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Moon Unit

The most surprising Trump news from this weekend wasn't, surprisingly, his abject failure to show up to any of the solemn memorials (like every other living former President save the Carters), choosing instead to pay a Reality Celebrity appearance at the police and fire units near his apartment. Nor was it, drunken Rudy Giuliani's rabid ramblings at a memorial dinner that evening (though these were a sure sign of Rudy's falling into a sad Joe McCarthy-like final decline).

No, Trump managed to upstage himself by making a paid video appearance in promotional materials for the Unification Church of (the now deceased) Sun Myung Moon.

The Church - now led by Moon's wife and sons - has long been staunchly right wing in America. Among other things, they own The Washington Times. Still, Trump's taped remarks were, at the very least, disconcerting, and raised long simmering questions about the Church's malign influence.

Also, Donald Trump is a financially desperate hack who'd take money from anyone who will prop up his fragile ego and fan his delusions of self importance.

In my youth, the notion of "Moonies" - those who had surrendered their independence of thought and finance to the Unification Church - was part of a general concern about cults and the danger they posed. In the sixties, these concerns had started with the Helter Skelter killings of the "Manson kids", followers of Charles Manson. In the seventies, cut concerns took on added urgency partly because of the odd behaviors of Unification church members, Hare Krishnas, and ultimately, with the tragedy of Jim Jones and his followers in Guyana, after they'd fled the San Francisco Bay Area claiming persecution.

Like so many things that have become weirdly politicized, it's hard to know where cult acceptance bifurcated on party lines. Probably, one could point to David Koresh and conservatives trying to suggest "live and let live" libertarianism about a doomsday cult with odd notions about Christianity and some clear implications of underage sexual abuse of children. Whether it's of a piece with a blind spot about authoritarianism combined with "anything goes" notions of religious freedom (especially for anything nominally claiming to be Christian)... who can say. But the failure of conservatives to get tough and stay tough on religious cults does seemed to have moved form merely curious to oddly problematic.

Liberals, being the more comfortable home for religious skepticism, have a somewhat different problem: there's a decidedly passive, impotent approach to tackling cults once they are found out, also having to do with a confusion over choice versus coercion. Cults are marked by the work they do to brainwash adherents (well documented, clearly identifiable tactics like "love bombing", isolation, and deprivation), but often, cult involvement is treated as more of a personal weakness than a dangerous exploitation... until, well after the fact, the exploitation is all too clear. Most recently, that trajectory seems to explain how the NXIVM cult quietly destroyed many young women until its tactics were brought out into the open.

And what does this have to do with the Unification Church? Well, for one thing, like Scientology, the Moon family has worked hard to shroud the cult like aspects of the organization in order to put a more benign, quasi-religious face on its operations to avoid deep scrutiny. That includes using its Wash Times mouthpiece to whitewash potential allegations, courting conservative political cover, and most recently, going full MAGA to gain trust from Trump. Trump's paid appearance is, apparently, something of the culmination of those efforts.   

Trump's Moon Unit this weekend, might have played badly in conservative circles at one time; but at this point, the cult-like atmosphere of conservatism itself, never mind the more specific contours of MAGA support, probably slough this off as some liberal conspiracy to trash Trump by calling the speech benign, at best. Everyone else's views of Trump are so low at this point, one more round of him trolling for a check is hardly a blip.

Still, I wouldn't lose sight entirely of this momentary weirdness and the ways it could, and probably should, blow back on Trump and the right. Despite its own efforts to camouflage its cult aspects, conservatism generally likes to keep its Unification Church connections at arms length - plausibly deniable, while happily pocketing (some might say laundering) the Church's lavish cash. And while this moment, like so many isn't in itself enough to derail Trump's weak if noisy plotting for a political comeback... I wouldn't be too surprised if, should he really try to come back, that a lot of Moon-related questions suddenly appear. While Trump's sleazy business of talking to anyone with a dollar and a scheme worked once... this time, all those sleazy associations could be his, never mind the GOP generally, undoing.

 

The Christian Thing To Do

For years, Conservatives have held religious faith and their own sense of religiosity over the heads of liberals; calling it "holier than thou" would be an understatement. From the rise of the Moral Majority to the attempts at political advocacy run out of evangelical churches to the Christian Coalition, the conservative right grew over the past fifty years in part by appeals to religious fundamentalism. And with it came notions that no one knew religion, morality and decency better than they did.

Much of this legendary religious certainty came in the face of internal tensions, never fully reconciled: the most stridently antiabortion rhetoric defined as "pro-life" came from people just as likely to turn around and express a near bloodthirsty interest in the death penalty, and after 9/11, acceptance of even the most casual justifications for the use of life endangering methods of torture. We were treated to lectures on immorality and marital fidelity from folks eager to elect much married, often multiply divorced leaders with scandalous histories of adultery. The most stunning revelations of closeted men seeking men, often much younger men or even boys, for gay sex have come from a cadre of religious leaders closely associated with conservative causes, or members of the GOP in Congress.

