Not All Breiviks Live In Norway

It was a lone self-described Christian conservative (his description, not mine) who perpetrated last week’s lethal rampage in Norway to highlight the erosion of culture by the infiltration of those who are “different.” In this case, the “different” meant the Muslim immigrants moving into Europe in increasing numbers. Clearly, as a dramatic statement about maintaining a certain cultural purity, this deranged killing spree was different from anything that had come before, but the dirty little secret is that Oslo was different only in degree, not in essence.

To justify his insane murders, the homegrown Norwegian killer, Anders Breivik stated that he was offended by the prospect of Muslims “mixing in.” Thus, Breivik joins the long list of other Christian conservatives who have been offended by “different” people “mixing in.” Christian conservatives fought against equal rights for Negros right up until the 1972 passage of the Equal Rights Amendment because they didn’t want people with dark skin and kinky hair to be “mixing in.” When the KKK would set their chosen symbol on fire to intimidate and threaten Negros, it wasn’t the symbol of the swastika, or the symbol of the star and crescent. It was the symbol of the Christian cross. And today, the Christian conservatives have targeted homosexuals as the latest group to be prevented from “mixing in.”

Readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of Christianity, and my reason for this is that I see Christianity— at least in its conservative fundamentalist version— as exclusionary and elitist. It’s all about deciding who is offensive to God, and deciding who should be prevented from “mixing in.” But mostly, it’s all about making the fundamentalist Christian conservatives feel like they’re “special.” Swelling their ranks are evangelists like James Dobson and Ted Haggard, and politicians like Michele Bachmann, and self-appointed “therapists” like Michele’s husband, Doctor Bachmann Ph.D.— all claiming to speak the mind of the Lord when they oppose gay marriage, and as they work to marginalize homosexuals I see a little bit of Anders Breivik in all of them.

Why Some Of Us Voted Against Our Own Self-Interest

Growing up in the 1950s, I was aware of a group of adults who were known as “The Country Club Set.” For the most part they were college educated, working at very high paying jobs, and they always voted Republican. They were the opposite of the poor blue-collar working class, and while my father toiled within this latter group and never belonged to a country club, he nevertheless always identified with the upper strata of society, probably because he was very intelligent. Intelligence seemed to be another quality of the Country Club Set, at least to the uninformed mind of a child in the 1950s, and for that reason I wanted to grow up and be a member of that group. Last Tuesday, the Country Club Set did an amazing thing. They voted for a man who will deliberately raise their taxes, probably by quite a lot. Understanding why these people voted against their own financial self-interest by switching their vote from Republican to Democrat is the key to understanding why the Republicans are in deep trouble.

Now that the election is over, the media pundits have been unusually candid and free in using the word, “incompetent,” to describe the Bush administration, although they are still reticent to use the other appropriate adjective, “stupid.” Whether or not the Country Club Set is truly intelligent I can’t say, but I do know that they understood at some gut level that the Bush incompetence was directly caused by his fundamental personal stupidity. I can say this since I’m not an official pundit, and speaking for myself, I can also say that it would be difficult to overstate the sheer dreariness and embarrassment of living for eight years in a nation governed by a globally-recognized fool. I don’t speak for the Country Club Set, but I myself finally came to the point when I wanted smart, intelligent governance more than I wanted governance which would be financially advantageous to me. The other alternative was to pick up and move to the Cayman Islands.

This discussion about intelligence leads back to the Republican Party. In the GOP, the Country Club Set was, until the last election, one of the two fundamental “base” groups that could always be counted on to pull the “R” lever. The other GOP base group has always consisted of those who are content to let James Dobson define the Word of God for them, and let Rush Limbaugh explain the Constitution as well as everything else. It was this latter group that was appeased by the pick of Sarah Palin, and was made to feel especially comfortable with the realization that she could never make them seem intellectually inferior. She was, after all, one of them, and it was good riddance to those intellectuals who were driven away by just her wink and a smile. The Republicans are now openly predicting that Palin will be a major force in their party in 2012, and this sends the message that the GOP is casting their lot with the dittoheads who tune in the EIB on radio stations down there below the Mason Dixon Line. I just can’t see this having much appeal for the rest of us, especially after we have four years to see a glow of grace and intellect in the White House.

Petroleum Science 101

There’s a political TV ad running in Colorado right now, and it claims that there’s more oil under the Colorado mountains than under the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As Jack Parr used to say, “I kid you not.” Actually, this is more of a half truth than a falsehood. The deception lies in the fact that there’s such a thing as oil—and then there’s OIL. The stuff under the Arabian peninsula is called, “sweet crude.” It’s pure petroleum, and it’s in liquid form. The stuff under the Colorado mountains is called, “oil shale.” It’s petroleum that’s locked into solid rock layers. There’s lots of it, but here’s the deception, the oil needs huge amounts of water and heat to be released from the rock. Colorado, despite its winter snowpack, is a desert environment. There simply is not enough water available to unlock the oil from the oil shale in quantities that would be significant. The required electricity to generate the heat is also in short supply, so the oil is “there,” but unavailable. Petroleum industry honchos aren’t stupid people. They wouldn’t have spent the last half-century investing in petroleum infrastructure on the other side of the planet if their product needs could be met right here in this country (see my blog 7/28). Most of the political rhetoric about unlocking domestic oil sources seems to ignore this basic fact.

