Illiteracy in the Marble Halls

 

Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.” ― Eugene Victor Debs

 

In defiance of the U.S. Constitution, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Lauren Boebert, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano[1], and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have declared their support for a state religion based on Christian nationalist and Christian dominion dogma[2].

The First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Read that first part again. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

Lauren Boebert, among others of the far-right authoritarian political spectrum didn’t read that part. I can only wonder if they have read the rest of the Constitution.

In a Sunday, June 28th, 2023, speech at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo., Lauren Boebert argued, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church,” Boebert told the crowd, which applauded. “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia hard-liner, adding her support to the idea of a Christian Nationalist government declared: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian Nationalists.”

Reflecting the views of Boebert’s and Green’s soulmate Michele Bachmann who once said, “If you want take away my religious liberties,” she once said in a radio interview with Lars Larson, “you can advocate for that but you do it through the constitutional process and you don’t intimidate and no politician should give away my religious liberties or yours.” Somehow, in that muddled brain, she equated the call for gay rights as a move to take away her religious rights, and then assures us that her religious rights are ensconced in the Constitution; that human rights are a violation of her interpretation of the Constitution. Can she perceive why the term “batshittery” was invented to describe her incoherent ramblings?

The more conservative elements within the Christian religion have translated Bible verses in any manner that they feel promotes their views. It doesn’t matter what the scripture in question says, it only matters how it can be twisted, spun, bent, and mangled. That same thinking drives those Christians into reinterpreting the Constitution, our history, the words of the Founders, and the pronouncements of political figures. Anything can mean anything to the semi-literate.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, among a legion of others — thrive on fear and hate, the two-sided coin that drives the reactionary right.

A wise man once told me, “Do not ever- ever — make a crucial decision when you are in the throes of fear or hate. Nothing good can come of it. Wait until your senses return, and then decide.”

It’s unfortunate for our country that many of our politicians have not had a wise man or woman in their lives.

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[1] Mastriano came to national prominence by leading protests against COVID protocols, and became one of the leading voices in attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He literally brought bus-loads of supporters to the Jan. 6 insurrection and appeared to cross police barricades during the riot. He has spread Islamophobic conspiracy theories and tweeted out QAnon content. He pals around with white militias and prays to God to protect Confederate monuments. He once said women who have abortions should be charged with murder.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/doug-mastriano-christian-nationalism-dominionism-nar.html

[2] Connecting Christian Nationalism and Dominion Theology
https://mindshiftpodcast.medium.com/connecting-christian-nationalism-and-dominion-theology-93deb8c60237

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Dress Code

 

Photo by Elin Tabitha on Unsplash

 

I wasn’t expecting entertainment with my burger, but an argument at the next table left me with a sense of hope for American humanity that the hamburgers do not provide. A couple began a conversation in which the man offered a scathing comment on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and on the requirement in Afghanistan that women wear the mobile tent known as the burqa.

“Forget the Burqa, Chris. To hell with women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran.” The woman said. “The way you think of women rights here in your own country is a difference only of degree. You are little different than some insane imam in some backwater fundamentalist country. We send our military to Afghanistan to fight against Islamic Terrorism and the Islamic need to force their beliefs on others, while we Christians do the same thing in our own country.”

“Debra, I can give you a dozen reasons just off the top of my head for keeping our military in those so-called ‘backwaters,” Chris said. “January sixth was a wake-up call. We can fight terrorism on their turf, or on ours. I prefer to see them on the defensive. We must give the women of Islam the rights due any human.”

Debra was an attractive blond that commanded my attention when I entered the restaurant. She, and Chris were dressed in business attire, and what man doesn’t love a woman in a pencil skirt?

“We, and they, use any opportunity- all opportunities- to keep women subservient, docile, and submissive,” Debra said. “There is a pill called Plan B that takes care of unwanted pregnancy. Do you know what the major objections to the pill in this country were before its FDA approval?”

“It’s abortion and it’s pro-choice, both currently out of favor among the misogynist element, which seems to mean a LOT of our politicians.”

“That, too, but I was thinking in terms of the pill’s history. Before it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the largest body of complaints received by the FDA was that the availability of the drug would promote promiscuity. The self-righteous are not concerned about the health and welfare of women who use the pill, of its side effects, or even of moral issues surrounding abortion and pregnancy prevention. No, the freaks are concerned about behavior. A woman who can make decisions about pregnancy without a man is out of the man’s control, and that cannot be tolerated in this culture.”

“You’re out of touch,” Chris answered. “We’re trying to advance women’s rights, not deny them.”

“If this were a culture promoting women’s rights, the term ‘glass ceiling’ would be a quaint, archaic idea that passed through the culture for a week and was then forgotten. That phrase was coined in 1978 and it is still relevant almost half-a century later. Your alleged desire to advance women’s rights seems to be a tedious process. For all the lip service you pay, you are nevertheless threatened by assertive and independent women. All the holier-than-thou religious jargon you wrap around the abortion issue is nothing more than your constant reminder to women that if you can’t control your women, your society and your laws can. It always comes back to control.”

