It just so happens that today, the 9th of November in the year 2016, I am rereading Richard Leakey’s 1994 take on how we became what we’ve become, “The Origin of Humankind” . The timing of the read was dictated by nothing more than it being the only hardback book on hand after relocating to Italy, but it all seems somehow prescient upon awakening this morning.
Why?
Donald Trump has been elected to be President of The United States. Wow. Aside from underlining just how good an idea it was to leave the US almost 25 years ago, there are no positive points to this now being the actual reality. (Had it been scripted and edited as ‘reality shows’ actually are, no one would ever have believed this situation even remotely possible … no matter how clever the contrived convolutions.)
The New York Times conveniently compiled a list of The Donald’s tacky snipes , so there’s no reason to dwell on the nasty divisiveness that spews forth from His Orangeness, but it does rub against the grain even more abrasively when juxtaposed aside the anthropological construct that says humanity itself … the very basics of what makes humans human and separates us from apes … began evolutionarily with sharing.
As Leakey states in his 1981 book, “The Making of Mankind”, sharing is THE factor that puts us where we are, “ … the food sharing hypothesis is a strong candidate for explaining what set early humans on the road to modern man.”
The Smithsonian’s Richard Potts notes in “Early Hominid Activities at Olduvai”:
The home-base, food-sharing hypothesis integrates so many aspects of human behavior and social life that are important to anthropologists — reciprocity systems, exchange, kinship, subsistence, division of labor and language.
Yet 1.5 million years later where are we?
We are in a world that just made a lying bigot with zero experience, no integrity, ethics or morals the most powerful man on the planet, not only suggesting democracy is a failed system, but also that evolution has come to naught. Sharing made us human, now not sharing will reduce us to whatever form of cockroach-like scramblers we are destined to become as Earth revolts against perpetual rape and some learn the hard way that avarice is actually one of the seven deadly sins.
A couple of things happened over the weekend that have gained some ground in restoring my faith in humanity. Unfortunately and predictably, others had completely the opposite reaction and are now writhing around on the grubby floors of social media and the halls of urine-colored ‘journalism’ as if possessed by really stupid demons of the going-to-hell-in-a-handbag-because-the shoes-don’t-match-it sort as if they don’t know the difference between rapture and rupture.
Let’s start with football. The American version, of which I am … or was, when I had any access to viewing … a fan.
In a sport that makes constant reference to ‘penetration in the end zone’, ‘tight ends’, ‘wide receivers’, ‘defensive ends’, ‘long snaps’, ‘ball carriers’, ‘pump fakes’, ‘ball control’, ‘man-on-man’, ‘man-in-motion’ and where the point is ‘going (for the) down’, you’d be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that ‘man-on-man’ was okey-dokey with the National Football League in just about any context. You’d be wrong.
Michael Sam gets the call …
Michael Sam just became the first OPENLY gay draft pick in the NFL. Just now. Yesterday. In May of 2014.
Michael Sam, the first openly gay player ever to enter the National Football League draft, was taken by the St. Louis Rams with the 249th pick of the draft Saturday, proving precisely nothing about the state of homophobia in professional football.
This is not to say there haven’t been loads of gay players, may of whom were at least party out of the locker. (More than 30 years ago, a dear friend moved to California with his boyfriend who had, coincidentally, been drafted by the Rams.)
Although there have been many positive public reactions to the news … and to the video of Sam being congratulated and cuddled by his partner as the call came … there are still far too many humans that have yet to recognize the simple fact that we’re not all the same.
Here’s what some fuckwad of an NFL ‘player personnel assistant’ had to say:
“I don’t think football is ready for [an openly gay player] just yet,” said an NFL player personnel assistant. “In the coming decade or two, it’s going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it’s still a man’s-man game. To call somebody a [gay slur] is still so commonplace. It’d chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room.”
Sound familiar?
Back in 1946, the Rams signed Kenny Washington, the first African-American football player in the modern era of the NFL. Fisher was aware of the historical resonance Saturday.
Perhaps someday football fans will value gay players as much as they do Black players, as the league wouldn’t amount to shit without them.
To be honest, I’d never heard of this extravaganza until I moved to England way back in the early ‘90s. To this day I don’t know if I was simply clueless or if the US just didn’t pay much attention and I went along with that. I was stunned by the enthusiasm, the parties planned for the occasion, the dressing up to watch it on the telly, and more than a bit confused about the process. Having the same experience a few years later a small, very crowded apartment in Zurich, I am now convinced that this is a VERY big deal.
