Because even though not much is happening, we still might want a bit more room to banter back and forth.
Kent Jones at MaddowBlog shared the following, and I'm cheerfully ripping it off:
Too many renditions of church hymns to a watered-down version of the 'Ode to Joy' theme (they are to Beethoven what Red Delicious is to apples) sit like a cloud between me and a decent recollection of just how wonderful a piece of music the Ode to Joy is when done right. As I said in comments over at MaddowBlog, this blew away the cloud for a bit. Hope it does the same for you.
What's going on in everyone's weekend? I think the kid and I are going to brave the Farmer's Market tonight; after that, I think we'll either be in the water, or inside staying cool.
In the FYI dept:
Last night we heard David Gergen, of all people, speak on political polarization and other issues surrounding the election, at a local event. Here are a few notes:
1. Gergen said he voted for Obama (!) in the last election but is undecided about this year.
2. He praised Obama for sophisticated and smart foreign policy, said he has given us back some of our pre-Bush stature in the world community, but it's imperative we stay out of new conflicts or potential conflicts, like Syria, if for no other reason than the over-extended budget.
3. He considers Bill Clinton the only successful president we've had in recent years.
4. Re: Romney. He likes him, says if Romney could be his own man, he thinks Mitt would make a perfectly good, Massachusetts-moderate president. But, he said, Romney is not his own man. He cited Grover Norquist's comment that he and his cronies weren't looking for a leader, just someone who could sign his own name. Always pointing out the Democrats have their own brand of crazies, Gergen actually said he feared a scenario in which the (right) wing nuts take over, using a (relatively) moderate front man, such as Romney.
5. He bemoaned the lack of a political center, a spirit of bipartisanship, blah blah blah, where we could actually get things done. He praised Obama for getting a health care law passed but blamed him for "not inviting the Republicans to the party" on its development, which resulted in it not being passed by a (bipartican) majority. "If it had, we wouldn't find 26 states suing and health care providers not knowing what's coming next. It wouldn't have been this political football."
All through his talk and the q & a, Gergen appeared to be battling with himself over what he wanted to have happen and what he knew would actually happen, in the event of a GOP win. He all but said a Republican win is a tea party win, for all intents and purposes.
All through his talk and responses, he struggled with the concept of the ideal Republican Party vs. the reality. Very interesting, indeed.
I should mention he was talking to a room full of Yankee farmers, retired professors and aging activists for various causes, few of whom felt his pain. They were polite, though, to a fault and eager to praise him for not being a nut.
Posted by: Paula B | July 06, 2012 at 11:30 AM
One piece of good news on gay rights from Roanoke:
Its also a reminder that, in this one area, at least, most corporations -- almost all that are not run by CEOs who are also ultra-conservative Chtistians -- are well ahead of even the Democratic Party in accepting gay rights, SSM rights, etc.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 06, 2012 at 11:31 AM
Add Gergen's comments -- despite the idiocy of believing that 'if he were his own man' Romney would 'revert' to the 'Massachusets moderate' of sane Republicans' desperate fairy tales -- to the criticism in the last three days from Rupert, from the WSJ, and from Bill Kristol. Rupie, in fact, all but called Romney's staff idiots, a fair assessment, especially for Etch-a-Sketch Fehrnstrom, who's been with Romney for at least a decade.
Losing that end of the Republican Party -- at least losing their full support -- is matched on the other end of the Republican Party by (from Montana Cowgirl)
Which at least hints at something I've been predicting, that the TP tide is going out faster than it came in.
(And that last, as well as the problems of incompetent staff, are further similarities between the McGovern and Romney campaigns.)
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 06, 2012 at 12:24 PM
I took my girlfriend to her first symphony concert in San Francisco last weekend featuring Beethoven's Ninth (and a sublime Lux Aeterna by Ligeti). As I experienced the expected chill running up my spine at the moment that the full orchestra joins the full chorus, it was fun stealing glances at her as she sat transfixed with her mouth slightly open. As fun as I remember it being exposing a child to the symphony, it was even more gratifying seeing the reaction of a fifty year old woman. I don't know what to follow up with, though. How do you follow that act?
Posted by: advocatethis | July 06, 2012 at 12:45 PM
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis?
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 01:00 PM
despite the idiocy of believing that 'if he were his own man' Romney would 'revert' to the 'Massachusets moderate' of sane Republicans' desperate fairy tales
Actually I don't think this is complete idiocy. I do think his natural temperament is suited to political moderation (because I think when it comes to politics he's mostly a pragmatist) and that in a political environment where he had the choice he would probably opt to portray himself (sell himself, actually) as a moderate pragmatist "grown up". However those politicians are now labeled "RINO's".
Above and beyond anything else Romney says whatever he thinks will win him the election in which he's running, but having observed him as governor I still think in a political environment where he had the choice to act as he wished he'd usually choose to be a policy wonk pragmatist.
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 01:14 PM
Yeah, oddjob, I think that works.
Posted by: advocatethis | July 06, 2012 at 02:00 PM
How do you follow that act?
none of these are equivalent to the Ninth,
but all are spectacular experiences
Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", as orchestrated by Ravel
Stravinsky's "Firebird"
Holst First Suite in E flat
Beethoven's Sixth, the Pastorale, big stretches of which your friend will instantly recognize.
Handel's Messiah at Christmas; performance must include "For Unto Us A Son Is Born"
Posted by: joel hanes | July 06, 2012 at 03:47 PM
Two others to add to joel's list might be:
Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto
Carl Orff's Carmina Burana
If she exhibits a tolerance for heavy, dense loud orchestration I'd also add just about any symphony by Gustav Mahler. Perhaps the 2nd is the most easily accessible to someone unfamiliar with them (& in my mind it bears a certain resemblance to Beethoven's 9th, without being as powerfully transcendent). I'm not a fan of Mahler's music but that's because I don't enjoy his heavy orchestration. I find it turgid and kind of annoying, but I realize there are lots of Mahler fans among classical music lovers.
