Trump’s America

There are a lot of people, probably mostly liberals, who are really quite shocked to find us where we are in America today. How did a terrible man like Trump become our President? This is not who we are as a country!

I think this sort of thinking requires a denial of the reality of United States history, both in the long view and in the more recent. Trump is, in many ways, the quintessential American President. Trump is America with the mask of politeness taken off and discarded.

Perhaps the most obvious thing about Trump that is so American is the racism. While we love to think of America as the "melting pot" of cultures, we're a nation pretty much founded on white supremacy. We were created by the genocide of indigenous Americans, and built by the forced labor of people stolen from Africa. The White House (so appropriately named) itself, the home of our nation's leader, as pointed out not too long ago by Michelle Obama, was built by slave labor. I myself am fond of reminding people that the founding fathers were made up of two groups: rich white men who loved Black slavery, and rich white men for whom Black slavery wasn't a deal breaker.

Trump’s sexism is also very American. We became an independent nation in 1776, but women weren't federally given the right to vote until 1920, nearly a century and a half later. (Oh, and that was only white women, of course.) And voting is just one right of many denied women; the right to own property, the right to have a bank account separate from their husbands, the right to not be discriminated against for employment or housing? All of those came later. Of course, one of the most important rights, the right to be able to control their own bodies and their reproductive choices? That one's still up in the air, as women are effectively given less bodily autonomy than a corpse.

What else defines Trump? Xenophobia? I would call it selective xenophobia, as ICE raids places known to have immigrants with black and brown skin, but makes no moves against communities of undocumented white immigrants. We build a wall on our southern border, but largely ignore undocumented immigrants coming across the northern border. Why? Well, those immigrants are white, aren't they? I may be wrong, but I believe the very first law in the United States limiting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, because we can't have non-Europeans in the U.S., can we? Of course before that, when the United States won a large portion of the southwest from Mexico in the mid-19th century, Mexicans in those territories were assured on paper that they would be American citizens, but apparently in practice, most of them were driven off the land, deprived of property and rights. America has never been keen on accepting non-Europeans, so Trump’s xenophobia is really nothing new.

Oh, and putting the rights and needs of rich people over those of the poor and middle class? That's just capitalism, which has also always been us. White capitalists have always ruled this country, and pretty much every President has been at least a millionaire. Bigotry against LGBTQ people? That's a western cultural norm. We used to (really still do) have laws against them existing, and barely have half a century of progress towards equality, but conservatives will constantly make up stories about how drag queens and transgender women are attacking children despite the fact that the observed reality is that the people children have to fear are religious leaders and their own parents.

This unfortunate conglomeration of lies and bigotry is what America is, has always been, and it's that reality that Trump represents. Can we change? I hope so, and so do many other Americans. But no politicians from either of the two major political parties seem to be willing to make those changes. I believe it's going to take a major shake up of the status quo that's going to require either some restrategizing in the Democratic party, or a rejection of the outdated Democratic party for a newer, more progressive set of politicians. Really, it may take a revolution of some sort, because the status quo needs to be completely rejected, and that's hard to accomplish.

If you, like me, don't want Trump’s America, then don't wait for voting in the midterms in 2026. Start strategizing now, and pushing for changes that can happen now. It's going to take a fight to reverse 250 years of history, but it's not impossible if we put in the work.

About-Facebook

So I got "unfriended" today on Facebook. It was kind of an odd experience. I think what was particularly odd about it was that it was in the middle of a political discussion, and the person who unfriended me is someone that I find myself frequently in agreement with regarding political matters.

The place where we most certainly do not agree is in the area of religion. As I'm sure just about anyone knows, I'm a Christian. My former Facebook friend (FFF) is an agnostic, and a pretty hard-core one. Even though it was a political discussion going on with no perceptible religious undertones, my FFF took a moment to imply that my religion was a big part of the problem.

I'm having a hard time relating the story without simply copying and pasting the discussion here, but I think it's an important story nonetheless, because it largely defines the kind of person I am on a broader scale than just calling me a politically liberal Christian. See, my FFF implied that those people involved in the conversation that weren't liberals simply weren't worth the time having a political discussion with, and I disagreed. So he said he just had to unfriend me because he'd had enough of the "bullshit" that my religion was bringing on me.

I'm thinking that, given the context, he wasn't just talking about religion. Not really. After all, I'm even less of a preachy person outside of my blogging. I think the thing he had a problem with is the fact that so many of my Christian friends are (as Christians tend to be) very conservative. Yeah, he essentially said that he hates religion, but knowing him, (and I've known him IRL for over 20 years) I think the thing that really bothers him about Christianity is that so many Christians are conservative. If we all agreed with his political views and just happened to also believe in God, I'm sure he'd find Christians much more palatable. (Heck, he's put up with me just fine, so that's something, right?)

I know it's difficult to put up with people whose views you don't agree with, but this is where I know I also depart from his view, and this is the thing that, as I said, defines me as a person. I feel that shutting people out of my life because I disagree with them is just going to make the quality of my life (and maybe theirs) poorer. Just because I'm a Christian, I'm not going to forsake all my pagan, atheist, and agnostic friends. Just because I'm a Democrat doesn't mean I'm going to hate my Republican and Libertarian friends. Just because I love America doesn't mean I'm going to ignore anyone who lives outside of this country. I just believe that there's a fullness of life that you get from interacting with people whose viewpoints have the potential of broadening your own. If you only expend your time on people who have the same views as you, how will you ever learn anything new?

I guess I accept that my FFF may simply be dealing with anger issues (he also hinted at that) and just felt it was something he had to do for his sanity, but still, isn't there an easier way to deal with such things than cutting off your friends?

A bullshit free society

I recently came across the following statement in an online discussion on the topic of religion:

"I secretly dream for all religions to be eradicated so that one day we will be able to construct a bullshit free society and be able to do scientific research without being interrupted. [Religious groups] oppress, brainwash, burn for millennia, [and then say] 'We're a religion of peace now.' "

My response to this person was to take the "bullshit" sign and point it right back at his statement, following up with this explanation of how I think the world—and history—really work with regards to this issue:

What do Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism have in common? Each one, along with most other religions, is now and has always been "a religion of peace". Oppression, brainwashing, and "burning" (whatever that is supposed to be) aren't religious practices, but political practices. Religions don't do those things unless they become powerful enough that they have become political forces. When you have an institution such as the "Holy Roman Empire" as an example, it tends to be ruled by people thirsting for power rather than goodness. People of faith want to trust their spiritual leaders, but the more political clout your church/mosque/temple has, the more likely it is to attract the wrong sort of leadership. Jesus knew:

[Jesus] told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” -Matt. 13:31-32

As skeptics have pointed out, mustard seeds don't become trees. So what is Jesus talking about? You'll find in Jesus' parables, birds are usually symbolic of evil, and I believe this story is suggesting that Jesus fully expected the church He started would be host to evil men who would use it for their own interests.

Does that mean that if religion can be a tool in the hands of evil men, we should then toss it out? Right before the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus tells another that I think is closely related:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.’” -Matt. 13:24-29 (my emphasis)

In other words, churches—just like all institutions—will have some "bad seeds", but that doesn't mean you toss the good for the sake of the bad.

We actually can know that removing religion from society isn't the solution because it's been tried before, in places such as Russia. The USSR under Stalin was strongly anti-religious. This of course led to "a bullshit free society..."

Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin...towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader and the Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honor. He accepted grandiloquent titles..., and helped rewrite Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution. At the same time, according to Nikita Khrushchev, he insisted that he be remembered for "the extraordinary modesty characteristic of truly great people."

...freedom "to do scientific research without being interrupted."

Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, along with art and literature. There was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains, owing to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, the most notable legacy during Stalin's time was his public endorsement of the Agronomist Trofim Lysenko who rejected Mendelian genetics as "bourgeois pseudosciences" and instead supported Hybridization theories that caused widespread agricultural destruction and major setbacks in Soviet knowledge in biology. Although many scientists opposed his views, those who publicly came out were imprisoned and denounced.

...and of course, these enlightened atheists didn't "oppress, brainwash, burn..."

Researchers before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union attempting to count the number of people killed under Stalin's regime produced estimates ranging from 3 to 60 million.

(The above excerpts are from the Wikipedia article Joseph Stalin.)

Does that mean atheism is evil? Of course not; it means that using political means to force ideology on people—regardless of the ideology—will be unsavory, to put it lightly. It also doesn't mean that communism is a bad thing, mostly because Stalin and the leaders who followed in his office were not practicing communism. In fact, as I wrote some time ago, communism and Christianity have more in common than either is likely to admit.

The point that I am trying to make with all of this in a nutshell is that it's power that corrupts people, not religious ideology. If the day comes when (as many atheists have been suggesting for centuries to be right around the corner) religion is somehow eradicated from the earth by the cleansing light of reason, does anybody really think that there will be no more hatred, stupidity, or violence? I've got to say, even as a Christian, I find myself doubting that would be the case if the whole world were uniformly Christian.

From MLK to BHO

We've still got quite a ways to go. Pardon my pessimism, but it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are looking to the inauguration of Barack Obama as the realization in Dr. King's dream, and don't get me wrong, I think it shows we've made great strides, but we're not "there".