And yet, in the face of this, conservatives have continued to wield their mighty sword of piety and religiosity at every turn, unencumbered by a sense of humility or certainly even a modicum of irony. To this day, the notion of liberals as shameless, godless hedonists, angry antireligious extremists bent on taking God out of schools and all aspects of modern life wherever possible, persists.The arguments around these issues are intense, extreme, and most certainly, endless. 

If liberalism could be defined as "a belief system" - something I heard much of growing up - what's been in remarkable over the past 25 years is watching liberalism move away from articles of faith to expressions of defensible public policy. Sociology, urban planning, education theory, economics, healthcare and energy policy... the list of areas where research and analysis has reached into thinking about government policy and actions is wide and deep. Policies that liberals advocate - from early childhood education, to nutrition, to environmental concerns, to energy policy and more - are built not on feel good pronouncements but the actual evidence of studying what works and what doesn't. That such policies and ideas often help to achieve desirable, compassionate ends is often not just a goal, but an added benefit.

Indeed, what;s been fascinating in the push/pull of political debate over my lifetime is the way what used to be a debate over emotional vs. rational in terms of left vs. right in this country, has reversed. It is now the left, more often, approaching debates from the position of thoughtful, rational approaches to policy and political action, while the right retreats ever more into orthodoxy, and rigid expressions of belief unmoored from fact. Emotion - particularly anger and hatred (and distrust) - rule the day. It is often impossible to even have rational debate across our deep divide because what we often call "not agreeing to the same facts" is one side simply refusing to deal in facts at all. Feelings are what matter - be it fear, suspicion, anger, righteousness or anything else. And often, it's so impossible to take seriously, the right has a growing internal reliance on a host of writers and commentators whose careers are built, entirely, on an abject rejection of seriousness altogether.

In the roughly 36 hours since the Trump Administration's budget has been made public, one organization in particular has come to the forefront of the debate over its absurd priorities and bad choices: Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels is funded, in part, in many communities out of Community Development Block Grants, grants that are made to organizations providing services meant to help communities in need. As Seth Meyers said in his witty takedown, no one, really, opposes delivering food to old people. Because that's all there is to Meals on Wheels: a healthy meal delivered to senior citizens in need of care at home.

In zeroing out the funding for Community Development Block Grants, Trump's Director of OMB, Mick Mulvaney justified that choice saying there's no proof the grants made under the program go to programs with any proven results or demonstrated need. What, he was asked about Meals on Wheels. Mulvaney largely sidestepped describing Meals on Wheels directly as ineffective, but maintained his broader point - these things may sound good, but they don't really do much.

Since then, there's been a wide ranging debate online about Meals on Wheels as the "Christian Thing To Do." That debate, of course, isn't actually simple: there are a variety ways to look at, and define, Christianity. What's striking, to me, is that the debate in many ways simply misses the point: it doesn't matter if one thinks Meals on Wheels is Christian or decent or otherwise morally good. The main thing is, it does an important, useful service, and the effectiveness and need for that service is well documented, and easily proved.

Liberals, in some sense, need to get over the tired right wing boilerplate of religiosity and moral certainty - we are well past the point of the Religious Right owning, or earning, their spot as the moral high ground. The election of a twice divorced, serial adulterer as their champion speaks volumes to the myriad ways that so called "evangelical voters" (Usually self described, and often less overtly religious than the wider public) have simply given up on expressing moral decency in politics. The right has nothing more than a belief system at this point to justify their views, and, more often than not, that belief system is confused, deeply flawed, and morally inconsistent.

The left has done admirable work, in my lifetime, to move away from a cadre of True Believers more interested in orthodoxy than then effectiveness. The right, on the other hand, seems to have simply given up on fighting the regression further into extreme beliefs unmoored from the real world and how it actually operates. And it's well past time that liberals need to let go of the pointless exercise of engaging with conservatives on Who Is More Morally Decent. Not because we can win the argument - and endorsing food for old people, surely, puts us there - but because the argument really isn't the point. Governing sensibly, thoughtfully and appropriately isn't just The Christian Thing To Do. It's the intelligent defensible thing we've been right about all along.

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Oh Fer The Love Of God!

I always say (to myself, anyway) you wait long enough... and there will surely be something to blog about. 

Sure enough, I decide to wait until the end of Easter/Passover vacation to get started again... and there you go.