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 04:11 PM
Hi guys.
Sorry for the inactivity, but I was engaging in what David Brooks would no doubt describe as the great American pasttime of incurring medical bills for expensive tests due to a lack of skin in the game.
As a member of the 50 plus club I finally succumbed and got my first colonoscopy this morning. It doesn't get much more fun than that. So between last night preparing and then this afternoon sleeping off its effects I have not been in a posting mode.
Please return to the high-minded discussion before I so crudely interrupted.
Paula,
Oh, and let me say, with respect to David Gergen, it is a sign of a poorly developed political and moral skill set to be undecided between Romney and Obama. the differences between the two candidates and, most importantly, their parties, are sufficiently stark that it really shouldn't be much of a conundrum.
l-t c,
Thanks for doing this. I just woke up and figured it was time to do the same.
Jim,
That's nice news -- Roanoke is a pretty conservative part of the world.
It is supposed to be 106 here tomorrow. I cannot really fathom that.
Posted by: Sir Charles | July 06, 2012 at 04:32 PM
Dept. of Justice asks SCOTUS to take up two different DOMA challenges simultaneously.
Both are challenges to Section 3 of DOMA (the part that authorizes and instructs the federal government to refuse to acknowledge same-sex marriages even when they are legal in the states where they took place). The challenge from Massachusetts was a given since there's already been an appellate court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, but the California challenge (which has nothing to do with the Prop. 8 case) hasn't yet been argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Hmmm.....
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 05:04 PM
Paula - we should have a name for this effect, of longtime political insiders either being unable to see what's happening around them, or being unable to speak its name.
Bubble blindness, maybe?
I mean, we are total outsiders, and politics isn't our day job, but we know what the Congressional Republicans say they want, and there's no reason to think they don't actually want what they say they want. And none of us can imagine President Romney threatening to veto what a GOP-controlled Congress sends him.
"Gergen actually said he feared a scenario in which the (right) wing nuts take over, using a (relatively) moderate front man, such as Romney."
There's no way else this plays out if Romney wins, yet Gergen can't make up his mind which way he's going to vote. During the debt ceiling debate last year, The Onion had a headline, "Congress Continues Debate Over Whether Or Not Nation Should Be Economically Ruined."
Now we can substitute "Gergen" for "Congress."
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | July 06, 2012 at 05:11 PM
Noted conservative federal judge Richard Posner is no more impressed with Scalia's dissent in the Arizona immigration case than was Prup (& for largely similar reasons).
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 05:23 PM
Episcopal Church expected to OK liturgy for same-sex couples
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 05:32 PM
69 Politicians as They Were in High School
Hat tip, Sully.
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 06:01 PM
We're in Portland to attend my nephew's wedding. This is actually Round 2, since his fiancee is of Indian descent, so they had a Hindu ceremony last year. This is the Western one. Yes, we're evil multiculturalists in our family. And my gay brother is attending, though his partner is holding down the fort back home in socialist Canada. High of 90 predicted, which is by far the highest it's been here this year (sorry Sir C).
Posted by: beckya57 | July 06, 2012 at 08:03 PM
l-tc, that video is wonderful!
i know not of this gergen of whom y'all speak, but really? republicans "weren't invited" to the health care reform "party"? and really? hard to tell who to vote for? pppphhhhhhffffftttttt.
oddjob -- i'm not sure if the DOJ's request for SCOTUS to do the DOMA cases together is a bit premature, seeing how the 9th circuit won't decide until sometime after argument in september. but it is definitely normal for big cases presenting similar problems around the same time to be heard together.
it would be unusual for SCOTUS to take the california case before the 9th has heard argument. but on the other hand, 2 federal courts in CA have decided DOMA is unconstitutional, and the arguments will be along the same lines as the MA case. this is a pressing problems since the district courts have ordered the federal government to comply, and the federal government wants to comply -- but the congressional republicans' lawyers want to keep litigating and withholding benefits to same-sex couples.
Posted by: kathy a. | July 06, 2012 at 08:25 PM
Interesting NY Times opinion column arguing the constitutionality of the New Deal and its philosophy of government and policy.
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 08:26 PM
ltc -- Video had me going for kleenex. I've been kind of weepy this week -- not sure why, but I think it's the realization that a year ago, we were still shy of the debt-ceiling showdown and I thought then that maybe, we were still one country, contentious, but ultimately healthy. Fourth of July, and this year, I'm not so sure. So thanks for that recording of serendipitous joy. Long live les artistes.
Here's another, a bit more planned, if you missed it.
Posted by: nancy | July 06, 2012 at 08:53 PM
oh, nancy. how wonderful.
Posted by: kathy a. | July 06, 2012 at 09:07 PM
Paula B - but he is a nut. He is a pundit and cannot come down on the side of the obvious truth without risking his job which he is too cowardly to do. 4 & 5 alone put him off the deck. Bipartisanship? The repuglicans will do anything, I mean anything, to kick out Obama. He likes Rmoney? Well that is a major joke in iteself, the man must be an idiot. Rmoney is a major league liar, moreover he is an ideolog who is doing everything he can to hide his ideology and to top it all off, his vision of the future is the 0.01% running the whole world and the 99.99% living on the razor's edge between indentured servitude and destitution.
No fault to you for reporting but the man is an idiot. Fire his ass, foreclose on his house and deny him coverage for the consequential health issues that arise, then let's hear from him.
Posted by: KN | July 06, 2012 at 10:52 PM
advocatethis - you can't follow it. The ode to Joy pretty much is out of the park. Moreover it is just the last part of an incredibly great symphony.
Music is strnage stuff.
