Dan Riley's Blog, page 28

Why I'm Not an Atheist, Part 2

I suspect this was intended as a boast for atheists and a diss of Christians, but the truth is that only atheists and religious zealots pay attention to each other; most ordinary Christians just want to get on with their daily lives and they rely on their religion much like they rely on aspirin…as pain reliever.  

I was about as eager a beaver as could be at becoming the first member of my family to go to college when a teacher friend of the family fed into my parents’ skepticism about the venture by telling them, “You know, he’ll just go to college and become a communist and an atheist. They all do.” I don’t think the word gobsmacked was around back then, but it would pretty much have described my reaction. At the time, I was as much an idealistic young American boy as you could imagine all jacked up on the New Frontier, and as I’ve written before still going to church to pray every blessed night of the week. When I got to college and started studying it, I realized (long before Reagan called on Gorbachev to tear down that wall) that the Soviet system sucked and would fall of its own accord. I also ended up going to a seminary. So my teacher’s prophecy failed on both counts.
Nonetheless my seminary experience had more to do with making me less a disciple of any one church, but more understanding of churches, temples and mosques in general. I realized through my studies of mythology and history of religion how integral religion has been to the development of just about every human society (and though atheists like to point to remote societies here and there throughout the world that seem free of religion, none of them are free of myth or ritual which occur naturally to humans and are the building blocks of formalized religion). The prominence of religion in human society is not propaganda manufactured by church hierarchies, but a scientific truth revealed to us by anthropology. So, paradoxically, it was science that led me to a greater appreciation of religion rather than a disdain of it, which is the typical course.
Its fundamental role in the development of human society cannot hide the fact that human history is full of religious idiocy...if not insanity…and its more lunatic aspects are not confined to the Dark Ages but on full display most every day. So the casual student of religion--which most atheists are--can be forgiven (if I may use the word) for assuming that religion is an unholy grail full of beheadings, pedophilia, war and grand scale hypocrisy. More cogitative atheists, however, hold three core tenets:
One, that the universe is indifferent to the fate of humanity (thus a meteor that may one day crash into earth and destroy it is an accident, not divine judgment).
Two, that there is no benign spirit watching over us (thus an infant born with encephalitis is a misfortune, not a test of faith).
Three, that there is no heaven (thus death is not the doorway to basking in God’s glory, but a closing of the door on the only glory there ever will be). 
I actually accept all three of those tenets, which brings me damn close to being a card-carrying atheist. But I also accept that heaven, God, and moral consequence have been animating tenets of human existence and--spirituality aside--should not be dismissed if one has any intellectual curiosity about who and how we are as a species. Evidence of our need…desire…for a higher power, an afterlife, and moral structure are embedded in our non-biological evolution. You can argue that our drones are nothing more than Greek God Zeus’s thunderbolts made real. You can argue (as I have) that the historic subjugation of women is nothing less than the patriarchal legacy of Genesis. But I would also argue that our cathedrals and skyscrapers and choir voices raised on high are attempts to reach heaven; our legal system is designed to simulate a moral universe; and that our political org. charts, regardless of kind of government, always include a godhead. We can separate Church and State on paper, but religion in so many ways both insidious and inspiring permeates most every aspect of human society. 
Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most brilliant minds of our times and a foremost agnostic (atheist lite), engaged in constant, public battle with creationists on behalf of Darwinism. Unlike “the new atheists” (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris) who define religion by its most extreme or preposterous manifestations and demand in vain and vanity that humanity abandon its historic embrace of religion to see things their way, Gould subscribed to what he called the magisterium. He borrowed the word from the Catholic Church, which used to it to delineate areas of authority where the Church could legitimately claim primacy. Gould was fascinated that the Church invoked magisterium in order to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution. In 1950 Pope Pius XII declared that the magisterium of the Church only extended to the evolution of the soul, not the body. Thus, he declared, Darwin’s theory was not in conflict with the teachings of the Church. Gould expanded on this in his challenging work Rocks of Ages by propounding something he called NOMA—Non-Overlapping Magisteria, which he believed could be essential to the peaceful and productive co-existence of faith and science. In simple layman’s terms NOMA meant science doesn’t stick its nose in the business of religion and religion doesn’t stick its nose in the business of science. And in Rocks of Ages, Gould argues--contrary to the new atheism which calls for an end to religion--why that should be a two-way street. Science, he maintains, should be concerned with the empirical realm, that which is factual; religion with ultimate meaning and moral value…and each should merely inform the other, not prevail over it.
Examples of religion’s intrusion into the empirical realm are abundant in our time; especially in the cause that commanded so much of Gould’s time and energy --the imposition of creationism on science. But Gould, true scientist that he was, did not shrink from seeing things from the other side. After chillingly documenting how early 20thcentury German intellectuals perverted Darwin to affirm their belief in Aryan superiority, Gould offers this passage from one of the most sacred texts in all atheism:

Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants and animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing or spreading disease but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasiteslf such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating sexes in asylums and other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibility of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.

That’s from A Civic Biology by George William Hunter, a professor of biology at Knox College. It is the book that was at the center of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in 1925. Every scientist, secularist, humanist, academic and atheist worth his or her soul holds that trial holy as a landmark in the struggle for intellectual freedom. One can only hope that if these intellectuals knew that the passage quoted above came from the same book that famously advanced evolution they would find it sobering and damnable. 
As for me, again I find myself bowing before my great God Irony and thus unable to declare myself an atheist. After all, Irony--as Gods go--is not much different than any other…invisible, inviolable, inviolate. Yet I wonder if I could’ve made it fly as my answer if I had been in Bernie Sanders’ shoes at the Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night when a sweet church lady asked him if God was relevant to his life. Would she and the country have accepted it if I as candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President had declared that Irony is my God and I experience its presence every day in small ways and large? Would a mass audience have made room in its collective conscience for a concept of God that didn’t fit its own any easier than it would accept a declaration of atheism?
To be sure, the better question is: Why is such a question even relevant in a debate to lead a nation that accords the highest priority to the separation of Church and State? But that’s a question for another blog post. For this one, the paramount question remains: Why am I not an Atheist? And for all the fancy dancing I’ve done around that question through at least two blog posts and more than 2000 words, I guess the answer gets down to this: I just don’t believe in atheism. 