A lot of people are talking about the inauguration as though it's this moment in time that is an inflection point between the past and the future, but I don't think it's really so. I think the inauguration is symbolic of the transformation our country has undergone since the days of Dr. King, but it's not as though this day could have come unless we were ready for it, and our readiness as a nation is the real transformation, but it didn't happen suddenly one Tuesday in November, nor will it on a Tuesday in January. It happened slowly and steadily over the course of something like a century and a half.

Some people wonder why it's considered such a big deal, which has a couple of interesting facets to it. On the one hand, there's something almost heartening that a generation should come to pass where people don't see the inauguration of a President not of purely northern European ancestry as a big deal. It shows acceptance, and of a kind that indicates our minds have changed, and gone beyond mere acceptance. On the other hand, the pessimistic one, it may show a kind of ignorance of history. After all, if it's no big deal, why did it take over two hundred years to go from slavery to this? It may be great that we've come as far as we have as a nation, but at the same time, did it need to take so long?

Actually, I think it could have been a little bit sooner. There's a part of me that thinks the national attitude could have managed to elect an African-American President as early as the late '70s, if only there had been the right candidate. If true, this also has (at least) two facets. Maybe it's just easier for me to accept the idea since I was born in the early '70s, and therefore past the most intense turmoil of the civil rights movement, but I don't think the country has suddenly accepted black people; the seeds for the 2008 election results were beginning to sprout towards the end of the '60s. I think on the negative side, it shows some of the reason that mere acceptance is not quite enough for equality. A sufficiently qualified African-American could possibly have been elected in, say, 1980, but there was no such thing yet. Actually, some might argue (and many have) that Obama is not it either, having largely gotten elected on personality rather than an impressive record; after all, he hasn't been in politics very long. The thing is, since African-Americans were kept out of politics for so long, it's hard for them to have a viable candidate since we (rightly) expect our politicians to work their way up from the bottom. White and wealthy George W. Bush, in contrast, is a good example of someone who was never at the bottom. Not that it's his own fault, but there's a certain shame for our society that there really aren't any African-Americans of equivalent status to Bush.

It's unfortunate that we will always have to be performing a balancing act between remembering the tragedies of the past and working to put them behind us. It would be wrong to forget the injustice done--not just to African-Americans, but to various social groups in our history--and yet at the same time, one wonders if we are unable to put the past behind us, how can we let go of bitterness and move into the future? Think about how profound it can be: in some sense, the troubles in the Middle East are the result of a 3,000-year-old case of sibling rivalry. How long will we in America have to keep fighting the civil war? I suppose at least until we're truly the united states.

I sometimes wonder if we'll ever be "there". It seems sometimes like racism in particular, and prejudice in general are simply a part of human nature. Actually, it's pretty natural. When two people meet for the first time, the only thing they have to evaluate the other person is their physical appearance. We like to try to get a handle on other people, so until we get to know them better, most of what we know about them is what color and shape they are. In itself, that's not so bad, so long as we can eventually let go of our preconceived notions and see who we all are on the inside where it counts.

Barack Obama for President in '09

I've got some news for you, and you may be shocked. You see, Barack Obama's our President.

No, really.

I'm not sure whether you heard it or not, since it was hard to make it out over all the shouts and sounds of celebration. It may have been an election of epic proportions, as it seems a large portion of the population would be gathering along Pennsylvania Avenue to spread palm branches in his path as he rode to his inauguration on a donkey's colt. Meanwhile, in other locations, there would be a weeping and gnashing of teeth as people stood by to witness the abomination of desolation.

See, this is exactly the sort of thing that's been bothering me for so long, and I'm afraid it's not going to stop now that the election's over. It's been so long since we had a "normal" election, that I think we forgot what it was like. John McCain's concession speech was quite moving and humble, but a speech like that should be the norm. Politicians like McCain and Obama must live in the eye of the storm, where there is calm enough that they can actually graciously bow out of a race or accept victory. How many people were surprised and disappointed when John Kerry conceded after only a day of waiting, rather than fighting it out over weeks like we did in 2000? In the age we live in of electronic counting of votes, there should rarely be a reason that elections take more than 24 hours. This Election Day went satisfyingly smoothly, like that refreshing beer that most people would probably enjoy sharing with their candidate, but not the other. (Side note for those who still think Barack Obama is a Muslim: I thought he should have dispelled rumors by being photographed eating pork, but he was photographed drinking alcohol, which wasn't enough for some. No matter.)

I myself would probably enjoy sharing a beer with either candidate, or even President Bush, despite our differences in politics. Maybe that's my problem; that I don't try and divide people into who I'd enjoy being around and who I wouldn't. I've commented many times before actually that while I strongly despise what Osama bin Laden stands for, I suspect he's rather friendly and personable on a one-on-one basis, since he's only human. All of these people are only human. They're just people. To quote from C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian:

"You come from Lord Adam and Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content."

Whether you believe in the story of Adam and Eve, whether or not you're of any particular religious persuasion, I think this is a deep truth, and one we need to apply to all of our leaders, as well as our aspiring leaders. We're all just human beings.

There's a lot of talk about the fact that Obama is now our first black President, and what an historic moment it is. This is definitely true, but I think there's something to be said about it after we savor the moment as simply a moment. A pundit on television election night made an interesting observation as he was talking with an elderly black gentleman who had been involved with the struggles for racial equality in the '50s and '60s. I don't remember his exact words, and not being connected to the Internet as I write this, I can't look them up, but he said something like, "The really great thing about this transition point in history is that unlike similar transitions in the past, there was not so much of a struggle, but simply an acceptance of it. This was the act of approval by the whole country." Yes, unlike the desegregation of our schools, our places of business, and our professional sports, which largely had to be forced, the desegregation of that exclusive 44-member club came about with about as much conflict as any other inauguration (although the actual inauguration is still two months to come).

Really, this should be no surprise on at least one level. Sure, if you want to make sure there are people of certain races in the local school, you can endeavor to force them to go there, and force those who don't want them there to accept them, albeit begrudgingly. It is, however, the nature of a democratically-elected office that you can't force this one, so of course it happened peacefully. There may indeed have been people who voted for Obama because he's black, but I doubt the number that voted for him specifically for that reason was high. Speaking for myself, I would never vote for Al Sharpton, nor would I vote for Clarence Thomas (were he to run), but it has nothing to do with their race and everything to do with their politics. It's simply the case that given the current political climate, Obama was more palatable than McCain to a majority of voters.

In some ways, it's this matter-of-fact-ness that I see as the reason we have to let this moment pass. Yes, it's a great day in our history, but it still has potential to be a dismal four years. Obama is still just another politician; I have high hopes for his term in office, but like everyone who has gone before, he will disappoint us. Not all the time; hopefully not even much of the time; but certainly some of the time.

See, that feeling so many of us feel that is seen as a moment of triumph has great potential to become a moment of sorrow. Every time we look at Obama and say, "Look at how great our President is doing...and he's black!" we give an open invitation for his detractors to say at other times "Look at how terrible our President is doing...and he's black!" Is that what we want?

I'll mention Asimov's biography again, as I've been doing ever since I read it. A Jewish friend once came to Asimov (who is likewise from a Jewish background) and said, "I'm really proud that an inordinately large number of Nobel laureates are Jewish!" Asimov replied, "Did you know that an inordinately large number of pornographic film producers and directors are Jewish?" The man was stunned. "Is that true?" he asked. Asimov replied, "I made it up, but it could be true. How would you feel if it was?"

The point here is, if you're going to take everything Obama does in his life and put it in the mental sorting bin of "African-American achievements", then you're going to have to put his failures there, too, and he will have them. George W. Bush has left behind more than a few messes to clean up that simply won't be pretty no matter what the resolution. In inheriting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, history will put part of the blame for the aftermath of those wars on Obama's shoulders. Do you think a really happy ending is likely there? Do you think it's unthinkable that yet another war might begin while Obama is in office? Contrary to the beliefs of some (and such beliefs I find offensive, even as a Democrat who is no fan of the Bush presidency), the 9/11 attacks were on our country as a whole, not on any particular administration. If al-Qaeda strikes again in the next four years, don't think Obama will fail to respond with some sort of military action.

But I'm getting off track. I think Obama is going to be a good President, maybe the best we've had since Kennedy, but we really can't know how things will turn out, can we? As a T-shirt slogan I saw on the Internet said in reference to Obama, "Dare to hope. Prepare to be disappointed." I think it was referring to the election, but really, we should have an attitude like that about the next four years.

Barack Obama is just another President, and compared to some people it makes me a pessimist (compared to many others, it makes me an optimist, of course) to believe that the next four years will just be a fairly run-of-the-mill time period. But think about it, all you Obama true believers and hopers: in comparison to the last eight years, wouldn't "run-of-the-mill" be a great improvement? I, for one, welcome it.