Posted by: KN | July 06, 2012 at 11:10 PM
Actually I very much doubt Romney is an ideologue. No one campaigns for senator against Ted Kennedy by promising to be to his left on gay issues in the Senate and then when running for president promises to fight for passage of an amendment to the Constitution barring said Americans from ever being allowed to marry, and that's just one example of how far he's flip-flopped.
He's no more attached to what he's promising now then he was when he promised the opposite while a candidate in Massachusetts. He says whatever he thinks he needs to say in order to win the election in which he's presently campaigning. To be an ideologue you have to actually believe in what you're saying. Romeny doesn't believe in anything except his aspirations to political office.
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 11:41 PM
When it comes to politics Romney is an extraordinarily shameless used car salesman.
Posted by: oddjob | July 06, 2012 at 11:46 PM
Oops! Department:
Subsection: Read the Fine Print
or "Be Careful what you wish for"
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 07, 2012 at 03:27 AM
I mentioned this above or in a previous thread, but it deserves a stand-alone comment. This is a document from Buzzfeed (And Andy Kaczinski) which purports to be the McCain opposition research on Romney from 2008. (I say "purports to be" not because I doubt that it is, but because I have no proof that it is. Certainly the newspaper stories and videos are authentic.))
In my previous mention of this I suggested sending sections anonymously to TPers and Ministers, but this is devastating anywhere. It stops -- obviously -- in 2008 and doesn't deal with taces, off-shore accounts, or the like, or the simple personality issues (afaik -- I haven't read everything). But it has a 35 page section on his time at Bain Capital -- including a tie in between Bain, Italy -- closely tied with the main office -- and an Iranian Oil Company. Also contributions from Bain emp[loyees and the like.
There are even ten pages of Romney's flip-flops on everything, and several quotes from academic research and analyses of them.
Just read it, then try to figure out how we can get it used more.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 07, 2012 at 04:07 AM
And one last comment before I shut down and anticpate our triple-digit day coming -- not so bad as Sir C, but not good.
That's to mamcy. I'll say more tomorrow, but I have the exact opposite take. For me it was last year, when the TP was rising and not visibly cresting yet, when Obama was more lost and still being a 'debt hawk' and a 'post-partisan' and when the Senate races seemed hopeless, where we'd be barely able to hold our majority -- if we could keep Manchin on the rez for anything. That;s when I started losing hope and doubting.
This year things are so much better, the TP is shrinking, the divisions are hurting the Republicans, we got the easiest possible opponent to beat and set up a landslide, we have great Senate candidates. Nope, there's a lot of sun and the clouds that are left are thinning fast.
(Ph, and the Mets, who I would have been happy if they'd finished the first half 7 games below .500 and 3 1/2 games out of fourth -- given how dismal they looked -- finished the first half 7 games over .500, 3 1/2 out of first and tied for the 2nd Wild Card. Hey, it don't hurt my mood.)
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 07, 2012 at 04:18 AM
low-tech cyclist --“Bubble blindness” Love it!
Sir Charles -- “a sign of a poorly developed political and moral skill set to be undecided between Romney and Obama.” Again, I certainly don’t think he’s stupid, just emotionally tied to losers he hopes won’t disappoint him, once again. Kind of like rooting for the old Red Sox or the Mets.
kathya
Gergen worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton White Houses, plus advised George HW on his campaign. He was editor in chief of US News and World Report, was Mark Sheild’s counterpoint on PBS long before David Brooks and currently is chief political analyst for CNN. He lives in Cambridge and teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. No slouch and knows the players, up close. But, I think his history is not a benefit but the root of his political myopia.
sully via oddjob
Love the yearbook photos. I think I told you I kind of knew Steny Hoyer in his youth. He was my freshman mentor at Maryland, which meant he shepherded a group of 6-8 newbies around for a week, teaching us the ropes. To his credit, Steny kept in touch with us during our first year, while he was president of student government. As you can see by the photo, he was the epitome of cute and a real charmer who seemed to know just about everyone at a very large school. Definitely a Big Man on Campus, even in those days, and even though he was about 5’6”.
beckya
You definitely win the multicultural-medal-of-the-week award! Hope you have a fabulously multilingual, intercontinental, interdenominational time!
advocatethis:
If she likes voices, take her to a performance of the Brahms’ Requiem, or the Faure Requiem, preferably in a cathedral or very good room. If you can get to Boston, the
Pops has an annual gospel night with its own 100+ choir in late June, that’s worth the trip from just about anywhere. Or, there’s the Santa Fe Opera, under the stars with mountains as backdrop. Bring a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine…
oddjob, re: To be an ideologue you have to actually believe in what you're saying. Romeny doesn't believe in anything except his aspirations to political office.
You got that right! We’ve given this guy the benefit of the doubt over and over, and he keeps coming up short in the integrity column. If nothing else that, to me, is the bottom line.
KN---thanks for your input, but really don’t want to see the man booted out of his house. Just his Cambridge house. He should be very happy in the basement apartment I have in mind for him in Athol, Mass, or the eight-family farmhouse by the river in Charlemont, where he can experience life as a real Merkan.
Prup, re: Be careful what you wish for
Actually, many of the Founding Fathers were not exactly Christian but Unitarian, and if we tried to copy their lives, we’d give up electricity, penicillin and the blogosphere. Do the good people of Louisiana believe the Founding Fathers would have approved of Mardi Gras? If you fund religious schools, that includes Hebrew schools, Mormon schools, Buddhist monasteries, New Age whatevers. And, why not if you’re going to fund Christian schools? I’ve never liked the way people toss around the word Christian, because I suspect they really mean only certain Christians. Are Catholics in the mix? What about Congregationalists? Or are we talking about fundamentalists here?