Debra glared at her partner, who sat in apparent stunned silence. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. She picked up her purse, laid some currency on the table, and walked out. Chris followed her.

I enjoyed a brief fantasy involving Debra in that form-fitting skirt: together, we fought for bodily autonomy and destroyed the glass ceiling. She was my romantic partner and my crusading associate. I imagined our sex life and our shared experiences. I pictured her in jeans, shorts, and negligee. I saw us dining at our intimate, candle-lit table.

And the fantasy crashed. With my luck, she can’t cook.

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Celebrating Slaughter

 

Photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/docmonstereyes/
Photo originally posted at https://www.flickr.com/photos/72538882@N00/5507547759
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AR-15_Build_IMG_9439_(5507547759).jpg

Facebook, Twitter (!?) and social media in general, do not offer a forum for robust debate on contentious subjects, making it necessary to keep discussions focused narrowly on select topics. Nowhere is that more evident than in arguments over “Gun Rights” vs. “Gun Control.” In those discussions, pro-gun advocates (and gun control people) have learned to derail arguments with questions and statements unrelated to the opening argument or comment. In a recent example, a statement saying that states with strict gun laws experience more gun violence was met with acounterclaim: immediately, a response claimed that the counterclaim did not explain Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit.

Notice that the response did not affirm nor deny the accuracy of the comment that a correlation exists between looser gun laws and higher gun violence, but instead chose to change and expand the subject by bringing in an exception to the rule, by raising questions of gun trafficking and gang violence, and thereby increasing the complexity of the discussion and veering it away from a debunked comment while simultaneously forcing that complexity into the narrow confines of social media.

We see the same tactics used by Congress, such as the July 2022 response to the Uvalde, Texas massacre: Missouri Representative Billy Long blamed the mass murders of school children on Roe v. Wade- a non-sequitur. Abortion and the slaughter of children in schoolrooms are two entirely different topics, necessarily addressed by different laws and social standards. One addresses bodily autonomy and religion, the other concerns the protection of viable life.

Again, in June 2022 a Fox News host Jesse Waters blamed the Buffalo NY slaughter at a supermarket on the wearing of medical face masks. Really, Jesse? Ten blacks murdered by a white supremacist and you want me to believe he did it because he wore a mask? How do these circus performers and carnival barkers get voted into high office and well-paid roles as journalists?

Remember when the title, “World’s Dumbest Congressperson” passed from Louie Gohmert to conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene when, in May 2028 and prior to her election a Georgia’s representative, she claimed the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was actually a “false flag” planned event?

And then there is the propaganda device known as The Big Lie. Texas Senator John Cornyn got educated by California Governor Gavin Newsom when Cornyn claimed that California gun laws do not stop gun crimes, Newsom offered statistics showing that Cornyn’s Texas had a higher rate of gun offences than California. Why don’t our government officials check the facts before they make their fallacious claims? Could it be because we are led by dim-witted anti-intellectualists?

Gun control advocates sometimes use the same tactic, but from my experience, generally when they show a lack of firm grasp of the facts.

In early February 2023, members of Congress began celebrating mass shootings by wearing AR-15 pins, further encouraging strident militia types and wannabees to engage in Gish galloping non-sequiturs against those who seek a solution to the slaughter.

Could it be that those who seek to distract and derail a debate are those that know they have lost the debate, but rather than withdraw, try to force the thread into an endless pursuit of ever-changing topics?

Give up? The answer is “Yes.”

Welcome to ‘Murika, y’all.”

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Injustice Served

 

Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

"There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain — do something to make more money yourself.”

“They say that if you give your children too much, they don’t get the joy out of work. They just want the unearned things to keep falling from the sky.” Gina Rinehart (BrainyQuotes.com)

(That, from a woman for whom $18 billion fell from the sky.) [1]

The world’s richest woman and the universe’s worst poet [2], Australian mining heiress Gina Rinehart, in 2012 told the Sydney Mining Club that Australian miners were “too expensive.” She thinks they should work for two dollars a day, like African workers. Notice that she wants to bring everyone’s wages down to those of African miners, and not to help elevate those African miners to the realm of her Australian workers. You might remember Ms. Rinehart from an earlier statement, in which she wrote, “If you’re jealous of those with more money… spend less time drinking or smoking and socializing and more time working.” Similar to her reluctance to assist in a more equal economy, she wants workers to spend more hours at their labors, thus increasing the profits of the parasitic Plunderbund.

She claims superpowers by pointing to her 24/7 work hours as an example for all of us. She calls upon us common folk to work hard, invest and reinvest our meager wages, to find our own way to pleonexia — the greed that knows no limits. The lady does not, however, explain how we are to save funds for that investment on the wages she would like the rich to pay. Neither does she enlighten us as to what we are to do about the loss of retirement and investment funds, by those of us who did work 24/7, to pay executive bonuses to people who drove their companies into near-bankruptcy and caused a worldwide recession.