Lactose intolerance

In one chapter of Isaac Asimov's autobiography, he talked at length about the sorts of letters he gets from readers, and in particular, there was one type of letter that he always thought strange. As a life-long atheist, he often would get letters from people who had something to say about his spiritual state. Some would inform him that they would be praying for him, to which he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, okay, if it makes them feel better. Another type though, the one that was the really strange one, was letters from readers denouncing him for his atheism, and telling him what a terrible person he was for not believing in God, and how much they despised him. He said he wrote one of these people back and said, "I am sure you believe I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

Asimov apparently lived a very happy life. Throughout his autobiography, he repeatedly reports that he has had nothing to complain about, having spent his life largely doing the thing he loved most: writing. There were a few regrets (a failed first marriage), but he had the sense to try always to look on the bright side of those (two wonderful children that brought him much joy). Despite the fact that obviously, as a Christian I disagree with his theological views, I have a lot of respect for the man, who seems to at least have been true to himself in his life, if not to any sort of higher power which he didn't believe in anyway.

I'm glad Asimov had a happy life. As a Christian, I have to believe it highly likely that yes, in fact, Asimov is in Hell now. Knowing that, why would anyone endeavor to make someone's life miserable because of their belief in greater misery to come? It's a very good question, and one to which Asimov never got an answer.

This is not an essay on Asimov, nor on Proposition 8, which will come up as a big part of the inspiration for my writing of this. It's not even an essay on salvation, although that's obviously important. This is an essay about hatefulness.

The other day, I saw... Well, I've told this story to a few people, and I realized that the best way to tell it is to leave out details that might give away anything to reveal the identities of the parties involved, so as not to bias it. After all, the story is about the event, not the political positions of the persons involved. The other day, I saw a person standing on a street corner holding up a sign that espoused their view on Proposition 8. A car came by, and did not slow down, but somebody leaned out the passenger window with a sign espousing their support for the opposing view, and waved it in the face of the person on the corner, shaking their fist. I was appalled. It seemed to me that this was an incredibly stupid and dangerous action on the part of the passenger (probably illegal, too). They were making a fool of themselves and potentially endangering themselves, the person on the corner, the driver, and various others in the vicinity, just so they could put on a public display of hatred for a political position.

If the pro-8 people believe they're going to win, what purpose does it serve to make the lives of homosexuals (and gay-friendly heteros) miserable on the way to taking away the rights they think they deserve? If the anti-8 people think they're going to win, what's the point of rubbing the noses of homophobes in it and making them miserable? Is hate doing anything to make the world a better place? Why are people getting so worked up about this law that in the end will pretty much stop nobody from doing anything? If it passes, the pro-homosexual activists will just keep pushing until it's taken out of the constitution. If it fails, the proponents will bring it back next year. Anna Quindlen was so wrong about the debate over same-sex marriage being over that it's scary. This is a debate and a fight that will never end.

We human beings are very good at hating. We hate people who have different philosophical views, we hate people who have different sexual orientations, we hate people who have different political positions, we hate people who have the wrong color skin, we even hate ourselves sometimes. What good does it do to hate, though? I'm certainly not hate-free. I'm human, but at the same time, I recognize that on those occasions wherein I experience hate, my hate is doing nothing to make the world--or even my own personal experience of the world--any better. I can hold it in and fume over it, damaging my own sense of peace, or I can lash out and become the villain. Neither one is going to improve my happiness. Why do we do it?

It seems like everyone I know either hates Barack Obama or hates John McCain. Some people hate both of them. They're just a couple politicians, both of which are doing the best they can in their own belief to make the country a better place. They're not bad people, neither one of them, no matter what you believe about them. I only wish it were that simple to convince people of this fact. I know who I'm voting for, but I also know that whoever wins, people are going to be angry and disappointed. People are going to view the losing of their candidate as an earth-shattering event. I don't get it. How many Presidents have really made changes that have deeply, radically changed the country as we know it? Abraham Lincoln? Franklin Roosevelt? Ronald Reagan? They steer the country, but we're a country so large that, like an aircraft carrier, turning around is a slow and laborious process. If the next President is headed the wrong way, then simply wait four years and get a new one. Meanwhile the Supreme Court legalizes abortions, desegregates schools, and makes the real changes in the country while Justices keep their positions for life.

Darnit, this is all so fleeting! Why do we get so caught up in this? Politics are important, but they're temporary. If the average person lives 80 years, then a Presidential term is just five percent of a lifetime. Raising a child is a task that will stretch through five terms, but will have an impact that potentially reaches for generations. On the national level, my political opinion is just one among half a million, but at home, my influence on my kids is about 50%. Do I want to teach them to hate, or do I want to teach them to stand up for what's right with love and compassion? However I express myself, they will pick it up and emulate it.

That goes for politics, yes, but it also goes for spiritual matters. Going back to my original line of thought, what good does it do to hate non-Christians? Hatred is not going to save a single soul, is it? Hatred is the sort of emotion that consigns people to Hell, not the sort of emotion that draws them out of it. I fear that Christians are caught up in the pop-culture theology that says, "Bad people go to Hell." Not that they truly believe this heresy, but that they draw on this concept to prove to themselves that since non-Christians are going to Hell, they must be bad people, and deserve to be punished. Funny, I don't see that in the Bible; I see the statement that God wants to see everyone saved. I see the statement that Christians who can't live in peace are severely lacking in spiritual maturity.

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? (ICor. 3:1-3)

How can anyone think that hate can be the foundation of anything good?

Let's talk about what to so many Christians is their pet topic: abortion. Where in the Bible does God say that people who are "pro-choice" are going to Hell? Where does it even say they are bad? If abortion is murder, then we're faced with a challenge: If people don't believe abortion is murder, then they'll never agree that it's something bad that should be made illegal. In order to change abortion, we supposedly need to change the law, but the law is made by people. You won't change the law unless you change people's minds. You won't change people's minds unless you change their hearts. You won't change their hearts unless you convince them to let God into their lives. If you want to save all those unborn babies, you could spend some time barricading clinics or protesting Planned Parenthood, but in my opinion, the best way to really make the situation better is to show some love and share the Gospel with people. Do you really believe that all Christians will be against abortion? Then you'd better figure out how to make this a nation of Christians.

I'll give you a clue: you're not going to make converts through hate.

Queer voting: Don't ask, don't tell.

Well, let's just have one last talk about Proposition 8, but then that's it. (At least until after the election; then I'm sure I won't be able to resist.)

I've said it many times, both in conversation and in writing that I realized long ago I simply can't retain my sanity and get involved in certain discussions. Politics and religion, those general topics that many people say ought to be avoided in polite company, are some of my favorites, but there are more specific topics that are like Plutonium. Abortion is the most prominent one, the fact being that there are enough people in the world who feel strongly enough about the subject at either extreme that open discussion of the issue is impossible. Suggest the slightest shade of grey to the issue, and you may be reduced immediately to the rubbish bin in people's esteem relegated for child molesters and telemarketers. (Sorry telemarketers, I couldn't resist a line like that, and lawyers need a break now and again.)

Anyway, I've come to realize (unfortunately too late for a handful of conversations already let out of Pandora's Box) that Proposition 8 and the legal status of same-sex marriage is one of those conversations. It's a topic I've talked and written about many times, and yet something seems to have shifted. Maybe it's the bringing of the topic to the forefront of the culture by putting it on the ballot yet again, but suddenly, it seems to be undiscussable.

You see, I'm in a difficult position of having a foot in both camps due to the company that I have kept in my life. Let me make it clear that I make no apology for either group nor my associations with them, but a fair portion of my friends are conservative Christians, and at the same time, a fair portion of my friends are gay/lesbian/bisexual. What's a guy to do? No matter how I vote, I'm going to offend some people I care about very deeply. I simply can't avoid it.

I briefly considered abstaining, but then I realized that was a copout. Not just a copout, but one that would be counterproductive. Abstaining would solve no problems, and it would simply offend everyone, I imagine. It reminded me for a moment of Bill Clinton and "Don't ask, don't tell." In an attempt to please everyone, a solution was arrived at that pleased virtually nobody. Homophobes want to ask. Homosexuals want to tell. Nobody's satisfied.

Clearly, I had to make a decision, and I wanted it to simply be the right one, not the one that society (or any subsection thereof) told me I should choose. Don't think I'm going to tell you here, because in case I didn't make it clear, part of my process was eventually deciding that whatever I chose, I would not tell a soul. But still, there was something that needed to be said. What people on both sides of the issue agree on is the fact that it's an important issue.

There were plenty of reasons to vote Yes. As a Christian, I do believe that the Bible, the basis for Christian morality, teaches that certain sexual relationships are not to be condoned, and allowing a person to legally call certain of such relationships "marriage" would be condoning. There were plenty of reasons to vote No. Our government is secular, and has no compelling reason to bow to religious morality, and finding a reason for this law outside of that realm of thought is difficult. Yet if morality is not our basis for deciding our vote, then what is? Yet what good does it do to impose one's personal morality on another? You can go back and forth all day.

Furthermore, I'm often left with the impression that despite the supposed importance of this law, the outcome of this vote isn't really going to change anything. The proponents of the law said as much, which was an odd argument to my mind. (I've always said that if you had a choice between two religions, one of which says, "believe in me or suffer," and the other says, "believe whatever you want, it doesn't matter," then it seems believing in the former is a manner of hedging your bets, so to speak.) Long before same-sex marriage was declared to be legal, I knew many same-sex couples that had weddings and considered themselves wife and wife. It seems that with legal domestic partnership, this law is really a matter of semantics. You can be married, but you can't technically call yourself a "married" couple is what the law says, which in some ways is ridiculous, since the name was all that same-sex couples can really get away with without having to get government sanction. You call anything whatever you want to call it; that's free speech.

