Lest We Forget: Vain Hubris Can Be Disastrous - The Hindenburg Showed Us How.

American exceptionalism has been in the news so much lately that you'd think it was an inbred trait of America.


It is. Only it was called by other names in the past: "Manifest Destiny" and "American Colonialism." The concept of America as the Number One nation in the world, it seems has always been with us, but there have been times when our swelled heads have been deflated - pride going before the fall, so to speak.


Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, an epic tragedy in many ways to many people, but perhaps the biggest setback to a prideful National Socialist Party and its homeland, Germany.


It was May, 1937, and Germany was still riding a high from 1936 - hosting the Summer Olympics and re-occupying the Rhineland (against the Treaty of Versailles) in its first real aggressive act since WWI. True, it was fighting some bad vibes from other countries (especially the U.S. and even the Vatican), but it also saw the unifying of Germany and Japan against Communist Russia in the Anti-Comintern Pact. Germany as a power in the air had been established for a long while, with the flying of zeppelins as proof of Germany's technological superiority.


There was hubris tinged with irony in the disaster: it was first proposed that the massive zeppelins be filled with helium, a non-flammable substance, but because America - the biggest producer of helium gas during the 20s and 30s - had a military embargo against Germany banning the import of helium, Germany was forced to use flammable hydrogen as the primary lift gas for zeppelins. For years, the zeppelins filled with hydrogen had operated without a problem, giving Germany the feeling that it had mastered the art of lighter-than-air flying. The Hindenburg was, in a sense, the Titanic of zeppelins, drawing onlookers wherever it went - and especially where it landed. It had, in fact, flown 34 successful transatlantic trips in 1936.


The film of the disaster will remain in history's memory forever: not until 9/11 had anyone ever seen instant flaming destruction on such a scale.


Not until 9/11 - perhaps the other wake up call to a nation's hubris. Yes, it may seem a stretch to compare the two, but bear with this concept: whether natural or man-made, disasters can bring countries of great import to to their knees. More than humbling, disasters can be a reality check, a jolt back into perspective. The problem with that jolt, however, is how we react to it: if we react with more hubris (the cowboy diplomacy of George Bush?), we may be worse off than before.

American exceptionalism, as said before, has always been with us. We are the shining City On a Hill "exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries." (wikipedia). "Exempt" may too mild a word for a country that has considered a capitalist, boot-straps, take-charge energy to be the be-all and end-all of everything good for a nation and its inhabitants. Exceptionalism has created, if you will, a blindness to America's history of its ills and lack of morality. We have today some Americans who have flatly stated that African-Americans were better off under slavery. We have political forces teeming to obliterate the hard-won labor movement. The Christian Right backs only corporations and politicians who subscribe to a Puritan ethic, mindless in that ethic's war on humanity. The OWS movement is considered an outright war on capitalism. The singing duo Garfunkel and Oates have been roundly criticized for coming out with a parody, We-Are-The-World video entitled Save The Rich (see below). American exceptionalism is in full force.

So when is going to be America's next Hindenburg? It's next 9/11? When are we going to jolted back into the reality that we have a long way to go to be as perfect as we think we are? When it happens, let's hope that we will have the integrity and leadership to accept the reality check and go on from there.

Demonizing America - Part 2: "Kill Them All! God Will Take Care Of His Kind!"

Like it or not, the concept of bullying has been with man since the very beginning of his existence. We called it "survival of the fittest," to rationalize terrorizing the weaker species. During ancient times, bullying took the form of slavery. It took the form of victors lording it over vanquished: male rape was seen as an excellent form of bullying as well as slavery, which, if one thinks about it, is perhaps the ultimate form of bullying. In the Bible,  the ultimate bully was embodied in Goliath, the man-mountain whom the Philistines sent out to daily harass and taunt the Hebrew armies. Some people argue, however, that the ultimate bully was the God of the Old Testament. Israel was His schoolyard. Look what He did to poor, defenseless Job!

On a bet with Satan.

Size and strength characterized bullies whether in personal size or number of soldiers in an army: Napoleon and Hitler were considered bullies by the relatively defenseless Eastern European countries: when Neville Chamberlain waved the paper treaty with Hitler in front of the Britons and declared "peace in our time,"  the Czechs cowered with the thoughts of the bully Nazi army  - which did, in fact, march into Czechoslovakia days later.

Whatever the form, however, bullying was always a state of the strong ruthlessly handling the weak.