I’ve seen a pattern in the attitudes among the uber-rich toward the working class: the more money they inherit, the more they claim to have made their fortunes through hard work. Isn’t it interesting that most of those who actually — you know — worked for their money share an empathy for the plight of the working class?

Of course, there exist parasites at both ends of the economic spectrum. I once provided an acquaintance with a key to my apartment and the use of my computer and printer to aid him in his job search. His unemployment compensation neared an end and he had fallen on his savings to survive. Food stamps and the kindness of friends and associates saved him from homelessness. He spent his time while I worked to print out Drudge Reports, listen to Rush Limbaugh rants, and write letters to the editor in which he lambasted liberals for their welfare mentality. The only evidence I saw of a job search lay in a stream of letters to his former employer, in which he pleaded for his old job. The very wealthy are not alone in their willingness to leech from those who provide them. But the very wealthy possess the resources to persuade millions of workers to invest in the fallacy of trickle-down economics with their labors and their votes.

A Facebook friend and fellow blogger writes that we should refrain from name-calling when we discuss the crimes of right-wing extremists and their effective propaganda machine, but I disagree. I only regret that the legions of lawyers available to the right-wing rich render me unable to call the greediest of them and the sheer stupidity of their ditto heads by appropriate names. That, and the fact that the English language does not provide words worthy of their lack of common morality.

Ethan Couch, a Tarrant County, Texas teen got drunk, killed four people in an auto accident and was sentenced to ten years of probation after the teen’s lawyers pleaded that his father’s wealth instilled in him a lack of personal responsibility and a psychological condition called “Affluenza.” [1] The boy will spend time in a $450,000 per year luxury rehabilitation center in Southern California. [2]

Shaun Goodman also got drunk and led police in a high-speed chase through the streets of Olympia, Washington. He wrecked his $70,000 Ferrari by smashing it into two cars and a house. Yes, a house. While he waited for the trial for his seventh DUI arrest, a judge signed an order permitting Goodman to attend the 2013 Super Bowl game in New York. He is now serving a one-year work-release sentence, leaving behind a simple and unanswered question: has justice been served? [3]

Those two cases might lead one to wonder whether we have a two-tiered justice system, or if an exchange of money in plain, brown envelopes might have aided the decisions. I am working hard to quiet the cynical voice that urges me to opine the latter.

While the American inheritance-class wealthy deny they are engaged in class warfare, Ms. Rinehart and her fellow plunderers encourage it [6]. They have the the power, but the working class the numbers. The Story is in how that balance affects the future

Citations:

[1] https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/18b-cash-pile-lets-rinehart-play-both-sides-of-energy-transition-20221205-p5c3tq
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/everyone-is-laughing-at-australias-richest-persons-ode-to-mining-2012-2
[3] https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/ethan-couch-affluenza-10-years-since-deadly-drunk-driving-crash/287-a8ea72a1-592e-49dd-a097-fd1bb80e237e
[4] https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-teen-drunk-driving-probation-affluenza-20131212-story.html
[5] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-arrested-on-suspicion-of-eighth-dui-after-seattle-hit-and-run/
[6] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866

Suggested Reading:

Shipley, David K. The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
Bregman, Rutger. Utopia for Realists. Back Bay Books, 2016.
Correspondents of the New York Times, Class Matters. Times Books, 2005.
Desmond, Matthew, Poverty By America. Crown, 2023

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The Great American Dumb-Down

 

Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

“For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes.” — Francis Bacon

“Because it takes nothing on faith, science is inherently antiauthoritarian, and a great equalizer of political power. That is why it is under attack.” -Shawn Otto, The War on Science, p. 41, Minneapolis (2016 )

So-called “pro-lifers” view the “ball of about one hundred fifty cells constituting a five-day-old embryo as deserving of the same moral and legal protections as fully developed human beings.” Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, New York (2005), p.2

The Florida Board of Education Chair said in 2019 that he “won’t support any evolution being taught as fact at all in any of our schools.” https://churchandstate.org.uk/2019/08/new-florida-board-of-education-chair-i-wont-support-any-evolution-being-taught-as-fact-at-all-in-any-of-our-schools/

The March 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores decision by the Supreme Court ruled that three kinds of pills are abortifacients that are not, in fact, abortifacients. The scientific definition of pregnancy that was adopted by the federal government states that pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterine wall. Religions define pregnancy as occurring when an egg is fertilized. Many eggs are flushed naturally. Is nature (or “God”) performing abortions? The court sided with Hobby Lobby even though the ruling was contraindicated by federal regulations and the scientific definition. — Shawn Otto, The War on Science, Minneapolis (2016)

More than a third of Florida’s New College teachers will not return for the 2023 Fall semester due to the governor’s “Dumb-Down” policies affecting the school. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/07/18/new-college-florida-ridiculously-high-number-faculty-are-gone/

“15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense”
“Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don’t hold up.
By John Rennie on July 1, 2002
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/

That is a tiny sample of a large list of stories about the anti-intellectualist movement in the United States about efforts to restrict knowledge in the American population. As the U.S. continues to embrace policies that refute science, reason, and logical analysis, we can expect another nation or other nations to pick up the slack. In that event, America will become just another second- or third-world country fighting for survival in a world that finds it irrelevant.

