We’re talking lowest common denominator here. As I man I can’t help but to understand the appeal. Advertisers know it too. At the corner of 42nd and 7th, there is another fifty-foot woman, apparently nude, sitting in an office chair for Go Daddy with a QR card across her torso offering to those who would scan her, “See More Now!” It is difficult to be judgmental when advertisers are using basic psychology to sell their products, and studies have shown that men are very easily aroused by visual images—our juvenile imaginations never do grow up. But women this large? In 1958 Nancy Fowler Archer was salaciously considered a monster, but the producers knew teenage boys would watch in fascination. Such simple creatures.

There is a disturbing subtext here. Men are weaker than they pretend to be, but that doesn’t bother me much. Vulnerability is where humanity is most authentic. The problem with the fifty-foot women in Times Square is the message to American society that women are a commodity. They, like everything else in Times Square, can be purchased and owned. They exist solely for the pleasure of men. I am not a prude, but I do believe that such blatant shows of the female body for sale bear as a subtext “mene mene tekel upharsin.” A society that cheapens its women in such a forum is creating the standards by which a hopefully more advanced future will remember it. Standing beneath the open thighs of the fifty-foot woman on my way to work, I am profoundly sad. This is Rush Limbaugh’s American Dream writ large.

Academic Omelets

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As an erstwhile accidental adjunct, I came to see a side of the academy increasingly rare these days: the professional who must earn his or her keep. That life is less than half-a-year away and I still look to see what is happening as higher education crumbles under its own excessively disproportionately top-heavy infrastructure. An article in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education outlined how an adjunct, on his own initiative, began a survey of working conditions for those in similar academic situations. The results went viral and universities felt the need (only occasionally) to justify their actions. Expediency at the cost of a few eggheads nobody worries about, but when the news starts to leak like so many yolks, it is about time to at least act concerned. The phrase that stuck in my shell as I read the piece was this: “many adjuncts nevertheless feel they embody a lower class in academe.”

I felt like a bulls-eye had just been struck, and that bulls-eye had been painted on my forehead. Higher education has always been subject to claims of elitism and exclusivity. I entered the industry because at every stage along the way my instructors encouraged me to continue since I thrived in that atmosphere. I had entered higher education, however, from a humble, working class family. No dreams of power drove me—it was the sheer joy of learning. When I tried to situate myself among those who had had a leg-up in life, it was an uneasy fit. It’s like that uncomfortable feeling when a homeless person sits next to you on the subway. You know you could help, but you know there is an invisible wall that separates your world from his or hers. And hopefully, somewhere deep inside, you also realize that that homeless person could have been you.

The adjuncts are the working class among higher education. At some schools the full-time faculty teach very little and get to earn their lights as the brilliant minds who write books. I’ve written a couple myself. The difference is, they are bona fide. Privileged. Education used to be considered a great leveler. As in most myths, the truths in that sentiment are heavily metaphorical. Education could level the playing field if people weren’t prone to accept privilege when it is offered to them. What adjunct would not just as soon become the full professor with a light load and the fame of being featured on television and interviewed in Time? I don’t mean to single out universities—people in all situations tend to behave that way. No, I don’t single out universities. It was just that I hoped they might have been above this kind of thing.

This is your life, on adjuncts.

Watch Your Tower

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So when the smoke clears from another leap day barely survived, and my Apocalypse calendar tells me about the looming end of all things, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses stop by and leave a Watchtower with the headline “Armageddon” at my door, I start to get a little paranoid. Did I miss the memo on this? I tend to be suspicious of any religion that is less than 150 years old—call me a historical snob in that respect. By the time of the nineteenth century of the Common Era, we were getting industrialization, evolution, and the Whig party sorted out. It was hardly a propitious time to be starting new religions. Well, I was curious about Armageddon, so I read a bit of the Watchtower in any case. It goes best with salt.

“The original Hebrew word Har-Magedon literally means, ‘Mountain of Megiddo.’ Although no such literal mountain existed, a place known as Megiddo does exist.” So I learned. But there was a mountain at Megiddo. Literally. I’ve been there. It’s not an impressive mountain like the Front Range of the Rockies, but it is sufficient for the purposes of the Bible. Megiddo overlooks the broad plain of the Jezreel Valley. In ancient times such valleys were highly valued for fighting because of a basic engineering difficulty with chariots: they don’t work well on hills. Chariots have open backs, so falling out would hamper effective up-hill battles (literal ones), and your chariot bumping into your horses or chasing them downhill would have resulted when the fighting was done. Or when you were fleeing. Valleys like Jezreel were perfect for fighting. And Megiddo has a front-row seat on its little mountain. The site of Megiddo has been excavated by archaeologists and is well worth the time it takes to get there.