Posted by: Paula B | July 07, 2012 at 01:45 PM
I forgot to tell you the best thing about this night:
Gergen spoke before a crowd of 100-125 rapt, post-50ish listeners, most of whom live in areas to far out in the woods to be served by cable or broadcast television. In other words, they've never seen CNN. If they know him at all, it's from his White House connections, not his media personna. I pointed this out to him in the reception after the speech and he nearly choked on his lemonade.
Posted by: Paula B | July 07, 2012 at 01:51 PM
Make that "too far."
Posted by: Paula B | July 07, 2012 at 01:52 PM
“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion
Apparently Rep. Asshat is unaware that the religion of at least a few of the most important Founding Fathers was Deism!
I wonder if she'd support the teaching of that?
(LOL!!!! Can you imagine the heart attack she'd have over that idea?)
Posted by: oddjob | July 07, 2012 at 02:25 PM
Actually, the thought of her having a conversation with one of the authentically Christian, believing, Founding Fathers is even more delightful. What she thinks of as 'Christianity,' -- the belief in the 'Fundamentals' listed in a late 19th Century pamphlet as constituting 'all of Christianity' the combination of Biblical literalism -- based on English translations -- and the twisting of individual phrases out of context to make political points -- would have been laughable to an authentic, educated 18th Century Christian. That form of Christianity was only invented in the late 19th Century -- even the rapture hadn't been conceived of by Darby until the second (iirc) decade of the 19th.
And I can see her face when he, as an educated man of the time -- almost defined as someone who knew both Latin and Greek -- started asking her about different meanings of the Greek original and the Vulgate. She is sadly the sort who really doesn't even know she's reading a translation. She is the 'if the King James Version was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me' type of ignoramus.
But the crowning moment would be when she gave him a book on evolution as an example of the 'heresy of the Age' and found him -- not at all anti-Science -- wondering and delighting at the brilliance of our time in understanding the mechanism by which God brought about his Creation.
I hope her head wouldn't explode too messily.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 07, 2012 at 04:33 PM
"...The estimated 750,000 voters who do not have state-issued IDs in Pennsylvania surpasses President Obama’s margin of victory in 2008. Many of the voters without ID are in poor and minority communities — typically blocs that vote Democratic...."
Posted by: oddjob | July 07, 2012 at 05:20 PM
Oddjob, I've printed up that NYT op-ed and will be handing it off to everyone I can buttonhole in the near future. Professor husband added it to his binder. Workingman's Constitution . Indeed. Summary judgment.
Prup, thanks for reminding me that there's lots to look forward to, as the R's overplay one hand after another, apparently believing no one is going to care. Personally the 'envy of success' charge is the one I enjoy. Are they fucking kidding? No, they are not.
But closer to home it's their hateful, brazen willingness to extend misery at whatever price that has my attention. It's a year after the debt-ceiling madness but the unemployment effects broaden. 'No End in Sight' at the New Yorker .
Posted by: nancy | July 07, 2012 at 07:55 PM
For those of you in the heat, and because it's summer -- a pause .
Posted by: nancy | July 07, 2012 at 08:13 PM
Oddjob, the only problem with your disavowal of his ideology is that he is doing everything he possibly can to hide it. No lie is too egregigious in the quest for ascendent power and hegemony. No lie is too extreme to conceal the agenda of theocratic dominion. I find it mildly incredible that so many people do not realize just how extreme the desire for power is among the religious maniacs.
Paula B - but the question arises which of his many houses? Assuming he can move around more or less freely without having to show his credentials. How many residences does he have in New Hampshire the bastion of Live Free or Die? Does he have residences outside the jurisdiction of US courts? Has he got an option on Gingriche's moon base? Inquiriing minds want to know. (Parenthetically, your references to place names don't resonate because I have limited experience with everywhere I have ever lived.)
Obliquely, perhaps it is metaphorically just that we have to sweat through this summer election season, after all, a fail at this point might be fatal. Might, hell,it would be an un'mitt'igated disaster.
Now I will go and stew up a nice fresh Gorack for dinner, shipped to me in dry ice by Tensing Norquist.
Posted by: KN | July 07, 2012 at 09:06 PM
You are misinterpreting his dishonesty as an attempt to establish an ideology. It isn't that; it's an attempt to win an election in the face of the fact that neither major party as it's presently constructed has any place for him.
He's not authentically movement conservative and he's spent too much of his life as a Wall Street Republican (huge on big business, mostly moderate on social policy and in his personal life) to make a credible Democrat.
He lies because it's the only way to even hope he has any chance of getting the nuts of the Republican base to vote for him, not because he authentically cares about turning the country into a theocracy or the sort of hell Ayn Rand believed would be paradise.
The ones with the ideology are the GOP base. He can't win without them, so he's captive to their ideology whether he likes it or not. George W. Bush faced a similar challenge but handled it slightly better, and at a time when the nutjobs in the base weren't as powerful.
Posted by: oddjob | July 07, 2012 at 09:24 PM
As governor Romney was a typical New England Republican (business-friendly policies, moderate on social policies) until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the commonwealth to marry gay couples. That was more than he could stomach (& something he had specifically stated he opposed when campaigning for governor).
It was in the aftermath of that court decision that Romney started trying to change his colors and it wasn't too long after that it was clear he was now pivoting right for a run for the White House.
Romney has no core convictions worth the name except those attached to his political ambitions (& probably some or many regarding his family, but that's a personal matter).
Posted by: oddjob | July 07, 2012 at 09:30 PM
(Correction - George H. W. Bush!)
Posted by: oddjob | July 07, 2012 at 09:37 PM
Oddjob - you are conspicuously overlooking the ideology of his chosen religious affiliation and its stated ambitions.
In that context it is fine to lie to gentiles because they are damned and don't deserve truth in any case.
He is a closet theocrat of the first order. It will be interesting to see if he is able to fool the other xtian fundies into voting for him.
