It Sucks to be Sick

Everyone gets sick.  This is the unspoken corollary to the other two eternal phenomena of human life: death and taxes.  Sickness is a part of the human experience, and let’s face it, it stinks.  No one likes waking up to a fever and feeling achy with a flu, no one likes the repeated spitting that follows a particularly unpleasant bout of vomiting, no one likes a sore throat or a headache or all the other maladies that may afflict us at any given time.  If we’re lucky, that’s the long and short of it.  Maybe if we’re slightly less lucky we’ll get a broken limb or have to undergo some small surgery, but for many people this is the limit to what they think of when they think of sickness.  It’s the occasional inconvenience to be endured every so often, with a few aspirin or an antibiotic to make the whole process a little more tolerable.  Otherwise, we are all expected to simply go on with the belief that sickness is nothing more than a tiny nuisance; however, this is not the whole truth.

In 2014 we were reminded that there are scarier diseases out there than the flu like Ebola, though statistically the flu remains the greater killer. We had to suffer the hysteria of people dealing with just the thoughts of what a pandemic disease might mean.  This not to belittle the tragedy that befell West African countries that really did experience the full force of Ebola.  Here in America the number of people who ever even had Ebola remained so low that you could count them on your fingers.  Despite the facts of the situation, it seemed like we were nearing the end times, as governors forcibly quarantined certain individuals for the sake of the herd, regardless of the medical consensus.  We were reminded of the structural inadequacies of the American healthcare system to confront a threat like this, but also the overwhelming fact that modern medicine certainly is prepared to treat even the scariest diseases with a very high success rate.  But now in 2015, no one cares anymore.

“Breaking Bad” was one of the most successful and entertaining dramas in television history.  A testament to its success were the record breaking numbers of viewers tuning in to watch the pilot of the spinoff, “Better Call Saul.”  And whether said explicitly or merely felt implicitly, one of the overarching themes of that series was the critical failure of the American healthcare system.  Walter White didn’t die of cancer, but only because he made a fortune selling drugs to afford the treatment, among other things.  And while this is certainly a work of fiction, it pays lip service to a larger truth that America, though blessed with the greatest doctors and the most advanced medical technology, is not very good at healing its citizens.  Someone that I greatly admire, Dr Aaron Carrol, made a video exploring just how the current healthcare system we have now is not necessarily extending everyone’s lives in this country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjlRc1lEIvk

It’s all well and good to have the best doctors in the world and to be the epicenter for medical research, but it’s quite another to bring those resources to bear when and where it counts, which is to say in the lives of real people.  If you can afford a good healthcare insurance plan you’ll probably be fine.  Let’s not forget that even having any plan does not necessarily guard you against high premiums and deductibles.  The ACA has done so much good in extending the benefits of healthcare to millions of Americans, it does not solve the problem altogether.  There are still plenty of holes in the system where real people can and do fall through.  This is why America is still in the elite category of being on of the only developed nations left in the world that still fails to guaranty healthcare to everyone in her borders.  The only reason why there isn’t a greater outcry on a daily basis is simply because the vast majority of people don’t get sick that severely or that often, but for those of us that do, it is a daily embarrassment to say the least.

But we cannot pretend that the only problem here is the failure to help Americans who, through no fault of their own, get a chronic disease or an otherwise overly expensive medical complication.  It’s not simply a matter of failing people who have the temerity to be both poor and cancer patients, it’s a matter of business and social policies that seem dead set on ensuring that sickness is as inconvenient a threat as possible.  The liberties people take with their own health and the health of their children has come to some prominence lately.  After about a hundred cases of measles were reported and linked to vacationers at Disneyland, it seemed there was finally a bit of a public outcry over the number of parents denying vaccines to their kids.

Herd immunity is critical for the survival of a modern society, and the cornerstone of herd immunity is the trust that every person who can be vaccinated against preventable diseases will do so.  There are some people in the world who cannot take vaccines because their immune systems aren’t strong enough.  Babies are the first that come to mind, as their immune systems simply haven’t developed yet; then you have senior citizens of very advanced age, who again are dealing with ever weakening immune system; next would be the people who simply have autoimmune diseases, including but not limited to HIV/AIDS; and of course people who have to take immunosuppressant drugs in treatment of disease, which incidentally includes myself.  All of these groups have limitations as to which, if any, vaccines they are capable of taking.  The whole of this group, along with the rest of society, depends on other people to do the right thing and get vaccinated; however, we’ve been reminded what one of the costs of freedom is in the hands of irresponsible people.