My interest in the dumbing down of my country began sometime prior to 1957 when I was a pre-teen. In that year the Red Scare created in large part by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Unamerican Activities Committee fizzled to an end. but long before that, the curiosity of a child led me to a pursuit of knowledge not based on magic, superstition, or opinion. I wanted to know.

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A man in a red suit stood on a roof, Standing next to the chimney and waving to the crowd of holiday spectators below. My parents had driven my brother and me across town to see the Christmas lights and Santa and his magic reindeer. Santa didn’t go down the chimney, he only waved and ho-ho-hoed at the crowd below. It was the reindeer that held my attention, though. They didn’t move. And they glowed by a light within. I realized that the deer were plastic, and that Santa was never going to go down the chimney because he was too big and his red suit was too clean. It’s all fake, I told myself.

I continued to feign belief in Santa for the goodies it got me on Christmas morning, but I had become convinced that Santa was a story made up by adults to entertain kids. Disbelief in Santa soon led to skepticism about elves and fairies and unicorns. By the time I entered high school, I was aware that magic men did not walk on water, donkeys didn’t talk, kangaroos didn’t migrate from Australia to Israel to hop a boat, and stories of zombies and walking dead were…well, stories. Those tales led to a love of literature and reading the Bible resulted in a love of poetry. But even a child can be skeptical of extravagant claims, even those made in so-called “holy” books.

An adult told me that God punishes non-believers by torturing them an eternity. An authority figure who I respected attempted to indoctrinate me into religion with some Christian dogma so obviously fallacious that even a post-toddler saw through it. Then, a third-grade teacher refuted the school’s science book by telling the class that condensation and evaporation did not exist; God made the rain, she said. Later, a senior warrant officer demanded that I formally deny my atheism or receive a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge. I believed him. I learned later that his threat was illegal. I had grounds for a lawsuit against the US Navy.

A thread of anti-intelligence weaved through those experiences, and others. Each demanded that I suspend reason and accept their demands for belief or face certain punishment. Each demanded that I suspend intellect to accept the speaker’s version of reality on faith- that is, on opinion and indoctrination. The lessons I learned in my science books made sense; I could grasp the concepts and the reasoning behind the claims. I struggled to believe the stories about a magic man who lived in the sky, who created humans by speaking them into existence, and who would consign me to a burning pit of fire forever if I questioned that story. Now, in the age of a resurgence of 1930s-style of fascism, anti-intelligence legislation rolls out of Washington, D.C., and American state capitals with metronymic frequency.

The leap into the denial of the existence of supernatural beings was automatic. It lay in waiting from the moment that I realized those plastic reindeer weren’t real.

I turn first to the Wikipedia web site and its citations first when seeking definitions. The opening segment of the “Intellectualism” page reads: “Intellectualism is the mental perspective that emphasizes the use, the development, and the exercise of the intellect; and also identifies the life of the mind of the intellectual person. In the field of philosophy, the term intellectualism is synonymous with rationalism, knowledge derived from reason.

My concern is not with those “who scorn intellectuals, but those who hold in contempt formal education, critical thinking, and intelligence in favor of magical thinking. It is magical thinking above all in my experience that has pushed the United States down to such levels of anti-intellect that our leaders (and I use the term loosely) are too often represented by the likes of James Inhofe, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Antonin Scalia, where they could use their fundamentalist (and therefore, unthinking) religion to force American laws into line with their unscientific, irrational and uninformed opinions. We are told we must teach children a creationist view of science disguised as “Intelligent Design,” and that our religion requires us to enact laws that dictate the control the bodily autonomy of women. Christianity forces itself on Americans with totalitarian authority in its passage and enforcement of anti-abortion laws by citing the Bible as a source of the “abortion is murder” meme. That, of course, raises the question: why do we give a flying frog what the Bible says?

Religion IS anti-intellectualism. But we all hold beliefs and opinions that run counter to the rules of reason and logic. So, is the belief in a supreme being so bad?

Well, yes, it is when you work to force those beliefs and opinions on others through the power of legislation and the courts. The separation of church and state does more to keep society sane and in search of truth than any magic man in the clouds could do.

Fundamentalist religion is not alone in its drive to dumb down Americans. The current batch of legislation from around the country reveals a white supremacy strain in the teaching of American history. Educators are told that they cannot teach the role of blacks in America’s past through the contents of Critical Race Theory and books like Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project. The anti-intelligence faction believes (that is, of the opinion) that truth is what consensus believes. Are so concerned with the feelings of a few delicate sensibilities that we will deny our own history?

We can only engage in the uncharitable and un-Christian hope that the rest of the world is engaged in the same Dumbing Down process as America has embraced. Otherwise, we might well see third world nations outpace us in scientific advances. Is that the fate the holders of power in Washington wish for us? It certainly seems so, doesn’t it?