In the foreseeable worst case scenario that such an abject idiot should ascend to the primacy of Chief Executive - besides the obvious wholesale carnage that will be wrought upon the under classes, it will be interesting to see how the internicine warfare plays out between the dominionists of the apostolic reform movement and the LDS.
Then we have to weigh what the puppet masters will do with him. I apologize in advance oddjob if I am being too strident but I just cannot believe that any thinking person could entertain the idea that Rmoney is anything less than a one dimensional shadow puppet entirely at the mercy of the puppet masters. Howdy Dootey would be a better candidate.
More pathetic than that is the very idea that this idiot can garner enough support just by virtue of some cosmetic rhetorical enhancement surgery to seem in the right wing press to be in a close contest against an abject pragmatist.
Obama is not a saint or a genius, he is just pretty competent by and large. If he manages to keep our democratic republic alive for another four years he will deserve a place in history close to if not along side Lincoln.
Have you ever played the game prisoners dilemna?
Once a party defects, the only strategy that will survive is uniform distrust. That is the one thing Rmoney has been entitled to from the very beginning.
I should not post this comment in all probability because it will ostracize me from this small community. It really doesn't matter if it does.
From the perspective outside, at least here, the US is a bad joke with a few sinister nuances. They see us, that is the US vox populi as on the one hand consumed by hate by one half of the other, and absolute impotence.
Personally, I am not overly concerned with the outcome for the world in the next 20 years. I expect to be dead by then. None of it will matter to me then. But it matters to me now because I have come to understand that regardless of how we define or construct it, we all must exist within a society. My conception of society has a strong bias towards egalitarianism. There is an intellectual basis for that point of view founded upon the cogent fact that we are the first species in the long history of life to attain self awareness and actually confront the choice of our own evolution instead of being naturally de-selected due to our penchant for rejecting reason in favor of wishful thinking.
Now I will STFU.
Posted by: KN | July 08, 2012 at 12:34 AM
I have a problem. When KN made his earlier statements, and oddjob replied, I breathed a sigh of relief. Oddjob had responded simply, accurately, and far more politely than I would have been had I replied before I saw oddjob's response.
But then KN replied, in the following terms:
This is condemning a person based on nothing more than his religious belief, with no other evidence, and covering for that lack of evidence by claiming that 'members of that religion are free to lie to non-believers.'
It's not the first time I've heard that argument. In fact, because you use no names in your comment, it would be possible -- changing the term for 'non-believer' -- to imagine you had made the same comment about a Muslim, a Jew, even a Marxist -- and I have heard it made in just those terms about all of them.
In every case, it is an example of a particularly ugly type of bigotry. If the sentence had referred to a Muslim or a Jew, I have no doubt that the entire group would have condemned you with one voice.
Can I do like Rachel Maddow did for too long with Pat Buchanan, and ignore the vileness of this type of bigotry because the bigot was also a familiar face, someone who has been friendly, who has been 'accepted here for too long to make a big thing over one statement?' (I certainly can't do it because it was about Mormonism, because -- whatever disrespect I have for that delightfully loony belief structure -- it is as false, bigoted, and vile as it would have been in the context of the other religions.)
No, I'm afraid I can't.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 08, 2012 at 03:38 AM
Regarding Mitt and his Church; I suggest that you are both wrong. First, about the “puppet” charge? The LDS Church should be viewed as a giant marketing organization (missionaries are trained by marketing people, not theologians). Mitt is the Mormon marketers’ dream come true. The best advertisement for the church since the Tabneracle Choir went off to the 1893 Chicago Exposition. No matter what a President Romney might propose, even if seemingly contrary to church dogma, trust me, the leadership will figure out a way to align orthodoxy with Mitt’s agenda. Case in point: J Willard Marriott went into the booze-selling hotel business in the late 50’s and how to square booze with the Word of Wisdom? Take on J Willard? No way -- he was the ideal Mormon role model as well as being the “church’s biggest tithe payer.” So what did the Leadership do? It simply noted that Mormons are counselled to “be in this world but not be of this world” and that was how it came to be that booze in Marriott’s hotels was viewed as OK.
But, then, secondly, to suggest that Mormonism shouldn’t be a consideration also misses the point. Of course his Mormonism should be considered. Mitt is both in and of the culture of Mormonism, a religion that buys into American exceptionalism, ignores the possibility of human tragedy, and since the 50’s has been transformed into a suburban religion, i.e. Romney hasn’t a clue about city life, and brings to his world view a paternalistic Ozzie and Harriet view of family life. Moreover, as for the self selected leadership (he was a bishop), it can be characterized as all bright, all business and all anti-intellectual. He is all of the above. Which explains why he comes off to most people as being so removed, even alien.
Heathen
ex-Mormon, BYU undergraduate, secular school PhD
Posted by: RCH | July 08, 2012 at 03:27 PM
Hey guys -- it's too hot to get so heated.
We topped 105 yesterday, the hottest day I ever recall here. I guess it kicked to 106 for a minute -- less than the three minutes necessary to make it a record.
RCH,
Yours strikes me as a very good analysis about both Romney and LDS.
Posted by: Sir Charles | July 08, 2012 at 04:07 PM
First, for the most part I have no quarrels at all with RCH's analysis. In fact my only qualm with a very valuable comment is that neither KN (from long experience with him) or I was using the term 'puppet' in anything like the way he does. Had that been KN's meaning, I would have questioned it slightly, but let it go.
But it was not, and KN included the precise quote I copied -- and I am always going to get heated at something like that. The line "but their religion" (or Philiosophy in the case of Marxism) "teaches them it is permissible, even admirable, to lie to non-believers' is a way of both steroetyping all the believers into one box -- that almost any of them would reject -- but making sure that anything they attempt to say in their defense wil be ignored.