But on a more day to day basis, sickness plagues the lives of American citizens everywhere because of our work ethic.  Americans are among the most productive and work centered people in the world.  In fact, many countries joke about just work obsessed we are, yet it remains one of the qualities I most respect about my homeland.  Unfortunately, like all things, there is such a thing as too much.  Our devotion to work means that there is still no guarantee that all workers can expect maternity leave from their employers, let alone paid maternity leave.  This ensures that pregnant mothers will remain on the job as long as physically possible putting both the mother and child at heightened risk.  More fundamentally, Americans have no guarantee of sick leave of any kind from their work, and this is of particular concern.

Workers in food service routinely show up to work less than healthy, because they know that they can’t afford to take the day off.  Doing so means a day’s less wages or worse the possibility of termination, but this only serves to put the consumer at greater risk.  Now there is always going to be a risk from going out to a restaurant, just as in preparing food at home.  There are any number of ways that you could get sick from food borne illnesses or from sitting next to another customer with a contagious disease, but we only put ourselves at greater financial risk when our chefs, cooks, waiters, and maitre d’s are expected to always come to work.  This of course setting aside the fact that these same workers generally can’t take off to tend to their kids when they get sick either.

Sickness sucks, and not just for the person zonked out on Nyquil with a flu.  Sickness sucks billions of dollars out of the US economy every year from losses productivity, it sucks trillions of dollars out of people’s wallets to cover expenses ranging from treatment to funerals and yes business expenses too.  Sickness sucks out our humanity as we continue to allow millions of Americans to go without or to go into interminable debt when combating serious illness.  Sickness sucks in just about every way possible, except for the fact that it does keep our doctors and nurses employed.  Any of these are the kinds of conversations we need to be having because it costs us dearly, but no, by all means let’s have another fight on whether we can keep the government running at all in the first place.

Imagined Threats

Scarcity is the most important concept of economics, as everything hinges upon it.  Similarly, politics rests on the reality that there is a select number of resources, people, man-hours, etc that we have at our disposal to tackle all the challenges we face in the world.  We do not have the resources to monitor every potential threat that could hit America, let alone to take care of those threats.  We have only so much money in our coffers to provide for national defense in the form of tanks, battleships, and bombers on the one hand and the less tangible things like intelligence gathering.  We have only so much money to provide for the construction and maintenance of schools, not to mention the personnel that make these structures so valuable.  As informed citizens, it is, therefore, our job to ensure that our representatives are given the incentive to focus resources in the most efficient ways possible, so as to cover as many threats with as few resources as possible.  However, the role of the government becomes impossible, when on top of everything else, the electorate demands that we waste resources on imagined threats and overinflated problems.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about, we’re talking about fear.  Fear is this strange phenomenon that is often quite rational as a defense mechanism.  For example we have evolved to fear dimly lit places, because our visual disadvantage in these places makes us vulnerable.  Usually these fears are just tiny little thoughts in the back of our mind that can ultimately be conquered with an adequate dose of thought.  Roller coasters might seem scary, but you realize that no business could long operate if its clientele were being perpetually killed off, so they’re pretty darn safe.  But fears can also be overblown and irrational, sometimes earning the label of phobia.  These fears can be incapacitating and lead otherwise rational people to make stupid decisions.  Sadly, this is the case for many of the supposed threats that face America.

Terrorism is despicable and the people who use it as a tactic for their own ends are lacking in certain human capacities, to say the least.  Terrorists are killers and a grave threat to countries plagued by warfare, turmoil, power struggles, etc.  Terrorism is not a grave threat to the United States, however.  In 2014, 23 Americans died as a result of terrorist attacks, incidentally the majority were Right Wing terrorists and not Islamic.  In that same year, 55 American soldiers died fighting in the war on terror.  More than twice as many Americans died fighting a threat than who died from that threat.  To give a comparison of what normally happens when confronting a threat, let’s look at some fire statistics.  The easiest year to find statistics I could find was 2011.  In that year 3005 Americans died due to fires as compared to 6 firefighters.  Because if something is an actual threat, it kills more people naturally than the people who go in to fix it.  But Americans aren’t all that scared of the risk of fires, nor should they be.

Only 23 Americans died due to terrorist attacks, and while each death is a tragedy, it is not a tragedy that warrants literally trillions of dollars to remedy.  130 Americans died due to incidents with deer, usually in car crashes.  So even Bambi is a greater threat than terrorists to the average American.  But the call from many people is to increase the scope of the War on Terror and to spend even more money on keeping us safe from this imagined threat.  Why?  Why are people so incredibly afraid?  There is no one answer to this question as there are many factors involved, and what may be true for one person is not true for all.  It could be that the media focuses too much attention on terrorism, because ratings go up when there are big terrorist attacks to cover.  It could be that terrorism is so irrational that people can’t understand it, and people do fear what they don’t know.  But I think more than anything, it is part of a specter in America that feeds on fear, the nationalist sentiment that pervades the American Far Right.