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Suggested Reading:

Forrest, Barbara & Gross, Paul R. Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. Oxford, 2004.

Freeman, Charles. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Hofstadter, Richard. Intellectualism in American Life. Vintage, 1963.

Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Metropolitan, 2004.

Jacoby, Susan. The Age of American Unreason. Pantheon, 2008.

Levitin, Daniel J. Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era. Dutton, 2017

Mooney, Chris & Kirshenbaum, Sheril. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Basic, 2009.

Otto, Shawn. The War on Science: Who’s Waging it and Why it Matters. Milkweed Productions, 2016.

Specter, Michael. Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Penguin, 2009.

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God's Graffiti

 

Photo by author

I’ve almost finished reading Revolutionary Characters, by historian Gordon S. Wood, and have recently read biographies on George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. I intend to squeeze in Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton as soon as I can acquire the books, and I’ll look up the others on the internet. I look especially for information on their religious views and, so far, I have found nothing to indicate that the founding fathers were the devout men that Christian apologists and evangelicals would have us believe. Most of the Founders were deists, the prevailing sentiment held by the educated upper classes of the time, and they held in varying degrees of indifference and contempt the evangelical Christianity of the masses.

The religious right in this modern age like to point to references to God in the founders’ letters and documents as proof of the religiosity of the framers of the Constitution, but the God of the deists bore no resemblance to the angry meddling God whose words contemporary evangelist would have inscribed on every surface of every federal facility on the planet and taught as science in the classrooms of our public schools. Appeals to God in those letters and documents were appeals to Providence, not to some denominational creator who heaps beneficence on the faithful and severe judgment on those not obedient to His authority as expressed by one or another interpretive branch of His dictates.

George Washington, ever aware of his public image, attended church to display his affinity with his constituency in much the same way modern politicians, steeped in corruption and self-interest, cater to a religious constituency to appear as one of the people. Alexander Hamilton used Christianity to achieve political ends and did not express adherence to the faith until the early nineteenth century, decades after his prominence in Revolutionary politics. John Adams openly expressed in belief in deism but thought church attendance essential to man’s morality. Thomas Paine’s masterpiece, The Age of Reason, promoted deism and criticized Christian doctrine. Benjamin Franklin considered himself a deeply religious man, but in his writings, he often refers to “the deity” and “providence,” without mention of Christianity. He endeavored to virtue, but of course, virtue does not rely on religion for its practice or existence. James Madison rigorously defended and promoted religious freedom. Of the founding fathers, only John Jay and Patrick Henry attested to orthodox Christianity. They did not belong to the class of educated men who adhered to the prevailing theology of deism among the landed elite in the northern colonies. Evangelical Christianity was, to those who aspired to a republican aristocracy in the Age of Enlightenment, the religion of the unenlightened masses.

The furor over the place of religion in patriotism began with Francis Scott Key’s words in the Star-Spangled Banner: “And this be our motto: In God is our trust.” We can assume without further research that the god referred to is the Judeo-Christian deity.

Proselytizers and enforcers of religious have only the motto “In God We Trust” as a wedge and as justification for their attempts to force fundamentalist Christianity on an entire nation, but that graffiti did not appear on American currency until the Civil War's religious revival period, at a time of religious revival in the United States and was not adopted as the national motto until the Eisenhower administration in 1956, when the aristocratic values inherent in the Age of Enlightenment ceased to have relevance. Its acceptance as the national motto was accelerated when positioned as a response to “Godless Communism”.

The most militant atheist quarrels with inscriptions of the national motto on currency and the Ten Commandments on the face of federal buildings, but most Americans view those allusions to religion with ambivalence. The motto refers only to “God” and does not promote the god of a favored group, and the Decalogue represents a historical event and is not the sole province of any particular philosophy. The exact wording belongs to the Judeo-Muslim-Christian heritage, but identical admonitions come from multiple cultures and religions ranging from the code of Hammurabi to definitions of proper behavior in Scientology. It does not require religious thought to know that rules set forward in the Commandments represent common-sense applications for an individual to live by if he is to live at peace in a society. The problem many deists have with religious graffiti on taxpayer-funded property lies in the rigid enforcement by brown-shirt religious leaders to limit those inscriptions to their particular faith. Why not include Buddhism’s Eightfold Path, and the Sutras of Patanjali? Buddhism and Hinduism, are, after all, well represented in American society, as are Wicca, Paganism, Scientology, and any number of groups and doctrines that have sprung up to challenge the rigid and chauvinist dogma of Christianity and its history of torture, mass murder, and denial of reason and free thought to enforce its adherence.