Religious bullying is not new: if you think of one sect purposely taunting, terrorizing, then ultimately killing off another sect as bullying, then you're right. The first case of western civilization genocide was the bullying, then annihilation of the Cathars of Southern France. They were different than anyone else, wore different clothes, worshipped not in churches but out in fields, did not eat meat, did not believe in hierarchy such as bishops and were extremely good to their neighbors. Naturally, the pope hated them.

To publicize their heresy, they were forced by the Church to wear yellow crosses sewn onto their tunics (demonstrating that Hitler wasn't very original) and routinely had their hands cut off, the only reason being that the church considered them heretics. Their numbers continued to grow despite the vicissitudes imposed on them, until the pope had a plan: get together with the king of France, Louis the VIII,  take their lands and simply eradicate them. That's when the battle cry above was born: while beseiging the city of Beziers, one of Louis' commanders asked the papal legate how he could tell the 200 Cathars from the rest of the 15,000 Christian citizens of Beziers. The legate's answer went down in history: "Kill them all - God will take care of his kind." Louis and Clement's strategy claimed approximately 120,000 lives over a period of some 20 years, becoming the first genocide in modern history. It was known, of course, as the Albigensian "Crusade."* 

Revisionist "historians" of Christianity always seem to overlook the Albigensian Crusade, perhaps because it not only stained the church of the Middle Ages but because it also gave rise to another dark era of religious bullying: The Inquisition. For hundreds of years, men like the legendary Torquemada  carried out the bullying of Jews and Moors (Muslims) in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and scattered places across the rest of Europe. 

I remember the evening I went to see the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. A nun was holding a makeshift sign that said "Lies, lies, lies!" But while the movie focused on the Church organization, Opus Dei, it did not touch upon the Albigensian Crusade to any substantial degree. That was, to me, the typical philosophy touted by almost all of America's religious leaders: never admit to anything and never, ever apologize. And if you have to apologize, do it when people won't remember what you're apologizing for. The Vatican recently apologized to a very dead Gallileo for imprisoning him, and the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for its part in the institution of slavery 140 years after the U.S. condemned and abolished the inhumane practice.

Just how many religious people in America know of the "dark side" of their religion?  The percentage would be closer to "0" than you think. Today's religion and yesterday's history aren't exactly friends, which is why we're seeing revisionists cropping up, so that people of faith need not apologize for anything. One wonders if people actually know about the first Christian theologian - Tertullian - and his last-minute conversion to Montanism or that many of the Vandals and Visigoths sacking Rome were Arian Christians.  How they would react to the stories about the concentration camps for pagans in Skythopolis, Syria?  Or the persecution of heretics? And for the last hundred years little has been made about Martin Luther's horrendous anti-Semitism (he wrote the seminal work, On The Jews and Their Lies)

Other instances of religious demonizing, then bullying, were the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (40,000 "heretical" French Protestants massacred in one day), Native American Indian slavery ("ungodly heathens" forced to build and work on the California Missions - approximately 50,000), and Chatila (massacre of 1500 Muslims by Christian Phalangists). Bullying on a continuous scale came in the form of The Crusades (millions of Jews and Muslims killed in the an untold number of major wars, minor wars and massacres), Charlemagne's forced conversions of the Saxons (legend of Widukind) and in later years, the Russian pogroms and massacres of Jewish villages and settlements.

The worst incident at demonizing in history?  There are so many, but arguably the most vile was the "Blood Libel" of the Jews, so strongly entrenched into the European psyche that it took hundreds of years to convince Christians that Jews did not kill gentile children to drink their blood for secret ceremonies. (BTW, this gave rise to the Jewish Legend of the Golem)

DEMONIZING PWAs

Many people were demonized during the "Age of AIDS" (1982 - 2000).. PWAs ( People With AIDS -primarily gay men) were the new lepers since during the first years medical establishments and health organizations were uncertain about how contagious the virus was. There were a few faith-based agencies in San Francisco during the beginning and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles stepped up to the plate in 1986, but so very many churches abstained from doling out compassion. They just weren't up to the courage of Father Damien.

The Christian Right's eagerness to demonize gays, politicians and non-Christians became evident with the like of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Of course, statements from people like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms didn't hurt either:

Americablog:

Sen. Jesse Helms says the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct," The New York Times reported Wednesday....

Pat Robertson:

- I have a zero tolerance for sanctimonious morons who try to scare people.

- I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss.