If you ever find yourself in the position of listening to a group of hardcore conservatives in a setting that is free of media cameras, you will be in for a show.  Don’t get me wrong, when the cameras are running these same people have no shame in saying some truly horrendous things, but then tone shifts just a little bit crazier when they aren’t worried about what the outside world might think.  Terrorists, which in these circles is the same thing as Islamic terrorists, are the perfect scapegoat for all the problems of the world.  They are the boogeyman that sits in the corner, but is just tangible enough that everyone feels vindicated in fearing it, in a way that most adults don’t fear the fictional boogeyman. What’s more, because it’s Islamic that means it is different, and what is different is inherently bad to these people.  It is the perfect storm for hate, so all that is needed are select individuals to give words to the hate and the fear, so that the rest of the crowd can turn off their brains to simply clap and hear.

Now, I’m usually the last to make allusions to Hitler in political discussions, simply because it is usually an ad hominem attack that ends discussions, but when I listen to these groups and I see the speakers going in full force it’s hard not to picture the Nuremberg Rally.  The whole crowd is put through the emotional roller coaster or tragedy and terrifying stories to hateful rhetoric about the people who caused it until it boils over into demands that we kill and kill and kill them dead until there’s no one left.  I have trouble even coming up with hyperbole to describe these events, because even when you think you’re beginning to describe a straw man the next speaker comes up and says essentially exactly what you were imagining.  Reason is tossed away at the entrances so the audience can simply have their hearts tugged and their spirits enflamed until the whole crowd gets whipped up in the fury to enact their solution to the terrorist threat, which it goes without saying means killing every last one of them.

I said that it was incidental that the majority of Americans who died in terrorist attacks last year were from Right Wing attacks, but that’s not quite true, because how else could these movements that get so riled by hate end.  Without irony these groups that hate terrorists so much, glorify every act of violence that could be committed against them.  Without any sense of perspective, these groups are more than prepared to do anything and agree to anything so long as we can kill those bad guys.  It boggles the mind how these people can go about their day to day lives when they are so bogged down with hate and fear.  But these are the same people who are called to action at the polls and so they are the voice that gets catered to, regardless of how small a minority it really is.

We do have problems in the US, and terrorism is indeed a threat that needs to be addressed, but we need to be able to talk about scope and scale.  More than anything we need to be able to talk about the barriers to our being able to capable tackle these problems.  Fear can be a useful emotion, but its excess leaves us vulnerable to even greater threats, disguised as solutions.  There is a small sect in American politics that seems to embrace fear as a strength, who uses ignorance as a weapon and a tool to get a destructive political agenda passed.  The goal of all people who strive for a peaceful society should be to make this small sect as irrelevant as possible, to let them keep to their hate-filled rallies until they either realize how wrong they were or die in their old age, bringing their hate with them.  We have trouble enough to deal with in the world, without fighting quixotic battles and fretting about imagined threats.

The Past Is Behind Us

In many ways, too many to count actually, the Republican Party can best be summed up with one word, nostalgia.  This is both their greatest advantage and greatest disadvantage, because people find nostalgia alluring, but it is also a dangerous trap to fall in.  Every speech made by the GOP will include allusions to the past, to the good old days, and to fallen heroes like Ronald Reagan.  There are a great many people who remember their childhoods fondly and think that it is worthwhile to return to those good old days.  And while I might agree that there are important lessons to be learned from the past, and even certain values worth bringing back to the modern political and cultural landscape, there is a lot more to the past than the good old days.  It is the ignorance, both passive and active, that makes the nostalgia at the center of the GOP platform ultimately untenable as a guiding ideology.

What I mean by this is that a proper discussion of the past has to include both the good and the bad, the full scope of reality, which is too often overlooked when seen through rose tinted glasses.  It is only natural to want to ignore the more painful memories and to pretend like there were only sunny days way back when.  If you think of your own personal heroes, it is all too tempting to pretend like there were no flaws to them, but you pretend at your own risk.  As a child, I admired Napoleon Bonaparte as an example of a person who could come out of obscurity to a position of such great influence.  To me he was the man that ended the terrors of the French Revolution and set forth a fair and admirable Code Civil, which was the first in Europe to treat all members of all religions as equal citizens.  But as I learned more about his full history I learned how he reinstated slavery in the colonies, how he imposed the “values of the Revolution” on all those countries he conquered.  In short, I grew up and learned to take the full view of the man as imperfect, so while I may be able to admire certain aspects of his story, I cannot put back on the rosy view I had earlier.