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Cross Dressing on the Elizabethan Stage

 

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

In William Shakespeare’s time, the depiction on stage of a young, respectable, unmarried woman ran counter to social conventions. When playwrights presented contemporary works or modernized Greek Drama, they changed the character from female to male, or—where the character’s gender gave the play its form and plot—a young male dressed in feminine attire played the part. With the presentation of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare turned social convention on its head with an ironic twist: he had a young woman, played by a male actor, disguise himself (herself?) as a man. The humor in the man-turned-woman-turned-man-turned-woman romp would have delighted an Elizabethan Age audience, with the exception of domineering social prudes. Their representation in the play by Malvolio would have doubled the fun and had the spectators gasp at Shakespeare’s genius in his subtle use of irony in poking fun at society through story. Even the title had meaning to the crowds at the Globe Theater: the Twelfth Night refers to the twelfth night after Christmas, or the Feast of Epiphany, when custom had men dress as women and women as men. Disguise and confused identity are common themes in Shakespeare’s works.

Students of history can easily see how he found favor with Elizabeth, the popular queen and only the second woman to rule the country.

The law of primogeniture that dictated a male line of succession to the English monarchy had collapsed with the fall of Salic Law in France under the threat of English claims to the French crown. By the time Mary Tudor ascended to the throne, the only restraint on a female monarch was the concern of Henry VIII, her father, that a woman could not hold together the Tudor line and a country that seemed destined for civil war. With the death of Henry’s only son Edward, the line of succession fell to Mary, whose reign of terror and her cozy relations with Spain infuriated the English people.

On Mary’s death, Elizabeth I resumed the Tudor monarchy. Her reign marked the beginning of the Renaissance in England. The arts and sciences flourished, the English navy ruled the seas, and explorations of Asia, Africa, and the New World reached a fever pitch. Knowledge founded on reason surged forth and a revolution in societal standards and mores swept away the old values of the Medieval Age. In the new age of learning and relaxed attitudes, William Shakespeare found fertile ground for his wit.

The opening lines of Twelfth Night set the tone for the remainder of the play. The idea of romantic love existed in medieval Europe, but it was tightly bound in cultural proscriptions. Arranged marriages and marriages of convenience represented the cultural norm. Orsino’s both praises the joys of love and laments it in the opening lines of the play (Act 1, scene 1: 1-15). We know immediately that this is a play about love.

Much of Shakespeare’s language is lost to the modern reader. Metaphor anchors language, and metaphors change in time until they lose meaning. One must be a Shakespearean scholar to fully understand and appreciate much of his writing, but some metaphorical meaning has survived the nearly five hundred years since they had found life under Shakespeare’s pen. His subversive and bawdy humor doubtless drew chuckles with lines like those spoken by Sir Toby Belch to Sir Andrew at Maria’s farewell: “And thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou mightst never draw sword again” (Act 1, scene 3: 56-57). William Shakespeare’s use of wit and humor to both transgress and reveal his society’s attitudes under a thin veil of metaphor makes worthwhile the time required to fully grasp the meaning of a five-hundred-year-old language.

Jingo Gods

 

Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

While cleaning out some ancient files on random flash drives, I came across some old email promoting wing nut propaganda from a day in the early days of war in the Middle East. The predominant message that day featured a photograph of a wounded soldier giving an over-the-shoulder finger to invisible insurgents. Below the photo, an account of the soldier’s heroism and a brief history of past bravery, ending with a reminder that God was on our side. Eat it, insurgents!

I paused over the image for a moment. “I am impotent in the face of you’re your rage,” it said. The maudlin sentimentality of the caption did not show through the electronic photograph. I saw an image of a wounded warrior fighting back with the last act of the defeated- an obscene gesture. This is not the stuff of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the charge up San Juan Hill, or the storming of the beaches at Normandy. The image conveyed instead anger, frustration, failure.

The soldier’s wounds had been pixilated out of the photo. I saw only bare skin under the torn clothing. He does not even face the enemy he insults, but tosses the gesture over his shoulder. The caption might just have well read, “Retreating troops offer last act of defiance.”

Today, the two sides continue call upon their regional and national gods to support the goodness of their respective causes, I think of a line from Father Thomas Merton: “The love of a disinterested god.” The universal God had been forgotten by both sides to favor the jingo gods of nationalist fervor. “God bless our troops. Allahu Akbar.” If we win, we lose. The minor gods of our smallest minds will prevail. If we lose, we lose. The minor god of the enemy will have invaded our thoughts. In either event, the Omniscient God will be eclipsed by the angry god of righteous retribution and revenge.

We have stopped, for now, the disgusting practice of using the military to promote our political and religious ideologies. I can only hope it is a continuing non-practice.

Whether we embrace the Universal consciousness, or the regional deity; hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin*, we must win. We can sort out the conflicting concepts of our gods some other time.

* From the National Lampoon song, “Deteriorata,” by Tony Hendra. See https://web.archive.org/web/20150511234144/http://www.joke-archives.com/poetry/deteriorata.html

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Darwin and Wallace

 Alfred Russel Wallace

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

Variations in traits among a species lie behind Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection. Those traits that lead to differential reproduction success [1] will cause some of a given species to reproduce at a faster rate than others. For example: a brightly colored insect increases its chance of being eaten by birds, leading to a lowered reproduction rate compared to their dull-colored counterparts. As more brown and gray beetles survive, they pass on the brown or gray gene, resulting in more beetles of that color.