Eurovision is about music; the song and the performers.
Historically, a country’s votes were decided by an internal jury, but in 1997 five countries (Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom) experimented with televoting, giving members of the public in those countries the opportunity to vote en masse for their favourite songs. The experiment was a success,and from 1998 onwards all countries were encouraged to use televoting wherever possible. Back-up juries are still used by each country, in the event of a televoting failure. Nowadays members of the public may also vote by SMS, in addition to televoting. Since 2009, national votes in semifinals are a 50/50 combination of both telephone votes and the votes of juries made up of music professionals.
Conchita and her trophy …
Hundreds of thousands of people watch and vote, and this year the country-by-country talent contest that brought ABBA to the world made even more history than they have since their win 40 years ago …and the winner was humankind.
That not everyone is happy with this outcome is as obvious as peaches having fuzz. The Russians in all their icky homophobic skid … complete with marks … toward the Dark Ages are particularly peeved:
Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision win has been branded “the end of Europe” by Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky. After last night’s 2014 song contest in Copenhagen, Russian state television broadcast a debate on her victory, as politicians and celebrities launched a hate-filled attack. Outspoken ultranationalist MP Zhirinovsky called this year’s result “the end of Europe,” saying: “There is no limit to our outrage. “It has turned wild. There are no more men or women in Europe, just it .”
Hm. It … It seems that take ended up biting Russia on the furry butt:
Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay laws, restricting the spread of information on what was called ‘non traditional sexual relations’ did not go down well with last night’s audience. Russia’s entry, The Tolmachevy Sisters, were greeted by loud boos from those in the venue, with many of the onlookers waving rainbow flags. The tension then reached boiling point during the results announcements, which saw Russia receive further boos with every point received.
I must admit to having had a few less-than-pleasant encounters with drag queens in the past, having taken no little guff from some who find amusement in being unmercifully snarky to straight women who’d just like a top-up on their wine thankyouverymuchMarge, and have been slightly intimidated when standing in line between 6’7” blonds … big shoes … with hair the hight of the Tetons while waiting for a free cubical.
I have also, however, has some uproarious times laughing my head off, straightening stocking seams and dissing … yes, I can do snark, too … the polyester-clad clueless that seem to form herds wherever drag queens congregate.
It takes huge balls to be transgender true to yourself … even bigger than necessary to tell the NFL you’re gay. The world is full of ‘transphobic’ fuckwads …
Researchers describe transphobia as emotional disgust, fear, anger or discomfort felt or expressed towards people who don’t conform to society’s gender expectations,[and say that although it is similar to homophobia, racism and sexism, those attitudes are becoming generally considered unacceptable in modern society, whereas some individuals still maintain transphobic views without fear of censure.
As adults, transgender people are frequently subjected to ridicule, stares, taunting and threats of violence, even when just walking down the street or walking into a store. A U.S. survey of 402 older, employed, high-income transgender people found that 60% reported violence or harassment because of their gender identity. 56% had been harassed or verbally abused, 30% had been assaulted, 17% had had objects thrown at them, 14% had been robbed and 8% had experienced what they characterized as an unjustified arrest.
All because of their look, their dress, they’re undeniable style? How stupid is THAT?
Conchita deserves admiration. She is brave beyond measure, beautiful and talented … and her attitude is fabulous!
“Hey, I’m just a singer in a fabulous dress, with great hair and a beard.”
She is also the WINNER! Watch her performance here.
Could it be that the world became a better place this weekend?
I think so.
Those deeply invested in enjoying their fundamentalist frantic frenzy of fucked-uppery … carry on. Sigh …
Nowhere near as eloquent as my ancestor Mr. Lincoln, I spent the 4th of July on a few occasions while living in England in the mid-1990s hosting a celebration of the event passing around finger foods with the reminder to my guests … all Brits, of course … “We kicked your butts!”
Politics is apparently not my forte, no matter how good a slap-up of barbecued Americana might have tasted, since I can rarely manage even the vaguest vestige of political correctness. I’d say my English guests employed a well-honed sense of humor on those occasions, but that would be stretching it; there’s still nothing funny about a vanished empire to many and the audacity of America to go all independent on them continues to grate.
History being history and all, there’s no turning back either Big Ben or the clock on the Old North Church, and with another 4th of July about to pop it seems a good enough time to give some thought to my old stomping grounds.