Shortcut to Part 1. 

Why I'm Not an Atheist, Part 1

Reductio ad absurdum...atheists don't cover themselves in glory when they ignore the fact that
discussing the morality of killing (in war, self-defense, revenge, capital punishment, hunting) is
an ongoing and complex issue in human society, and a church is a more fitting place to
have that discussion than a science lab.    
There is just a second in that blasphemous masterpiece of a musical The Book of Mormon where I thought the writers were aiming one of their poison tipped darts right at me. It is when Mafala Hatimbi, the African chief whose religious beliefs are summed up in the scabrous song hasa diga eebowa (Trans: Fuck you, God) mocks even those like me who dance around the old God question with the God is metaphor soft-shoe. I was not offended that they chose to lump my kind in with the Mormons in their un-divine comedy. I was actually impressed that they were so shrewd as to include secular believers like me in their ecumenical mockery. After all, just because I’m such a sophisticate that I contemplate God as metaphor shouldn’t exempt me from being laughed at. (Contrary to our friends the Muslims, no one’s belief should be above occasional ridicule...nor, dare I say, should anyone’s atheism). If you’re watching a movie with a child when a zombie steps out of the bedroom closet and scares you both out of your seats, it makes no difference that you knew it was just a movie and the child didn’t. You both jumped..and it's funny. 

Emotion trumps knowing. And like true believers who see God as more (or less) than metaphor, I have been moved to tears listening to Handel’s Messiah, awestruck walking into St. Peter’s Basilica, uplifted listening to the ReverendDr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that all three were inspired by a God I no longer believe in does not prevent me from responding to their emotional power. But I have encountered people whose atheism, especially the so-called new atheism, is so dogmatic that they won’t allow themselves to be accepting of music, art, or good works that have the hint of God about them (or in the case of MLK they accept the politics, but dismiss the piety behind it). They are as condemningof godly works as some believers are of ungodly works, regardless of artistic or social merit.
In the terrific new HBO documentary on music and civil rights icon Mavis Staples there is footage of a visit Mavis makes to the home of Levon Helm, one of the very best good ol’ boys in American culture. Levon was in the midst of a losing battle with cancer and had just endured a brutal round of chemo when he and Mavis greet each other at the door with an exchange of “Amens.” Later we watch Mavis singing to him, “This may be my last time. This may be my last time, children…talking with King Jesus…about my wants and woes…” The presence of a higher power…a spiritual power…that is in that room with them is palpable even through my TV. I can’t ever see myself in a room personally feeling such a power, but I cannot deny that Mavis and Levon were feeling it. So I don’t know how I can rightly call myself an atheist if I’m open to seeing God’s hand in such things, even if it’s a God beyond me.
As happened the night after watching Mavis, I revisited Woody Allen’s most profound film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The dichotomy between faith and atheism is set up early on when a man of science, Dr. Judah Rosenthal, confesses an infidelity to a man of faith, Rabbi Ben. In what follows, the doctor realizes it’s a conversation they’ve been having all their lives, which the rabbi sums up this way:

Yes, I know. It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless. And I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure and real meaning and forgiveness…and some kind of higher power. Otherwise there is no basis to know how to live. And I know you well enough to know that a spark of that notion is inside you as well.

Woody restates the theme later when his character Cliff Stern has a flashback to a family Seder where his aunt, a woman of learning, and his father, a man of God, take positions on opposite sides of the same debate. It so haunts him that he makes an obsession of getting onto film the teachings of a wise old philosopher who he believes may have the answer. Prof. Louis Levy tells Cliff that because God is created in man’s image rather than the other way around, God is susceptible to human contradiction…as much capable of cruelty as love.
In the end the wise professor commits suicide without leaving an explanation, the good rabbi goes blind before getting his wish to see his daughter’s wedding, the doctor gets away with murder, and Cliff our hero loses the woman of his dreams to a phony rival he loathes. Woody the filmmaker seems to have clearly come down on the side of an empty, harsh and pitiless world. But that’s his view…and ours only because we’re seeing Crimes and Misdemeanors through his eyes. But for all we know the professor’s suicide may very well have been informed by his wisdom and totally rational. The rabbi may have had a  Cat Stevens-like reconciliation with his loss of sight (And if I ever lose my eyes/If my colors all run dry/Yes, if I ever lose my eyes/Ooh, I won't have to cry no more). And the doctor may have been morally tortured by his murder long after his particular happy ending in the film.
As for Cliff…let’s really pull back the camera because this is where my God, Spinelli, God of Irony, steps forward to command center stage. The love of Cliff’s life in the film is played by Woody Allen’s real life lover of the time Mia Farrow. The audience feels the heartbreak of Woody’s character because Cliff’s creator, his God, Woody has made him sympathetic. But in the real world of the Mia Farrow/Woody Allen scandal, it is Mia who is the victim of an empty, harsh and pitiless world.

Like Woody Allen, or at least like his character Cliff Stern, I struggled with the God question. It was one of the formative events of my life. It made me think about the universe and my place in it for the first time on an adult scale. I had lived my young life up until that point believing that a just and loving God was watching over me and that every day I could walk and talk with his only begotten son. It was a benign existence. I never felt oppressed…or, in the words of a famous sermon that was delivered in my hometown centuries ago, that I was a sinner in the hands of an angry God. To willingly wake up alone one day in a wholly other place was for me whatever's the opposite of a "no-brainer" (full brainer, perhaps). It was the day my intellectual and spiritual training wheels came off, but not the day to declare my atheism.