In fact, I'm saddened that KN did not at least give me a piece of obscure scripture to hunt down. The Pam Gellers and Jerry Boykins at least toss out a rare sura from the Qur'an. The anti-Semites usually find an obscure passage in the Talmud (not the OT, because they are usually unwilling to attack that to an audience of Jew-hating 'Christians'). KN didn't even give us supposed textual backing for his claim.
But the 'puppet' charge, RCH, was nothing like you were defending. Over many months and posts KN has shown himself to believe in this charge as literally as his "Howdy Dootey" reference would imply. (And -- as someone whose first crush was Princess Summerfall Winterspring and who knows that Phineas T. Bluster's brother's name was Don Jolla Bluster -- his comment is as accurate as his spelling of Howdy Doody. Okay a little showing off, aren't you, Prup?)
He really believes that everything coming from 'their side' is the result of backstage manipuklation by an unseen all powerful cabal of what i call 'Comic Book Villains.' Of course, he sees our side as acting independently, stupidly at times, with poor coordination, and tripping over each other's feet -- and considers this is 'their side's' great advantage.
Of course, this way of thinking is quite familiar, it is precisely -- except for the 'side' and the members of the 'cabal' -- the way Glenn Beck speaks about 'them' and 'us.' (Not a false equivalence. There is more truth in our portrayal of the Koch Brothers as evil manipulators -- at least they try to be -- than there is in Beck's various targets. But there is equally zero truth in the idea that our leaders are mere puppets acting out the concerted plans of hyper-intelligent schemers -- connected through a web that the Beckoid proudly claims only he is wise and knowledgeable to see -- and in the exact same idea about their leaders.)
This is the type of puppet of the "mormon Capitalistic Dominionists" that KN is speaking about. And I am simply tired of Political Platonic Paranoia in either my right or my left ear. It's false, it is disheartening -- and also gives us a 'cheap excuse for losing' and it most of all causes us to overlook the numerous weaknesses in the bumbling from their side that we can exploit.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 08, 2012 at 06:18 PM
All. It's the Sanctified Church of One Grover Norquist the Holiest with which we might better concern ourselves. Glory be.
Posted by: nancy | July 08, 2012 at 07:06 PM
Prup, ya know, I generally agree with everything you say in your last paragraph. Which is what confuses me somewhat about everything you say leading up to it.
You take me to task for not making specific citations. Well that is a reasonable complaint. I would answer simply, there are too many, and the whole subject of 'belief systems' is too vast to tackle in a comment on a blog.
Prup, I get the sense that you are arguing because you are offended or perturbed or something because I dismiss faith. Well, you are justified I guess though I am a little bemused by why my point of view in that respect should matter unless it arouses uncertainty in faith.
I don't want to have a fight here, Cogitamus is a pretty civil environment and I will admit I have done my own part in adding to the inflamatory rhetoric, so I offer a truce, let's stop arguing over it without discernable improvement in knowledge.
Can we agree we have a difference of opinion? If I thought any further argument was useful I would have made it, but I do not.
Up to you.
Posted by: KN | July 09, 2012 at 01:38 AM
Nancy - here here.
Posted by: KN | July 09, 2012 at 01:56 AM
KN: You put me in a difficult position. Yes, i would have been glad to 'agree to have a difference of opinion.' However, that is npot the reason why I find myself unable to continue the discussion. I see by your comments that you have not understood one single word I have said. You don't even understand why I found your comments so offensive that i compared them to Pam Geller or worse, why I condemned the bigoted stereotyping of your comments. You didn't even realize how 'semi-sarcastic' -- at least -- my 'request for citations' was in context.
My last paragraph was meant as a specific and pointed criticism of your own attitude, your own way of thinking, so I am unable to see how you can agree with it.
Yet the gap in communications -- which certainly can be to a major extent my fault, since I am frequently unclear and a poor writer -- is so great that further discussion seems to be, simply, useless. It would take a translator to interpret what each of us said to the other -- and it wouldn't be worth someone else's time any more than it would mine.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 09, 2012 at 02:01 AM
RCH - I appreciate your point of view, it is possible that I am wrong, I never asserted that my source of knowledge was divine. Some do. They more or less don't allow for the posibility of being wrong.
Is there a difference in those points of view?
Posted by: KN | July 09, 2012 at 02:04 AM
That is not worthy of a response.
Posted by: KN | July 09, 2012 at 02:37 AM
http://www.mormonwiki.org/Lying_for_the_Lord
Posted by: KN | July 09, 2012 at 06:45 AM
http://www.dailykos.com/search?text=romney+lies&time_begin=07%2F02%2F2012&time_end=now&text_type=any&text_expand=contains&search_type=search_stories&time_type=time_published&submit.x=20&submit.y=15&submit=1
Posted by: KN | July 09, 2012 at 06:53 AM
Oddjob - you are conspicuously overlooking the ideology of his chosen religious affiliation and its stated ambitions.
And I'm doing so based upon his behavior as governor.
I also agree with nancy.
Posted by: oddjob | July 09, 2012 at 09:12 AM
First of all, this blog is not a place to argue a doctoral dissertation or participate in a Don Rag. No one has to prove anything, nor do we have to listen to (read) anything we don't want to hear. That being said, yes, it's a pretty civilized place, one that let's a consenting adult splash around hyperbole like water in a kiddie pool on a hot day. And we do. All of us. Some more than others. But, we're also here for each other when it rains or on those days when we just need a hand to lead us through the fog.
Second, the reality of today's political culture forces us to look at faith--both general and specific--even when it doesn't matter. Sometimes faith serves as a cultural shortcut, or icon, within the context of an issue, but more likely, it's part of the window dressing that attracts us to (or repels us against) a candidate. We're not supposed to ignore a candidtate's faith, and couldn't even if we wanted to. These days, it's as important to people in a country where the majority is not affiliated with a particular faith, as much as it is those where the the Sunnis and the Shi'ites follow in step, when it counts. And, that's exactly what the campaign managers are counting on!