It has been nice the past couple of years to once again feel free to proclaim my roots. For the eight years of G.W. I would often pass myself off as Canadian when strangers would hear my accent and approach. I simply had no answer to the deluge of questions that would invariably start off with something like: What the hell is going on over there?
What did I know? I left the US pre-OJ … a dividing line between the reasonable and the totally unexplainable … and had nothing in my repertoire to trot out when asked to give reasons for stolen presidential elections, coordinated lies, embarrassing gaffs and backward stumbling toward the bad old days.
Don’t misunderstand. I have always been proud to be an American, but the longer I’ve lived outside the borders … and the range of Fox News … the more trouble I’ve had figuring out just what that means.
As this 4th rolls around my confusion is compounded, as it is beyond my scope to calculate just how people in the US have grown so stupid. I mean REALLY, folks! Michele Bachmann? Talk about giving the Brits an opening for get-backs!
As this article in The Independent indicates, America is now in the position of having England “get it” when an apparently large portions of those in the US are missing so much.
… three questions pose themselves. Could she seize the White House? Can she even win the GOP nomination? And just how thick or crazy, or both, is Michele Bachmann? In tribute to the late Eric Morley, we will take them in reverse order. While accurately gauging her idiocy-derangement ratio is hard in the absence of a psychiatric report, Bachmann’s mouth is a reliable launch pad for astounding foolishness. To cheer us all up – if you can’t have a giggle at the thought of the codes falling into such hands, when can you? – here are some highlights.
Wittily replicating the Vidalian impertinence that reshaped her political allegiance, she mocked the Founding Fathers in January by lauding them for “working tirelessly until slavery was no more in the US”. Those would be the FFs who in 1776, a mere 89 years before abolition, agreed that an African-American legally constituted three fifths of a human being, and enshrined slavery in the Constitution?
According to Bachmann, meanwhile, the greatest threat the US faces is nothing so footling as the deficit or long-term mass unemployment (let alone the global warming she inevitably regards as “a hoax”), but gay marriage.
Passing over her defence of carbon dioxide, which she says cannot harm humans because it (like arsenic and uranium) occurs naturally, let’s end the resumé with this peach. “It was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another Democratic president,” she said in reference to her erstwhile idol Mr Carter. “I’m not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”
In the above lies her appeal to the frothing far right … bewildering lack of knowledge; blind terror of otherness; and – the latter’s kissing cousin – paranoid hatred of Barack Obama. Add to that her Palinic gift for viscerally resonating with her base and its prejudices, the facility to raise fortunes, undeniable can-do charm and good humour, and a talent for spouting drivel with sublime confidence then blaming the lamestream media for accurately reporting it … and this is one formidable candidate.
No, I don’t live in England anymore, but I am surrounded by Brits here and like many American expats the world over I find myself progressively more and more stumped by what truly are well-thought, and concerned, questions.
I can harken back to the words of Founding Fathers, pointing out that they were actually a pretty bright bunch with little in common with the present field of GOP hopefuls:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
…
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
~ Thomas Paine
A far cry from:
”There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.”
“I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I’m not a scientist.”
~ Michele Bachmann
So although peeps are mostly okay with swallowing the formation of our great nation, much of what’s on offer now makes an unpleasant chewing experience and creates some fear of regurgitation.
Frankly, I don’t much like the taste of it myself, nor do I have any answers for those struggling to comprehend how an idiot like this Bachmann woman … or that fuckwad from Texas, whatever his name is … hasn’t been laughed off every platform she makes a dive for … from … whatever …
The Brits seem to be enjoying the show, though:
All we know for sure is that her name’s Michele Bachmann, that she’s running for president, and that watching her do so will be as much fun as anyone has a right to expect within the law.
No matter … we did kick their butts …
We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. ~William Faulkner
Suzanne Nossel, deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations, told CNN, “It really is a key part in setting a new norm that gay rights are human rights and that that has to be accepted globally.”
“It talks about the violence and discrimination that people of LGBT persuasion experience around the world,” she said, “and that those issues … need to be taken seriously. It calls for reporting on what’s going on, where people are being discriminated against, the violence that is taking place, and it really puts the issue squarely on the U.N.’s agenda going forward.”
Woopie fuckin’ zoopie doo.
Anyone with a lick of sense and a brush with recent history will get what a limp dick sits squarely on the UN’s fat ass agenda. Take, for example, the great job done in Sudan, the effectiveness of their “Racism Forum” that featured “that wonder of gentle tolerance, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Holocaust denier extraordinaire”, and the “Climate Change Summit” in Copenhagen that did such wonders for promoting the case of prostitution but little else, then the one in Cancun that accomplished even more bugger all.
“Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.” ~ Winston Churchill
It all rather pulls one hand away from any applause the United Nations gigantic PR machine solicits with statements like:
Friday’s vote “marks a victory for defenders of human rights,” said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “It sends a clear message that abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity must end.”
Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping? No. Me neither. But that doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the bullshit spreading one little bit …
Nossel told CNN, “it’s not like discrimination or violence are going to end overnight” because of the U.N. resolution, “but now … when there are proposals in parliaments or legislatures around the world to illegalize gay activity or repress people because of their sexual orientation, opponents can point to this and say, ‘Hey, the U.N. has spoken out, there is a resolution that rejects this squarely.’
“That is the way these international norms are built,” she said. “It’s not from scratch. On women’s rights, on minority rights, it builds up over time. So this is really a critical beginning of a universal recognition of a new set of rights that forms part of the international system.”
International norms? New set of rights? International system?
Go ahead … pull the other one.
The UN does have a place and a purpose; the place is New York … and Geneva … and on First Class seats toward Five Star hotel rooms in some of the poshest places on the planet. The purpose is to keep a bunch of people highly-paid, well-dressed and traveling while seeing the sights from lily-white convoys of SUVs …
“Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose. Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity, and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Dreamt I went to a “Rocky” convention. Walked in just as shouts of “Yo! Adrianne” commenced. Realized my “I ❤ Bullwinkle" placard was inappropriate. Ooops! Wrong Rocky.
I have NO idea where that intro comes from, but it was in my mind this morning when I woke up. Does rather sum up recent life, however, so I led with it.
Once again, I have no internet connection and haven’t since yesterday morning. Add that to the election furor going on here and it is a case of annoyance prevailing.
Any drive now, including those the kids and I do to school each day, comes avec a parade of faces … the same ones over and over again plastered on posters tacked to every power pole in the country, and … sheesh … am I glad I’m not in any present need of plywood since every square inch of the stuff must have been used for politics. Really now! There are only something like 40,000 voters in the country and everyone actually does know what the candidates look like.
Attached slogans are predictable: the peeps who’ve been running the show since the ’70s tout “new”, while the opposition parties are promising the vague “better” or going with ethnocentric pandering with claims of “Seychelles for the Seychellois”, whatever that means.
I have never understood politics, either in general or how the heck such a system ever managed to catch on in the first place. Sure, I can follow the historic breadcrumbs from feudalism to federalism, but that doesn’t mean it makes much sense.
What is it about humans that has us handing over our “us-ness” so easily in favor of someone whose name we recognize, then arguing over pre-digested interpretations of actions we’re usually clueless to the ins and out of?
Seems to me political parties are little more than intentionally divisive creations whose machinations work unity into messy little packets of self-rah-rah and manufacture politicians often more flash than substance, and preferably so.
As the ramping-up begins in the US, I’m even more confused. Donald Trump, after all! WTF can that be about? Sarah Palin? (I’d so much rather see Michael on a ticket!) And how ’bout them folks who cast votes based on single none-of-their-fucking-business issues like gay marriage and abortion?
One step forward, two steps back seems a dance most countries can’t bow out of, and with all the preaching to the choir going it’s hard to hear the beat when there is one. After all, if half the people think … as an example … that climate change is a result of greed and the other half think greed is good and global warming is fiction (or WTF does it matter since the world is ending in a couple of weeks, anyway … ) what possible use is it to build huge office buildings and fill them with vampiric officials who suck the blood out of those lining up to send them there?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have politics a part-time, unpaid job where positions would be filled by generous, community-caring individuals willing to share their time, effort and knowledge for the betterment of all?
Yeah … right. Like that’s gonna happen …
As a species, we just may not be smart enough for Democracy.
And now, for a bit of light entertainment, we step into the WayBack machine and take a look at another time … that looks pretty much exactly like today. (The bit in Congress is not to be missed … )
There a whole lotta blah, blah going on about marriage, its “holy bonds”, traditional roles, legal entanglements, etc., and I’ve done my share of blathering.
Yesterday’s post on infidelity, for example, was at least partially about pondering on the whole monogamy issue, the skirting around that happens to the tune of millions of bucks for modern-day cyber pimps and some offered thoughts that adultery dulls divorce tendencies.