Google's decision to run a graphic for the birthday of Cesar Chavez on Easter should really be no big deal - though I have to admit, I was a little surprised, until I realized they were the same day. Easter was a busy day this year - I'm now on Facebook, and two other FB friends (or as I used to say, friends) also had birthdays on Easter. And it was Easter. And Passover.... and a bunch of other stuff, which was kind of sad.

Anyway, I don't think it's surprising, exactly, that the conservative right went nuts over the linking of Chavez to Easter - or, more hilariously, that they mistook Cesar Chavez for Hugo Chavez, the recently deceased leader of Venezuela, which made them all the angrier. I mean, as they say, we do all look alike, especially when the last names are similar. 

In the wake of Republicans trying to rebuild a relationship with Latin Americans, though, this farce is basically example A of why most of these efforts are doomed. Too often and for too long, the right wing's predictable responses to even the mildest discussions of liberal figures - Cesar's hardly worth the controversy, and let's face it, Hugo's dead - is screaming outrage. And the outrage just seems misplaced - and in the case of Venezuela, awfully late now that the real question is whether Venezuela will simply fall apart in the wakr of his (er, Hugo's) death.

But the enmity for the Chavezes and all they represent - the union building, poverty work and immigration friendly politics of Cesar; or the communistic approach to governing Venezuela more in favor of the downtrodden - is what's really going to keep conservatism, and by extension the GOP, from going wide. There's just got to be something about Hispanic culture and politics that conservatives have to figure out how to support and present positively, or it's just, don't bother. This story is already over.

And it's not as though liberals are going to care deeply about whether Republicans get this right or not - frankly, at this point, the left's view of the right's Hispanic outreach is just that, as farce. The guys who want double edged barbed wire along the Mexican border, whose most extreme elements would actually try to round up "illegals" in every corner of the country and deport them, whose last Presidential candidate attracted about 30% of the Latin vote - these guys are not people we take seriously as any sort of threat. Have at it guys, because at the rate you're going, we'll get Hispanic support for the Democrats up to or near the 90+% numberws we enjoy with African Americans. Not even trying.

Of course, beyond the gloating, all of this is depressing. It's depressing to hear the shrill rhetoric opposed to anything that might make life even sort of slightly better for people on the edges of society, be they migrant farmworkers or the poorest citizens of a third world country. It's disheartening to see people you might otherwise at least respect as thoughtful opponents descend into the absurd anger and shrieking of the fringiest conservative elements, or even at a minimum, simply draw a line, any line, about rhetoric that goes too far. When Don Young of Alaska, a member of House leadership, blithely refers to "wetbacks" with little more than "oh, gee" from other Republicans, that's the kind of thing that shows what the right accepts in its senior leadership. For God's sake, this isn't hard.

But then that's Easter in the land of politics: dressing things up, trying to put a kindly face on the oldest of stories (I've always preferred the Potestant version, which sems to focus on the white light and the post-rising Good News rather than the more Catholic-seeming obsession with the pain and suffering He felt on the cross), candy coating the bad stuff so we won't maybe notice. The same week of all these Hispanic fumbles, the right is practically in seizures as (several) lifetimes of antigay rhetoric don't add up to a hill of beans fighting marriage equality, the battle they can lose now, or lose later. By Sunday, even Catholic priests in America were scrambling to find the right words to try and evince some sort of caring for gay people, even while condeming homosexuality and absolutey trying to rule marriage off limits. The contortions were breathtaking, the mixed messages were head scratchingly confused. We - the angry gay radicals of near limitless power, thank you John Roberts - have apparently managed, if nothing else, to turn "homophobia" into such a dirty word that conservatives almost universally flinch as they try to expalin opposing unions for people they really, really... well, we don't hate them, we just think they should settle for second best... or something. Really... breathtaking.

It's a weird Easter this year - it came too early, the weather's too weird for it, all of these crazy controversies and a new Pope who seems, genuinely, to believe that "poverty" and "humility" are not just nice words but a better, more honest way, to approach one's duties as a Priest. No cars, furs, or penthouse papal apartments? Good lord, now what?

It's a weird Easter, in some weird zone between secular and religious, where liberal theology and social justice apparently won the war while no one was looking. A moment when the Christian, decent things we can all pretty much sign on to - treating each other decently, caring for those less fortunate, helping those in actual need - seem to trump the less pleasing notions of doing for ourselves, getting what's mine, and judging others with a critical eye. It's an Easter big enough for the death of Christ, the birthday of the man who stood for farm workers, and even my friend the married gay minister. And that's pretty good... for the love of God.

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"Best Speech Ever" When It Actually Applies. No, Seriously.

Perhaps "Act of God" may seem far-fetched, but the forces that made this weekend the one for Barack Obama's sppech at the Martin Luther King memorial dedication are surely big ones.