By coincidence (or is it?) my apocalypse wall calendar begins March by saying, “Make Archaeology Your Friend.” Hmm, is there a message somewhere in here? When the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mayan interpreters agree, should we not at least admit a little doubt? I don’t think so. Both traditions, as certain of special revelation as they may be, are human attempts to make sense of our world. We know of nothing that doesn’t end. The great Eastern religions seem to have caught on more readily to the idea of impermanence than Western cultures have, but they all share this in common—it’s gotta end sometime. I would, however, point out to Mr. Santorum, as he begins to think about his concession speech, that the Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to agree with the amateur Catholic on the part about Satan. My Watchtower says “Satan will marshal the nations for an assault on those who worship Jehovah God.” Perhaps politicians should stick to following the Mayans.

Walking Monsters

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It was a moment of weakness, or at least tawdry cheapness, that made me watch The Monster Walks. Just the day before the Cable Vision guy had stopped by, detailing how much money we could save by switching. We haven’t had television service since 2004, and even then it was only with a cheap aerial. Back in the days of Borders, I sometimes caved in and purchased the “Classic Features” movie boxes with 50 B, C, or D movies for what seemed a steal at less then 25 dollars. Maybe five or six of the movies from each set were actually worth the time spent watching them, but many of them proved an education. So it was with The Monster Walks.

Now, I readily confess to having a weakness for B movies. Made by people who were really trying, but who seemed to lack talent, I often identify with their efforts. So when I popped The Monster Walks into my DVD player, I had no idea what I might learn. The first revelation occurred in the opening credits where a character named “Exodus” was introduced. Since this was 1932, the character had to be African American. And comic relief. To spare you the pain of watching the movie, the plot is rather simple: rich man dies, helpless daughter inherits all to the chagrin of surviving brother and domestics, who plot to kill her by pretending to be a murderous ape. There also happens to be a murderous ape locked in the cellar. You get the picture. Aptly named Exodus is purely there as a foil for the educated, privileged white family. He was played by the talented but underappreciated Willie Best. As might (nay, should) be predicted, the scheme of killing the girl backfires and the ape kills the killer. Okay, so I can confess an hour wasted and get on with my reading. But the final scene arrested me.

Exodus wonders to the lawyer (who is there to read the will) why the rich man even had an ape. The lawyer, metaphorically transformed into a judgmental William Jennings Bryan, states that it was because he believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Exodus responds by noting some family resemblance to the ape. The blatant racism was hard to take, but in Black History Month the painfully obvious collective sins of our society should be laid bare. In 1932 Fundamentalism, often implicitly allied with racist causes, castigated Darwin’s theory for bringing all of humanity down to the same level. As long as a white god is creating the universe, the Anglo-Saxon can claim superiority. Never mind that Genesis was written by a Jewish writer living in Asia. Self-righteousness comes in many forms, but it always involves bringing others down to a rung below where the blessed stand. Has not the great Rick Santorum told us that even the Crusades were merely misunderstood?

Theomockracy

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“From Santorum to Graham, the ferociously religious are doing religion no favors at the moment, and it’s beginning to feel as though we may need to save faith from the extreme pronouncements of the faithful,” so writes Jon Meacham in this week’s issue of Time. Theocracy is a scary word. It didn’t work in ancient Israel, and it is difficult to believe that our society is morally more advanced than things were back then. I mean, they had Moses looking over their shoulders, and Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah to point out each misstep. We have Santorum, Bachmann, Palin, and Gingrich. This playing field would be an abattoir, and I have no doubts that the true prophets would be the only ones left standing should it come to blows. The odd thing is, the ancient Israelites, evolving into the Jewish faith, came to recognize that maybe they misunderstood some of what their stellar, if mythic, founders were saying. Rule by God is great in theory, but in practice it leaves a nation hungry.

It is difficult to assess the sincerity of modern day theocrats. We know that politicians are seldom literate or coherent enough to write their own speeches, and we know that they tell their would-be constituents what they want to hear. It shouldn’t surprise us that they belch forth juvenile pietism and call it God’s will, for we have taught them that elections are won that way. My real fear is that one of them might mean what they say. Could our nation actually survive even half a term with a true theocrat at the helm? W may have played that role, but there was a Cheney pulling the strings behind the curtain. Some guys like the God-talk, others prefer to shoot their friends in the faces. Either way it’s politics.

