Midnight on the Forecastle

Iran and American Sabre Rattlers

Some thoughts that popped up today regarding the American Right and the uprisings in Iran piqued my interest.  First, Yglesias makes this point:

It’s worth keeping in mind that the people trying to loudly position themselves as the Iranian people’s greatest friends are the exact same people who wanted to drop bombs on Iranians just a couple of weeks ago.

Now we have Sullivan chiming in with a similar point:

The key point is that many neocons actively want war with Iran and they are doing all they can in this crisis to precipitate one. Whether it be hoping for an Ahmadinejad win, or trying to goad Obama into making this critical uprising into a US vs Iran showdown, their goal is conflict. Everything they say needs to be filtered through that prism.

I’m not convinced that everyone wants conflict right now, but there’s certainly no question that it has been advocated in the months and years leading up to the latest election.  What have been the positions taken up by prominent American conservatives toward Iran?

• They are meddling with fatal result in Iraq and such meddling must not go unanswered.  We should initiate military operations in Iran.
  
  
• Ahmadinejad is batshit crazy and therefore cannot be negotiated with or allowed to speak at the U.N.  Open hostility and a policy of regime change are the only legitimate Realpolitik responses to Iran.
  
  
• Although Israel is a nuclear power with the strongest military in the region, Iran
  poses an existential threat because Ahmadinejad is batshit crazy.  Therefore, we should fully support Israeli military action against Iran.
  

• Iran supports terror and is part of the Axis of Evil that justified the Global War on Terror (GWOT).  This is a war with real enemies that need to be defeated, not tolerated or coddled or negotiated with.

Remember how John Kerry was ridiculed for advocating that terrorism should be reduced to the level of a nuisance? Indeed, the conservative stance of late has been interventionist, pathologically militant, and decidedly anti-everything else.  While there is little disagreement in America about praising the uprising in Iran, there are still deep and abiding differences of opinion about what American foreign policy should be with respect to that country.

Many who voted for Obama were well aware of the disastrous role that the CIA played in creating the enmity that has come to define US/Iran relations.  Foreign meddling has a price, and it’s never one that can be accurately predicted.  What concerns me now is that the factions of American public opinion that have been such staunch advocates for war will be in no ways enlightened by the ungovernable caprices of national movements or the revealed impermanence of our national enemies.

Sapolsky on Religion

A very interesting lecture by Robert Sapolsky:

  

(via Boing Boing)

ADDENDUM: OCD and Religion.

§ Racism: Sotomayor v. White Males

The Republican Establishment response to Obama’s nomination of The Hon. Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is awesome.  It was also predicted.  (For the record, please note Matt Yglesias’ excellent posts about racism and modern Republicanism: here, here, here, etc.)  I’ve long maintained that the Republican Party will eventually purify itself of its idiotic adherence to Caucasoid hegemony, if for no other reason than the inevitable ascendance of gigantic and untapped reserves of conservative political capital in minority communities.  Certain pundits, however, hell-bent on preserving their own positions via firebrand invective, have gleefully sabotaged the interests of their party.  It’s hysterical.  Witness my favorite (beloved, really) red-meat Republican, Pat Buchanan (via Think Progress):

Spectacular.  There’s nothing more welcome to liberal politicians than an opposition fully committed to reinforcing the most damning conservative stereotypes imaginable.

ADDENDUM: Pat's Back!

Jeff Sharlet's "The Family" and Christianist Belief

A little while ago I finished reading Jeff Sharlet’s book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.  It’s a terrific book about a subject that has been fueling my interest for a number of years now; namely, how Christian fundamentalism in America expresses itself in both the culture and politics of the nation.  Sharlet has experience in this genre and has created a fierce and exhaustive account of the organization behind the seemingly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast.  More than that, however, The Family provides needed insight into the nebulous architecture of belief that has come to typify the modern evangelical movement in this country.  According to Sharlet, the “prayer cell” model utilized by the Family is fueled by a fundamentalist conviction that the person of Jesus should be followed, period.  Therefore, evangelical belief is (as we know) utterly unmoored from its pedigree in establishment religion… but it is also disdainfully anathema to theological dialectics which dissect and interpret the meaning (and importance) of Jesus’ life and teachings.  As such, American Christendom has become (and most assuredly is) a mechanism by which power entrenches and protects itself.