Prup says it's not fair to trash the faith, just the faithful. But, I think it's fair to trash the way a candidate uses his/her faith in a campaign, don't you? I was most interested in what former Mormon RCH had to say. He helped me understand how a 22 year old could be sent to Paris as a missionary. Until RCH, the whole concept eluded me. If such an assignment is about nothing more than building membership -- among the rich, at that -- there's no better place to go. (Screw the poor and the sick. Leave them to the world's Mother Theresas!) But a missionary to Paris can't really expect to gain points for altruism 40 years later, can he? In fact, the 2+ years Romney spent in a foreign culture using a second language to talk people into joining something they knew nothing about, may have been the best training he could ever find for campaigning for...anything! What else has he ever done but talk people into believing he knows the way, the truth, the light? What did he do at Bain, at the Olympics, but win people over to trust him to deliver a better tomorrow? Even in Massachusetts, where he snowed us with that earnest face, he himself felt so removed from the people who elected him that he ridiculed us to outsiders every chance he got. What else does he do every day on the campaign but say, "Try it, you'll like it!" to people living in a culture he's never known and could never fully understand? And, he's been on one campaign or another since he got back from France.
And, I guess when you're that kind of missionary, you don't have to deliver on the specifics for immediate redemption, like vaccinations, mosquito nets or clean water, or even jobs, health care and the environment. The theologians will provide the plan, when the time comes.
I also agree with nancy and oddjob.
Posted by: Paula B | July 09, 2012 at 11:39 AM
he ridiculed us to outsiders every chance he got
But not until it was pretty obvious he was trying to change his colors so he could run for president, a prime example of his innate Etch-A-Sketch going shake, shake, shake.
Posted by: oddjob | July 09, 2012 at 12:47 PM
Regarding missionary work as selling the official marketing line; There's a reason why so many recently "RMs" (that's "Returned Missionaries") get immediate employment selling home security systens door to door. And the "door to door" are almost always in the suburbs.
Promotion, marketing and selling-----all wrapped up in "50's" social conventions which have been deified and then packaged as "instant community" (which goes down best in the materialistic, highly compartmentalized, auto centered suburbs)-----Romney is in and of this culture.
Now, add to this a burning ambition manifested through self promotion (which in Mormon culture, taken together, are viewed as evidence of virtuous living), and you have Mitt Romney. Or as another former Mormon put it, "he is so pragmatic as to have no principles at all."
But again, Mitt isn't unique. It is not by some accident that the Justice Department attorney who wrote several of the more outrageous memos for John Yoo was a Mormon (who viewed himself to be a patriot). Nor is it by some accident that the two guys who wrote the torture protocals for Guantanamo were Mormons (who viewed themselves to be patriots). And that their brand of patriotism made them big bucks? All the more evidence of virtuous living. Mitt would applaud.
A short reading list, a shortcut to understanding Mormonism: Forget all about the Krakauer sensational stuff. Read Thomas O'Dea's 1957 book "The Mormons" perhaps the most insightful essay ever written (O'Dea was a Catholic sociologist). Book is somewhat dated. O'Dea was in the middle of a moving cultural stream but for the most part his insights hold up. Read anything that Wallace Stegner had to say about the Mormons (he grew up in Salt Lake City). And then, for a counter-intuitive suggestion, pick up William H. Whyte's "The Organization Man." Whyte wasn't writing about Mormonism, but, frankly, indirectly, he describes the religion and all the Mitt Romney's to a tee. It is a church of organization men run by organization men, for organization men.
Posted by: RCH | July 09, 2012 at 02:14 PM
RCH, why did the voters of Utah embrace the very nonpragmatic Tea Party candidacy of Chafitz over Bennett ? And why is Utah one of the strongest bastions of Tea Partyism (to the extent that Orrin Hatch has had to worry of late about his seat) ? The Utah Tea Party seems very unpragmatic.
Posted by: Joe S | July 09, 2012 at 02:54 PM
I wasn't going to rejoin this, but apparently I was so unclear that no one understood what i was saying, so, please let me try again.
My point had nothing to with 'don't attack the faith, attack the faithful.' My point had nothing, in fact, to do with Mormonism at all. I was complaining about a particular technique of arguing that I cosidered illegitimate, one which may become clearer if I used the Muslin equivalent. All of us have heard Islamaphobes argue in the following way:
When we hear a Pam Geller argue that way, we recognize it as hate speech -- however we feel about Islam or specific Muslims.
Now replace "Muslim" with "Mormon," replace 'terrorism' with 'dominionism' and you have the statement i blew up at -- and one which I am proud that i blew up at.
The statement "Romney is a closet dominionist because all Mormons ar closet dominionists, and the reason he's never said it is because all Mormons are allowed to lie to unbelievers" is hate speech. I don't like hate speech, whatever I think about Mormons and Mormonism. (And I not only agree with RCH, I would point out that an early example of the sort of Cultish behaviour comes from "Nixon's Mormons" Haldeman and Ehrlichman.)
I also do not believe that Mormons are dominionists at all. They are far less ambitious than that, they have no 'second coming' or 'rapture' that gives the excuse for dominionism. And -- even though I was the first person who worried here about '7 mountain theology' I am more convinced than I was that dominionism is not a serious threat. The fact is that most American 'believers' in fact 'believe in the reality of thei religion' in much the way they 'believe in the reality of their favorite television program.'
(I'd also argue that a large proportion of Americans -- even fiercely political Americans -- view politics in the same way, as a form of entertainment where you cheer the heroes and hiss the villains, but not something that really affects their own lives. But all of this is a side issue.)