However, it appears that what one is not allowed to say is that one is a Christian, and yet votes No on 8; or that one is friendly to homosexuals and yet votes Yes on 8. I hate it, and yet, it seems a fair enough evaluation, which puts me in a quandary. Do I lie? No, that's wrong as well. Do I say nothing? It seems the safest, although with the way I end up talking about the subject so often, almost everyone who knows me at all well knows I'm on the fence, or at least near it, and would be rightly curious of my choice. I don't want to lose friends and create enemies.

Or do I? I started to think about it. Do friends really break off their friendships over politics? Well, maybe they do, but I hope it's over something of great depth. I would like to think that in Nazi Germany (Godwin's law again, sure, but it's always a great example) there were people who were moral and brave enough to break off friendships with friends who joined the Nazi party. I'm sure there are lesser issues that might apply, but not many, in my mind. If I had voted for President Bush in 2004, are there people who would have refused to ever talk to me again after hearing such an admission? I know a few people who seem to feel as strongly as that about him, but if they weren't exaggerating their feelings, I imagine they would have moved to Canada by now.

Although I don't feel so strongly, I almost understand how someone could feel very strongly about the abortion issue, on either side. Actually, the fact that I can understand both sides no doubt has a lot to do with why I'm not at either extreme. What I really have a hard time understanding is why people feel so very strongly about an issue that really is just semantics. If you really think that homosexuality is so evil that it can't be allowed, then this law ought not to be enough for you; you ought to be pushing to outlaw same-gender sexual relations entirely. If you really think that gay people ought to be allowed to be married, then damn the law, and get married anyway!

If you are a person who has a strong opinion on this issue, and you want to know how I'm voting, I've decided what it is I want to say to you: Please assume that I voted the opposite of how you voted (or would have voted, had you the chance). Treat me accordingly. If you don't judge me on my voting record (and I'm not a politician, so I'm not sure you should) then fine. If you do, then judge away, but for now, I'm done talking about it.

The Violent Femmes

Feminism can be a tough issue, especially for a fundamentalist Christian. I've noticed that among my kind, feminism can be a dirty word, but it doesn't have to be. Strictly speaking, feminism is simply the belief that women are equal to men in value, and I would hope that's not something that many people in my church would dispute, at least when put that simply.

In the world at large, it's a lot harder for me to say how people view the relative value of women vs. men. This particular presidential election cycle has given us a lot of food for thought in this arena. Hillary Clinton came so close to being the Democratic candidate that I'd hope people wouldn't label her eventual failure as the result of sexism, although of course they have and will continue to do so. Sarah Palin, of course, has become the Republican vice-presidential candidate, thus resulting in an unprecedented amount of talk of "glass ceilings" by conservatives. In my mind, whether or not we get a woman President anytime soon, we've shown it's possible in theory. But I know so many people will question whether "in theory" can really measure up to "in practice". Since women have had the vote for so long here in the U.S., why haven't we seen a woman President yet?

There's a weird sort of sexism that exists in our society which is not often obvious, mostly because it's so ingrained in us. Men, far more often than women, are characterized by being strong and ambitious. A woman who exhibits those tendencies is often viewed as "bitchy", which is a nasty word that ironically implies that a woman is acting like a man. I don't say that humorously, but seriously. Even in the liberal town where I went to college, I remember having a boss that people labeled as a bitch behind her back; I would point out to these labelers that a man acting the way she did would probably be promoted out of her position.

This sort of verbal sexism, while fairly well-known, is actually symptomatic of bigger issues that lie under the surface. With Clinton losing the nomination to Obama, there's been some dialogue concerning sexism vs. racism. There's a funny (peculiar, definitely not "ha-ha" funny) difference between these issues. There are a lot of people worried that the first black President is likely to be assassinated by racists. Does anyone think that the first female President will be assassinated by chauvinists? I've never heard it suggested, and I think there's a reason why. Sexism, despite any supposed similarity to racism, works in a very different manner. Racists tend to look down on people of the hated race and say, "They're inferior, we must be protected from them," while chauvinists seem to say, "Women are inferior, we must protect them from us."

I recall many years ago, there was a "For Better or for Worse" comic strip in which the character Liz had discovered her boyfriend had been cheating on her, and in her outrage, she started punching him. A few people were apparently outraged by this, but of course, the outrage was only a fraction of what it would have been had the genders been reversed. Imagine Liz's brother Mike discovering his girlfriend/wife had been cheating on him, and punching her. I don't know if my emotional responses are typical of society as a whole, but the latter scenario almost brings feelings of nausea, while the former at the time hardly caused me to blink. But violence of any kind should bother us, shouldn't it?

It's a weird thing that I was thinking as I was pondering writing this. Back when Governor Schwarzenegger was running for office, a number of his interviews that showed him in a less-than-flattering light were publicized. Among them was one in which he talked about how much fun he had making Terminator 3:

"I saw this toilet bowl. How many times do you get away with this, to take a woman, grab her upside down, and bury her face in a toilet bowl? I wanted to have something floating there ... The thing is, you can do it, because in the end, I didn't do it to a woman, she's a machine! We could get away with it without being crucified by who-knows-what group."

This was appalling to me, and I imagine to many others, but after making two movies (Terminator movies, that is; he's made far more than two overall) in which he beat the crap out of male adversaries, wasn't beating the crap out of a teenage girl in some sense a very "feminist" thing to do?

How bizarre to think that violence against women could be a positive thing, helping to modernize our culture! It's not such a crazy idea, either, as Anna Quindlen, the very feminist columnist herself, wrote a column near the beginning of the war in which she insisted that if this war meant reinstating the draft, then women should also be drafted. Quindlen's probably twenty years older than me, yet she manages to make me feel awfully old, or at least old-fashioned. Something about this seems dreadfully right somehow. Why is it that I can accept the idea of a woman being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, yet I quail at the idea of women serving in the armed forces? Clearly, while I claim to accept women as equals, there's a part of me that can't quite do it.

I think the problem of women in the workplace not being recognized goes back to this, too. I've worked in a lot of offices with a lot of men and women, and I think it pervades the culture in a way that is hard to overcome. It's not just a matter of the men in charge not accepting the competency of women, but I think on some level, a lot of women are either aware of this tendency in their male superiors or don't accept competency in themselves. Possibly both. Over the years, working in various office environments, I've noticed that the lower levels of the org chart are overwhelmingly filled with female employees. Not being managerial material myself, most of my coworkers seem to be women, but it's the exceptions that are interesting. It's seemed to me that the tendency of men is to say, "This job sucks!" and so either push for a promotion to a cushier job or quit. On the other hand, women seem to say "This job sucks!" and then just sit in their chair and keep doing it year after year. Either women don't think they're worth more, figure that their true worth doesn't matter in the face of perceived worth, or perhaps stagnate due to an innate craving for stability.

After all, there's something about striving for advancement that implies risk-taking activity. A friend of mine told me (and I think he's right, although I don't have any data to back it up) that most people only make truly big career advancements when they change jobs, not when they get promoted within the same organizational structure. It does seem to be true that women have a stronger need for stability than men do. That being true, perhaps it really does take balls to make risky decisions. Without risk, one can't succeed in a big way, but on the other hand, one also can't fail in a big way. I wonder, people often talk about how men make up a large percent of top executives in America, but what portion do they comprise among the unemployed?

We men tend to be irrational, impulsive, and yes, violent. And we run the world. Is it any wonder things are in such turmoil?

Who wants strident?

I've started to realize that while I am often loath to comment directly on political issues, I revel in the chance to comment on political commentary. That being said, just because I carefully tread a line along the edge of a minefield doesn't mean lack of careful choosing of my words and who to share them with won't cause me to stumble and fall right in.

Yesterday, as I was sitting and enjoying my coffee and tapping out the beginnings of my previous rant not on Proposition 8, but on the manner in which others had shared and hidden their own views on Proposition 8, I happened to have a run-in with a Christian acquaintance of mine who has no qualms about freely expressing his views. Now, as I was writing about that very subject, I was hoping to confide in him what it was I found silly about the vague positioning of those on both sides of the debate, and not express my own views on the matter. (If you did read that piece carefully, you might have noticed that nowhere in the essay did I give my personal opinion on same-sex marriage; partially because that wasn't really what the piece is about, and partially because my view is complicated and nuanced, i.e. completely confused.) No matter; to him, this was a clearly "cut-and-dry thing". He rattled off factoids about biological differences between procreative and non-procreative sexual activity and the archaeological evidence for the destruction of Sodom in a much louder voice than I would have used in a public place (unless I was there to give some sort of performance, I suppose), albeit not in an outright rude manner.