Next week: Part 2

Double Feature

Since the air is abuzz with political primaries and Hollywood awards, let’s dedicate a blog post to a politics meet the movies double feature, shall we? Herein we interpret the Democratic presidential nomination battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton through two Academy Award winning films.
First up is Network…or “The Mad as Hell” film…so let's sit back and watch how this multi-Oscar winner captures a Bernie Sanders presidency. The obvious connection of course is that Howard Beale, Network’s main character, is a forerunner of Bernie’s modern day Joshua, inspiring an army of fed-up millions to blow hard on their trumpets to bring Wall Street down. Bernie’s campaign is a clear echo of Howard Beale’s exhortation to his audience to throw open their windows and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
Unfortunately the parallel probably continues to the climatic scene in Network when Peter Finch’s Howard Beale is invited behind closed doors to meet with Ned Beatty’s Arthur Jensen. I don’t buy wholesale conspiracies of the illuminati-- privileged elites from government and finance who gather in secret to plot a New World Order to be imposed on the rest of us. Though I admit the last time I mixed movies and politics in this blog, I showed a pretty strong inclination in that direction and I do believe that on the first day in office a new president is introduced to a new reality previously obscured by a mass of classified and confidential information suddenly available. A total outsider like Bernie Sanders, who’s probably never stepped foot inside a corporate board room, may know intuitively that the system is rigged, but can't possibly know how...and can’t possibly know which planks in the rigging can be removed without bringing the whole thing down on everyone, common people as well as the rich and privileged  Something like that surely seemed enough to scare Barack Obama off from messing with things “too big to fail.” So it’s not that hard to imagine Bernie’s first day in the Oval Office going something like this:


President Bernie's first day
Fade Out.

Fade in.

Casablanca…and now let's watch how this Oscar winner is the best picture for capturing the essence of a Hillary Clinton presidency... 
Hillary's Place
Hillary's role is Humphrey Bogart’s Rick…connected, compromised, and comfortable. As Ronald Reagan was long-rumored to have been originally cast as Rick, Hillary has lately been cast as a Republican. Both rumors are untrue. At his place, Café Américain, Rick cynically plays host to both Nazis and refugees from Nazis…with a keen eye always on his own survival and well being, while maintaining the loyalty of Sam his black piano player who provides rhythm and soul to Rick's place. When a reminder of his old idealism comes back into his life in the person of his former lover Ilsa, Rick is thrown into a quandary between continuing the triangulating ways of his later years and the anti-Nazi activism of his earlier ones.   
Bernie Sanders is Laszlo, the saintly resistance fighter who has a hold on Ilsa’s idealistic heart. But Rick holds the letters of transit, the key to idealism’s ultimate triumph. Rick cons the corrupt Captain Renault into releasing Laszlo from imprisonment on a minor charge with the promise of helping to entrap him later on a major one. As Rick helps Laszlo escape (back to the underground), he turns to Ilsa and says, “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."
Rick then shoots the Nazi, Strasser von Trump; Renault orders a round up of the usual suspects; and Rick and Renault stroll off musing on the start of a beautiful friendship. 

Fade out.

Not a dry eye in the house. 

Who Am I?

Who will I be?
On Christmas morning, last, Daughter Gillian sent our Christian ancestors spinning in their catacombs when she broke out the Chinese zodiac and started reading to us what we each would believe if we had been born on the other side of the world. I usually look for the nearest exit whenever the conversation gets around to asking, “What’s your sign?” But Gillian was not just a daughter, she was our hostess for the holidays and I always play by host rules. Besides, if you’re gathered together to celebrate the birth of a child spawned by a ghost, it’s not that big a stretch to start contemplating life in the Year of the Monkey (which 2016 is for all my simian tinged readers out there).
Anyway, turns out that I was born (70 years ago TODAY!) in the Year of the Dog. And I must admit that though I started off merely trying to humor Gillian, she got my attention when she read the following passage about my doggie personality:

Though typically reluctant to take charge, the Dog is extremely capable of being a strong leader, due to [his] deeply ingrained values and high integrity… While hesitant to step into the social/political arena, the Dog is an unfailingly altruistic and unprejudiced leader.

It wasn’t that it was such a wonderfully flattering profile (my subsequent study of astrological mumbo-jumbo, both East and West, revealed that much of what makes it so appealing is a high degree of ego stroking.). No, what got me about that passage was how close it came to a passage I encountered about myself after I took the Myers-Briggs assessment some years ago. Skeptics don’t give Myers Briggs any more credence than they give astrological signs, but M-B is at least based on questions (93 of them) and Jungian analysis, not merely a random birth date. But what won over my skepticism was that one passage in my INTJ profile, which read:

Note that INTJs will remain content followers so long as the leader is doing a good job (Keirsey, 1998).  But if the leader is a bungler, the INTJ cannot help but try to wrench the wheel from the hands of the incompetent and set the ship back on its proper course. 