Variation + differential reproduction + heredity = natural selection. Natural selection is the driving force behind Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, detailed in his book, Origin of Species, written on his return from the five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. He joined the voyage in December 1831 as a geologist and naturalist, but biology began to consume him early in the five-year trek around the point of South America, to the Galapagos Islands, he noticed differences in animals seen in Chile and those seen on the Galapagos Islands, and in differences from island to island. From there, he began formulating his theory of natural selection.

Alfred Russell Wallace, inspired in part by Darwin’s 1839 Journal of Researches [2] (known to modern readers as The Voyage of the Beagle) an account of his Beagle research, and Alexander von Humboldt’s’ Personal Narrative [3]. Wallace joined the Mischief in 1848 for a similar journey. He and entomologist Henry Bates spen more than four years collecting specimens of animals, plants, and insects inhabiting the Americas. He suffered setbacks, including a fire aboard the Helen, the ship that was to return him to England. He was able to save little of his specimens and samples. A brig sailing from Cuba picked him up after days adrift in a small craft and arrived in London in 1852. He departed England again in 1854, destined for the Malay Archipelago, where he devised his own theory of natural selection.

In early 1858, Wallace contacted Darwin regarding the similarity of their work. Darwin offered to send Wallace’s paper to a scientific journal. It was published the same year with a description of Darwin’s theory. Darwin’s Origin of Species published the following year, preceded Wallace’ The Mandalay Archipelago by ten years, likely a major reason for Darwin’s continued fame. Charles Darwin was already well known in academic and scientific circles when Wallace began his own voyage of discovery. Several websites outlining the accomplishments of the two men indicate that, had not the respected Darwin published his work first, the theory promoted by Wallace are likely to be as varied and complex as the differences in their life experiences. In any even the world has accepted “Darwinism” in its lexicography, while Wallace remains a footnote.

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Notes:

[1] Differential reproductive success: A situation in which some individuals leave more offspring in the next generation than do others, often due to traits that confer advantages in survival and/or reproduction.

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/differential-reproductive-success/#:~:text=A%20situation%20in%20which%20some,in%20survival%20and%2For%20reproduction.

 

[2] Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries, 1859

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6951

 

[3] Alexander von Humboldt, 1822 Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6322

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Crossing the Stroad

 

 

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

 

                        

           

         Crossing the Stroad

The bumper on a speeding SUV stopped inches from my shin. I was crossing a lane of traffic called by urban planners a “turn lane on a horizontal curve.” [1] Crossing Northwest Highway at Skillman Street means crossing a stroad.[2] Stroads are evidence that street planners hate non-automobile traffic. They are streets that have been widened to accommodate increasing numbers of cars, leading to higher speeds, larger business setbacks for greater expanses of parking lots, and hostility toward bicycles, mopeds, scooters, pedestrians, and wheelchairs. Stroads are the sacrifice of the benefits of urban life for the convenience of suburban car culture. Stroads lead to the suburbs or to airports. They are not for the convenience of urban residents.

Walking home from the Half-Price Books on Loop 12, a locally infamous stroad that promises the threat of death and injury to pedestrians, I had the light to cross. In the center of the turn the SUV made a right turn at the aforementioned “turn lane on a horizontal curve” without noticing me. Fortunately, traffic was heavy enough that day that drivers were no getting up to full speed. The driver was doing only about twenty-five or thirty miles-per-hour- enough to fracture my leg and drag me under the car to an almost certain death.

I started walking the city when a mechanic handed to me a four-thousand-dollar repair estimate on my car. Every seal in the engine, he said, needed replacement. That meant pulling the engine. Rather than shell out that kind of money for a twenty-three-year-old car, I sold it for a fraction of its book value. Surrendering an only car is a scary decision under the best conditions, and my situation was less than ideal. I had no backup- no motorcycle, bicycle, not even a skateboard. And, I live in Dallas, Texas, a city known as one of the most car-dependent cities in the U.S. [3]

         Pedestrian Casualties

Fifty-four pedestrians were killed in Dallas by automobile drivers in 2018 and 3,434 were killed nationally in the first six months of 2022. Texas was one of three states (along with California and Florida) that produced 38 percent of pedestrian deaths in the first six months of 2022 but are home to 28% of the U.S. population.[5]

The U.S. experienced 6,205 fatal pedestrian incidents and 76,00 pedestrian injuries in 2019. [6] How many of the increasing numbers of pedestrian casualties are due to the rate at which we turn streets into stroads? The numbers are not available.

         Pedestrian Life

The problem with living sans-automobile became apparent the first time (two days later) I had a doctor’s appointment and learned the hard way that Uber is more expensive, calculated on an annual basis, than the car, its repairs, fuel, and insurance. I paid over fifty dollars for the trip to and return from my doctor’s office 0.08 miles distant. There could have been mitigating situations: I had no experience with the Ube app and didn’t know that I had a range of pricing options. My ignorance might have contributed to the excessive cost, but I belong to an economic class that believes that, for fifty dollars, the trip should have come with champagne and showgirls.