It's a paradox that I inwardly wince when put in such a situation. It's a paradox because I wince for two (perhaps) completely opposing reasons: I simply don't feel strongly enough about most matters to speak out concerning them in such a fashion, and yet I'm not sure if I'm more embarrassed because I don't feel that way. Does that make any sense? What I'm saying is that when I'm sitting at the coffee shop I frequent on an almost daily basis, and the man next to me is expounding on how "two men in bed together begets nothing but carnal lust!" I'm wondering if some people I know will look over at me and think, "Why is he just sitting and listening to that hateful talk?" but I'm also wondering if others will think, "Why doesn't Brucker ever say things like that?" After all, I'm a Christian, so I'm supposed to be loving, accepting and non-judgmental, but I'm also supposed to stand up to immorality, which "everyone" knows Christians consider homosexuality to be. Where's your strident expression of moral outrage, huh, Brucker? If not on this, then on something.

Once again, I've let my intro hijack the original intent of my writing, but I think I'll let it go, because it's just as good as my original intent anyway. I was going to write on the interplay between religious belief and political belief, but that's really what this is about, isn't it? I am inclined to believe, from reading the Bible (and isn't that where a fundie Christian like myself is to get my beliefs from?), that homosexuality is in some manner not wholly acceptable to God. Yet I am also inclined, nearly if not more strongly, to believe that the government has no right to tell people how they can live their lives behind closed doors.

As I'm sure I've said before, Christians ought to give some serious thought to this, as it goes beyond the topic of sexual preference. If the government can step in and say who I can or can't sleep with, can't they also decide how I raise my children? My kids get read a Bible story every night before bed, but what if the government decided that the Bible was hate speech, and I couldn't do this? If we can't keep the government out of a same-sex couple's bedroom, how are we going to keep them out of my children's bedroom? Granted, in talking about same-sex marriage, we're talking about something public, but it's really about giving approval or disapproval of something that goes on in private. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what the supporters of Proposition 8 believe, whether they openly say it or not.

This is where I really have to laugh at myself and my socio-political schizophrenia. I'm a life-long Democrat who holds the religious views of a stereotypical Republican, often expressing a longing for communist ideals, but maybe being a Libertarian at heart. Is it confusion? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'm just an anarchist or something, I really don't know.

The thing that I had been intending to use as a backdrop for this piece of writing was actually once again an editorial published in Newsweek, this time written by Sam Harris. (You really ought to know who Sam Harris is, I think, so if you don't, look him up. I'll tell you this: he's an atheist that I feel a lot of respect towards.) I'm sure it's in no small way partly due to the fact that I am, after all, a Democrat, but I'm finding myself largely agreeing with his views about Sarah Palin, even some of the things he says about how it's scary to think about the country being run by someone with her religious views, despite the fact that that's the one area where I probably come closest to being in synch with Palin.

It's something I understand, and yet don't understand as fully as Harris appears to feel I should. Why is it scary that Palin has a "conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events"? As a Christian, it would probably be weird if she didn't think that, and really, while we're not officially a Christian nation, it's a fact of life that our country has been run and inhabited by mostly Christians throughout its history. Abraham Lincoln probably thought he was an instrument of God's will when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and is that so bad? Believing that God is on control of world events doesn't imply that individuals can't act on their own conscience. If that's what Harris is implying, then I don't understand why, and if not, then I guess I don't understand what. I also don't follow what is wrong with Palin asking people to pray concerning Iraq, "that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." Most of us Christians believe that the Biblical God is a God of peace (yes, despite detractors who point out the bloodiness of so much of the Bible and church history), and seeing that there rarely seems to be evidence for any sort of plan in Iraq, such a prayer request makes almost too much sense.

The thing of it is, our religious views are part and parcel of who we are as individuals. That goes for atheists too, who have religious views despite not having religion. If religious views are a part of individuals, then living as we do in a representative democracy made up of elected individuals, religious views are a part of our government. Now of course that means that indeed we should be interested in the religious views of the candidates we elect, but sometimes it seems like so many of us are far too interested, and place undue emphasis on the bare fact of having a view, rather than asking what the implication, if any, of that view may be. When John McCain made the announcement that Palin was to be his running mate, my initial thought was that he was trying to pick someone that would attract disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, this view not being mine alone, and also not being completely ridiculous, as indeed it seems to have worked on a few people. In time, I came to realize that what Palin really represents is that she is the anti-Obama. In a very odd turn of events, (to my mind at least) rather than attempting to position himself as a centrist, he's chosen a running mate that further accentuates the differences between himself and the left.

The weird thing about this is, despite being the polar opposite of Barack Obama, I truly believe that both Palin and Obama have formed their political views in no small part due to their individual faiths: and both of them are Christians! What does it really mean that this sort of thing can happen? How is it, jumping back again to Lincoln, that in the heyday of American slavery, most slave owners were Christians who used the Bible to justify slavery, while at the same time most abolitionists were also Christians who used the Bible to justify abolition of slavery? It would almost seem that either we Christians are suffering from the same sort of schizophrenia that I attributed to myself, or maybe it's just our country, which happens coincidentally to be run by Christians. Either way, there's a bit of an identity crisis at work here, and various people have various ways of dealing with it.

While Harris is pretty generous, it's not in my experience the usual case that atheists can separate out political views from religious ones. Like many Christians I know who are convinced that only the most dedicated Christians are truly fit for running out country, many atheists seem drawn to the candidate who does his or her best at taking their religious views and stuffing them down out of sight. As our national politicians do seem to be almost invariably Christians, the best they can hope for tends to be whoever is the least overtly Christian. In the meantime, those who are more outspoken about religious issues in particular over the political can use the fact of this wide diversity of ideals to argue the emptiness of Christian values. After all, if the Bible is clear in what separates right from wrong, then there ought to be no difference of opinion on what constitutes proper behavior for a Christian, even in the political arena.

While such a view may seem incharitable, it's unfortunately one that also exists within the church, perhaps most often among those I briefly mentioned in the previous paragraph. Earlier this year, I had been discussing with someone from my church the matter of Mitt Romney, and whether a Mormon (not necessarily Romney in particular) could be a suitable President. He argued strongly that no, it would be unconscionable for a Christian to vote for a Mormon. I asked him if he felt so strongly about this that he would, say, consider voting for Hillary Clinton a preferable option over Mitt Romney. He said that he hardly considered Clinton to be a Christian, so that was apparently a false dilemma. But why? What would make him believe that Clinton was not a Christian? As far as I am aware, she was raised in a Christian home, regularly attends church, and essentially does all the sorts of things that Christians are supposed to do. I never asked, so I could be wrong, but I'd be willing to guess that it essentially boils down to the fact that she's a Democrat. The "Religious Right" in the Reagan era seems to have burned into the minds of Christians and non-Christians, liberals and conservatives, Republicans, Democrats and independents that the terms "Christian" and "Republican" are all but synonymous.

It's a dangerous place to be, I think. The country seems so badly divided these days that I don't like the idea of trying to find more and more ways to pull us apart. Can't I stand together with my fellow Christians, even if many of them are Republicans and I am a Democrat? Can't I stand together with my fellow Democrats, even if I'm not quite as strongly "pro-choice" or "pro-gay rights" as most of them? Can't I stand together with my fellow Americans, even if many of them are atheists, Republicans, or even just people who don't like my taste in music? Regardless of the religious and political affiliations of our next President, regardless of the legality and morality of gay marriage, regardless of whether you believe God guides all things in every way on a day-by-day basis or you believe he's just a myth dreamed up by an ancient tribe of nomadic shepherds, we still all have to live together and share this country. We have to share the whole damned world. If we can't even talk about talking about it, how will we ever actually do it?

Hail to the Blog

I've been a lifelong Democrat (although earlier this year I tried to register Republican in order to vote in the GOP primary, but that doesn't count for much, especially since my registration didn't go through as far as I am aware), but I'm obviously not so taken with partisan politics as many people are in this country. In particular, I recall back in the day thinking that there was something wrong with the way mainstream media seemed to be criticizing the Bush/Quayle administration. I would often tell people, "If the best people can come up with to pick on Dan Quayle is that he spells 'potato' wrong, he must be doing pretty good!" I mean, think about it; our current Veep is shooting people in the face while on a break from supporting a highly immoral war that's funneling money to his friends at his old company. Could we get the guy who's a bad speller back, please?

So just this week, Anna Quindlen writes a column explaining how horrible it is that John McCain doesn't use the Internet. She points out that she herself goes online to see people's reactions to her work and, "...she's already been told many times that she's a left-wing idiot." This is what she calls being informed, or "tak[ing] the people's pulse." I was glad to be informed of this, as I myself have considered writing her many times to tell her that, and look! I managed to get informed about the issue without going online!

Quindlen is actually a very interesting writer, in no small part due to the fact that she is so very liberal. She's the sort of writer who can spout the liberal view on issues of the day in a very eloquent manner, far more eloquent than I can, and she can do it whether she's saying something insightful or spouting a load of crap. I remember clearly her saying many years ago that she was surprised there was controversy over the RU-486 pill; after all, it was a safe method of terminating a pregnancy without an abortion, and isn't that what everyone wanted? Seriously? Was she so dense that she thought the abortion issue was at heart about a surgical procedure? Crazed pro-lifers standing in front of abortion clinics are known to call abortionists "baby killers", not "questionable surgical practitioners". It was the first time I was tempted to write Quindlen and tell her she was an idiot, but not the last.