This characteristic of not asserting myself into a leadership position until there’s a void or need has been a distinct pattern of my life, beginning from well before I ever heard of zodiac or Myers Briggs. When I was a high school sophomore, I was asked to take over editorship of the student paper because there were no available upper classmen for the role. A year later, the classmate who easily would’ve been our class president for four years if he’d chosen to came to me and said he wanted to devote time to his studies and asked if I would run as class president, leading me to hold that position for our junior and senior years. In college, the chairman of what was called a Leadership Development Commission received an appointment to West Point and I was asked to replace him. A few months later the editor of the campus newspaper was flunking out and I, a sophomore, was asked to step in as new editor. In the corporate world the same pattern repeated itself…managers suddenly and unexpectedly vacated their positions and I was tabbed to fill them.
So long after most of my life’s resume had already been filled out I found out that I, as an INTJ type, was more likely to have leadership positions seek me out rather than the other way around. And that made me stop and wonder: had all my life been written in my stars…or at least into my DNA?  And upon hearing this trait echoed in my Chinese zodiac profile, I had to ask: How do they do this?
My attempt to answer that question has revealed that there are more than a few disclaimers in order. First, there are numerous interpreters out there and they don’t all emphasize or even see the same things. I have seen Chinese zodiac dog profiles, for instance, that make no mention at all of this reluctant leader trait, and even Myer-Briggs practitioners, which are more consistent overall, make less or more of this characteristic. Then there’s the amorphous and positive nature of the profiles that invoke the Paul Simon rule: Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. And then there are the exceptions that disprove the rule…when you meet another INTJ or someone else born in the Year of the Dog and they share little to nothing in common with you. To simplify: if you’re shopping for an X-Large black pullover, Costco could be the best place you ever shopped; if you're looking for another size, color or style, best to stick with Nordstrom's. 
Humans who fancy themselves as masters of freewill don't generally like to be pegged as "a type" of course, though I've noticed most have a tendency to peg others. This is especially true of INTJs, which, I'm told, simultaneously resist being pigeonholed, but are inclined to be judgmental of others. It's one of the contradictions in my Myers-Briggs profile that makes it so curious to me. How can it have me so right as a pragmatist--always on the lookout for what works--while calling me a perfectionist (which I definitely am not…just ask Lorna). How can I be one who genuinely craves working alone, but who assumes all those leadership positions (and was voted "most popular" boy of my high school class)? How can I be one who sees human society as fatally flawed, but eminently fixable…and worth fixing? How can I be so seriously immersed in contemplative thought on the knottiest problems in human existence and yet find so much bliss there? How can I be more willing to provide problem-solving suggestions to my children than emotional support, yet deeply feel their pain when I watch them struggle to solve a problem? And how can I value mutual independence over romance in my most intimate relationship, and yet devote a blog to the preeminence of Love's Body?

As I've written before, I once taught a high school course called Who Am I? Neither I nor any of my students knew anything about Myers Briggs (or Chinese zodiac). But I believed then…and believe now…that those rambling, gambling (often ungrammatical) attempts at adolescent autobiography provided the best tool I could ever have had in understanding the lives that had been entrusted to me to teach. And gave them the best possible insight they could ever have had in getting a handle on who they were about to become. In the same way The Nobby Works--rather than Myers Briggs or the Chinese zodiac--is probably the best way for me to answer the question of Who am I? because in this small, precious space I wrestle with that question every week of my life. 
Young Man  (with apologies to Neil Young)
Young man look at my life, I'm a lot like you'll be. Young man look at my life, I'm a lot like you'll be. 
Young man look at my life, Seventy years and there's not much more Live agog in a paradise That makes me glad I'm two. 
Love gained, ego waned, I got things that don't get lost. Like a heart that won't get tossed Rolling home to her
Young man. take a look at my life I'm a lot like you I needed someone to love me the whole day through Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true. 
Lullabies, look in our eyes, Run around many old towns. Means so very much to me To mean something to you. 
I've been first and last Look, no joke, the time goes fast. But I'm not alone at last. Rolling home to her. 
Young man, take a look at my life I'm a lot like you I needed someone to love me the whole day through Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true. 
Young man look at my life, I'm a lot like you'll be. Young man look at my life, 
I'm a lot like you'll be.

My Funny Valentine

Have you heard me lament lately about the cross I bear being married to a woman whose birthday is on Christmas? Everyone of course thinks the burden is on Lorna. You should hear them…in banks and pharmacies and DMVs: “What’s your birth date? Oh, a Christmas baby. That must be so hard.” Hard? Every birthday is a holiday…you never have to work on your birthday. Every birthday is not forgot and ever brought to mind. Every birthday the house is full of people, presents, plentiful good cheer, and decorated to the nines.
I’ll tell you who it’s hard on. It’s hard on the poor husband who has to double the pleasure, double the fun every December 25th…the husband who has to roll Christmas and birthday celebration and affection all into one mere 24 hours. The husband who knows that it’s not enough to be just sweet and caring a couple of times a year, but uber sweet and ultra caring under the watchful eyes of family and friends on the biggest day of the year. It’s as if they played the Super Bowl and World Cup on the same day…as if we elected a president and handed out Oscars on the same night…as if you got married and lost your virginity on the same...D’oh!
I usually start planning on how to make each Lorna’s Day the best one ever 'round about World Series, because often the gifts are elaborate and require considerable preparation. Sometimes the gifts resonate long after the giving, which is why I’m writing about the one I gave for her birthday FIVE YEARS AGO as we approach Valentine’s Day 2016. It was actually four gifts in one…of my own invention, which I called Gung-ho cards. This was one:
This was another:

This was a third:  
And this was the fourth:

I fully admit to putting more thought into the logistics surrounding these cards than the gift itself. Lorna loves Yeses…lives for them; I have an approach/avoidance thing about about them. So giving her unqualified yeses was a genius gift idea. The difficult part was deciding how many to give her. I’d worked that 12 days of Christmas angle often enough in the past, so 12 yeses was my immediate thought. But then I started thinking about the serious damage Lorna could do to my life with that much power over it…all the unmanly social situations she might force me into…all the possibly outré romantic positions. Not to mention leading me willy-nilly into the mystic. As I’ve written in the past, Lorna has an affinity for the mystical.
So I settled on four as a safe enough number of times for me to demonstrate my love (with other assorted limitations, such as the $1000 limit on the money card). And then I made the gift and waited to see the price of what Paul Simon called in song doing it for your love.
The year passed…like that year you claim more for charitable deductions than you should and just know there’s going to be an audit letter from the IRS. But it never arrives. And sure enough, the year passed without Lorna cashing in one of her yeses. At this point I should mention that Lorna’s a very, very busy girl, so let's say I had some odds in my favor. Since I had clearly stated on each card (take a close look) that the gift was for the year 2012, I felt entirely within my rights in collecting the cards at the end of the year. When early in 2013, Lorna came looking for the cards, I had to regretfully inform her that the gifts had expired…all the Gung-ho Yeses had turned into Gung-ho not any mores. 
If I say the disappointment that greeted this news easily undid the joy the original giving had created, I’d be understating the case by a factor of about 10,000. If I say it marked one of the more serious breaches in our long-loving relationship, I’d be recklessly trafficking in the obvious. If I say it subjected our marriage for the first time ever to outside legal interpretation you’d think I was exaggerating, but I’m not. When Lorna took her tale of woe and injustice to her women friends…and she took it to many of them--one of them, appropriately named Heather, Googled California law and found that gift certificates in California cannot be subject to expiration dates. Waving CALIFORNIA CODES CIVIL CODE SECTION 1749.45-1749.6 in my face, Lorna reclaimed all her Gung Ho Yeses from me.
And so there we were last Sunday morn eating breakfast and talking about what we’d like to do on Valentine’s Day. And Lorna said that what she would like to do is take me to her Yoga studio for an evening of lying on my back in the dark with my eyes closed, listening to a concert of Tibetan bowls. (As I say, into the mystic.) I saw this as an opportunity to finally pry one of those Gung-ho Yes cards from her and I say, “Well, if that’s what you would like, you have a card you can play to make it happen.”
And she smiles and says, “You know, when I tell people about those cards, I say the best thing about them is that I’ve never had to play one. Dan is always so accommodating. So now you decide. Do you want me to keep saying such a nice thing about you, or do you want me to tell everybody that I had to cash in a card to get you to give me what I wanted for Valentine’s Day?”
Four card…flush.    

Forget it, Bern. It's Chinatown

The man featured in the brief video below is not a villain in a new HBO series or Hollywood film about Wall Street abuse. It’s a real Manhattan attorney, one of 16 attorneys secretly filmed during a Global Witness investigation into money laundering in the U.S. An undercover reporter with a hidden camera sought out legal advice on how a mysterious African in possession of tainted millions could get his money scrubbed clean in the U.S of A. It kind of echoes the Nigerian prince scam that lots of ordinary Americans see passing through their email every year. And though those ordinary Americans, guided by common sense, trash those emails, all but one of the lawyers Global Witness approached--guided no doubt by greed--offered advice on how to get around our laws governing dirty money. The video lasts less than a minute, yet it is an acidic distillation of the message Bernie Sanders has been delivering throughout his presidential campaign. I pause here to give readers a chance to view it because much that follows depends upon it (if your browser has trouble running the video, go here):

“ We run the country .”
The impact of the arrogance, cynicism, and perversity inherent in that statement manifests itself throughout the land in both widespread voter anger and apathy. And though the anger and apathy may be new…or renewed…the arrogance, cynicism and perversity are not.  The 60 Minutes segment that covered the investigation was a chilling reminder to me of one of the most profound PBS documentaries I ever saw, The World of David Rockefeller. It is frustratingly unavailable (some conspiracy theorists suggest that it is suspiciously unavailable), so I am relaying the most outstanding portions here from memory. 
Bill Moyers is reporting on a Rockefeller international trip. Aboard Rockefeller’s plane Moyers asks Rockefeller what he thinks about the threat from Nicaragua’s new Sandinista government that in the cause of revolution they will not be paying back their country’s past loans from Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank. Rockefeller responds with supreme confidence that they will be paying the loans back if they don't want to find themselves financially isolated in the world. Moyers then asks why Rockefeller’s bank just agreed to a massive loan to Italy given that the Italian government has proven so unstable since World War II. Rockefeller, again sanguine in the extreme, says, yes, Italy's government does have excessive turnover, but the head of The Bank of Italy has always been the same and that’s all that really matters. At a birthday reception for Rockefeller in Paris, Moyers finds himself in a circle of movers and shakers from around the world…Jews and Arabs, black and white Africans, European socialists and capitalists…and he asks what brings them all together like this and they respond almost in unison: the color of money. And finally Rockefeller invites Moyers to take a look at his financial control center in London. It is the size of an airplane hangar, and even though it's 1980 it is clear that it is equipped with the most modern communication and information technology. Looking upon the immensity and complexity of it all, one could only think pitifully, as I did, on homegrown, ragtag, revolutionary groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army trying to bring “The System” to its knees robbing banks like Bonnie and Clyde, Butch and Sundance and the James Gang.
Thanks to Bernie Sanders, the word revolution has worked its way back into the American political lexicon. Despite Madison Avenue’s abuse of the world…applying it to anything from box springs to boxed rice—the word is still pretty potent in a political context. And the political candidate who invokes it should be prepared to lead in a bold and daring new direction. Bernie Sanders has been fairly clear on his revolutionary direction—income equality, universal healthcare, free college. He has been far less clear on how he’s going to get there. How he's going to penetrate those fully insulated, heavily reinforced bastions of power from where the masters of the universe rule?
Will he receive such a sweeping mandate for revolution from the voters that the powers that be will deny or defy him at risk of their own survival? And if so, what about that rather large and vocal (and, dare I say, armed) number of voters out there who don’t buy—despite the evidence—that the game is rigged at the top, and persist in their fear and loathing of the bogeymen concocted by their talk radios and Fox News—the dark-skinned, the immigrants, the poor, the foreign, the educated?
And then there is my tribe—the progressives. I’ve reflected upon our behavior long enough to know that we are subject to two animating—though contrary—myths. One I call the Capra myth, evinced in Frank Capra It’s a Wonderful Life, and it holds that a good and decent man will risk all to stand up to the greedy bastards and just when all looks lost for his bravery, the little people with their small donations and big hearts will rally around him and save the day.
The other is the myth of Chinatown, the American classic about political and financial corruption’s ultimate triumph.