I have had similar journeys to learn the whole truth of many people I respect, including heroic liberal clans like the Roosevelts and the Kennedys.  So while I may still admire the truly great things that FDR did, I am not willing to be as naive as to ignore the reprehensible things he did.  I do not see the same tempered admiration on the Right, in fact the mere admission that someone may have had faults seems to be a claim of hatred on the Right.  To say anything wrong about America is equivalent to hating America, and thus if we don’t like it we can get out.  To point out the problems of the Reagan presidency is near treason and to quote the many things he said that stand in stark contrast to his image as a conservative idol is heresy.  America has always been perfect and would be now if not for all those darned liberals mucking things up.  Except in reality, we notice that there are many problems with the conservative narrative of history, and it is because of their active ignorance of history that we keep running into the same walls over and over again.

One of the accomplishments Germans should be most proud of is their reaction to the Holocaust.  It may have been true that during the war, Germans were generally kept in the dark about the full scope of what was going on, but once the cat was out of the bag they faced it like adults.  There are monuments and museums across Germany that pay respect to the fallen, that inform the living of the lessons that must be learned, and that make sure that people cannot willingly forget about what happened.  The efforts of the German government to make some form of restitution is also commendable.  And I bring this up, only to contrast it to the way America has always responded to its great national sins.

“Forty acres and a mule.”  That’s the nearly apocryphal promise made to the freed black slaves during the Civil War.  General Sherman issued Special Field Orders, Number 15 in 1865 to provide about 400,000 acres of land to essentially get the refugees that had followed him off his back.  It was taken as a promise of compensation by the freed slaves, a recognition that simply being freed is not sufficient to join into the larger society.  But within that same year, the newly sworn in President Johnson undid it all.  Now it may be worth noting that paying the sin of slavery with the sin of theft of land may not have been the right way of doing things, but the various Homestead Acts would seem to prove that the issue wasn’t with taking land, it was a matter of who’s land was being taken.  Since then, there has been so close to 0 effort into addressing the aftermath of slavery that to even bring it up is frowned upon, if not a third rail.

To even suggest that the history between the end of the Civil War and now, including the Civil Rights movement born out of the more recent turbulent past, is an impossibility to the Republican Party.  It’s all ancient history and not worth bringing up, in stark contrast to the good old days of the same period.  This is what I’m talking about when I say that the GOP is all about nostalgia, without any of the recognition of reality that should come with it.  There may be a reason why the largely old, white, straight, Christian males that dominate the GOP have much fonder memories of the good old days than the rest of the country.  Again, that’s not to say that I dislike American history or the American people, the truth is that I love my home country; however, I love my country as an adult and I can recognize the profound blemishes my homeland bears.

The same phenomenon is apparent in the conservative reaction to President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.  Now let’s set aside that it may be inappropriate for the government to be sponsoring things like prayer breakfasts, and focus on what has made conservatives angry, other than that Mr Obama spoke at all.  He cautioned fellow Christians from getting up on their high horses when talking about religious extremists and Islamic terrorists.  He spoke the simple truth that religion, though a source of comfort and solace for many, can be used by wicked people to do wicked things.  This simple truth is as true for the maniacs that make up ISIS as it is of the maniacs that make up the KKK.  It is a truth that stretches back for thousands of years.  And though he brought up the Spanish Inquisition, something nobody expected, he could very well have gone back to the Bible itself, with the slaughter of the Amalekites and the Mideonites and the Canaanites and still more.  The command then was as clear then as it is now, to those who see only the most literal and inhuman interpretation of their texts as viable, the only path for the believers is soaked in blood.  That horrifying truth has once again proven too honest for the conservative extremists to tolerate.

History and religion are both full of lessons for decent people, but only if you are willing to see the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  America’s past is imperfect, and we need to recognize that fact by facing up to it as we move forward.  The story of religion, yes even Christianity, is imperfect and good-hearted people need to be able to admit that the Bible is not perfect as they move forward in faith.  But to those who want only to see what they want to see, there is not path forward that is free of the exact same problems they ignore.  Like infants, they believe that when they cover their eyes the whole world disappears and will stay that way until, or if, they ever pull those fingers away to see it.  The past is behind us, but we can’t leave it there.  We need to be adults and bear the weight of our past: the good and the bad and everything in between.  Nostalgia can be comforting, but the excess of it, as with the excess of just about everything else, leads only to greater pain and endlessly repeated problems.  We are told, “Seek and ye shall find.”  So when you seek the truth, that is ultimately what you will find.  But if you seek only what feels good, then that, and nothing else, is all you shall find.

Social Darwinism

In a recent tour of the United Kingdom, presidential hopeful and Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, decided not to answer any questions about his beliefs concerning evolution.  Well that’s not strictly true, he did want to answer questions about the evolution of the cheese industry in Wisconsin.  Nonetheless, his response highlights a key problem that faces the Republican Party, namely reality.  Any GOP presidential candidate is expected to walk the fine line of catering to the far right extremists that dominate the tone of the party and appealing to the rest of the country.  Now, I don’t claim to know what Mr Walker’s response would have been had he answered, but I think by listening to other big name Republicans we can narrow down the response.