Of course, as I also hinted, she's written a lot of stuff that's come across as very intelligent, but I'm short a good example, mostly because we tend to remember things that upset us rather than things that are generally agreeable. Newsweek chose well when they signed her on as a columnist, I think. They seem to do very well in that respect. Even as someone who considers himself fairly liberal, though, even when George Will says things I don't agree with, he still doesn't ever seem to sound stupid.

But to speak to Quindlen's point, is it really so bad to have a President that doesn't use the Internet? Quindlen is right about a number of things. It makes McCain look old. But then, what doesn't? The guy's in his 70s, after all. Is it bad to look old when you are old? Hmm, maybe. I'm still out of work, and sometimes, on the few days I have an offer of an interview, I briefly consider buying some sort of hair product to get rid of my grey. Having grey hair is something I've actually always looked forward to oddly enough, but now I realize ageism happens, and I'd rather look my age or younger, not older. Ageism happens in politics, too. This is a year where one of the issues is that one candidate seems too old to be President, while the other seems (to some) to be too young. We like our presidents old, but not McCain old.

The more important issue, though, as Quindlen points out, is that McCain seems to be OUT OF IT, and may actually be so. Is it enough to have aides "take the people's pulse" for you? Heck, doctors do it. I can't remember the last time I had my pulse, temperature or blood pressure taken by an actual doctor! I think it's more important to have aides that will be honest about their findings. Often it seems the current administration is suffering from the problem of a President surrounded by aides that refuse to tell him anything is wrong. Imagine going to the doctor and having the nurse find you with a fever, but he tells the doctor you're at a perfect 98.6°F no matter what the thermometer actually reads! But is being "connected" necessarily going to change that in any way?

The Internet is like television, but moreso. You can sit and watch television and be blissfully unaware of what's going on in the world quite easily. There was a time not even so long ago when I'd have gladly watched the Cartoon Network 24/7, but will that make me any more or less informed than spending all day at icanhascheezburger.com? I happen to know for a fact that when Dick Cheney isn't busy shooting people, he spends a fair (and balanced?) amount of time watching Fox News. Would he really be more connected with reality if he took some of that time and spent it perusing foxnews.com?

The Internet is what you make it, both as a writer, and as a reader. From the long list of people who will probably never read my blog, we can guess the inclusion of John McCain, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and Anna Quindlen herself, who probably is more "connected" than any of the others just named, and named more times in this entry than any of the others. It has nothing to do with being OUT OF IT or what amount of time one spends on the Internet. And if any of these people happened to come across my blog and read it, it's unlikely it would deeply change their lives in any way. We hear what we want to and see what we want to (and write what we want to!). When on rare occasions, a person reads my blog, they will come away from it with the same sort of benefits they come away from in reading a column in Newsweek: either "That's so insightful and true!" (because I agree), or, "What a (fill-in-the-blank-)wing idiot!" (because I disagree). Furthermore, as so many have observed, including Tim Berners-Lee himself, the WWW is largely a repository of crap, my own blog not excluded from that assessment. The Internet's new world of "pushbutton publishing" (is that Blogger.com's motto?) has some potential for changing the world, for people have observed that cream floats to the top. Crap floats, too.

In the modern world of politics, is the new rule "He who eats the most crap wins"? I guess you are what you eat, so why not? We know politicians are full of crap, so why not give them the Internet to help them mainline the stuff in its true, unadulterated form? (Did I just refer to "crap" as "unadulterated"? Man, I hope I'm single-handedly bringing blogging to a new low...) It's crap. Crap, crap, crap. The Internet has left-wing crap, right-wing crap, Christian crap, atheist crap, crap art, crap photos, crap news, crap fiction, crap discussions of current events, and of course just plain crap. Man, I feel better now that I've gotten that out.

Is it really such a handicap for a potential President to not be on the Internet? I'm on the Internet every day, and I have no idea what's going on in the world until Jon Stewart makes a joke about it, and I see the clip a few days later. Of course, then I still don't know what's going on, but at least I can laugh about it. Can I be President? I'm obviously not busy with anything else at the moment...

One government, two worlds

Many years ago, I had a pastor that was giving a series of sermons on hot topics of the day. Of course, many of those topics are still big, not least of which is the topic of abortion rights. You can probably guess what side of the issue he came down on, but many people might be surprised how he approached it.

Rather than simply standing up and blasting the opposition to his personal view, he took time to point out some things that most people don't think of. A person's views on abortion are really formed largely upon their opinion of the nature of what an embryo/fetus really is. If you believe it's a human being, then you're most likely going to want to see it protected. If you believe that it's just a lump of tissue on the wall of a woman's uterus, then removing that lump and disposing of it is no more of a moral issue than getting a wart removed. Until you take the time to understand those two viewpoints, you'll never understand those who stand on the other side of the issue from you.

My main point here is not about abortion, but about understanding the opposition on many, many issues. I find myself so often confused as to why the Republicans and Democrats seem to have so much animosity towards one another when there really seems to me to be very little difference between them. Where does this animosity come from?

I was thinking about the Libertarians, and I remembered something one of them once told me. (I have a lot of respect for Libertarians, although I myself am not one, because I tend to see them as perhaps the least hypocritical party for reasons that may become clear here.) This Libertarian pointed out that Democrats seem to think we can use government to solve all our problems, and openly admit it. However, while Republicans say that they are against "big government", if you watch them, you'll realize that they simply want a different kind of big government than the Democrats. I think there's a deep truth there.

We're not talking about a fetus now, we're talking about our government; what is it that Republicans and Democrats view the government to fundamentally be? I think that it's that view of government's fundamental purpose that not only forms the two parties' policies, but is the root of the animosity they have toward each other.

Take two issues; taxing the rich on the one hand, gay marriage on the other. Generally, Democrats are for both of these, and Republicans are against them. Why? The Republicans look at the government and ask, "What can the government do to protect me from things I think are wrong?" We don't like to see our money being taken, so less taxes for everyone. We have a moral system that says homosexuality is wrong, so we're not going to budge on that. The Democrats look at the government and ask, "What can the government do to create situations that I think are right?" We need money for social programs which the rich can afford to fund, so more taxes for everyone, especially the rich, and whatever my personal views on homosexuality may be, equal rights for everyone is a good idea.

So many Republicans and other conservatives seem to have this idea that liberals feel that wealth is evil. Why? Because they seem to want to just tax that evil right out of the rich. Now I'm sure there are a few people who do believe that, but not the majority. Where do Republicans get this idea? It's from their view of the purpose of government. The action of raising taxes on the rich implies to them that rich people must be wrong. That is not why Democrats do it.

Likewise, Democrats seem to feel that conservatives feel it's right to squelch the rights of others. Why? Because they don't take every chance possible to expand equal rights to everyone at every time. Once again, I'm sure there really are people who enjoy stopping those they dislike from enjoying their full freedom, but the aim of most conservatives tends to be different. They just want to stop what they view as being immoral. Democrats assume hatred of freedom and hatred of the poor on the part of Republicans because of a refusal to see eye to eye with them. But Republicans are just following their moral conscience, just like Democrats.

How do Libertarians view the government? To them it's just a tool for people to force their own morality on others, which is exactly what the Democrats and Republicans both do, albeit in different ways. My view? Does it matter? The fact is everyone thinks they're right, and the opposition is wrong, and it's all based on opinion. All I hope for is that people will stop mistaking a difference of opinion for a lack of morality, because there is nobody who is completely moral or amoral. We're all just trying to make things right.

If James Madison were alive today...

...he'd be clawing desperately at the lid of his coffin. Man, that one never gets old.

I'm going to try (no doubt in vain) to make this one brief, because, as they say, brevity is the soul of wit. To quote from a fellow blogger (who is an atheist) whose blog I enjoy, some people, such as Mike Huckabee have claimed that the Constitution needs to be amended to make the U.S. a Christian nation as our forefathers intended. When you think about it, "[D]oesn't that, in itself, prove that our constitution wasn't supposed to be a Christian document?"

I don't know if DocMike was the first to think of this question, and he probably wasn't (I myself have mused along those lines before), but in his little comic format, he puts it so well and so succinctly that it suddenly becomes a "Duh!" statement. Sure, there are those who wish the United States was not just a Christian nation in culture, but in law. The laws can be and often are changed, but the thing that so often bothers me is the appeal to how somehow by voiding the laws that the Founding Fathers wrote, we're actually serving their wishes.

Say what you want about how the Founding Fathers were great Christian men (and of course, most of them were), but don't appeal to them as a defense for your own moral choices as you simultaneously aim to tear down what they created. The Constitution is a living document that can be amended, and has been many, many times. If a politician wants to change it, they can freely endeavor to do so, but let's have no nonsense about what the Founding Fathers wanted but somehow forgot to put in.

For those Christians who are still not convinced (and no doubt wouldn't be reading my blog anyway), consider the position reversed. Imagine a politician taking office and making a law that Bibles printed in America be amended to say that any sexual act between two consenting adults is acceptable to God, because "We know that God is love, and therefore we know that God wants the world to have more love in it, especially physical love." That would be crap, wouldn't it? People can and do teach whatever they want about the nature of God, but would it make sense to change the words of the Bible because you feel you know that God wanted it that way, although He didn't clearly state so?