Mrs. Mulwray: I'll tell you. I'll tell you the truth.
Gittes: Good. What's her name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Katherine.
Gittes: Katherine who?
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
[Gittes slaps Mulwray.]Gittes: I said I want the truth.
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister.
[He slaps her again.]Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
[Another slap.]Mrs. Mulwray: My sister, my daughter.
[Two more slaps.]Gittes: I said I want the truth!
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister and my daughter!...My father and I - understand? Or is it too tough for you?

That dialog isn’t there for its salaciousness; it’s there to underscore the incestuous nature of our capitalist family. If Bernie’s going to bring about this revolution of his, he’s going to have to somehow deal with how we’re all to one degree or another complicit in it. As Evelyn Mulvey says, that’s going to be tough.  
Nonetheless, it’s heartwarming, if not a little disorienting, to see so many fellow liberals--with their well cultivated disdain for the media, the political class, the financial sector, and many of their fellow citizens--embrace the Capra myth this political season. Years of experience teaches me, however, that there’s hardly a savvy liberal out there who’s not a single discouraging turn away from muttering Chinatown's climatic line, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

Major Dan to Dream Control

Last night I had a dream that I was sitting with my iPad on a beach chair on Main Street in my hometown writing a novel…or a blog post (or a game-changing speech for Hillary perhaps). It was going to be great whatever it was because I could feel I was in the groove. Then my old college roommate Martin Bresnick came by carrying a suitcase to say goodbye I think (though it could've been hello…this being a dream it could've been either). I got up to greet him and we exchanged a few friendly words before he moved on. (Note: I suspect the reason Marty showed up in this dream is because we'll be seeing his wife Lisa this week when she travels West to perform with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus. Anyway I think that's how dreams work.) So I turned around to retake my seat and continue with my scorching hot writing and saw that my iPad was missing. I immediately looked around at the people passing by my chair and standing around it, body checking each of them for my iPad. When no suspects appeared, I turned to check out the church standing behind my chair. It was the church of my youth--St Patrick's in Thompsonville, Connecticut--only it was the size of St. Peter's in Rome. I went inside, and quickly realized I had never stepped foot in there with my iPad. The dream was about to turn into a nightmare…all that terrific writing, my pictures, my music, my MyPlate log of all the calories I had gained and lost and gained again…all gone with my iPad. And just before it turned into one of those awful, tossing and turning, cold nightsweat nights, I said to myself, "This is a dream. If you wake up, you'll find your iPad." And so I did. 

I've been using this technique since I was besieged by nightmares brought on by one of the most anxiety inducing jobs I ever had back in the 80s. It seems that I successfully trained myself to turn off nightmares. I share this story in hopes that it might help anyone who struggles with nightmares...or anyone in the San Diego area looking for a dream experience next weekend: Lisa Moore, Saturday and Sunday, Mandeville Auditorium, UCSD. 

Hillary v. Bill: Tale of the Tape

As I've written before, I'm perfectly content to let my Democratic cohort East of the Rockies deliver the Party nominee to me. I'll be happy with Hillary or Bernie and what I see as the classic choice between the pragmatist and the visionary…the incrementalist and the revolutionary. It's as old as politics. However, fresh attacks on Hillary have raised the vestige of chivalry in me, and I feel compelled to offer a few more words on her behalf. The attacks came from Rand Paul at the Republican debate last night and Charles Blow in the New York Times yesterday. Paul and Blow differ racially and politically, but they share something overriding in common that I think is at the root of more widespread disdain for Hillary. 

In the debate, Paul said of Hillary:

I don't think she's responsible for his behavior. But I do think that her position as promoting women's rights and fairness to women in the workplace, that if what Bill Clinton did any CEO in our country did with an intern, with a 22-year- old, 21-year-old intern in their office, they would be fired. They would never be hired again. Fired, never hired again and probably shunned in their community. And the thing is, she can't be a champion of women's rights at the same time she's got this that is always lurking out there, this type of behavior. 

In his column, Blow, who compared Sanders as a "cool uncle" to Hillary as a "cold aunt", wrote this:

At the town hall, Clinton’s back was against the wall, and she performed brilliantly. Indeed, that seems to be when she gives her best performances — when her back is against the wall. But she is often in that position because of her own doing, her own lapses in judgment, her own miscalculations. It is an odd, cyclical exercise to continue to praise her for climbing out of holes she digs for herself. There almost seems to be a self-destructive, self-defeating impulse at play, a need to be perpetually down so that she can perpetually fight her way back up, a sort of crisis dependency.

Without digging down into all that's wrong with each of those statements, let me just address the bigger nonsense head-on: both of these guys are essentially blaming Hillary for what have for the most part been Bill's issues that either he brought on himself or were brought on by his political enemies. She has always been the adult in their relationship and she has always paid the heavier price for being so…and at the risk of psychoanalyzing a mass of people I have no business psychoanalyzing, I'd dare to suggest that a lot of people have transferred their disapproval of specific things Bill has done to general disapproval of Hillary. And since I'm already in over my head here, I'd say there's one very big reason for this …and to find out what it is, let's now go to the tale of the tape...  