Such was the fervor of the Moral Majority at the time, that it seemed as if they danced in the streets while people were dying in the streets: "Thank you God, you have sent a plague to our enemies."

THE LAST HOLDOUT?

Probably the most obvious (and the most vicious) holdout as far as demonizing PWAs is concerned is the powerful Southern Baptist Convention. Almost thirty years after the start of the epidemic, the SBC still cannot point to the sponsorship of any faith-based agency dealing with AIDS ...in this country. They lauded Mike Huckabee in 1996 when he wanted to quaranteen PWAs (the casual contact theory had been disproven years befor then, but Huckabee still pushed the quarnateen - to his own embarrassment years later). Today, they still follow Jesse Helms dictum that helping AIDS victims in Africa was fine because they were "all heterosexuals" while all AIDS victims in America were perverted sodomites.***

Next Up: 

Demonizing America - Part 3:  HELL HOUSES - Causing Teen Suicides Or Rescuing Souls?

* Scholar Steven Runciman wrote:

"High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed ... the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".

 **"That massacre, said Pope Gregory XIII, gave him more pleasure than fifty Battles of Lepanto, and he commissioned Vasari to paint frescoes of it in the Vatican"."

***I may be wrong on this since my research is over a year old. 

And This Is Who They Listen To

Scott Lively May Trump Beck As Prince Of Fools

But The Christian Right Still Insists On Quackery

People listen to Glenn Beck. Yes, they do. And because they do, the rest of the country has to suffer the slings and arrows of unreasoned hatred fueled by an insipid lust for power. But who does Glenn Beck listen to? Does he listen to anyone? Do the writings of some pseudo-historian drive Beck's history and blackboard shenanigans?  

They do.

Beck introduced David Barton as the "historian" who is "The Library of Congress In Shoes." Unfortunately, those shoes only hold a "career upon his claim that United States government was founded on Biblical precepts."

wikipedia:

Barton is a collector of early American documents, and his official biography describes him as "an expert in historical and constitutional issues." Barton holds no formal credentials in history or law, and critics dispute the accuracy and integrity of his assertions about history, accusing him of practicing misleading historical revisionism and "pseudoscholarship."

Barton's claim that ours is a Christian Nation is specious at best. His discourses on slavery dodge the bullet when he skirts around the subject by citing his friend, Stephen McDowell, whose close relationship with R.J. Rushdoony (THE Reconstructionist) shines through in his explanation: America's slavery was not BIBLICAL Slavery! In other words, "Southern Slavery Wrong -  Biblical slavery Right!"

Reconstructionism has long been a taboo subject for American Christians because it advocates "reconstructing" government to conform strictly to Biblical law. For years, pastors, churches and denominations were quick to disassociate themselves from the Chalcedon Foundation, founded by Rushdoony. But today, unreason has taken hold and Reconstructionism is hiding in plain sight: in the teachings of people like David Barton.

Barton is a fraud. Beck knows it. Groups like Tony Perkins' Family Research Council know it. But neither of them care, because they need people like Barton. 

FRC and Scott Lively

It took the "kill the gays bill" in  Uganda to bring Scott Lively to the forefront of influential "historians." His book, The Pink Swastika, was debunked by legitimate historians condescending to talk about such idiocies: Hitler was gay, he surrounded himself with gay men because they had no conscience and were the most vicious, therefore Nazism was founded by gays. Lively brought forth his precepts in Kampala, Uganda last year, along with the principle that the criminalization of homosexuality was the best way to eradicate it:

[from a statement made in 2007 in a letter to Russia]

However, homosexuality is destructive to individuals and to society and it should never [be] publicly promoted. The easiest way to discourage gay pride parades and other homosexual advocacy is to make such activity illegal in the interest of public health and morality. 

Wikipedia:

Scott holds a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Trinity Law School, and a Certificate in Human Rights from the International Institute of Human Rights.

Whoa! Such credentials! But with a little investigation comes a great big disappointment. For one, Trinity Law School has had an abysmal rate of its students passing the bar (only 22% pass the first time and some almuni have wound up taking it as many as six times - without success). Nowhere is Lively's bios does it say that he was a ceritifed attorney. For another thing, a Certificate in Human Rights is rather dubious, considering that the IIHR's founder was key in drafting the Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 9:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.     