Yes, marriage and partnerships of all sorts are a hot-button topic these days as many struggle to rearrange everything from expectations to laws. Although there is a strong tendency to hold to tradition, it’s harder to do that every year as society shifts radically.
Historically, it wasn’t all that long ago that ending a marriage by any method but death was almost unheard of. No matter the circumstances, marriage was a life sentence, and although that conveyed some stability the price was often higher than many wished they’d signed on for.
It wasn’t until 1979 that the USA shit-canned the last of the Head and Master laws, an appalling mandate based upon the “legal definition of marriage” that, “delegated the husband’s role as supporting the family and the wife’s as housekeeping, childrearing, and providing sex.”
“Head and Master” laws were a set of American property laws that permitted a husband to have final say regarding all household decisions and jointly owned property without his wife’s knowledge or consent, until 1979 when Louisiana became the final state to repeal them. Until then, the matter of who paid for property or whose name was on the deed had been irrelevant.
They meant the wife had no say over where or how a family lived, and a woman who refused to move at her husband’s demand could be sued for abandonment.
Some are still pissed off about the movement Betty Friedan started back in the ’60s with an article in “Good Housekeeping” shockingly titledWomen are People, Too, blaming the women’s movement for the disintegration of the American family, but anyone with a firm grasp of the history … not just “Leave it to Beaver” episodes … in their head understands the costs at which families were held together before there were options.
The voices of tradition and the voices of Freudian sophistication tell us that we can desire no greater destiny than to glory in our role as women, in our own femininity. They tell us how to catch a man and keep him; how to breast-feed children and handle toilet training, sibling rivalry, adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, cook Grandmother’s bread and gourmet snails, build a swimming pool with our own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine, and make marriage more exciting; how to keep our husbands from dying young and our sons from growing into delinquents.
They tell us — the psychologists and psychoanalysts and sociologists who keep tracing the neuroses of child and man back to mother — that all our frustrations were caused by education and emancipation, the striving for independence and equality with men, which made American women unfeminine. They tell us that the truly feminine woman turns her back on the careers, the higher education, the political rights, the opportunity to shape the major decisions of society for which the old-fashioned feminists fought.
Now a thousand expert voices pay tribute to our devotion from earliest girlhood to finding the husband and bearing the children who will give us happiness. They tell us to pity the “neurotic,” “unfeminine,” “unhappy” women who once wanted to be poets or physicists or Presidents, or whatever they had it in them to be. For a woman to have such aspirations, interests, goals of her own, the experts keep telling us, impairs not only her ability to love her husband and children but her ability to achieve her own sexual fulfillment.
That was written in 1963.
Of course, we still have many issues to deal with … domestic abuse, infidelity, unequal divisions of power and money, to name just a few … but the stranglehold of traditional values has loosed its grasp.
We don’t have to marry at all if we’d rather not, and not marrying no longer means a life of chaste spinsterhood. If we do marry, and marry badly, divorce is a viable option, much to the chagrin of those who see the option as the cause. (Often the same people who see sex education as the motivating factor in making teens horny … yeah … right … )
When we commit to a relationship we now have bargaining power, the result of which can be healthier, more productive partnerships.
Some will argue that children suffer under an opt-out system, but those who grew up in abusive and/or dysfunctional family units glued together by dictates outside the front door could present their suffering and scars for examination. Sure, a two-parent cohesive family is cool, but how many of those are there?
Laws have changed. Women have changed. Families have changed. Traditional roles have changed.
Good.
And while we’re on the topic of marriage, tradition, laws and change, same-sex marriage gets a mention, as well.
One argument against same-sex marriage arises from a rejection of the use of the word “marriage” as applied to same-sex couples, as well as objections about the legal and social status of marriage itself being applied to same-sex partners under any terminology. Other stated arguments include direct and indirect social consequences of same-sex marriages, parenting concerns, religious grounds, and tradition.
Sounds like the same load of shit that kept those “Head and Master Laws” in place for a ridiculously long time.
I very much doubt that, back in 1956, anyone congratulating Herbert Kubly — journalist-turned-university professor — on winning that year’s National Book Award could have imagined the life that would play out for a girl of ten at the time. If somehow a mid-1950s mind was able to wrap around what was later known as Punk, the idea of the woman eventually dubbed “Godmother of Punk” winning a National Book Award of her own might have brought on apoplexy.
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.
Patti came to music through poetry, a logical step that resonates on just about every level I have and made me a fan many years ago. Her lyrics have spoken , and with a generation I listened, absorbed and was absolved.