Originally planned for August 28th, the dedication was postponed - at almost the last minute - when it was clear that Hurricane Irene, combined with that week's Virginia's earthquake, would make holding the ceremony impossible. That weekend, of course, would have the historical significance of commemorating Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech. 

Two months later, it turns out, you can still have a lot of impact.

Today's speec, in some ways, might be seen as the speech that was much that his inauguration wasn't - not least because Aretha Franklin sang at both, and today was in far better voice with material that suits her best ("Take My Hand, Precious Lord" - shivers). But this was a day that also favored Obama himself; who, in many ways, has always aimed himself at being a very good inheitor of King's legacy, rather than becoming a great President. Taliking big picture, aiming to uplift the crowd, the President is on his strongest ground where faith and politics and a sense of higher purpose meet. And they surely meet at the foot of a giant piece of granite carved in the image of Dr. King.

The Presidnt's speech touched on the themes of Dr. King's life - the search for social justice, the demand that we be a better nation with a sense of a higher purpose. He quoted King, but most of it wasn't obvious or easy - many would have naturally clipped the most familiar lines, but Obama didn't need them. It's easier after all, when in so many ways you naturally embody the dream of a world beyond segregation.

More pointedly, the President took this moment, so well timed, to draw together the threads of social protest and the demands for social justice that come to us from the Civil Rights era and exist today in Occupy Wall Street. He both honored the importance of protest to force change and recognized the pain and suffering of so many, while challenging everyone, protestors or not, to see that real change takes hard work. And, more than he has in the past, the President didn't make his case theoretical or oblique; he spoke, clearly and squarely, about our current condition.

I was most impressed because Obama gave voice to things that have been top of my oen mind when it comes to these protests - the sense that we need to see one another, first and foremost, as human, in all our flaws and prospects. He spoke of the work of making change by finding the sense of commonality, the sense of thigs we share, our duty to one another, to help one another, and make sure everyone has a chance.

The speech was the most pointed evidence yet that it's absurd to count this President out in next year's election. This is a speech that could never have come from Mitt Romney, never mind Rick Perry, or darling of the moment Herman Cain. Contrast Obama's moment on the natonal stage with Cain's modestly successful, but frustrating appearance this morning on Meet the Press, and much of Cain's sense of "momentum" seems trite. Republicans can't win this election, never mind make it into the kind of referendum they want on the President, until they have a way to combat the President's ability to talk about the positives and our potential. America, as the President said, is a nation of optimists. We do not wind up electing people whose best argument is reminding us of our failings.

Liberals, too, who grouse about this President's flaws and failings also need to face that, at his best, there's a reason so many people find Obama inspiring and impressive. He talks a good game. He connects with some of our best liberal impulses to help others. In hemself and in his own story reside so much of what the left fought for, for so long: a mixed race man, educated and intelligent, who sees the possibilities for others.Those who oppose him need to be clearer, more direct on what they would do differently. And why.

None of this is some sudden conversion on my part. I've said from the outset that there are things to admire in the President. The parts of his story that resonate with me, so much of what our lives are that are a direct result of the work of Dr. King, have always been the base of my own support for him. The problem, as I said, comes from translating these great theories and ideas of which he speaks into action. on that he's been mostly a failure, and I don't see that changing any time soon. But the President, today, gave a good reminder that when we think about change, what we deal with is a choice. Those who want the kind of justice and social change that Dr. King embodied in his life and work will have a choice next year about how to create change. Many, I think, will continue to see Barack Obama as the worst best option, but that, in the end, may be the only choice. Today's speech, I think, made his best case, right now, for his reelection. He makes it well. If we want more than that... well, that's where we have a lot of work yet to do.

Higher Ground: Faith That Works

I've been on something of a lucky streak with moviegoing lately, mostly because I've been avoiding most of the big budget mainstream films in favr of the smaller gems. Among the other reasons for being missing in action is because this past week was pretty much an indie film festival.

And I have to start wit what is probably the most remarkable and,in its way, ambitious: Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground. 

Vera Farmiga is one of the go-to actresses, right now, for wife and girlfriend roles in big budget films. She was nominated for Up in the Air (playing Clooney's love interest), had a big role in The Departed, that sort of thing. Perhaps that's why nothing quite prepared me for the impressiveness of her directorial debut in a small, deeply felt film about faith and finding your way. What's more astonishing is that while the directorial debut is assured, Farmiga's performance in the lead role is also brilliantly realized.

Based on the memoir of writer Carolyn Briggs, Higher Ground is the story of a woman who finds God at a young age. Corinne raises her hand in Sunday school when almost no one else does, and finds herself on a long journey into an intense Christianity. As a teen she starts a romance with a young rebellious singer songwriter in a teenage band, and they wind up married after she gets pregnant. A reckless, near death experience for them and the baby drives the family even deeper into bible study and church.