In stressing obedience to Jesus above all else, obedience itself has become the hallmark of devotion – nevermind that Jesus himself was a vaguely eschatological agent of social change.  Two days ago I listened to a radio preacher speak ad nauseam about the ironclad truth of Romans 13:1 (a verse Sharlet fully explicates in the context of the fundamentalist ethos).  He [the radio preacher] left no room for interpretation: “The authorities that exist have been established by God.”  No exceptions.  No legalisms.  No moderate interpretation.  No secular influence allowed.  The only caveat: “…now, this doesn’t mean that those who possess authority will act in a Godly manner.  Only that the authority they possess comes from God!”  Whew.  This means, of course, that when in doubt… well, trusting in authority is synonymous with trusting in God.  Man is the head of the household.  The President is the head of the country.  Obedience to this (and all) authority is nothing less than a form of worship.  Hence, power entrenches and protects itself.

During the last few days I’ve been reading through the New Testament Gospels (thus far I’ve only gotten through Matthew, Mark, and half of Luke).  I’ve also been watching an old Frontline series about the history of Jesus and Christianity.  Both make this important point:

…this holy man winds up in Jerusalem and winds up executed by the authorities, probably as a trouble maker, somebody who's best off dead, rather than alive because alive who knows what may happen? He's a threat to the social order. He's best off executed.  This is how Christianity begins. It very rapidly turns into something different.

Personally, I don’t see hypocrisy in the transition of rebel into overlord.  We know it’s not unusual; that it is, in fact, the normative evolution of social institutions (even Thomas Franks wrote about this in Commodify your Dissent).  Eventually, however, forces rise up to offer a counter-revolution.  This is what is so insidious about religious fundamentalism: it counters its own revolution.  Jesus = Water.  Christianity = Coke.  Christian Fundamentalism = New Coke.  Everyone hated New Coke.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Jeff Sharlet’s latest article in Harpers, Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military, is a follow-up to his 2005 article, Soldiers of Christ: Insider America's Most Powerful Megachurch. These are both great articles and provide excellent context for the latest bit of news that’s rumbling around the Internet: U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan have Pashto Bibles, told to ‘hunt people for Jesus.’  (The United States Air Force Academy, which plays an important role in Sharlet’s essays, is likewise figured prominently in the film version of James Carroll's book Constantine's Sword, which has been discussed previously on this blog.)  

Here's an interview with Jeff Sharlet that was aired earlier today:

This Bitter Earth

Dinah Washington:

Coriolanus & Conservatism

In anticipation of seeing The Old Globe production of Coriolanus this summer, I’ve been doing some research on the play and familiarizing myself with its particulars.  It’s not a play that I’ve ever seen performed live (although I have seen the 1984 BBC production on DVD).  As one of Shakespeare’s most political plays – perhaps the most political – it has a history of being produced with an eye toward whatever contemporary political viewpoint happens to be in vogue at the moment.  Which isn’t a bad thing – if anything, it vindicates Shakespeare’s understanding of certain timeless aspects of man as a political animal.  My own take on the play is that of Coriolanus as a kind of Conservative Überhero; in him I see shades of Sen. John McCain, Gen. Odierno, President Eisenhower, and even Dick Cheney.  Just as Dick Cheney famously said, “So?” (with respect to public opinion), so Coriolanus is equally contemptuous of the “voices” of the common people.  A recent post on RedState.com echoed this deeply felt conservative notion that the ideal state of man is a kind of lofty detachment from the petty concerns of mere humans: 

…concede nothing (you can always agree, but you do not concede); you keep going back to a disputed point over and over again until they get tired of trying to sneak one past you; 

[snip] 

…you don’t accept the other side’s presumptuous bluff that they speak for the American people.  Because they don’t. 

And you don’t give a tinker’s dam if they like you afterward. To quote Truman: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. 

This is pure Coriolanus: a powerful and successful military man who is a god-awful politician, a man of principle who won’t suffer fools even at the price of his life, a patrician colossus who acts as though civility, humility and humanity were mortal weaknesses.  In her excellent essay on Coriolanus in her book, Shakespeare After All, Marjorie Garber makes the following points: 

Coriolanus, though married and a father, regards himself, with wounded and defensive pride, as alone.  More than almost any other Shakespearean hero, he aims at a status that is less like that of a man and more like that of a dragon, a god, or a machine – someone, or something, in other words, that does not feel.

[snip] 

This propensity to reject or displace family and personal ties, in favor of the presumed larger purposes and less fraught emotional commitments to warfare and heroism, produces in Coriolanus the play a striking and persistent line of imagery that allies its martial heroes with what has been called “male bonding” or “homosocial” behavior – in this case the identification of the love object with the military commander or military rival. 

