Peddlers and Meddlers

Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution,
in which transactions are manufactured instead of products,
wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity,
and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured
while American communities fall apart  
--Greed and Debt, Matt Taibbi 

They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers
They buy and they sell
They destroyed your city
They’ll destroy you as well 
--Early Roman Kings,
 Bob Dylan 

Yo, we at war  
We at war with terrorism, racism  
And most of all, we at war wit ourselves  
--Jesus Walks, Kayne West 

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"One Nation Under God" and "In God We Trust" have been co-opted as the mottos of today's Republican Party and express their vision for America as voiced in their recent national convention.  Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan even bemoaned the fact that we were not MORE Christian: 

Slate wrote, "Ryan wants the Obama administration to explain why the Democratic platform doesn't include the word God in it. 'It’s not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision,' the VP hopeful told Fox News this morning. 'I’d guess you’d have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform.'"

But what about those of us who do not Trust in God?  Who speaks for us?  Why am I bound to their beliefs?  We are not "One Nation Under God," but rather a pluralistic society founded upon a humanistic philosophy which transcended the mandatory belief in a personal god.

Our government was not based upon religious belief but rather the freedom from any imperative -- governmental or otherwise -- to believe or not to believe.  Separation of Church and State was the watchword; citizens could overdose on religion, or not, depending upon their own predilections.  The bible is not the Constitution, and the Constitution is the seminal document for the United States -- a document not to be contravened by any other dogma.

The U.S. is no longer a bastion for White Anglo Saxon Protestants; their domination has been thrown to the charnal house of history. Try though the two Republican nominees might, the days of what they are peddling has past.  They cannot legislate morality any more than they can live morally.

Mitt is right: We deserve better.  But their convention did NOT tell us is how we can achieve the fabulous wealth and security that will supposedly come of bootstrap-pulling and dogma-adherence.  The Republicans say that the government has failed us, yet in a non-sequitur, advocate cutting food stamps, a program which has been successful in alleviating hunger in a nation in which one of ten of us suffers from "food insufficiency" (=hunger). For such a religious platform, their proposed policies are awfully penurious and punitive toward the poor.

Among a sea of believers in the Prince of Peace, why have we none but advocates for Warriorhood?  When did the worldly paid warrior enter into a neo-pantheon of gods? While our nation flounders while needing to create millions of jobs, it instead borrows money to fight elective and meaningless wars.  Why is war the only foreign policy we consider?  When did warfare become the American way of life?

Reason and logic had left the building in the RNC.

Radically Left

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it
--Dave Barry
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[Ranger will not be re-wallowing (to quote Dick Cavett) in the sorrow-porn of the day, each agency vying for the new angle, like the "Children of 9-11". Not today.]

Today we return to our homey Sunday homily form --

Sunday Homily: Was Jesus the world's biggest bleeding heart liberal, or, Would Glen Beck call Jesus a Bum?

This entry was inspired by Paul Longgrear's recent letter to the editor of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer sent to Ranger by a sleeper agent. Col. Longgrear, a minister and a brother-in-arms, objects to the idea of a "fair share plan" which he implies led to the socialization of this Great Nation and an endlessly raised debt ceiling.

Both Lisa and Ranger have conservative friends with strong notions of how to keep Old Glory flying high. It seems they are often emotional reactions which involve keeping certain people (= parasites) away from the pot of goodies that they have not earned, or alternately, which keep them parasitzed.

The parasites are people who need some assistance to make ends meet, and the fear is that they will keep the rest of us on a hamster wheel working for their salvation, or at least their existence. This is an adversarial relationship which presupposes that life would be better if the parasites could be separated from their host.

Many of these conservative thinkers also hold a strong Christian religious stance. Still, they also accept the rectitude of the use of torture in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), whose 10th birthday we commemorate today.

This all brought Ranger back to the founder of their religion, Jesus -- an unprivileged man conceived by an unwed mother and born in a stable. He was dedicated to the concept of uplifting the non-productive parasites in his society, i.e. the early Christians before they developed mega-churches with big screens, cheerleaders and quad sound systems.

Jesus was a thorn in the side of the Roman status quo who had consolidated power amongst the elite. Instead of genuflecting to authority, Jesus provided free wine and loaves and fishes on a socialist basis (= commodities). He also performed healing miracles for the most unsavory amongst his society (= free health care). Jesus was better than an EBT card.

These miracles tried to give the masses their "fair share" of the largesse of a newly sent Godson. "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). He was not speaking to the bankers.

As for the issue of illegals, wasn't the unverified journey to Bethlehem by a future mother of God an attempt by the Romans to deal with illegal immigration? And how did that end up for the Roman Empire?

Jesus's message formed the basis of a new religion which appealed to the hoi polloi of the times, and is now the predominant religion of the developed Western nations. But somehow, the founder's method was warped into something called prosperity gospel, and many Christians think that God somehow holds those in lower socio-economic rungs in disdain.