The proposed "kill the gays bill" of Uganda is nothing if not arbitrary. And one more thing about Mr. Lively's credentials, his letters are all signed with "J.D., Th.D." but no other documents reference a doctorate in theology or any accredited institution that would have awarded him one - even an honorary one. Additionally, a doctorate in theology is not the same as a Master or Doctor of Divinity which Lively would have to use in labeling himself as "pastor."  

And his other books, Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child: A Parent's Guide to Protecting Children from Homosexuality and the "Gay" Movement (1998) and Why and How to Defeat the "Gay" Movement (2000) cite no professional expertise, Lively being neither a professional child psychologist nor a psychologist specializing in gender "disorders." 

Lively is a silly fraud. But Family Research Council will support Lively, distributing his works as manna from heaven - especially in Uganda.

O.K, so I've mentioned Paul Cameron and Joseph Nicolosi before,  but it's worth repeating that Family Research Council depends heavily on the writings of these two for the "research" in its name. Along with Perkins and Lively, I've called them the Four Horsemen of the Homosexual Agenda.

Let's face it: it's so easy  Jon Daily to poke fun at the idiocies of someone like Lively, but the likes of the Christian Right - aka Tony Perkins, James Dobson and Rick Warren - HAVE to listen and repeat. 

The only other choice they have is to listen to their consciences.

No, that would never do.

 

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The Frightened and the Insane: Looking at the Latest In Right-Wing Intolerance

If for reasons of indolence or cowardice this fight is not fought to a finish we may imagine what conditions will be like 500 years hence. Little of God’s image will be left in human nature, except to mock the Creator.

- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

These last several weeks have brought out the worst and most unreasonable attitudes in people. It must have been the eclipse. Or the full moon. Or Gay Pride parades. 

Let's see, there was: Lou Engle spewing as much hatred as possible behind closed doors; not one, but TWO strikes against DOMA that inflames Tony Perkins' sense of the melodramatic; a HuffPost columnist trying to link Darwin to Hitler; the Call 2 Fall movement on 4th of July causing a lot of bruised knees and egos; the Texas GOP going completely draconian; Sharron Angle hoisting herself by her own petard; and the Phelps clan going to the Supreme Court armed with self-righteous stupidity.

We've covered Lou Engle's attempts to eradicate homosexuality (by eradicating homosexuals) and, quite frankly, if people haven't gotten the message that this is a very, very dangerous man, then no amount of additional, honest but unrestrained rhetoric will seep in. 

"Your honor, we believe the protesters were within their rights because they were nuts."

Before arguing a case before the Supreme Court, it is wise to submit a brief stating your client's case. It is not wise, however, to state that your client (also being your own family) was "hysterical" while exercising their right of free speech. The brief for the defendant in the case of Snyder v. Westboro Baptist Church is a case in point:

Phelps also argued that the church was engaging in public speech on a matter of public concern; that the funeral was a public event; and that the church did not assert provable facts but instead expressed “hyperbolic, figurative, loose, hysterical opinion.”

This is a case that will receive national attention simply because it is so emotional: do dimwitted right wingnuts have any right to spew insanely vile hatred anywhere near something as emotionally charged as a funeral? Remember, these were the same people (stretch of the imagination here) about whom The Laramie Project was based and who have a website featuring Matthew Shepherd engulfed in the flames of hell. The basic rule of humanity - that you NEVER insult widows or orphans or anyone connected to someone who has just died - is breached by people screaming how glad they are that the deceased are dead and rotting in hell! 

If the Phelps clan wins, then every hate-filled group on the planet will be marching with misspelled signs (oops, the Teabaggers already do that). At the very least, their victory will encourage some people to be more uncouth and vile in their protests. But if they lose, the Christian Right will have a very real conundrum on their hands: someone they hate (Phelps is bad PR) will have gotten the heave-ho using their only real defence - free speech. Tony Perkins will have a hard time choosing puns for that article.

It may also be the first time "hate speech" has ever gone to trial on a national scale. Will the "man addicted to hate," the man banned from entering other countries, the man who bred a family of haters, the man who invented passages of the Bible for his own purposes of argument, will that man win?

I shudder at the thought.

Well, Ducky for DOMA!

Sorry, but whenever I see headlines by Tony Perkins, my prose starts to whack to the right. His bon mots, puns and witticisms are as toxic as the BP oil spill and I should be pitied for having to slog through them every day. When district court judge Joseph Tauro decided two cases against DOMA, Perkins had this to say:

Yesterday, a U.S. District Court did its best to preserve Massachusetts's reputation as the most liberal state in America on marriage. In Boston, a federal judge used his gavel to shatter the one law preventing a complete capitulation to same-sex "marriage" at the federal level: DOMA. 

