The politics of whining

This morning I found an article newly published on Alternet entitled "Why Do Conservatives Love Sarah Palin? Because She Never Stops Whining" and I'm experiencing it as very illuminating indeed.

I want to share with you how it gets started:

The really beautiful thing about the culture war, from an entertainment standpoint, is that it is fundamentally irresolvable. There isn’t a concrete set of issues involved, where in theory both sides could give in a little and find middle ground, reach some sort of compromise.

That’s because there are no issues at all. At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

Please go over there and read the rest of it. You won't regret it. Honestly, this really helps clarify a lot for me.

You know, I frequently tell my meditation classes that the two most dangerous mind states a person can cultivate or indulge in are self-pity and resentment. This article helps tease out just why that is.
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Oh, this date

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Younger people may well not have this experience but I cannot ever be conscious of today's date without remembering with enormous sadness the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

I was fourteen years old and in the ninth grade. I got the news during geography class. There had been rumors among the students in the hallway between classes; someone had a transistor radio. And then the principal came on the P.A. system and told us that it was true. Not only had the president been shot but that he was dead. I remember sitting there in shock, tears welling up while praying the Kyrie over and over, looking out the window and noticing with amazement that the sun was shining.

Here are two powerful things this great man said that, as you can see, are connected and that we have often forgotten since his death:

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
...
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

I can't help but wonder if Kennedy's objection to censorship is part of what got him killed.

I have read recently that certain members of the religious right are actually urging people to pray for President Obama's death by referencing Psalm 109. I wonder if those people were alive when Kennedy was shot. I wonder if they remember how traumatized this nation was. I wonder if they care. How these people can consider themselves Christian is utterly beyond me.
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Oh, how lovely

I'm offering this in memory of JFK. It's a variation on Taps:

Il Silenzio from Brandon Noonan on Vimeo.

The trumpet soloist, Melissa Venema, is only thirteen.
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And that's not all ...

Oooh: very snarky snark

It's from Letterman, of course:

Sarah Palin's book is big, 400 pages. She wrote the book herself and agonized over every word, and so will you.

Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Crumbs: we're losing Moyers

Well, it had to happen. The New York Times is reporting that Bill Moyers is retiring from weekly television:

The PBS mainstay Bill Moyers said he was retiring from weekly television and would end his Friday night public affairs show, “Bill Moyers Journal,” on April 30, 2010. That date will also be the last for “Now on PBS,” which has been canceled.

Mr. Moyers said he had been planning for some time to retire the program on Dec. 25, but was asked by PBS to raise the funds to continue through April, which he did.

“I am 75 years old,” he said of the decision to end the series, which began in April 2007. The program has recently been having a “good run of it,” he added in a telephone interview on Friday, “so I feel it’s time.” He said he was not quitting television work, although he has no new projects planned.

Trouble is, there's just no one else remotely like him.
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Ha!

I nicked this one over from MadPriest's place (of course!):

Something about choices

I came across this today and I think it bears reflecting upon:

To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.

-- Kofi Annan

By the way, he also humorously said that "the Lord had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone" implying, of course, that the rest of us don't!
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Underreported Army suicides

This is very, very disturbing:

According to a soldiers' advocacy group at Fort Hood, the U.S. base where an army psychiatrist has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding 30 in a Nov. 5 rampage, the official suicide figures provided by the Army are “definitely” too low.

Chuck Luther served 12 years in the military and is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, where he lives today.

“I see the ugly,” Luther told IPS. “I see soldiers beating their wives and trying to kill themselves all the time, and most folks don't want to look at this, including the military.”
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Luther told IPS that he believes the real number of soldiers at Fort Hood committing suicide is being dramatically underreported by the military.

There's more right here over on OpEdNews.
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Excellent snark on Palin

Just take a look:

In her new book, Sarah Palin claims that before John McCain chose her as his running mate, his campaign spent $50,000 on a background check. Yeah. When he heard this, John McCain said, we should have spent $75,000.

– Conan O'Brien

Hat tip to Lisa over at All Hat No Cattle
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What the Republicans want to do

I just read an article over on the Alternet site entitled "15 Awful Things Republicans Would Do If They Had the Chance". It's really impossible to excerpt appropriately so I recommend that you go on over and read the whole thing. (It's not very long.) Also, some of the comments are quite thought provoking.

Some of us are a bit disappointed in Obama. I know I am. But articles like this make me so, so glad that the McCain-Palin ticket did NOT win!
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Take the trouble to say "thank you"

Okay, folks. Even though I am strongly, strongly anti-war, every time I see someone in military uniform, I go up to that person and thank him or her for serving. And that's why I find this video truly moving:

There must be a better way...

Back when I was a novice in the convent, our chaplain (who is now Professor of Ascetical Theology at Emory University) gave a lecture on Burton Mack and I was both fascinated and hugely impressed. Here's something Mack said that I just found today:

The kingdom of God could be realized simply by daring to live differently from the normal conventions. The kingdom of God in the teachings of Jesus was not an apocalyptic or heavenly projection of otherworldly desire. It was driven by a desire to think that there must be a better way to live together than the present state of affairs. And it called for a change of behavior in the present on the part of individuals invested in the vision.

That very first sentence is a humdinger, isn't it?
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