Everything about the global energy problem involves possible solutions that are deeply rooted in science and engineering, and thanks to the Christian Right’s influence working through the Bush administration, science has been crippled in the United States during the last eight years. Only 18% of our high school students study any kind of science, and the majority of the world’s scientists and engineers are no longer working in this country. By following influencers like Dobson and Limbaugh, a nation can’t let a fanatic religious and ideological fringe take it back to the Dark Ages, and then expect to face the challenges of the 21st Century with scientific enlightenment. We’re either going to be medieval, or we’re not, and we can’t have it both ways,

Also see: $4.00 Gas—Soon A Cause For Nostalgia

The ATA, Jesus, and New Age Paranoia

An interesting little tidbit of paranoia surfaced this weekend at the New Age conspiracy conference in Crestone, Colorado. I only mention it, here, because it may not be so paranoid. It concerns the ATA, which stands for Allen Telescope Array. Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen has spent part of his considerable fortune to build an array of twenty-foot radio dish antennas (there will eventually be 350 in all) at Hat Creek, California. This location is the reason why New Age conference attendees are paranoid. Everybody (at least everybody familiar with the project) seems to wish that Allen had chosen to build this telescope array in the middle of the CERN supercollider ring on the French-Swiss border, completely beyond the authority of the U.S. Government. France and Switzerland support and appreciate science, and many astute people believe that the only reason that the Internet grew to unstoppable proportions before government control could shut it down was the fact that the Internet was invented and started at CERN. But I digress.

New Agers are more into astrology than astronomy, so you might ask why they have an interest in celestial telescopes. It’s because of the ATA primary mission, which is to detect radio transmissions from intelligent extraterrestrial advanced civilizations. The ATA is part of SETI. The paranoid scenario goes like this. A few years from now (the exact number of years doesn’t matter), the ATA hits the Holy Grail and finds a radio signal which cannot come from anything but an intelligent source. The finding is announced to the world. And, with time, we learn to decode, or read, or understand what is being said to us across the light years of space. Then, as the interstellar messages accumulate, interested parties with religious tunnel-vision, maybe James Dobson or John Hagee, begin to wonder what happens if nothing indicates that the intelligent beings sending the signal know anything about Jesus, or Mohammed, or the entire concept of supernatural Salvation. What if Jesus begins to look like nothing more than a local boy? The celestial astro-communication will not be two-way, of course, so all we can do is listen. We can’t ask the bombshell question. But the stakes are profound. It doesn’t take too much imagination to visualize the U.S. Government, pressured by the religious Right, shutting down the ATA by claiming it compromises our satellite intelligence capability, or some other nonsensical phoniness tied to our so-called national security.

Sure it’s paranoid. But if your argument against this happening relies on faith in good American government, then consider The Patriot Act. And if you believe that Americans still appreciate scientific discovery, then consider the public response to global warming evidence. Finally think about this. Rush Limbaugh just signed a deal for 400 million dollars, justified on the grounds that he can sway an audience of 30 million right-wing listeners. Limbaugh believes that the new CERN supercollider can produce a black hole which might threaten the earth, and he doesn’t believe that subterranean oil deposits are the result of decayed prehistoric plant life. When you live in a country where that kind of scientific ignorance earns 400 million dollars, then any absurdity is possible.

The Geopolitics of Denver

When they start welding the manhole covers in place to deny sewer access, you know that some kind of extravagant dog-and-pony show is coming to town. For Denver, the big attraction will be the Democratic National Convention in August, and this seems like a good time to explain why, politically, Denver is like a pinball caught between the machine’s two bottom flippers. It all has to do with the location, and the pinball flippers are the two neighboring towns.

Twenty miles west of Denver sits a town that is often referred to with tongue in cheek as The People’s Republic of Boulder. To say it is “liberal” is like saying that Washington D.C. is political or Vatican City is religious. The description, while true, is insufficient. Like utopian residents living inside the hole of a donut, surrounded by a growth-inhibiting greenbelt of protected wildlife sanctuary, the left-leaning citizens of Boulder go about their daily lives, listening to NPR, and motoring about in their low-carbon-footprint compact Volvos while avoiding all use of forbidden tobacco products. The Federal Government always keeps a close eye on the citizens lest they betray their insufficient level of patriotism by advocating for peace. And everybody in town knows that the NRA would have fewer members if guns were used to perform abortions.

Democrats, even those with a middle-of-the-road, it-doesn’t-make-any-difference view, will probably feel right at home in Boulder. There’s a semi-socialist comfort to be found in the normal Boulder leftist way of looking at things, and certainly life in this town, for liberals, is vastly superior to what it’s like down the road.