A problem acquiring food, medicines, and household goods revealed itself when I subscribed to a national super center delivery service. It became apparent that deliveries are a way for grocers to get rid of bruised fruit and dented cans. I received a couple of canned vegetables so badly damaged that they should have been labeled with a botulism warning.

I am a good tipper. I appreciate good service and I empathize with service workers. I tended bar for years, and I know what they must deal with. I tip twenty percent for even mediocre service. A twenty percent tip on a fifty-dollar delivery adds ten dollars to each grocery order, and for that, you get botulism.

I have since changed over to Instacart for deliveries. Much of the unpleasantness associated with that first experiment in acquiring food without a car has disappeared, and the cost of tipping and a service charge are offset by coupons and random reductions in the dollar minimum for free deliveries.

All those factors, though frustrating, have solutions. The planning of cites to favor the automobile with stroads, sidewalk obstructions, and right-on-red turns on high-speed stroads is a threat to the lives of those without cars. My city, Dallas, has acquired some infamy for its “unwalkability”. The city has its moments: Uptown, Deep Ellum, some parts of the Oaklawn/Cedar Springs neighborhood, Highland Park, and Downtown. My neighborhood, Vickery Midtown,[4] is a sea of low-rise apartment buildings and condos far enough from consumer and cultural facilities to discourage walking, but close enough to discourage ride shares who can’t make enough money from the fare to make it worthwhile. And no one wants to brave crossing Greenville Avenue at Park Lane or travel Skillman Street in a wheelchair, on a bicycle, or on foot. That is an adventure analogous to playing Russian Roulette.

Times change. The automobile culture is supported by the petroleum lobby and espoused by Dennis Prager, co-founder of PragerU, a right wing misinformation group; Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow and anti-urbanist at the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute; and corrupt politicians legally purchased by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

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Citations:

[1] https://accessmanagement.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/TRB2015stover619.pdf

[2] https://www.thegazette.com/opinion/stroads-hybrid-of-streets-and-roads-make-linn-county-less-safe/

[3] https://www.walkscore.com/TX/Dallas

[4] https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/n/vickery-meadow-dallas-tx/

[5] 2018- 54 pedestrians killed in dallas

https://www.statista.com/chart/21013/pedestrians-killed-in-large-us-cities/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw98ujBhCgARIsAD7QeAhcTY-IlZseWh3uRlAc3BhZASlW_6BL4bBYsOUuCe1JDs8Qv6b8TA4aAhy0EALw_wcB

[6] https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA-Pedestrian-Spotlight23#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%20ten%20years,the%20start%20of%20the%20pandemic.

Nell’s Death in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame

 

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Symbols have performed as tools for the writer and storyteller from the days of The Epic of Gilgamesh to the post-modern works of John Barth and Thomas Pynchon. In Endgame, Samuel Beckett carried symbolism from its use as a literary device to employment as the driving force his story. How does one, after all, explore the hidden world of the mind- the world inside the head- without falling into trivial interior monologue? Beckett answered that question with his brilliant but disturbing one act play.

The four characters in the performance represent different aspects of the personality of the unseen character in whose mind they act out their play of existential angst. Hamm, the protagonist, plays the ego. Hamm is blind and confined to a wheelchair, and dependent upon his listless servant, Clov, the spirit of surrender in adversity. Nell and Nagg, Hamm’s parents who lost their legs in a bicycle accident, live in trash bins.. Nagg and Nell present themselves, not so much as Hamm’s parents and the dysfunctional family, but as symbols of old age and death. Hamm keeps his thoughts and fears of death in trash bins with the lids screwed down, even as he waits for his “finish”. Death “has no legs” for him. He suppresses thoughts of his end, but the two old people keep popping up out of their trashcans to remind him.

When Nell dies, her last word was, “Desert”. Life, as represented in the play, is a gray, sterile desert. Hamm instructed Clov to screw down the trash can lids, and then announces that he has to pee: If life is meaningless, then so is death. Nells’ death has little meaning to Hamm, but his attitude toward his own end has changed. He now welcomes the end of his pointless life. He encourages Clov to leave him, though he cannot survive without him.

Nell’s death had a greater impact on Hamm than he was willing to admit. It is the death of a parent, after all- especially the death of the mother- that brings to the son the awareness of his own mortality. Hamm’s resifnation to his end comes with Clov’s words on his departure: “Is this what we call making an exit?”

Nell’s death and Clov’s departure leaves us with questions without answers. Did Nell die? Or will she return the next day, in keeping with the play’s endless theme of endless cyclic time. Did Clov finally leave, as he had threatened so often? Or will he, too, return to live out the farce of life in the world of Beckett’s characters. In my interpretation, they will return. Nagg will ask for a kiss that Nell can’t deliver, and Clov will take Hamm on a tour of the world (around the walls of the room), just as he does every day, endlessly. The characters cannot die, for death gives us meaning to life. And in Hamm’s world, life has no meaning. It only fades to gray and begins again, where it left off. Endlessly.

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