HIgher Ground is remarkable in many ways, not least because it charts a kind of Christian intensity that is worlds away from southern, born again Baptist gospel. Taking place in upstate New York, Higher Ground is populated with hippie men and Earth mother types who place a great value on their journey in faith. Agree or disagree, but the window into these lives, which are probably unseen by many, is fascinating.

Corinne's adult life is up-ended when her closest friend, Annika, is diagnosed with a brain tumor and comes out of surgery with significant brain damage. Lost, adrift in a faith that cannot answer her deepest prayer, Corinne discovers that she's grown apart from her husband, and her faith. With considerable strong personal resolve, she sets out on her journey, breaking away from her marriage and her church, and, ultimately, everything familiar in the life she's lived.

The film handles all of this with a delicate sensitivity and respect for everyone in it. These are not easy caricatures  of intolerant Christians, the women are not saints and the men are not simply insensitive boors. Farmiga's performance as Corinne is fully realized and three dimensional - her choices at every step make sense for her character, even if those choices can seem frustrating. This is a good, decent person who cares deeply about what it means to be good and decent. To everyone.

Farmiga is surrounded by a talented cast who also bring incredible levels of depth to their roles. That's particularly true of Dagmara Dominczyck as Annika and Donna Murphy as Corinne's salty, independently minded mother... but pretty much every role here is pitch perfect. All of which convinces me that Farmiga is an especially sensitive director in dealing with her actors, a real accomplishment.

But the point here is that Farmiga's work as a director shines on many levels. Visually, the film is striking and often stunningly beautiful. Among other things, the film is a visual love letter to the simple pleasures of life in upstate New York. The settings are so believably rendered, I both felt I knew these people and longed for a moment to return to life up there. Farmiga also captures, as few directors do these days, the realities of working class life just now - this is one of the most believable portraints of working and middle class people I've seen, simple, direct, and respectful.

Higher Ground isn't a film meant to convince us, any of us, that it knows the answers when it comes to faith any more than the rest of us. Farmiga's final, brilliant speech as Corinne gets at the struggle to live a life in the real world carried by a faith that cannot always provide all the answers, what it is to live a life with doubts. That Corinne gives this speech to the congregation she's leaving, without telling them off or denying the strength of their faith is amazing. But then, so is this entire film. I highly recommend it.

Best. Speech. Ever. As Usual.

Before he'd even finished speaking - which was as good a definition of "rush to judgment" you're likely to get - the usual suspects were already offering their familiar refrain: "The best speech he ever gave," "he hit it out of the park" and on and on. Today will surely be filled with more of those exquisitely uncomfortable expressions of hero worship and mass love that seem to follow President Obama, sometimes quietly, often loud and gushing, Don't get between the hero and his adoring crowd.

The Tucson "Memorial Service" - if it can be called that - is already taking its place in the "legendary" and "historic" pantheon of those ever great, ever best, speeches that President oBama gives at regular intervals. Almost like some doppelganger reflection of the low standards applied to the Bush Presidency - where merely reading the text without stumbling became the low bar for his supporters of his greatness - President Obama endures a standard where his most recent remarks are somehow always his best, the most wonderful, the most ideal. It is the best of all possible worlds. How could it be otherwise?

It will no doubt seem churlish to some to suggest that, from a distance, absent both the "Obama wonderful" sensibilities and the pump priming for mass grieving on cue, that the event, and especially the President's speech, tended to fall flat, and seemed not especially appropriate, or on point. From the cheering, screaming crowds better suited to a Basketball final than a moment to grieve or mourn; to the generic, banal thoughts the President offered as (fairly cold) comfort, nothing last night seemed to work quite the way it should. And the net result, in the long run, is the net result President Obama has garnered from all his "best ever" speeches: good will with a short half life, and the sure sense that after his remarks, nothing really is or will be any different.

And Although I Know It's Strictly Taboo...

Over the past couple of weeks, I think there's been a couple of turning points in the upcoming midterm elections. One of them, which I'm still working on, has to do with the dismal cloud surrounding the Obama Administration and the clear weaknesses they're bringing into the home stretch for Democrats and the left more generally. But the other, for the right, can be summed up in the primary win and subsequent flameout of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware.

O'Donnell was considered one of the fringier Tea Party hopefuls, until a combination of forces - her string of especially negative ads against Mike Castle, the presumed nominee, as well as Castle's and the State GOP's ugly responses, along with the fact that Castle had never actually faced a GOP primary in his 40 year career - swept O'Donnell to a surprising, easy victory in Delaware's Republican Senatorial primary. Castle, the state's longtime Congressman, was expected to easily win statewide election, since he has done just that over and over. O'Donell, on the other hand is something of a religious activist who already lost once to Joe Biden (in 2008, after failing to win the GOP primary for Tom Carper's seat in 2006).