The Third-Party Guru

So yesterday was our so-called "Super Tuesday" here in America, the day that most of the country has its preliminary round of voting before the official election. Often, it's a day that campaigns make final decisions as to how far they are going to be run, and candidates can either make a definitive statement that they fully expect to be the official candidate for their party, or they drop out and declare their work to be done. I suppose sometimes a losing candidate can be happy to simply have made it through a lengthy campaign without any major scandals. Although you may have not heard it on the news in the midst of talk about, there was another campaign afoot that had a major contender who dropped out of the race yesterday. I am of course talking about the death of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

It's a fascinating thing to me that to a great extent, religion and politics have a lot in common. Despite the efforts of various interest groups here in the U.S. such as the so-called "Moral Majority" (I say "so-called" as some have pointed out that this is a phrase like "Christian Science" in which two words are used to describe something in which neither word describes it at all.) there is not an easy mix between religion and political ideology, the now-defunct Natural Law Party notwithstanding. Even in ancient societies, we see struggle between religious movements and political movements: In the New Testament, Jesus, the Pharisees and the Sadducees represented differing religious viewpoints, but struggled not just against one another, but against political powers such as the Romans and the Herodians. Today, even in a country that supposedly supports freedom of religion, we argue about whether a Mormon or a (falsely-rumored) Muslim is fit to hold national office. Many have chided the silliness of the notion that somehow putting one's hand on a Bible while taking a vow makes that vow somehow more unbreakable. While the Bible is of supreme importance to a Christian, physically, it's just a pile of paper, and the moral law within a politician's heart is infinitely more important than the moral law under his or her hand.

But what of the Maharishi? Why do I bring him up, other than the fact that he has recently passed the way of all humanity? Well, although I don't really know so very much about the man, there was a comment made about him in the news report of his death I heard this morning that struck me as fascinating. It is very rare among either politicians or religious leaders to go through their entire career without being plagued by scandals, but the Maharishi is one of those rare individuals who seems to have done it. Other than an alleged sexual advance on Mia Farrow that seems to be unproven (and considerably less of a scandal than it would be for a Christian political leader, as Hindu sexual standards are somewhat different), his life and the Transcendental Meditation movement he founded seem to have a pretty clean record.

I remember that there was a TM center near the place where I grew up, and there was a teacher I had in junior high school who often passed on rumors to her students that these weirdos were somehow dragging off young impressionable souls and brainwashing them. I always found the stories rather improbable, myself, and whereas another Christian teacher I had in high school later was definitely part of what inspired me to look into Christianity, this particular Christian teacher was the sort that made me say, "If that's what Christians are like, I don't think I need to have anything to do with it, thank you." There's no doubt to me that as a Christian, there is a certain disdain one must have for all that is not of Christ, but choosing to see the deepest evil in any religious activity outside of your own narrow views isn't so much Christianity as paranoia. Later in high school, I had a friend who had a part-time job as a janitor at the TM center. His view on these people was that they were a bit odd, but mostly friendly and honest, and they never tried to push their views on him, an atheist.

I think that honesty and good-natured kindness that seems to have always been very present in the Maharishi and his followers is admirable. Sure, we may disagree with their spiritual beliefs, but when we look at their aims as a group, I can't find anything to criticize. The Maharishi believed that his methods brought not just peace to the practitioner, but also to the world around the practitioner. The Maharishi and his followers, although surprisingly influential for such a small group, don't seem to have been self-seeking, living modestly and quietly.

As a Christian, I suppose I am obligated to call the Maharishi a "cultist" or an "infidel", and technically, either or both descriptions fit. Still, on a personal level, as someone who tries to look at the world both from within and without my religious belief system, I'd have to say that if all cultists and infidels--and even many Christians--were more like the Maharishi, this world would be a much better place for it.

I am Brucker, and I approve of this message.

Voting is a funny thing. Don't get me wrong. In the midst of all I have to say here, I am certainly not trying to say that voting is a bad idea. The democratic process is vital to a free society, it's just that it can be confusing trying to figure out what the results mean.

Back in 1991, there was a funny thing that happened in the world of voting outside of politics: Rolling Stone magazine had readers vote for what album they thought was the best album of the year. The results: Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion. I don't personally remember the album, as I've never been much of a fan of the band, but it was a double album that debuted at the top two slots in the Billboard charts, something that nobody else has managed to do (not that a lot of double albums like that are released too often). The funny part? Rolling Stone also allowed readers to vote for worst album of the year, and in case you couldn't see it coming, yes, Use Your Illusion was voted worst as well. I recall the editors expressing some confusion about the matter, but it really made sense to me. It simply was an album (and a band, for that matter) that few people were neutral concerning.

An article in the current issue of Newsweek talks about similar irregularities in politics that never show up because we don't get to vote that way. The way voting works is generally taken for granted: You vote for your favorite, and the one with the most votes wins. Why do it any other way?

The article pointed out that as most people know, President Bush has actually been elected president with a smaller number of popular votes than the second-place candidate. (I don't recall which election it was, or if it was even both of them.) The odd thing that was pointed out in the article was that while Bush won the (so-called) popular vote in Florida in 2000, it's quite likely that he was the least-liked candidate by Floridans in general! If you assume (although it's not necessarily so) that most voters who voted for Gore would have rather had Nader than Bush, and of course those who voted for Nader would have rather had Gore than Bush, then more than 50% of the voters in Florida had Bush as their least favorite candidate! But voting doesn't always work to get rid of such a candidate, obviously.

The really thought-provoking part of the article was this:

Consider an election with 30 voters, who mentally rank the candidates this way:

Three voters prefer John McCain to Mike Huckabee to Mitt Romney to Rudy Giuliani, in that order.
Six prefer McCain to Romney to Huckabee to Giuliani.
Three prefer Giuliani to Huckabee to Romney to McCain.
Five prefer Giuliani to Romney to Huckabee to McCain.
Two prefer Huckabee to Giuliani to Romney to McCain.
Five prefer Huckabee to Romney to Giuliani to McCain.
Two prefer Romney to Giuliani to Huckabee to McCain.
Four prefer Romney to Huckabee to Giuliani to McCain.

In our system, McCain wins, with nine first-place votes, trailed by Giuliani (eight), Huckabee (seven) and Romney (six). Now let's say Huckabee drops out. Cross out his name where he came in first, and notice who is now the first choice of his former supporters: two go with Giuliani and five with Romney. That pushes Romney, formerly in last place, to the top, with 11 first-place votes. As the GOP field prunes itself, don't be surprised if the new leader comes from the back of the pack.

This is fascinating to me. Not just for the simple claim that it makes, but the other implications of this setup, which I suspect the author put in for people like me who can't help but analyze these sorts of things to death. You'd think intuitively that if a candidate drops out, the remaining candidates would stay in the same relative order, but not only does Romney move from last to first if Huckabee drops out, but McCain moves from first to last, reversing the order of the remaining three! In fact, losing any of the candidates causes the other three to switch order of preference, meaning that Romney wins any three-way race of which he's a part. Furthermore, any pairwise matching also reverses the original order, meaning that while Giuliani comes in second to McCain in the four-way race, the only race he can win out of all possible combos is a one-on-one match up with McCain.

The author suggests a form of voting known as "approval voting", a form of voting that can be confusing for some, but has certain benefits. It comes in many forms, but here's one I suggest for this scenario: each person votes for their favorite two candidates, and the one with the most votes wins. In that scenario, Romney gets 22, Huckabee 17, Giuliani 12 and McCain 9. Once again, the complete opposite result, but perhaps one that best reveals the will of the voters. Sometimes it's hard for some people to quite fathom voting for more than one candidate when only one wins in the end, but if that hurdle can be passed, what I really like about this is how much this gives more power to third-party and dark horse candidates. Think back to 1992, when Ross Perot was running for president. He actually got quite a few votes, but it's likely that many people who were considering him were afraid of "throwing away their vote". How many would have voted for him if they could have also voted for either Clinton or Bush at the same time? If we had approval voting, we probably wouldn't have had eight years of either Clinton or Dubya! (I think there's something in there to appeal to just about anyone.)

On top of all that, it seems to me that an alternative voting system gets people more involved in politics. Think about it: how many times have you thought to yourself or even heard someone else proclaim "I don't feel like my one vote makes a difference!" This is probably true, but then, what if you had more than one vote? No longer do you think of voting as choosing the lesser of two evils, but instead, it's a matter of examining the whole field of candidates and choosing the ones you like best. More options instead of singular decisions, more examinations of issues instead of popularity contests, more candidates declaring their own worth instead of slinging mud at their biggest rival(s)--what more could you want?

Our current system has its flaws, but I don't think it's completely broken. Rather than complaining about the system, people should be examining what parts of the system work and what parts don't. Why does the electoral college exist, and is that reason a good reason to keep it, or throw it away? How can we help people make informed decisions about government instead of passing laws like term limits and balanced-budget amendments that effectively put the government on auto-pilot? What can we do to make elections into a contest of individual candidates with personal convictions rather than cookie-cutter images of the same two party platforms over and over? There's always potential to improve and streamline the system, whatever it is. Can we find ways to make it happen though?