I take Meacham’s point. In all this posturing and pretending, the would-be theocrats are making a mockery of what the honestly religious take very seriously. If they want to get right with God there are conventional channels to do so. The White House is not one of them. They swear to uphold the ideals of the Constitution that, with considerable foresight, protects us from theocracy. The history they prefer, however, is revisionist and their constitution begins with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Their use of the Bible offends those who take the document seriously. Theocracies have never worked in the entire history of the world. Those who ascribe to mythology as the basis for sound government should add Thor, Quetalcoatl, and Baal to their cabinet and pray for a miracle.

The implacable face of politics

Darkness, of Sorts

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“The horror! The horror!” During high school I was never assigned Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Neither was it required for the humanities core course at a highly selective Grove City College. Knowing that my daughter will be reading it for school, I decided to get ahead of the curve for once and read the book. I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I had gathered that it was set in Africa, but that is all I knew. I had even somehow managed to live through the ’80’s without ever seeing Apocalypse Now. Conrad layers the darkness thickly in his story of greed and cruelty in the material trade of ivory. The brief story does not dwell or linger on the suffering, but shows the deep scar never healed in Kurtz’s famous last words. It is a story still worth pondering profoundly.

By chance—in as much as anything happens by chance—I also watched Wolf Creek the same weekend. Again, I was unsure what to expect. I had heard about the movie before, but never with enough detail to give away the plot. Harshly critiqued for its exploitative narrative, the film presents a different setting that experiences the same darkness. Australia, 1990’s. Claiming to be based on actual events, Wolf Creek showcases the frightening duality of Mick Taylor, a character who holds many sleepless nights in store for me. Not that the movie itself is so terribly frightening, but the fact that people like Mick Taylor do exist, upon whom movie makers and novel writers base their characters, is darkness itself. It is the lot of humankind to be a mixed cast of characters, some of whom are decidedly unsavory.

I awake to newspapers bearing the cold, inhumane sentiments callously blasted from the lips of Santorum and Gingrich and their ilk stating that the poor can take care of themselves, the unborn have a right to be born into abject poverty, that women should be made to bow to the whims of men. My native naivety has worn off but slowly, hoping as I always have for sparks of kindness and genuine good will. Those who would be remembered as great leaders would do well to study closely the portraits of Napoleon and Stalin and their friends. And read a little Conrad. To find the still beating heart of darkness we need not venture all the way to Africa or Australia. We can find it in our own backyards.

NASA's view

Gas Bubbles

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Human brains display a strong preference for patterns. Looking out my office window at the repeating series of windows that make up much of Manhattan, there is a pleasing sense of symmetry. We seek meaning in patterns—this is likely what gave rise to the idea of prophecy; a pattern repeated in nature seems to bear divine significance. Now, I don’t claim to be the best analyst of patterns, but like all humans I look for them and try to make sense of them. With headlines declaring that gasoline prices are on the rise again, set to hit record highs in April, I think, like an elephant that doesn’t forget, over the past several election years and wonder if anyone else has noticed a pattern. When a GOP incumbent is in office, gas prices seem to go down in an election year. When a Democrat is in office, they tend to skyrocket in election years. This is not based on market analysis, but by the sharp pain in my backside that is caused by a starving wallet combined with repeated kicks by the petroleum industry.

Even as far back as high school I remember that alternative-energy cars were being designed. Keep in mind that this was over thirty years ago. When we asked why people couldn’t buy them, our teacher informed us that oil companies buy up patents for competing technologies. Television told us that such energy efficient cars were the stuff of science fiction. With Toyota often leading the way, we have seen, however, that electric-powered cars can perform on the highways as well as city streets. They don’t line the pockets so thickly for the big oil barons, so we’re lead to believe they’re wimpy and underperforming—not manly vehicles at all. To me it sounds like a lot of gas.

I’m not sure how America came to be under the ponderous thumb of the oil industry, but the finger-pointing and downright criminal activity of such companies as Enron and BP should be telling us something. It may be mere coincidence, but the past several Republican presidents have been very friendly with big oil. I remember when Clinton ran against Bush Senior that prices of gas dropped so low that a ten could fill the tank on our little Toyota. Here we are with a Dem in the House and prices are set to soar. Perhaps my cynicism is misplaced, but I don’t recall seeing many oil barons standing in the breadlines—not even after Enron imploded. No doubt we will be told it’s just the ebb and flow of the market, nothing more. No matter what the excuse may be, I have an idea which way the flow is going, and it has a pipeline from Americans’ bank accounts right into that internal combustion engine that is fueled by creatures long dead. Death and oil, by whatever means, go together.