Much of the political calculus is irrelevant, though, now that Bill Maher has released a string of footage (which he vows to continue) culled from O'Donnell's appearances on Politically Incorrect in the nineties. The most striking, so far, is O'Donnell's apparently unforced admission that she was familiar with "witchcraft" and had a first date "midnight picnic" on a Satanic altar.

Asked about it after the clip broke wide, O'Donnell fell back on the "didn't we all do something crazy in high school" defense, which is a good demonstration of at least her press savvy, neither running away from her past, nor especially interested in rehashing or defending it.

But the damage was done, and it was damage with some wider implications, since it pretty much forced the national Republican Party into drawing some lines - admittedly late and well past where they need to be - around just how much Tea Party madness the GOP Establishment should have to embrace. And in that moment cam e a reality that's been quite clear as "Tea Party Insurgency" became the storyline of the right: that in many ways, this was about extreme, fringe efforts on the right finally getting the reins and taking control. And the longterm results may not be especially good.

O'Donnell - endorsed by Sarah Palin - has been simply the best worst example of squandered opportunities in the Senate races for the GOP this year. The other extreme examples, like Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, share her penchant for gaffes and extreme rhetoric. But even Linda McMahon in Connecticut and Carly Fiorina in California share some of this sense that they are second best choices in races where stronger candidates could easily prevail (you could throw in two time loser Dino Rossi, now chasing Patty Murray's seat in Washington state). The angry national mood, we thought, would be a boon to Republicans. But as so many have said, me included, anger alone won't solve the Republicans lack of a good message and great candidates to deliver it.

The GOP can't run away from O'Donnell, because admitting that she's too weird and fringe-y to be viable would throw the whole Tea Party movement into relief: given her background at the edges of GOP social causes and cultural conservatism, as well as actually having run for office already, O'Donnell is in many ways a more conventional candidate than many others the Tea Parties have produced (and, like some conservatives, she seems mostly to be riding the Tea Party as her latest train to success). That's why the revelations of nuttiness can be so damaging: the "anyone can play" nature of Tea Party openness, the lack of rigor to set up some base criteria for viability, is killing them. And in this free for all, it's no surprise that telegenic opportunists like O'Donnell, or her mentor Palin, can rise to prominence on good looks and a talent in front of the camera.

Of course, putting this all in big picture context tends to ignore the aspects of the story that really drive it: the reason O'Donnell's tossed off asides about witchcraft took off is because what they reveal is not minor, or casual. A lot has been made of the quick response of Wiccans, denying connections to Satanism and blood altars (and what a world we live in, when even the Wicca have spokespeople at the ready the moment bad PR crops up), but no one, really, would mistake O'Donnell's witchy past for the more recent surge of interest in Wicca's vaguely upbeat, pro-nature paganism.

Having been a teenager at the same time as O'Donnell, this story caught my eye because I remember that era all too well: and there was, among a subset of the "fast kids" in junior and senior high, a fascination with various aspects of dark, Satanist leanings. It was the period when Heavy Metal bands dabbled in Satanic visual and lyrical images, and a slew of books capitalized on salacious details of blood rituals and Satanic rites. Knowing about it was hard to avoid... but actually getting out there and joining in was not, really, just some foray into youthful hijinks. Indeed, the whole episode of O'Donnell's foray into "witchcraft" probably explains the extreme swing she's taken to fervent religiosity and moralism. It's the zeal of the convert, the desperation of a sinner made good.

Most voters, really, won't be using "witchcraft" as their deciding factor in the Delaware election, or most anywhere else. O'Donell's failures as a candidate don't begin or end with the witch story, but the story does encapsulate her problems and those of the Tea Party right more generally: the "loose cannon" comments and the out of the mainstream actions and views that make them less than successful i appealing to wide swaths of the public. Wicked witchcraft, it seems, turns out to be the bridge too far. But those outer limits were reached months ago. And from here, I tend to doubt that Republicans can find their way back to turning this "angry election" into the blanket rejection of the left they craved. Of course, there might be a spell for that, too.

The Burning Of Paper Instead Of...

I don't think this was a hard call: I think we can pretty much agree that book burning is probably a bad idea, and something that seems, instinctively, not the American way.

What's harder, I think, is the continuing sense that anti-Muslim sentiment in America is, right now, gaining ground, and no one seems to have a good answer for stopping it. It's unnerving, not that the book burning wound up careening into the national conversation, but that even now, there's a weird ambivalence to Pastor Jones announced plan to burn the Koran. As if, in some universe, that was explicable. Or defensible.