However, the words of their founder belie this notion:

"Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor ..." (Luke 18:22; Matthew 19:21);

"But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?" (James 2:7)

"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: [yea, though he be] a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee" (Leviticus 25:35)

"I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak" (Acts 20:34)

"He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty" (Luke 1:53). "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Exodus 22:21).

Of course, there is nothing that should link the fantasies of a nomadic desert people with the workings of our society or governing policies. The Bible ain't the Constitution and we are already a socialist nation. Since Christianity is a socialist dogma, Ranger concludes that religion is the problem and not the solution.

We seem to be led by the mish-mash that is the Old Testament meets the New: An eye for an eye, yet turn the other cheek -- "forgive up to seventy times seven". Do we/should we follow Christian values when dealing with religious enemies? Should "values" issues (homosexual rights; abortion rights) even be a part of national political discourse?

If someone would turn some water into wine, Ranger says he'll drink to the elimination of biblical dogma from the halls of Congress.

--Ranger and Lisa

A Good German

--Thanks from a Grateful Nation,
h/t to reader Underground Carpenter

Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do.
You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?
--Happy Talk, South Pacific

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me,
What a long, strange trip it's been
--Truckin', Grateful Dead
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[This wonderful road sign outside of Las Vegas was snapped by faithful reader Underground Carpenter. It strikes us all a little funny that the veterans of the GWOT only rate a highway "segment", but we guess everything's in short supply these days. Salut.]

The recent resignation of Foreign Service officer and former Marine Matthew Hoh shows the invalidity and misapplication of Counterinsurgency policy in the U.S.'s approach to warfare in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©).

When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed (U.S. Official resigns Over Afghan War).

If a former Captain is the senior U.S. State Department civilian at province level, then we are hurting. Former Captains lack the experience level to be anything other than Captains; they should not be tapped as senior U.S. officials. It is doubtful that a Lieutenant Colonel (05) would be sophisticated enough to fulfill this function.

Said Hoh in a bizarre interview statement, sounding every bit a character from The Forgiven:

"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."

A senior State department official heartily endorsing killing is not a way forward. When State Department officials think and talk like Marine Captains, we are on shaky ground. Department of State and Department of defense are supposed to be separate agencies. When killing is happy talk, that person should not be at State. One must wonder if this gung-ho attitude has become de riguer at DoS.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Why has nobody resigned because the war has become a criminal endeavor? Mr. Hoh accepts the premise that the war is justified; he is merely questioning the why's and wherefore's. But like everyone else, he clearly accepts the "how" of the war. The entire debate is about how versus why.

"Why" should precede the acceptance or obtaining of strategic or tactical objectives. the how's and why's will never tally up because the war is neither just nor proportional, nor does it address the security concerns of America. Fighting in Afghanistan's insurgent civil war is not justifiable for the U.S. in any rational discussion.

"At one point," Hoh said, "I employed up to 5,000 Iraqis" handing out tens of millions of dollars in cash to construct roads and mosques. His program was one of the few later praised as a success by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

This is a point beyond rationalization. We the American people pay taxes to buy services administered by government. We pay taxes to perpetuate our lives and value systems. One of these is the separation of church and state. Yet here we have Mr. Hoh stating that our hard-earned tax dollars are being spent to contruct -- mosques?

How strange and bizarre is that? We are fighting phony wars supposedly fighting Islamic extremism, which is propogated in islamic mosques by extremist Imams, so what do we do? Build more mosques, which help perpetuate the cycle and violates the concept of separation of church and state which our democracy holds so sacrosanct.

Why does the U.S. electorate accept this insanity?

Democracy Antithetical to Religion

Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Lord it's good enough for me
--Traditional spiritual
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Rabbi Michael Gold wrote in his online newsletter this week about the fundamental incompatibility of religion and democracy.

For everyone's talk of democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Fundamentalist's belief in the notion of Christian motivation, the Rabbi offers a strong refutation:

"For traditional Judaism, God's authority is the basis of all life including government policy. When God speaks from Mount Sinai in this week's portion, the Ten Commandments are not put to a vote.

" It took centuries of Enlightenment thinking for democracy to become the norm in Europe and eventually in America. Sadly, it also took centuries of war over religion to realize that there must be an alternative path other than religion to government leadership. Democracy and classical Christianity is as difficult a match as democracy and classical Judaism."

Gold discusses how democracy has become the handmaiden of various religious groups in modern America who would hijack the process to bully through their agenda. And if democracy is a poor fit with Judaism and Christianity, how much less so is it with Islam, which has not benefited from 300 years of enlightenment thinking.

I believe one of the mistakes of American foreign policy is to use the language of democracy - voting and human rights - in our diplomacy with the Islamic world. Democracy is not part of their language. Perhaps we ought to be speaking the language of religion ("literally what is Allah's will?") in dialogue with the Islamic world.

Food for thought.