If he wanted to win the conservative vote in the GOP primaries, he would have said something along the lines of, “As a Christian, I believe what the bible says, and that’s that.”  Trouble here is that he thus insults the vast majority of Christians, let alone Americans.  Christianity has no objection to evolution, as evidenced by the last four popes, at least, telling their flock that evolution should be considered fact.  Many preeminent scientists, even within the fields of biology, are Christian and fully capable of recognizing the fact that is evolution.  It is a sad fact that among Evangelical Christians there is a majority that denies evolution, and even sadder that nearly 46% of Americans deny it as well.  But to say that the Christian stance is to deny evolution would be patently false.

In the 2008 and 2012 election, there were serious candidates who raised their hands to be counted among the people that do not accept evolution as a scientific fact.  Among these are the perennial “candidate,” Mike Huckabee, and the current cause of the collapse of Kansas, Governor Brownback.  But these were not the candidates that ultimately won the primary.  Politicians like Senator McCain and Governor Romney did assert that they accept that the scientific consensus is that evolution is the mechanism that best explains the speciation of life on Earth.  But their campaigns and critics are always quick to sugar coat the response with the old add-on, “but it’s just a theory.”

This assertion, however common, is so silly that I can never quite grasp how it is still around.  Yes evolution is a theory, in the same way that gravitational theory is a theory and that germ theory is a theory.  However, I don’t hear any of these “Christians” claiming to be able to fly, though I do hear some that claim that god, and not microbes, has sway over health.  These are the kinds of basic facts that any fifth grader would be expected to understand, if in fact the GOP allowed the education system to be funded.  This is why the question of whether a candidate accepts evolution matters, because it is emblematic of the fight against ignorance in this country.

During the Bush years, a vocal minority of “god fearing” folks got very comfortable leading the conversation about just about every issue in US politics: from whether public buildings should cover the nudity on classical sculptures to what should be taught in schools.  These people do no represent America, these people do not represent the religious community, these people do not represent Christianity.  The small but influential sect of people that believe that the bible is the literal word of god are as deluded as any religious literalists.  What separates a group like the WBC from ISIS, thankfully, is generations of secularly minded folks tempering the worst parts of that religious extremism.  But today, even after a resurgence of rationality in the White House, at least, the community of “Christian” extremists remains a structural part of the GOP.

Don’t get me wrong, there are people on the Left who ignore science too.  The environmentalist groups that ignore the real debate about GMOs by making claims about their danger that are definitively proven false by systematic review of studies, are also ignoring science.  The self obsessed yuppies that jump on the bandwagon with gluten free trends and even anti vaccination groups are similarly ignoring science, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.  Any person that accepts homeopathy as on par with standard medicine is also ignoring science whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or anything else.  However, there is only one party that has a core devoted to not only ignoring science, but defaming it.

Of the criticisms I’ve heard about evolution in the political arena, the one that consistently irks me the most is the conflation of evolution and social darwinism.  For example, this jerk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bma528opF5c “Survival of the fittest,” is not evolution.  Evolution is the variation of species, the shifting population dynamics during times of change, the adaptation of communities to fit niches and environments.  In short it has nothing to do with fitting the spurious claims of uneducated “skeptics,” on what constitutes the “fittest.”  Eagles have better eyes than we do, cheetahs run faster, whales can hold their breaths longer, and bacteria are much more populous than we are.  In any number of ways we can claim to be both the fittest or the least fit to survive, yet here we are along with millions of other extant species, not to mention the countless billions that went extinct in the process of making life as we know it today.

Evolution is the beginning of a conversation about how we use our resources in the present to best protect life.  Evolution is the beginning of a conversation about the origins of the diversity of life and the opportunities that diversity affords us.  All of the creationist digs at evolution give us is the end of a conversation and ultimately the end of America’s position as the prominent player in international politics.  Evolution gives us new medications and medical treatments, creationism gives us the Dark Ages.  The misunderstanding of evolution, by the likes of these Right Wing extremists does give us the kind of destructive social darwinism that they claim to abhor.  But why does this question matter?  Because truth matters.

The problem I ultimately have with the partisan ideologues that espouse this ridiculous rhetoric has less to do with the stories they tell themselves, and much more to do with the backbones of our representatives.  I don’t think that Mr Walker actually does deny the truth of evolution, though it wouldn’t be the greatest shock to discover that this is the case, but it shows a great deal of his character, or lack thereof, that he stumbles over this.  He and most every Right Wing politician that claim to deny evolution are most likely doing so merely for political posturing, and that is just sad.  Our leaders are expected to make the tough choices of allocating funds to education, defense, infrastructure, and so much more.  They are expected to weigh the pros and cons of wars, treaties, alliances, and all manner of potentially world changing things.  It would be comforting to know that on the simple issues of elementary science that they are willing to stand up and be counted among those who believe what is true, even when it is not necessarily what they want to believe.