Her verse and voice still inspire:
Dancing Barefoot
she is benediction
she is addicted to thee
she is the root connection
she is connecting with he
here I go and I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly
could it be he’s taking over me…
I’m dancing barefoot
heading for a spin
some strange music draws me in
makes me come on like some heroin/e
she is sublimation
she is the essence of thee
she is concentrating on
he, who is chosen by she
here I go and I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly,
could it be he’s taking over me…
she is re-creation
she, intoxicated by thee
she has the slow sensation that
he is levitating with she …
here I go and I don’t know why,
I spin so ceaselessly,
’til I lose my sense of gravity…
And now, what has been called a “beautifully crafted love letter to Robert Mapplethorpe” has been oh-so-appropriately honored.
You can read an excerpt from the book here, but here’s a bit from that:
We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark.
I was a dreamy somnambulant child. I vexed my teachers with my precocious reading ability paired with an inability to apply it to anything they deemed practical. One by one they noted in my reports that I daydreamed far too much, was always somewhere else. Where that somewhere was I cannot say, but it often landed me in the corner sitting on a high stool in full view of all in a conical paper hat.
I would later make large detailed drawings of these humorously humiliating moments for Robert. He delighted in them, seeming to appreciate all the qualities that repelled or alienated me from others. Through this visual dialogue my youthful memories became his.
Although it was far from fairy tale fodder and did not end up in happily-ever-after, the Smith/Mapplethorpe relationship … two dedicated artists sharing the path … stirs in my heart and mixes the sediment lodged there into the fluid of what it takes to create.
Ladies and gentlemen, Patti Smith … Dancing Barefoot …
Where to start? That’s a tough one this morning because this story in the Huff Post is wonky on so many levels. Of course, it was the headline that drew my attention: Retired Chaplains Come Out Against DADT Repeal, Citing ‘Religious Freedom’.
Sure, I knew pissed off was coming, but I am surprised that I can still be surprised by the complexity of convolutions possible when minds warped by religion put bent thinking to words. I’m in no fit state for eloquent this early on a Saturday in paradise, so you’ll be settling for the annoying sound of sarcasm dripping.
Before wading in, however, let’s start by watching Bill Maher deliver a new rule.
Done? Good.
Moving right along …
Dozens of retired military chaplains say that serving both God and the U.S. armed forces will become impossible for chaplains whose faiths consider homosexuality a sin if the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is thrown out.
…
“The bottom line is religious freedom,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Douglas Lee, one of 65 former chaplains who signed a letter urging President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to keep “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Amazing how the word “freedom” is deemed to have so much oomph when it follows “religious”, ain’t it? It’s ever-so-much more vital that bigotry is allowed to flourish than pushing for any recognition that what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own pants in no one’s fucking business, is it?
Of course, we’re not just talking run-of-the-mill clergy here, but those dedicating their careers to serving the military. Hm.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church in America, the Presbyterian Church in America, and the Rabbinical Alliance of America have issued statements or written to the Obama administration this year with their concerns that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” could force their chaplains to choose between serving God and serving the military.
Now THERE’S potential for a quandary. Salute, or genuflect? What is the chain of command? Wonder if that’s ever come up before … like … hm … maybe when sending troops out to kill and be killed over some bullshit tale of WMDs?
The Orthodox Church in America, for example, condemns homosexuality and mandates that the appropriate action its ministers should take toward gay people who seek counseling is to steer them to repent and renounce the gay lifestyle.
“If such an attitude were regarded as ‘prejudice’ or the denunciation of homosexuality as ‘hate language,’ or the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service,” the church informed the Pentagon in May.
I’m thinkin’ more along the lines of dishonorable discharge, actually … and maybe a lawsuit.
Anyone who can make a living passing the plate and the pap for the armed forces should damned well know how to keep their yaps shut; loose lips do more than sink ships, so GET OVER IT!
Can’t let this bit of hypocrisy by:
The Catholic Church likewise deems homosexual behavior a sin.
“This means that Catholic chaplains must show compassion for persons with a homosexual orientation, but can never condone – even silently – homosexual behavior,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio said in a June letter calling for “don’t ask” to remain in place. Broglio leads the Archdiocese for Military Services and is the church’s chief liaison to the military.
Oh, paaaaallllllleeeeeeeease! Since when, Archie? Your unit has been silently condoning, dodging and covering for priests jumping into any old fox hole for a long, long time, so shut the fuck up.