Again, if there are Mormon Dominionists, Mitt Romney ain't one, and he is not "Howdy Dootey" a mere puppet in the laps of hidden puppet masters.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 09, 2012 at 04:03 PM
Joe S,
Prior to Brigham Young’s death in 1877 Utah was a predominantly Democratic territory (conservative southern variety). Moreover, the leadership was much more radical. Here’s an excerpt from a speech by 19th century apostle, Orson Pratt: “An inequality in riches lays the foundation for pride, and many other evils. . . Hence an inequality in property is the root foundation of innumerable evils. . . it is a principle orginated in hell, it is the root of all evil.”
But, shortly after Young died the church leadership decided to make another concerted effort for Utah statehood. Three times before the Congress had said no. To make Utah more attractive the leadership took three actions, all pragmatic: 1. Renounced polygamy, 2. Retried and executed John D. Lee (Mormon Indian agent involved in the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre) and 3. and for the pragmatic whopper, one Sunday throughout Utah, all the bishops announced that “the Brethren” believe that Utah will not get statehood until the territory becomes more bipartisan---so, “we would like all the members seated to my right (or left, dunno the specifics) to begin voting Republican.” (this story comes directly from the then President David O’ McKay who told his interviewer how dismayed his father was then he first voted Republican because “at that time in Hunstville there were only two Republicans; one a man named Whiskey Olson and another a man of similar repute.” At this time the leadership also embraced corporate America and began its half century long journey to the American middle class culminating by finding its preferred angle of repose in the 50’s.
The leadership, however, moved faster to the right than did the membership. Over the counsel of the now business- oriented leadership, Utah voted for FDR all four times. All this changed with Eisenhower in 1952. Utah liked Ike more than did any other state. And some elements of the church moved even farther right----mostly anti-communist motivation (later president Ezra Taft Benson was a John Birch follower as was his son, Reed). Anyway, since that time Utah as a state has moved ever farther rightward, except that is for two heathen outposts: Salt Lake City and Park City (and from time to time Ogden). Salt Lake hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since, I believe, 1971. And recent Mayor Rocky Anderson was a lefties lefty. When George W. Bush came to Salt Lake to give a speech on Veterans Day, Mayor Rocky not only didn’t show up, but while Bush was speaking in the Salt Palace “Mayor Rocky” was a block away in Pioneer Park with a bullhorn, leading a protest of the Iraq War.
A long way of getting at your very good question. The answer is, I think, a tad murky. My take: the Tea Party strength comes from the deeply R, small-town, suburban orthodoxy, which is quite strong outside urban areas and this pattern is seen throughout Mormon country everywhere. The radical right capitalized on a kind of xenophobia that emerges from the provincial and anti-intellectual side of the church. But this kind of dogmatic rigidity becomes watered down in places like Washington D.C. or Boston. There you see the Mitt Romneys awkwardly trying to be “one of the guys.” That’s where you see the rootless pragmatism. One thing for sure, Mormon political history is far more complicated than most understand.
Posted by: RCH | July 09, 2012 at 04:33 PM
I wish that it had stuck by the name "Deseret" which sounds kind of biblical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret
Posted by: Sir Charles | July 09, 2012 at 05:46 PM
Although Deseret covers parts of a half dozen other states if I recall.
Posted by: Joe S | July 09, 2012 at 06:01 PM
RCH: Having nothing to do with any other question or dispute, isn't the Utah history even more complex that you imply? It wasn't a 'steady drift rightward. The most important name in Utah politics was probably Reed Smoot (of the "Hoot-Smalley" Tarriff) far from anything callable as Left Wing.
And from 1905 to 1917 his colleague was George Sutherland, later to be one of McReynolds' Marauders on the Supreme Court. (I have a vague memory of him being slightly more flexible than the others, and also that he was considered the most intelligent of them, but I am far from sure about that.)
Then you have Arthur Watkins, who chaired the committee that censured McCarthy -- which caused his defeat in 1958. (And if you want to talk about Birchers, his opponent -- who later split the vote to elect Frank Moss, was J. Bracken Lee.)
Benson, remember, wasn't just an Eisenhower supporter, he was the Secretary of Agriculture under Ike, and the farthest right of his cabinet.
With Benson, Lee, and Skousen -- who was kicked out of the Birch Society for being too far right -- I don't think you can compare today's Utah and LDS Politics with those of the 50s, that were much farther rightward.
[btw, Paula, when I do my 'name dropping' it's not meant as a "Don Rag" merely that if I make a statement I like to back it up with evidence, not just assertion. Maybe (*hah* try certainly) I go on far too long, but that's usually 90% why i do it, the other 10% probably is showing off]
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | July 09, 2012 at 07:30 PM
Seems like Mormon modern political history might need to add a new chapter -- 'our guy in the Hamptons fundraising' . This was certainly pragmatic, but was it wise?
I've said I don't believe that ultimately the electorate will go along with allowing Mitt to out-and-out buy the WH. The Hamptons fundraising-post-Lake Winnipesaukee-vacation kind of unseemly cluelessness surely is not lost on even Joe the Plumber. But, I could be wrong...see the Horsey cartoon.
Just hope the people at TeamObama convince the President to skip 'the Vineyard' vacation this year. Yes, I know -- no one agrees with me about this. I said the same thing last year. But every frame counts right now, I think.
Posted by: nancy | July 09, 2012 at 07:33 PM
nancy, the press has already reported that Obama will not be vacationing at Martha's Vineyard this summer (because the campaign's concerned about the appearance).
Posted by: oddjob | July 09, 2012 at 07:37 PM
No Vacation at Martha’s Vineyard for the Obamas
Posted by: oddjob | July 09, 2012 at 07:42 PM
Oddjob, good to hear. I'm sort of thinking Flo-ri-da. Disneyworld followed by a nice rest at someplace like Sanibel Island. Then a wrap-up at Camp David. With true friends, young and old.
Posted by: nancy | July 09, 2012 at 10:19 PM