The role of governing is difficult.  Any person wishing to hold the highest office should be expected at a minimum of proving that they can stand up against the voices of a deluded minority, and proclaim that 2 plus 2 is indeed 4.  This should be the easiest question in the world for any politician to answer in the 21st century, yet it continues to be a stumbling block for some.  Evolution is a fact of life, a fact evident in the necessity of getting a new flu shot every year.  If you can’t be trusted to stand up for truth on something as trivially easy as this, then how can we the people expect you to make any claim of truth?  This is a time for leadership, a time to stand for reason.  We can ill afford to continue sacrificing the most basic truths of the world to special interest groups, whatever form they take.  If we do continue to sacrifice that, then I can’t say much for our ability to survive in the long run.

God With Us

There are few things as profoundly personal as the search for a deeper meaning to life.  Very often this search brings people to a religion or some conception of a higher power.  And while I may not subscribe to any religious belief, I can certainly understand the allure of a spiritual community that comes together in that search.  Religious groups often live out their creeds through good works for their fellow human beings, e.g. humanitarian relief, reconstruction of troubled areas, rehabilitation programs, etc.  However, there is something altogether unsettling about groups that take their private and personal religious experiences and use it as a weapon in the political arena.

Politicians have long used religion as a means of connecting with people.  It would be nice to give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they weren’t merely exploiting religiosity to gain political favor, but let’s face it, there are quite a few people who will quote any scripture and recite any prayer if they think it will advance their career.  And while the explicit use of religion to wield political power has diminished in the Western world since the Enlightenment, it’s never completely gone away.  Any time a political movement wishes to make the immoral seem moral, they simply wave a flag and hold up a holy book to misdirect attention away from the words that come from their mouths.  Not for nothing, but the Nazi uniform didn’t forsake tradition and quote Nietzsche with “Gott is tot” on their belt buckles.  No, the Wehrmacht brandished “Gott mit uns” as prominently as possible.

I would say that the religious communities of the world should be the most skeptical of people who so freely brandish about terms of the holy when they make political statements.  This is not to say that a truly wholesome movement couldn’t be devoted to their religious convictions, just that it would be prudent to listen to what people are saying when they invoke the name of god to make a point.  I have no problem with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union because they hold their religion as part of their identity, even though I don’t agree with all of the platform.  I do, however, have a problem with people on the political fringe who use religion to justify the degradation of rights and the denial of justice to their fellow human beings, regardless of whether they are believers as well.  Though this is not a uniquely American problem, I have a much deeper understanding of the situation in America so I will focus on that.

We see the issues of theocracy in other countries and condemn them without hesitation. We are rightly appalled when we see homosexuals thrown from buildings and stoned to death, when women are denied the right even to drive a car, when apostates are sentenced to death, when “infidels” are burned alive, etc.  This is quite easy for many Americans because the religion being appealed to is not their own.  For many Americans, however, there is no consideration that the problem may not be just with Islamic extremists.  Without irony, some of the same people who were most disgusted at the horrific crimes committed in the name of god, are the most adamant that America needs to submit to their interpretation of god.

From many pulpits, the refrain is clear.  God hates the same people we hate, and wants to make sure that the law reflects it.  There is a whole spectrum of vitriol on this front.  Some people take Leviticus at its word and claim that gay people should be put to death or rounded up so that they can’t corrupt the rest of the world or just denied the same rights that straight people enjoy.  Other people insist that it’s the godless who need to learn their place and insist that religious monuments should be erected on public land while barring atheists from holding public office, regardless of the Constitution.  Still others assert that parents should be able to beat their kids and withhold modern medicine from them, so long as they are following their interpretation of the bible.  To this very specific kind of believer, god hates (among others) gays, atheists, and children.

What’s more, this same group believes that they are being oppressed when the sane part of the country pushes back and says you cannot deny service to people based on their sexuality, you cannot pass off religious teachings as science education in public schools, you cannot deny your child access to cancer treatment, etc.  To an unfortunately loud minority of the faithful community, being treated as an equal member of society is oppression because they deserve to be treated as privileged members of society.

And we must remember that this is not a matter of just blaming religion or religious people.  Dr King was a minister, Mr Rogers was a minister, and heck one of our Presidents, Jimmy Carter, is a deacon.  There has never been a reason why the religious community can’t be the accepting, devoted, and caring community that it wants to be as well as involved in shaping what America is and should be.  The problem is not with people being religious, nor with religious people being in politics.  The problem has always been with people who use religion as a tool for feigning superiority, while proving their moral inferiority through word and deed.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee is once again making small waves in his kabuki theater act of a presidential run. In word and deed he has proven to the country that he lacks the moral scruples or competent intelligence of a normal human being, which of course qualifies him to be king of the “bubbas.”  He tries so hard to convince people that he and people like him are being attacked on all sides, but really he’s just enjoying the world that would exist if people were judged by what they did and not by what god they claim to worship.  He says that people who hold traditional values are being disenfranchised, which is not the case.  Christians of all stripes have full reign to believe and act as they wish, but now those conservative Christians who want to use the government to bludgeon people who think differently are finding that they can’t do so anymore.