Down the road means Colorado Springs, 70 miles to the south. It’s a place where the citizens really know now to put the “Right” in righteous, and where seldom is heard the discouraging words, “gay marriage.“ Here is to be found an incestuous colony of world headquarters for outfits like The New Life Church, and The Navigators, and Global Harvest, and Focus On The Family, and numerous other para-church think-tanks devoted to the overthrow of evolution and homosexuality and stem-cell research and any other facets of biology which they find offensive. I never get it, that hang up with biology, since nowhere in the Gospels, as far as I can tell, is there anything to say from Jesus on the subject of biology. Nevertheless, the self-righteous biology police are famous for periodically calling a national news conference to announce that they’ve found homosexual traits in yet another animated cartoon character from the make-believe world of kiddie’s television. For me, watching this is more entertaining than Saturday Night Live, but the local citizens tend to keep their TVs glued to the Fox News Channel.

As home to the United States Air Force Academy, NORAD, the missile defense center, and the huge Ft. Carson army base, Colorado Springs is, arguably, the most militaristic city in America. Only a couple-dozen or so sovereign nations on earth have more firepower and military infrastructure than this single Colorado town, so the citizens of Colorado Springs tend to think of themselves as the last great bastion of patriotism and 2nd amendment protection. But deep down, if they’re forced to admit it, they also know that the NRA would have fewer members if guns were used to perform abortions.

Convention Democrats in August, intending to sneak down to Colorado Springs and, perhaps, revel in some pro-war happy-talk, are urged to go incognito. Don’t openly display your convention credentials and remember to dress conservatively (no pun intended).

Does the United States Need a Revival?

In God we trust. America has always been a Christian nation, and that explains why, of all the nations on earth, God smiles on The United States of America. Anyway, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

The U.S. is 5% of the earth’s population, but we have 25% of the world’s prison population. Countries like China and Indonesia incarcerate political prisoners as well as criminals, buy they don’t lock up citizens in numbers like we do in America. They aren’t even close to us in their ability to fill their slammers. Helping to drive this prison population explosion is the fact that we have the highest murder rate on the planet, by a HUGE margin. No other Western, non-third-world country comes even close to our kill rate, and even countries at war like Iraq are only slightly ahead of us in wasting the lives of their own citizens. What I’m describing, here, is just the “civilian” part of the Great American Killing Machine. Add to that the fact the America spends more on military hardware than all the rest of the world combined, and every penny spent on this so-called “defense” has just one purpose: erasing human life. Backing up all that hardware is the manpower of the “armed services.” Television advertising to recruit volunteers for the military accounts for the single largest TV advertising budget spent by anyone running ads on the tube. And the average person doesn’t even see most of the recruitment ads, unless they are black or Hispanic, because 60% of all that money is spent on the BET and Telemundo networks. Only in America can a career in the Marine Corps look more glamorous than a career in medicine or teaching.

As Americans, we excel at squandering lives, but we’re not all that good at saving lives. America is #24 in the world in infant mortality. That means that 23 countries do a better job of keeping their youngest citizens alive. America is #19 in the world in providing healthcare to its citizens. That means that 18 countries on earth do it better. These other 18 countries don’t have better doctors or better hospitals. They just choose to spend their money on healthcare instead of their Army and Navy. But we do hold the #1 spot in one area of medicine. We lead the world in the number of elective cosmetic surgeries performed purely for enhancing appearance. I guess we like to look good for God.

There’s another area where we are #1,and that’s in the purchase and recreational use of drugs that are illegal and unrelated to medicine. Whether it’s cocaine from Columbia, or marijuana from Mexico, or heroin from Afghanistan, we in the United States buy it, and snort it, and shoot it, and smoke it with enthusiasm and gusto not seen anywhere else on earth.

The family has always been considered important in every culture on earth, and we are told that the family is important to God, too. Let’s see how we’re doing. More than half of all American marriages end in divorce. 52% to be exact. This is the highest divorce rate of any country, so that makes us number one in that dubious category. Sometimes, the wives that get out of marriage are the lucky ones because public health statistics report that 17% of all married woman report spousal abuse. Illegitimate birth rates in America are also the highest of any nation or culture, and in some U.S. minority population segments the illegitimacy rate is 70%. This is the picture of the “traditional family” in America that the hate-mongers say is threatened by homosexual marriage. The hate-mongers ought to know since they claim to speak for God. It would sure be helpful to hear from The Big Guy himself, but I won’t hold my breath on that.

So, here’s the question: Is the U.S. due for a revival? Evangelical revivalism is a good old-fashioned American invention, and Americans have been “revived,” over the years, more than the citizens of any other nation. We can see where it got us. And just who would do the reviving? James Dobson? John Hagee? Ted Haggard? (I heard that Pastor Ted has, himself, been revived, so he get back into the swing of things and tend to our salvation). One last comment from me. If the U.S. does hold a revival, I will be the first in line to buy tickets. I’m beyond salvation, but I could use the entertainment.