Take me home, country roads

Ashes to Ashes

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It was just a small blurb in the paper. Down at the bottom of page 17, it could have been easily overlooked. “Alleged witch killed by being set on fire” the small headline stated. And the date was 18 February 2012. This sad incident took place in Nepal. The story notes that “Each year hundreds of women in rural Nepal are abused after being accused of being witches.” Just last week, to the scorn of many, Cologne, Germany reopened the case of Katarina Henot, a woman burned as a witch 385 years ago. Katarina Henot was declared innocent because of the efforts of a priest to raise awareness of the persecution of women around the world. Five days after the story hit the news, Theganidevi Mahato was burned to death in Nepal. Although some called the action in Cologne a publicity stunt, it was anything but. We need to put names on those we continue to allow society to brutalize. Katarina Henot and Theganidevi Mahato, separated by 385 years and many, many miles, both died for the insanity that equates tragedy with women.

How blithely the word “witch-hunt” spills off the tongue. Each time we invoke it, the very phrase trails the ghosts of many thousands of women made to pay the price for society’s paranoia. The answers to why such tragedies occur may never be fully understood, but the events are preventable. The key is education. Even in the most advanced culture in the world, as we like to style ourselves, we heap contempt upon education, claiming that teachers barely work and that professors get paid for doing nothing. We have fallen into the fallacy that one size fits all—not all jobs can be measured by the wicked, black dip-stick of the oil industry, or the quick-cash-and-crash of the stock exchange. Education is a lifelong process, and as the political ridiculousness we constantly hear reminds us, lessons must be endlessly repeated until they sink in. Too many people think it is just easier to burn witches.

Witch-hunts arise when societies are stressed. Scapegoating is one of the most unfortunate legacies religion has left us. Evidence points to the scapegoat as being earlier than the Bible, although it takes its characteristic form there. We hear how the sins of the people were transferred to the goat on a day not so different from Ash Wednesday, to be symbolically born away where the animal would die instead of us. Somehow we’ve come to believe that burning the representative of our neuroses will somehow cure our society. Does it? Has it ever? This day as millions of Christians contemplate their sins and wear ashes on their heads, I suggest that we think of the women whom religion has allowed to become its victims. Whether due to the superstition of a remote village in Nepal or the irrational fear of “civilized” Europe with the blessing of the church, we’ve let scapegoating go too far. And those who’ve been killed are not the nameless females of forgotten times, but are the Katarinas, Theganidevis, Marys, and Rebeccas who were just as human as their neighbors.

What are their names?

Denying Truth, For Profit

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Sometimes I’m questioned about why I bother with creationism. Everyone who’s intelligent knows it is religious ideology masquerading as science and people will eventually figure it out. But will there be time? An editorial in yesterday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger pulls the curtain back on creationism’s incestuous cousin, climate-change denial. As the editorial notes, key documents of the Heartland Institute—one of the major propagators of climate change as “just a theory”—have been leaked and show that they have learned their lesson from creationist tactics. They want “debate the question” instilled in science classes in lieu of facts. And much of their money comes from big oil. It is the hope of such institutes that an American public already woefully pathetic at understanding science will be led to believe “just a theory” equals “likely not true.” The data are stacked completely against them and the entire rest of the developed world knows that.

While the issue may seem less religious than creationism—which is based on getting Genesis 1 in the classroom as science, no matter what you call it—it has deep roots in that same insidious cocktail of politics, religion, and dirty money. Biblical literalists tend to believe the world is about to end. The belief has been around for at least two millennia. It is a damning and damaging belief that declares the world was made for raping because it is about to end. This deranged thinking is fueled, literally, by unrestrained economic interests. Sometimes the groups can’t see beyond the Bible to realize that they too are being screwed. Science is objective, and it is science that has been challenged by various religious and political groups since the 1920s. Today, when there is far too much information for anyone to stay on top of it all, and in an American society deeply distrustful of higher education, I smell an explosive amount of methane in the air.

Climate change is real. The “theory” is so well supported by evidence as to be fact. Is anyone really surprised that supporters of the Heartland Institute have also backed Newt Gingrich’s campaign? We have placed ourselves in a very dangerous position as the last remaining “superpower.” I tried to read a book on environmental issues that Routledge published, but was so scared after the first three pages that I had to put it down. What is the lesson here, class? Is it not that money is the root of evil? And that, my dear literalists, is biblical.

The future of human economic evolution