Hillary Tale of the Tape Bill Put personal ambitions on hold, first to become an advocate for children and next to support her husband Early career Pursued personal ambitions from the get-go
Goldwater Campaign (though just a teenager and though she later campaigned for McGovern, this is the root of the Republican Lite smear)

Guilt by Association
Democratic Leadership Council—group dedicated to the neutering of the Democratic Party and foundation of his Presidency Children’s Defense FundBoard of The New World Foundation
Board of Legal ServicesADA 90 percent liberal voting record as senator Liberal bona fides “The era of big government is over”
Flat, Midwestern directness.
Vocal quality
Drips with Southern seductive smarm
Masterly display of events, policies and global context in front of hostile House Benghazi Committee for 11 hours
Crucible
Embarrassing display of parsing in 2 and 1/2 hour grand jury testimony raising serious questions about what the meaning of is is and whether a blow job is sex
None known (though Marco Rubio claims she lied to the families of the Benghazi victims, none of the 8 investigations into Benghazi have substantiated this)
Outright lie
“I did not have sex with that woman.”
“I’ve heard from quite a few people my age that they think you’re dishonest, but I’d like to hear from you on why you feel the enthusiasm isn’t there.” (Note this was after she was cleared of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater affair, the Benghazi attack, and remains guilty of little more than carelessness in the email server “scandal”)


Debate question posed by cheeky young voter

“Boxers or briefs?” (Note this was after his Gennifer Flowers affair was exposed) Hilldebeast Nicknames Big Dawg,
Polarizing figure
Reputation
Best politician of our time
“You got the State Department on board. You convinced the president, you overcame the objections of Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Gates, the National Security Council. And you had another obstacle then, and that was the United Nations. And you were able to persuade the Russians, of all things, to abstain, and had you not been successful in arguing that abstention, the Security Council Resolution 1973 wouldn't have passed because the Russians had a veto. So you overcame that obstacle as well, right? Isn't that right?… There was another obstacle that you overcame and that was the Arabs themselves. Jake Sullivan sent you an e-mail, and he said this, "I think you should call. It will be a painful 10 minutes. But you will be the one who delivered Arab support." … So to put this in totality, you were able to overcome opposition within the State Department. You were able to persuade the president. You were able to persuade the United Nations and the international community. You made the call to the Arabs and brought them home. You saw it. You drove it. You articulated it. And you persuaded people.” --Rep Peter Roskam of Illinois
Republican endorsement
“Frankly, after seven years of Obama, a lot of Republicans would take Bill Clinton back, warts and all, just because at least he understood how to govern.”—Mike Huckabee
52.3 % unfavorable; 43.5% favorable
Polls
Bill was 10 points more popular than Hillary with whites and 11 points more popular with men
Female Gender Male

This Land is My Land

Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex…once upon a time this land was her land.
For the sake of fairness let’s stipulate at the start of this second piece to a two-parter that when it comes to publicly held lands, the Federal government doesn’t always have noble Teddy Roosevelt intentions of providing wondrous Grand Canyon experiences for boys and girls of all ages. Sometimes the government wants to use those lands to do nothing more than erect yet another military base, build a secret lab, or sneak a nuclear waste station into the neighborhood. And sometimes the government can do nothing to stop itself from stumbling into a grand bureaucratic canyon of arrogance, stupidity, and foolishness.
Take the case of Sue the dinosaur, for instance. Sue (named after Susan Hendrickson, the paleontologist who discovered her) is the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil ever unearthed. The provenance of the earth that yielded up her bones to a group of non-academic, commercial bone hunters was complicated enough to also yield up a criminal trial worthy of Franz Kafka. I don’t know what else I was paying attention to in the early 1990s when this story unfolded, but thanks to a terrific new Emmy-winning documentary called Dinosaur13, I’ve been able to catch up. Sue, the 13th Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found (thus the title), was buried in the South Dakota Badlands. Maurice Williams, a rancher with Native American roots, accepted a $5,000 check from the diggers, allowing them to remove the fossil from land he claimed to own. In time though, the Federal government became involved when word spread of the sensational qualities of the fossil. The government declared that the land on which the bones were buried was held in trust for Native Americans by the US and Williams had no right to sell off the fossil without getting permission from the government. But the government didn’t come down on Williams, it came down on the diggers, specifically and most harshly on Peter L. Larson, head of the group that pulled Sue from the ground and painstakingly reassembled her bones in their modest dinosaur museum in tiny Hill City, SD. A twisting, turning, protracted Federal case resulted in Larson doing serious jail time. The image that most stands out from the documentary--especially in respect to the government’s passive response to the recent armed militia take over of a Federal bird sanctuary in Oregon--is the sight of armed US agents rolling into Hill City with heavy equipment to confiscate Sue. The Feds roll back out with school children and housewives chasing them down the street, shouting and waving protest signs.
The government is clearly the heavy of Dinosaur 13. And not only will those who think government is guilty of overreach find it validating, but those who want more government crackdown on scofflaws like the Bundy family may find it sobering. But there is one brief moment in the doc where a representative from the Bureau of Land Management gets to state the government case, which in this case gets down to this: Sue the dinosaur is part of our national historical heritage, and the government cannot stand idly by while private operators, no matter how well-intended, claim it for their own purposes. 
Protecting natural national resources for the good of all is a traditional and valuable government function. In Collapse , Jared Diamond’s brilliant follow-up to his magnificent Guns, Germs, and Steel he reports that as far back as the 17thcentury Japan began practicing what we now call green awareness. Aware that they were on the verge of losing their forests as a result of overuse and a devastating fire, the Japanese took truly visionary action:

One of the first signs of awareness at the top was a proclamation by the shogun in 1666, just nine years after the Meireki fire, warning of the dangers of erosion, stream siltation, and flooding caused by deforestation, and urging people to plant seedlings. Beginning in that same decade, Japan launched a nationwide effort at all levels of society to regulate use of its forest, and by 1700 an elaborate system of woodland management was in place.