And get this:
Every officer in the military, including chaplains, is evaluated in an annual report. One criterion is whether the officer supports the military’s equal opportunity policy. If gays and lesbians are included in that policy, careers of chaplains who criticize homosexuality could suffer.
WTF? IF gays and lesbians are included? That suggests that they are not up til now, even under DADT, which I have to assume means that the confidentiality of the confessional hasn’t been a happening thing. Wonder what the catholic god who made that rule has been thinking. Probably understands that he’s been outranked.
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
From the Huffington Post, this, from David Briggs titled, “An Inconvenient Truth: More Religious Freedom Means Less Religious Conflict”, starts off the day.
Citing info in a new offering from Cambridge University Press, The Price of Freedom Denied”, Briggs makes the point well that ramming religion down the throats of anyone is a very bad idea with horrific consequences.
The more severe the levels of religious restriction, the greater the risk of violent persecution, the authors found. Forty-four percent of governments interfering with the right to worship had more than 200 cases of violent religious persecution; only 9 percent of countries with freedom of worship had similar rates of abuse.
And I will add … or NOT to worship … a point he’s not making, but I so am.
Hate crimes motivated by a religious bias have been reported to the FBI in nearly all 50 states for every year in the 21st century. In 2006, there were documented reports of one person being killed, 178 assaulted and 718 properties damaged or destroyed due to religious bias.
Although this article focuses mainly on the Ground Zero Mosque and stuff about zoning, my thinking goes more toward those not even included in those numbers, the kids who were literally bullied to death with religion granting the right to bully at the same time the right to love is denied.
Like it or not, religious nut jobs, you do not get to win this one. Really. Just because you’ve imbibed the anti-whatever Kool-Aid does not mean anyone else has to take even a sip.
“We don’t have a law against offending anyone’s sensibilities,” said political scientist Anthony Gill of the University of Washington. “This is just the messiness of democracy.”
You’d think the religious would be most in favor of religious freedom, but that is never the case. So convinced are they of their “rightness”, everyone else MUST be wrong, and that translates to running up their own asses and spending a whole load of time in the dark. Slinging shit is the logical outcome.
Seems the lack of light has so many missing so much of the actually point …
“The clear message is that even though religious freedoms are inconvenient, they’re the very thing that diffuses religious tensions,” Finke said. “Their religious freedoms are my religious freedoms.”
religion
re-li-gion [riˈlijən] noun: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods
From a Roman Catholic priest dripping water on my tiny brow as an infant, to the forced placing of tabs of LDS on my pre-teen tongue, to Jehova’s Witnesses disturbing afternoon delight sessions and beyond, attempts to shove religion down my throat have come often in my life. Thanks to a rather thick skin, an agile mind and a father who found it all more than a bit ridiculous, I managed to get by without swallowing the Kool-Aid, no matter what the flavor.
I don’t simply consider myself non-religious, but anti, and as any student of just about any bit of history can account, there’s good reason to take aim at the faithful when accepting blame for horrors is the target. (Check out the data here for a look at the part religion had played in genocides in just the last 60 years.)
Yesterday’s post addressed issues of religion-inspired hatred and its present-day deadly impact on people who happen to love folks with similar equipment and provided some insights from really smart guy Frans de Waal that, alongside discussions happening in my world these days, have me thinking about what might be the reverse of “religion”.
Of course, the religious would suggest words like ‘evil’, or ‘infidel’, or ‘unsaved’, or ‘headed for hell on a rail’, or simply ‘damned’, while others might put forth ‘atheist’ or ‘secularist’ to fill in the posed blank.
Dr. de Waal proposes that the possibility of a blank at all is not likely:
Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.
As often happens when I’m seeking info, it presents, as it does today in this article in the Huff Post that echos the good doctor’s thoughts without meaning to.
The author, Chris Stedman is a self-proclaimed “atheist promoting religious tolerance and interfaith work” … a designation I find confusing.
His take seems to be that atheists are somehow bound to spend time and energy trying to talk people down from their religious … what? … perch? … pedestal? … pulpit? … whatever … and convert them to atheism.
Sure, there is Richard Dawkins, vociferous and strident and poster child for what Stedman … and others … refer to as “Evangelical Atheism”, but compare the number of Dawkins in the world with the legions of bishops, elders, imams, priests, missionaries and others proselytizing the length and breadth of Planet Earth and you can’t help but come back with the idea that touting un-touting is a rather lonely endeavor.