Like former Senator Rick Santorum, Mr Huckabee is finding that the rest of America is learning that dickishness is not a family value.  Because the simple truth is that the “traditional values,” and “Christian love” he preaches is Orwellian nonsense.  There is no value in clinging to principles and beliefs that would have been the cutting edge three centuries ago.  What’s more, preaching to parents that they should disown their kids if they were gay is not love.  Instilling a sense of self-loathing and disgust in your gay children is not love.  Love is acceptance, even if you aren’t completely comfortable with it yet.  Love is actually eternal and not as fickle as that of the god that sends his creation to burn for eternity.

But let’s pretend for a moment that there were actual moral validity to these conservative extremists.  Let’s assume for just a moment that these preachers of hate were something more than flag-draped bullies.  Even then, there is still the astounding stupidity that comes from living in an echo chamber where you believe your own hate-filled shouts are the voice of god.  Mike Huckabee, due in part to his belief that a person who found Jesus must be redeemed, pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than one thousand prisoners as governor.  Now, I would be the first to claim that our overflowing prison system needs to be addressed, but you don’t do that by releasing violent criminals on an unsuspecting public.  And lest you think I’m making baseless accusations here, let’s remember the case of Wayne DuMond, for whom Huckabee actively sought parole, only to rape and murder again once out on parole.

See, when we look for political leadership we shouldn’t be looking for the person who says Jesus the most.  And we should be all the more skeptical of the politician claiming to hear the voice of god.  If nothing else, let’s remember the brilliant deductions of the President, who above all others, claimed to have a direct link to the big guy, George W Bush.  President Bush, when asked about his first meeting with Vladimir Putin said he “was able to get a sense of his soul.”  Apparently seeing a crucifix on the chest of Putin was enough to convince President Bush that this was a “very straight forward and trustworthy” individual.  But I suppose it is only appropriate to end on this scene of two leaders, each using the image of the holy as a masquerade for their own ambitions.  It seems quite clear to me that god is not with us in these ostensibly religious people, but only the specter of tyranny and ineptitude in the shape of a cross.

Eat Your Vegetables

Politics is so often the art of telling people what they want to hear, and that’s the problem.  Yes, you are not going to be Mr Popular if you always come off as a wet blanket, but the biggest problem people have with politicians is that they are inept and dishonest.  Both of these qualities are inextricably linked to the reality of politics, wherein politicians will say and promise whatever they have to get elected.  And due to the further reality of just how frequently these people have to be in campaign mode, once they are in office the temptation is to only get behind the policies that people like to hear about, regardless of the consequences.  Sadly someone has to bring a little truth to the table or else we are pretty much screwed.

Like many problems in American politics, there are good examples of bad behavior on both sides of the aisle, but there’s one side that is noticeably worse.  Democrats are quick to tout the benefits of government action and regulation, but it might take a little prodding to get them to admit how exactly we pay for things.  Republicans on the other hand love to dole out tax breaks at a moments notice but never admit that there is a cost of doing so.  Republicans love to end regulations, but they never admit that regulations might have a purpose in the first place.  Republicans love to harp on about the debt and the deficit, but darned if they ever actually get around to addressing it.  So what?  What’s the problem with following the polls and doing what is popular with the people?

Unfortunately for the people who win elected office, we don’t live in a magical world of make believe.  A world where government can do everything we want it to without receiving tax revenue.  A world where deficits just get rid of themselves and regulations are unnecessary.  No, sadly for those of us living in the real world, benefits come at a cost and sometimes people make bad choices.  The real problem here isn’t that politicians are doing poorly at their jobs, which is to say that they are indeed representing the expressed will of the people.  The problem here is that we the people can be quite bad at expressing our will to the government.  We want a government that establishes justice, provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare, and all that good stuff.  At the same time we want a government that taxes just the tiniest bit, if indeed at all.  And of course, we want a government that neither imposes regulations nor runs deficits.  In short we want candy, and we’re not too keen on eating our vegetables.

I am sorry to be the harbinger of bad news, but roads do not pave themselves, and soldiers may fight for freedom but they don’t fight for free.  We need taxes that raise revenue sufficient to run the government we actually want.  If we do any less than that, we create deficits and debts that grow until they threaten the potential for coming generations to govern themselves.  The problem, at the moment, is not necessarily that tax rates are too low.  In fact, we could probably lower tax rates, but only if everyone were actually paying them.  The tax system we have right now is a nearly endless labyrinth of loopholes, exemptions, subsidies, and outright fraud.  Solving this issue should be an incredibly easy task, as both Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed their disgust with the tax code.