 As a result--despite being close to turning itself into a bigger, starker version of Easter Island 300 years ago--80% of Japan is now safely forested, yielding inextinguishable environmental benefits. Those famous lessons of history we are always warned not to ignore abound. Here's another, as I’ve cited before, from my beloved Sicily:

Looking at Sicily today, it is often hard to imagine what attracted so many different people. But the fact is that for most of its history the island was a region of exceptional fertility. This was a consequence of both geology...and climate. Wheat, olives, wine and fruits abounded; so too did forests….The drastic deforestation of the island in recent centuries has not only changed its face but also its very ecology. Rainfall has dropped, springs have dried up, and not one river is any longer navigable. Human selfishness and misrule have made Sicily a pale shadow of its former self.

Alas, we also abound in people who want to ignore these lessons of the past...and moreover,  heavily armed with guns and ignorance, they want to defy them. They have no sense of commonwealth, posterity, or even what their Bible means as "dominion over the earth," which is governance, management, and sustainability, not exploitation. This land is their land, they believe, to do with as they please. They often need to be reminded that this is our land, too, and--for lack of a better tool--we need and want government to protect our share from those who really don't care.  

Take it away, Woody…

This Land is Your Land

(I haven’t even written the first word of this post yet and already I can feel it’s going to be a long one…so here’s what I’m going to do: Make it two parts…Part 1 appears here now as This Land is Your Land and Part 2 will appear next week, cleverly titled This Land is My Land.)
I must admit that I've learned much of what I believe about land holding from watching our Dalmatian Marley’s interactions with the local coyotes packs. Marley had more than half a dozen bloody encounters with those scraggly, mangy creatures. The third time I took him to the vet to get patched up, the vet said, “I’ve never heard of coyotes going after a dog this size.” I replied, “Actually he goes after them whenever he sees them crossing our property.” 
Territoriality has been guiding man and beast since the beginning of time. Our friends the atheists like to argue that it’s religion that causes mankind to war and if we could just get rid of religion…well, then, peace everlasting be upon us. But the overwhelming, inescapable truth is that it’s disputes over territory on both the neighborhood and international level that primarily drive men…and animals…to fight. Nothing is more critical to maintaining peace than clearly defined borders, but defined borders are often not worth the paper they’re written on whenever might asserts its right. This is why civilized societies submit themselves to legal codes and authority. Otherwise it’s Mad Max time, and our hold on our homeland is only as firm as the weaponry we have on hand to defend it. 
Despite the fact that we had a legally recognized deed to prove that the grounds Marley our dog had marked off for protection, truth be told the coyotes had a longer claim on the land. They were here before Marley and me...which, sadly, mirrors a rather long and ugly difficulty in human existence. All over the world through all time, people have been "discovering" and laying claim to lands, which were already occupied by other people. It has made for a brutal succession of suppressions, oppressions, dislocations, ethnic cleansings and outright genocides. Most of us who live in the United States of America are the beneficiaries of such blunt confiscation whether we ever thought ill of Native Americans or not. Without a balance of power—achieved through arms or law—the relationship between those who live on a land and those who covet it has always been fraught with potential for trouble. Say what one likes about the 10 Commandments, but it’s not for nothing that one of them is an ancient admonition against coveting our neighbors’ goods. If the Western world took that more seriously, there might be a little less Third World resentment toward us (not that pillaging and plundering is solely a Western sin, though hypocrisy really does seem to be).
Back to the animal kingdom…rattlesnakes also abound in our neck of the woods. A few years ago a deputy from the fire department came by to inspect how well we were living up to code. He told me that he had just come from a neighbor’s house and she had refused to come out to talk to him because she was afraid of the rattlesnakes. He shook his head and laughed, and pointing to the large slope of rock and brush inclining away from our house, he said, “You know if we made a pass over that slope with infrared, it’s crawling with a thousand snakes. I don't know where that lady thinks she's living.”
That exchange helped me realize that I, too, lived among the snakes, and unless I was willing to take on the inhumane…not to mention impossible…task of killing them all, I was going to have to make an accommodation, which I’ve written about here. To quote myself:

… I also have come to regard the rattling of the snake as one of the more honorable behaviors of all species on the planet. This is an allegedly cold-blooded creature alerting an innocent victim of danger...virtually waving the "Don't tread on me" flag.  And oh, if only human beings were as considerate. There are a lot of them marching around with that yellow Gadsden flag these days… The flag is increasingly a sign of anger and resentment, and unlike the rattlesnakes I’ve encountered in the wild, a sign of aggression.

And so it is…we all have to share not just the planet but our nations, cities, towns, and streets with people we may not like…people we may fear. The law permits us to establish boundaries to help save us from others…and ourselves. Sometimes the law, too, being a product of human reason tries to be accommodating. 

For 17 years, we maintained a large and lovely lawn at considerable expense never realizing it belonged to our neighbor until the California drought forced us to replace the lawn with drought-resistant plants. Once we had done that, the neighbor claimed the land as his and wanted his lawn back. The subsequent dispute immersed us in some arcane boundary law where we learned about the time-honored Anglo right to prescriptive easement. In simple terms, the courts of England and the US have historically recognized an entitlement to land to users overowners of said land if the users can demonstrate continuous and productive use of the land and the owner cannot prove he raised an objection to such use. The law is complicated and varies from state to state in the US, but basically it’s what is known as squatter’s rights. The courts have been tolerant of this mainly because society has traditionally favored productivity over absentee ownership. 

As I’ve written in the past I am intellectually predisposed to a loosey-goosey approach to boundaries. And I can understand how the legacy of this logic might influence those who look over vast expanses of idle, Federally-held lands and think, Hey, if you’re not doing anything with all that acreage, how about letting me mine on it, or drill on it, or log on it or graze my cattle on it? Fair enough...if you want to lobby your local representative about it, have at it. But I think we should all be able to agree that once you take up arms against our government, you take up arms against all of us because even though this land may be your land, it’s also my land.