[snip]

Coriolanus is a complicated dramatic character, the more so because he seems to have uncanny ahistorical similarities with embedded social types of a much later era, like the products of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British public schools: he is repressed; devoted to authority; committed to male bonding, fellowship, risk, and danger; slightly overpunctilious; impatient or condescending toward perceived social inferiors; awkward and even unhappy in situations that require small talk, gracious manners, accommodation, compromise, and a show of feeling.

[snip]

The play ends in death and in victory, in the ambush and murder of a man whose final flaw was his first yielding to human feeling, who was safe so long as he regarded himself as a monster without kin or a lonely dragon in his fen.  Shockingly, yet somehow fittingly, it is only at the moment when Coriolanus acknowledges himself as a member of the human race, as a man with human ties – mother, wife, child, friend – that he becomes really vulnerable.  For this act of simple human recognition he is murdered. 

Unlike many modern conservatives, Coriolanus is not necessarily a figure to be mocked... but his story and theirs eerily mirror each other.

Top-Heavy Coalmine Canaries

This is interesting: Woman accused of breast-feeding while drunk.  It’s pretty easy to imagine how a police officer might feel compelled to arrest someone for doing this – arresting people is often the default response for police.  It’s what they do.   On the other hand, I can’t see that such an arrest will serve as a deterrent.  To begin with, drunk people do bizarre and hazardous things regardless of the law or the risk involved; that’s what being drunk is all about.  It’s what drunks do.  Additionally, there has to be some limit on things that parents can be punished for when it comes to their children.  I don’t know what that limit is, but clearly we haven’t come anywhere near it.  As things now stand, a parent can legally fill their child’s head with bigoted, idiotic nonsense – will this become a criminal offense?  Will exposing a child to second-hand smoke become a form of child endangerment?  Or failing to have properly installed smoke detectors?  Leaving the life vests on the shore?  Under current law, parents can be charged with a crime for not using Internet content filters: exposing children to pornography is a no-no.  Helmets, seatbelts and suchlike are also well-known areas of enforced compliance.  But for a childless dimwit like myself, each new foray into the ambiguous limits of parental responsibility is actually quite worrisome.  It’s one of the many reasons that whenever I’m around children I’m paralyzed with fear: I don’t know all the rules.  None of us do.  Thankfully there are lactating drunkards out there risking the health of their babies so that we don’t have to.

Conservative Swine Flu Meltdown

It’s normal for people to think of disease as being a product of human agency. Perhaps the chaos of nature is even more terrifying than the consequences of immorality or hatred. I don’t know whether people are just dim (which is forgivable) or whether the driving need to generate large audiences is the cause, but conservative commentators are driving home the meme that Swine Flu is a biological weapon being delivered by illegal Mexican immigrants. No kidding. This is baffling. The only plausible explanation, in my mind, is that the conservative “movement” has been so thoroughly pulverized by its own criminal cruelty and inanity over the last decade that the only remaining public voices are the gibbering crazies; crazies we’ve all grown accustomed to, sure, but now their voices seem to echo off the walls a little more plangently... as if the austere artwork of Gen. Washington praying at Valley Forge has been removed, along with the Persian carpeting and mahogany credenzas. My guess is that the faux “adults” that conservatives have long imagined themselves to be have all left the building and the wingnuts are the only people still around.  And someone's got to slather aftershave on Fred Thompson’s jowls.

BTW, here’s to your health:

Summer’s coming so I’ll warn you now; try not to get seriously injured or ill in August. August is the month the medical students are released into the hospital as fully-fledged doctors. And to make matters worse, their first job is often on the crash team. In other words, they are your last bastions of hope, your final hand-hold on this mortal coil if you have the misfortune of going into cardiac arrest. If I were you I would just stay dead. I would want to be resuscitated about as much as I would want someone to mutilate my dead body.

ADDENDUM: And now this...

The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed "Mexican" influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and "we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu," he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel.

UPDATE: Conservative media clobber the GOP.

Obama's Popularity: Point Countertruth

Here’s from a Washington Times editorial:

Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years.

According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969.

Here’s from Gallup:

President Obama is off to a solid start as president, as far as his job approval ratings are concerned. His 63% first-quarter average [is] better than the averages of each of his four predecessors, and the fourth best since 1953.

That, in a nutshell, is why reading political editorials in certain publications is a complete waste of time.  

UPDATE:  Ah, now I get it.