"... gavel to shatter." There's drama (which I like) and then there's melodrama. The characters in Perkins' plays all seem to have a large appetite for scenery. 

In his decision, judge Tauro ...

...stated that he could not find “any identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective” for DOMA to treat same-sex couples differently.

Lisa Keen pointed out:

That finding was important because, in 1996 decision, in Romer v. Evans, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that animus cannot be used to justify a law.

Hmmm. Perhaps the same can be said for the Phelps v Snyder case. 

On The Origin of Species Was REALLY Mein Kampf!

 

Columnist David Klinghoffer wrote a piece last week titled The Dark Side Of Darwin. And readers of the Huffington Post commented accordingly: 

Humans have been killing each other for millenia, we didn't need Darwin to tell us to do it. To claim such is intellectual dishonesty to the extreme.

Lauri Lebo at Religion Dispatches:

In his piece, Klinghoffer recites the tired lie that Hitler was inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution to force the sterilization of 400,000 people he judged inferior in the quest for racial purity. Klinghoffer, by the way, is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, an organization which has been trying to insert religion into public school science classrooms under the guise of intelligent design and anti-evolution lesson plans.

There are, of course, intelligent people in the evolution debate, but an irony lies in the fact that they don't seem to be on the side of intelligent design.

"Spoiled" Nevada Unemployed Have Sharron Angle Coming To Their Rescue!

Nevada U.S. Senatorial GOP candidate, Sharron Angle, the one who promised Harry Reid physical violence via the Second Amendment, has a new attack ad featuring Nevada's high unemployment rate. It would be good strategy if Angle herself hadn't herself said that people receiving unemployment benefits were "spoiled" and that she would have voted against any extension of those benefits. Sort of like saying "you don't deserve jobs, but I'm going to get them for you anyway!" 

Prayers For Fear And Loathing

Sometimes it takes a foreign voice to give us a better perspective of how things really are: Matthew Harwood's article in Britain's Guardian, America's Paranoid Religious Right, gave a fairly good picture of Tony Perkins' Call 2 Fall nationwide 4th of July event. Harwood and his wife attended a Call 2 Fall service in a suburban DC church:

The experience was an insight into the cultural insecurities at work within the religious right and its Christian nationalism – the belief that the United States was, is, and for ever shall be a "Christian nation", utterly dependent on God for its success.

What Harwood experienced was what we, as Americans, have been experiencing on a constant basis: the "Christian nationalism" of which he writes has endeavored to put a strangle-hold on government and our daily lives. And in the process of strangulation, America has had to scream out the injustice:

What originally began as songs of love and sacrifice quickly rot into gay-bashing and the dangerous, yet indistinct talk of enemies everywhere. The room began to take on the darkness of Arthur Miller's Crucible more than the enlightenment of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.

This article also begs the question: Just how many degrees of separation are these people from Fred Phelps? Certainly not six. 

No People Evolving or Marrying Queers In Our State! 

And last but certainly not least, America was treated to the latest GOP aberration: the Texas GOP platform, proving that since they don't believe in evolution, Texas GOPers haven't bothered to evolve. 

From Huffington Post's David A. Love:

To round out an astonishing set of policy positions, the Texas Republicans are against any regulations on gun ownership. Oh yeah, and they declare that this is a Judeo-Christian nation. And there should be capital punishment for rape convictions (like the good old days). Deep water oil drilling should resume in the Gulf of Mexico, employers should be able to discriminate, and the minimum wage law should be repealed, they say. No more birthright citizenship -- citizenship by birth would be limited to those born to a U.S. citizen. Finally, the Texas GOP assert that the U.S. should get out of the United Nations.

                 

Of course, tthe Texas GOP may have simply stated which direction other extreme right-wingers in this country really want to move: not right, not left, certainly no forward, but - you guessed it - backwards.

An emotional vandalism case hits the big time. A Senate candidate runs a clueless attack ad. A repudiation of DOMA creates some serious melodrama. The 4th of July incites prayers of paranoia. An egregious link between Darwin and Hitler surfaces. yet again. A party platform takes its clues from the Dark Ages. Whatever brought all this on? 

I dunno. But as surely as you can say "rabid right" we'll have more of the same. 

Pass the hemlock.