Stedman says otherwise, but without attribution, so I’m not sure where this comes from:
When a large and vocal number of atheists say that their number one goal is convincing people to abandon their faith, it comes as no surprise that our community is construed as extreme and aggressive.
Personally, I’m a big fan of going toe-to-toe with those carrying the cross of luring people to accept Jesus Christ as their personal trainer … or whatever … as both the arrogance and the dangers involved in doing that just piss me off. This has much to do with recent events that have me drawing a line in the sand and trying on the idea of fighting intolerance with intolerance, being a bit frustrated with all the other cheek turning us non-believers are famous for. Being “construed as extreme and aggressive” actually sounds okay to me. After all, if you wanna end war and stuff, ya gotta sing loud.
Which brings me back to the Stedman piece:
“I may lose all of my credibility for saying this,” I said with a chuckle, “but I have zero interest in talking people out of their religious beliefs. The only religious beliefs I take issue with are ones that infringe on individual freedoms — for example, when someone’s religious belief informs their conviction that I, as a queer person, should not be free to marry whoever I choose. But their belief in God, when it does not contribute to actions that inhibit my liberty, is of no concern to me.”
EXACTLY.
Who gives a flying fuck what someone else holds dear as a belief? I couldn’t care less if folks think dancing naked around a pile of mangos will assure them of fruit in the afterlife … if wishing upon a star will grow them wings … if imagining a bit of stale bread to be some dead guy’s skin … go for it! Think of something wacky and live your life according to your wackiness. Just don’t screw around with anyone else’s whack unless you’re invited … and it’s a party … and your own doesn’t depend on getting theirs to match yours. Oh … and you’re not making a few bucks out of the deal.
Where Stedman loses me, however, is where he approaches that line Dr. de Waal so aptly defined … where what results comes out looking “like any old religion” … in other words, here:
It’s just a hypothesis, but I wonder if fewer nonreligious people would actively try to dismantle religious communities if we had a more coherent community of our own. Perhaps if we spend less energy negatively “evangelizing,” we’ll find ourselves well positioned to reach out in ways that build bridges instead of tearing them down.
He suggests reaching out to religious liberals and moderates in efforts to work together, an idea that feels like missing the point.
For starters, where’s the common ground between people who believe that the world began 6,000 years ago in the Garden of Eden and those who know that’s just stupid? Okay … maybe those people aren’t religious liberals. Maybe moderates understand the science behind geology and astronomy and evolution and have somehow modified their take on just how literally the bible should be interpreted, and if that’s the case, what is there to talk about?
If one side of the table sees homosexuality as evil incarnate and the other side is gay, where’s the starting point for discussion? If the religious group has no problem with what and who the gay group does in the privacy of their own pants, what’s the issue?
Religious liberals and moderates who keep their thoughts to themselves, support the rights of others, care for their kids and don’t kick the dog are pretty much like the average, everyday secularist, so the only reason I can see for trying to get some sort of coalition going might be called politics. I’m okay with that, but it also misses the point.
“Active dismantling” is appropriate when the fact is that religious fuckwads go out of their way to ram their warped agenda down and around the necks of any- and everyone. Their methods range from the devious — It’s our duty to save you from damnation — to the militant — God hates fags! — and pervasive. They’re also panicked by the idea that people may begin thinking for themselves, so bloody aggressive in their manipulation of hearts and minds.
Here’s a disgusting example of that manipulation … a video sent by a church to junior high kids to get them to save the souls of their classmates:
Shocked? Revolted? Horrified by the minds that would put that together for CHILDREN? Deeply concerned about the kids who had that dumped upon them? I certainly hope so …
When was the last time you had a secular humanist or atheist even so much as knock on your door to tell you you’re doomed, doomed, I say! (Or even: You’re an idiot.) … please read this pamphlet? That happens like almost never … and when it does, it’s only to make a point … like the guys in this video.
There’s also the issue of smarts. Anyone who actually believes the bullshit fed to them by any religion insisting that they own the rights to all right, that every other idea that can occur to anyone is not only wrong, but inherently evil, has to be either dumb as a shovel or capable of a disconnect to rival Sybil and therefore not a good candidate for any position that could make any difference to anyone under any circumstance.
Building bridges can be a nobel undertaking, but not always possible. When the divide is so wide the other side can’t even be imagined, much less seen, it’s often better to mind the gap. Of course, if the other side starts lobbing grenades, throw ’em back!
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 