So he's backed off, tying his own quixotic decision making to the by-no-means-parallel situation in New York, saying that the planners of Park51 agreed to move the site if he called off the book burning. That already seems to be quite untrue, but really, any fig leaf will do when calling it off.

This isn't, in the end, about the potential for uprisings in Afghanistan or Pakistan or other Middle Eastern countries. The problem with burning books is about what it says about a society, our society, the one that nearly did the burning. It's the frightening potential to burn ideas, of agreeing to the proposition that books are dangerous (though you could more likely convince me about a problem with, say, Danielle Steele's novels... but that's neither here nor there). How did we wind up here? And how, really, will we ever find our way back?

Happily, this piece affords me the opportunity to quote one of my favorite poets (aside from my best friend J), Adrienne Rich, who I found in college (unlike J, who I found shortly thereafter). This poem, the first I read, was one which profoundly moved me, challenged me, and enriched my thinking. This is the fifth and final section of "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children":

I am composing on the typewriter late at night, thinking of today. How well we all spoke. A language is a map of our failures. Frederick Douglass wrote an English purer than Milton's. People suffer highly in poverty. There are methods but we do not use them. Joan, who could not read, spoke some peasant form of French. Some of the suffering are: it is hard to tell the truth; this is America; I cannot touch you now. In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger. The burning of a book arouses no sensation in me. I know it hurts to burn. There are flames of napalm in Catonsville, Maryland. I know it hurts to burn. The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning. I cannot touch you and this is the oppressor's language.

These Times Are So Uncertain, There's A Yearning Undefined...

It's weird, isn't it, how Easter coincided with the latest round of handwringing about the Catholic Church. And it's easy, I think, to look at the latest revelations in isolation - yet more indication of how deep the priest-child abuse scandal went within the church hierarchy - and miss that there's a broader point here about religion generally.

For one thing, the problems the Catholic Church faced this week were not the only religion story to have legs: Scientologists scrambled to respond as further charges of abuse by David Miscavige surfaced, and more questions were raised about the Sea Org and Scientology generally.

And in all of this, I think, there's a point here about religion in the modern age, a point that links these troubles and others: the gradually decline of the ability to sustain a faith on mysticism alone.

That may seem less immediately apparent in the Catholics case, but stay with me on this one; one of the problems that showed up this week was the sense of the current Pope having a past. The various questions about what Cardinal Ratzinger did or didn't do, as Archbishop of Munich or as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, were ones that seemed, very much, to just bloom out of the blue. And "a past" is generally not what we talk about with Popes. It violates, as some noted this week, the general directive of the Church that the Pope is infallible and not to be questioned or challenged. Maybe... but how about the jobs the Pope held before he was Pope?

And isn't that question, really, a good indication of what it means to bring a centuries old organization into the 21st Century?

It's harder, after all, to shroud religion, any religion, these days in a sense of mystery. Many have noted the trouble the Church has finding Saints to canonize in recent years - too easy to explain away what used to be "miraculous" with science, or videotape, or such. And the abuse scandals too have lifted the veil on secretive workings of the Church's organization - the shifting of abusers to different parishes, the uselessness of their system of "counseling", the failure to report misdeeds to the prop[er authorities (never mind the legal agreements of enforced silence). None of that, really, is as possible to do now, or to hide as effectively.

Scientology, and other more recent religions face even bigger challenges, because so much of their basic text, and their tenets of belief, have been up for scrutiny long before they could enter the hazy realm of beliefs that we uphold on tradition as much as anything else (yeah... let's just leave it at that rather than discussing Virgin Birth or, say, the Resurrection). Scientology's odd discussions of aliens and bad energy, "clearing" and such have been under scrutiny since about the time Dianetics first appeared; and those questions, as much as anything, have driven the skepticism that leads to further investigation of Scientology as an organization. It's easy to say Scientology invited many of the problems it has now... but really, what faith can stand the kind of questions aimed at Scientology's beliefs?

Just ask the Mormons. It's been a while since Mormonism faced more public investigation, but that's likely to change if, as expected, Mitt Romney renews his chase for the Presidency in 2012. Questions about the Book of Mormon, about the veracity of cliams of golden tablets and other legends within the faith, are bound to reoccur, along with further examination of the curious history of the faith, more looks at Utah, and of course, more discussions of polygamy and outliers in their faith. Even without Romney - his viability is by no means assured - it's entirely likely more polygamist stories alone will drive further examinations, and more struggles for Mormons to back away from extremists and traditions within their own church.