A Mormon as President? Why not?

I decided not to make this have a clever title, nor to drone on about my own opinion here for overly long because I wanted to mainly drop a simple question out for consideration.

I know Mitt Romney in particular has a few personal quirks that someone might not like to see in their presidential candidates, like the fact he's waffled on a few issues, but set those aside and ask the generic question. What's wrong with having a Mormon in the White House?

We're looking at an election year where we're likely to see a demographic breakthrough for our leader. The next President is likely to be either Black, female, Hispanic, Mormon, or Italian. While I think we probably have come to the point in this country where race matters very little, we do still care about gender to some degree, and we certainly care about a person's beliefs, as they should say something about that person. While I tend to mostly disagree with the reasons people feel a woman does not belong in the Oval Office (yes, women are different, and they lead differently; is that necessarily so bad, though?) I seriously don't get the Mormon thing.

Sure, I don't think that Mormon theology is correct. In fact, I think it's rather strange. But what issue is that insofar as being President? The President isn't going to be teaching the country about God. They're not going to be explaining scripture to us. We're voting for a political leader, not a high priest. Mormon moral values are pretty darned American, as far as I can tell. There is a very short list of religious affiliations that I would hate to see our President have, and Mormonism is not on it.

What is it that people realistically fear a Mormon President would or could do to this country? I'd like to know, because I frankly don't see it.

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: ad nauseam

So after some difficulties this morning and over the preceding weekend, I finally got into my e-mail this afternoon and found that I'd actually received quite a bit of electronic correspondence over the last few days. Interestingly enough, I really don't get a lot of spam, and this time was no exception. Emails giving me information that I had actually asked for, notes from family and friends, and info from guys at my church who are involved with and/or leading groups with which I'm involved. And there was the one fly in the ointment.

There's this guy, see. He's a nice guy, a good Christian, and someone who I enjoy talking with face-to-face. However, over the weekend he had sent me an e-mail with a picture of and little blurb concerning Barack Hussein Obama (with a noted emphasis on the fact that yes, that's his middle name!). This isn't the first time that he's sent me an e-mail with a subject line starting "FW: fwd: fwd:" or whatever. No, there was some matter of signing a petition that would do something having to do with prayer in schools or some such thing that of course turned out to be completely meaningless on a quick check of Snopes.com.

This time was different, though, and to tell you the truth, I was simultaneously unhappy and glad that it was different. It turned out that the bare content (minus editorializing) of the e-mail was correct! This happens so rarely in these situations, it threw me for a bit of a loop. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't just fire back, "No; this is all wrong; please stop forwarding these to me; can't you see what this is doing to your personal credibility?!" You know, I'll admit that I actually get a bit of smug self-satisfaction from sending out such an e-mail, but you can't send out that e-mail when the person sending you info happens to be right.

So what was the part that made me glad? It was the dawning of a realization that came as much less of a surprise to me than the discovery that the e-mail was technically true: I DON'T CARE! It doesn't matter to me if you find out that Hillary Clinton's a lesbian, John Edwards has made a hobby of torturing puppies, Mitt Romney has seven wives, or Rudy Giuliani was really the mastermind behind 9/11! It doesn't matter whether you have a reputable source or not, whether there's a photo attached or not, or whether there is an action required of me or not. I don't care if you have twenty pictures of cute kittens playing with balls of string, or a heartwarming poem to remind me of what's so great about mothers, or even a coupon for free ice cream. If the subject already starts with even one "FW:", don't click a button and send me a "FW: FW:" because I DON'T WANT IT!

Obsessive forwarders of the world, I'm cutting you off. If you want to send me your own e-mail, please do. I'm not going to read anyone else's.

Red, white, and mostly just blue

I don't know if I've expressed it here in this blog before, but despite the stereotype of evangelical Christians, I am actually a registered Democrat. Not that my official party registration necessarily means much, since I didn't vote for any Democrats in 2000, and the next time I voted Democrat was in the California gubernatorial recall election (is that the proper way to say that?) in which I voted to keep Democratic Governor Davis and, should he be recalled, to put Democratic Lieutenant Governor Bustamante in his place. That was largely on principle, though, as I thought the whole recall process was a bunch of crap. No matter, I'm going too far with this tangent.

As a Democrat, and even someone who has felt a lot more affinity for my official party pretty much since we invaded Iraq, I've got to say once again despite expectations that I'm a little worried about the overwhelming results. On election night, I heard on television that this election was unprecedented. Never before (since the Republican Party formed in the mid-1800's I assume; I hate statistics in a vacuum) has there been a national election in which Republicans did not gain a single seat. While as usual, the majority of the offices up for a vote ended up going to incumbents, six seats in the Senate switched party, around 25 seats in the House switched, and seven state governorships switched, all from Republican to Democrat, not a single one the reverse. After what certainly seems to many like a long period of either a very incapable and/or corrupt Republican rule of this country, we're swinging back Democratic. Given my party affiliation and general disdain for the way the country's been run lately, you'd think this would be positive news.

I worry nonetheless. Part of it has to do with the situation. Because of how badly the GOP has been handling things of late, the strong shift to the left may be far less an indication of nationwide support for liberal policies than a nationwide rejection of conservative policies. The thing is, the two are not tantamount to the same thing, but we live in a country with a political system that has come to so often endorse the concept.

How many of you heard in 2004 that "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush!"? Bush and Nader didn't stand for much of any of the same things, if any at all, but the idea is that any vote that went to Nader as a third-party candidate (and yes, I know he was technically independent in 2004) was one vote less that Kerry would get. Perhaps more aptly, but showing up what's so offensive to this idea in my view, a friend of mine said that if your second choice was Kerry, then a vote for Nader was like a vote for Bush, but if your second choice was Bush, then your Nader vote was in that case a vote for Kerry!

You understand the idea, and that is that there is no possible way that a person could get elected in this country unless he or she is a member of one of the two main political parties, despite the fact that we actually have Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Natural Law and Reform candidates that have real plans on how to make this nation great, and they might even be good plans. In 1996, The Simpsons aired their annual Halloween episode with a political bent to it. (YouTube clip) In the story, Clinton and Dole get abducted by aliens who take their places so that no matter the outcome of the election, they will take over the Earth and enslave humanity. On Election Day, Homer finally manages to reveal this plot to his fellow citizens, unmasking the two aliens:

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles!
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens, but what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system. You have to vote for one of us.
Man in the crowd: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate!
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away!

Sure enough, the next day Kang is declared the winner. The disturbing thing about this episode is that every time I see it again in reruns, I think to myself that while I find it unlikely that aliens with superior technology would try to infiltrate our government in such a manner, I can totally believe Americans would vote for an unsavory candidate because they thought they had no choice. Let the Democrats run Stalin for President, and the Republicans run Hitler, and Perot and Nader would still get less than 10% of the vote it seems.

Then again, maybe there is hope. After all, defying everyone's expectations including my own, after Joseph Lieberman refused to drop out of the race after losing the Democratic primary, he managed to win Connecticut as an independent. Also, the Vermont Senate seat up for a vote was kept by independent candidate Bernie Sanders who, I have been told, is pretty much a socialist. (That was, however with no Democrat opposing in that race.) But third party candidates, while an interesting subject, are not the only subject that concerns me here.

Back in 1994, there was a similar upheaval in which the Republicans managed to gain control of both houses of Congress. At that time, some amazing things happened. Thinking that their substantial gains in Congress indicated widespread approval of their conservative issues, they proceeded to go wild and push through legislation at an impressive pace. There seemed to be no stopping them. And then before long, Congress went back to the Democrats. Why? I think political parties these days are often getting high on their own sense of power. We're not a nation of people represented by politicians anymore so much as a nation of political parties. How many people vote for candidates anymore rather than voting for parties? If we see this election as a victory for the Democratic Party rather than as a victory for several politicians many of whom happen to be Democrats, then the country comes to be run not by 500-odd human representatives of their constituencies, but by two grotesque, inhuman creatures battling over who gets to feast on the carcass of representative democracy.

Will the Democrats take this opportunity to make real changes and make this country better, or will they see it as a chance to take their power and gloatingly use it to their own selfish ends? Note that I'm not saying this is characteristic of the Democratic Party, but characteristic of politicians in general. I think to a great extent this happened to the 1994 Republican Congress and to the Bush administration, despite lack of a strong victory in the latter case. As Jon Stewart asked DNC chair Howard Dean the day after the election, "How long...before power corrupts you absolutely?" Dean shrugged it off as a joke, but I tend to think it's a question every politician should ask themself and their party.

Maybe nothing in particular will come of this election. Maybe only real change will occur once a new Presidential administration is in place, whatever political party it may be. I don't know. Sometimes I weep for this country. I don't believe that there is a political party out there that has a better chance than any other to make this nation great. All they need is to stand up for ideals rather than the quest for money and influence. What kind of a Congress will the 110th be? As every year, I look to my government with hope for the best, but little expectation for great things.