How can faith survive, in such a graceless age? Not easily... but I think it's too soon for triumphant atheists and agnostics to assert religion is dead. Many people need... something. The continued popularity of some evangelical churches, "Christian" pop music and such suggest that there is a modern compromise to be made. In Tucson, I noticed that Joyce Meyer is back with another book, and like Joel Osteen, I think she represents one of the ways to make a modern compromise about faith: make religion less about automatic belief in quesitonable mysteries and unexplainable phenomenon; and focus, instead, on teaching ourselves to be better people, based on internal faith. The real "prosperity gospel" after all, is that we have the potential be better people, already within ourselves.

The question for religious organizations, then, is how to navigate this modern world, and how to live in a world that's more real, more present, that leaves less room for mysticism and the inexplicable. Expecting people to give over control to religious leaders who rely on dogma and legend and myth, strikes me as unrealistic, and getting worse. We know too much, can see too much... and that knowledge cannot just be explained away, or driven out. Progress may not be perfect... but fighting the changes wrought by our scientific advances, tghe electronic world, and now the internet seems like fighting the inevitable. That fight against the very nature of our modern world, I think, is why the Catholic Church and the Chruch of Scientology seem to be on the losing end of the news, these days. The heart of the matter of faith, really, has to be about more than believing in the unbelievable.

The Part About Nidal Hasan Being Muslim

It was, depending on your perspective, bound to happen or incredibly insensitive and prejudiced. Once Nidal Malik Hasan's name was out there as the shooter at Fort Hood, somebody was bound to note the name... and leap to a conclusion. And clearly, some did.

As it turns out, Dr. Hasan was apparently an observant Muslim who followed religious traditions. He prayed every day. He wore traditional clothing. He was aware, and resentful, of anti-Muslim prejudices that became apparent after 9/11.

... And none of that makes him an example of "home grown terrorism."

Time and investigation will tell if there's any connection to be made, or other indication to consider, but for the moment, nothing about Nidal Malik Hasan suggests a connection to terrorist organizations, or that his act had a terrorist component. And I doubt it will - his family, who seem to have no need to hide or not talk about the man they knew, describe a sad, lonely person who they can't imagine resorting to violence.  Which speaks volumes, I think, more about what we see, and don't see, when we describe another's mental health.

In our quest to make mass shootings about something, anything but the mental health of the person doing the shooting, we all pick distractions. In the case of Seung Hui Cho, many liberals honed in on the ability to acquire guns easily in Virginia, while conservatives resisted any talk of gun controls... both sides ignoring more obvious solutions like improving campus mental health services, or identifying the steps the University could have takemn to separate Cho from the school.

With Nidal Hasan, we get the distraction of knowing that it was a Muslim soldier who resorted to violence, despite the fact that we know that all sorts of soldiers with mental health issues are doing the same thing. Ironically, the military aspect may have robbed liberals of their usual fallback of blaming the gun; we can do lots of things to rein in some gun sales... but military soldiers and weapons are likely to be together no matter what we do.

And so liberals have had to counter the "ohmygodmuslimradicalislamterror" moment with admitting the obvious - that Hasan probably acted alone, and that some sort of mental health issue was probably involved. Which leads, uncomfortably, to the discussion of soldiers and mental health issues and treatment problems we've been trying to avoid for a long, long time. Which may be why, despite little else happening in the news, the Fort Hood shooting is quietly sinking to the bottom of the news coverage pile, now the place of tributes, memorias, and video montages to sad music.

For all the rejection of snap judgments about Islam=Terrorism, we shouldn't, and we can't, just ignore that Hasan was Muslim, and that his life in a religious minority was somehow not a part of him or what happened. We need to talk about this in order to make, at least, a couple of obvious points: that if we plan to class Hasan as "Muslim terrorist" we've just made the "War on Terror" impossible to fight or win, and that, if we plan to hold these kinds of views of Muslims, we should be asking ourselves far more thoroughly just what it is we're still doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. Because if we can't ratchet down or deal with these prejudices and false assumptions, we're nowhere in figuring out how we plan to coexist with the Islamic world. And no matter what crazy conservative war types suggest... we're not going to defeat the whole idea of Islam with our Army - an Army that contains Americans who are themselves Muslim.

It's easy to call the revelations about Hasan's religious beliefs a distraction, even the unnecessary invitation to expression of unwarranted fears and prejudice. But the liberal inclination to tamp down any discussion of a difficult topic for the potential of some extreme to offend doesn't help us deconstruct, demystify or figure out the relevant aspects of the story. We have to find a way to deal with the part about Nidal Hasan being Muslim so that we can put his actions into a context, sort out what matters, and what doesn't. And than, I keep hoping, figure out how all of this context helps us to better understand the mental health issues that really need to be explored.