At this point the only hope we have in fixing the tax code is to cut it down altogether and start from scratch.  From there we can set up a progressive tax system that effectively brings in revenue without creating any confusion about which types of income are included or excluded at whatever rate.  By simplifying the tax code we would also lessen the burden on companies of all sizes that have to waste countless time and resources on accountants and attorneys to ensure that they are both getting the full benefit of the tax system without leaving themselves open to legal trouble down the road.  Only once we have a clear cut system of how to bring in revenue can we then address, exactly how much revenue is needed to fulfill the government’s purposes.  Finally, with all that in place the simplest solution is to just leave it alone for an extended period of time, i.e. more than a year.  This is because people and businesses can deal with imperfect systems, but inconsistent systems, not so much.

Speaking of the purposes of the government, we need to remember that there are times that government can be an effective tool in curbing the worst of our decisions.  For example, unlike Senator Thom Tillis, I think it is a good thing that there are government regulations to ensure that restaurant workers wash their hands.  This gives an added incentive for companies to make the decisions that are ultimately good for their bottom line, as well as give some reasonable security to the consumer.  I think it is a good thing that there are government regulations that require automakers to install seat belts.  Again this is the kind of incentive that ultimately makes sense for business as well as protecting the consumer.  These regulations become toothless, though, if the regulatory committees behind them are underfunded.  There is obviously a balance to be struck, but the kind of libertarian position that says that we would all be better served with no regulations is either asinine, naive, or dishonest.

Government is a necessary evil, but it is also a lesser evil than many others we face in the real world.  Because of that, it is worth ensuring that it works properly and is adequately maintained.  Again, the sad truth is that few things of value come without a cost, and for government we need to be honest about what we want and how we will pay for it.  We cannot expect government to be everything for everybody, but it needs to serve the basic purposes that allow us all to work and live together in relative harmony.  That means providing a safety net to catch people who fall through the cracks, so that they can again become productive members of society and not a drain on it.  To do this, it is not sufficient to merely funnel the poor into prisons, but to work on the kind of rehabilitation that many countries are noticing is not only more moral, but more economical.

Government needs to curb our worst excesses without becoming an impenetrable wall for any potential mistake.  This is why there should be regulations and caps on carbon emissions, a position that only a decade ago was a conservative one.  The government’s role is not to close every coal mine and every power plant that emits CO2, but it is the role of the government to ensure that greenhouse gases are part of the equation when energy companies are doing the math that causes them to invest in more green energy or more dirty energy.  For a more tangible example, we need to have close monitoring of nuclear power plants, but we need to make sure that there isn’t so much red tape to discourage the creation of new cold fission reactors.  Nuclear energy is cleaner than fossil fuels, as it emits no carbon, and it is safer on the whole than coal or natural gas.

But repeatedly we’ve seen that the problem here is not that politicians will only ever present us with sugar coated lies and half-truths, that is the symptom.  The actual problem we face is our indifference to reality and our inability to make the hard but necessary choices.  Government is necessary and worth paying for.  Taxes are annoying and should be changed to limit that annoyance as much as possible, but at the end of the day we have to pay.  Regulations may not seem like the most fun thing in the world and should be scaled back in certain circumstances, but we need to have a mechanism that makes bad choices less frequent and good choices easier to spot.  We need to remember that a democracy is only ever as good as its people, and unless we want to continue to have this petulant squabbling continue until the whole system collapses, we need to face facts.  We need to suck it up, act like adults, and eat our vegetables.

Unchallenged Minds

I am not, what you might call, the biggest fan of modern art.  On more than one occasion I have been known to scoff at some contemporary art as something that a child could make; however, I am also not an enemy of modern art.  If I am an enemy of anything, I am an enemy of closed minds and closed hearts.  And this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc is the height of closed mindedness.  The arrogant, unearned superiority of those calling for the good old days without the recognition of why things change is, to my mind, an assault on the collective experiences of humanity and on reason itself.  It is the quintessential example of why conservatives never seem to handle the concept of diversity, education, and liberty.

No one is going to argue that the works of people like Michelangelo or DaVinci are anything other than masterful, but when you make a claim that certain art is just objectively better than others, we run into some problems.  When you look at the portraits for which people have been willing to pay the most money, you will notice that they are mostly paintings that would fall into the “modern art” category.  So from a very practical stance one could argue that the most valuable art ever created is not the stuff of Renaissance artists, though obviously the most famous of those simply couldn’t be bought or sold.  Regardless, some of the most enduring images ever created by human beings are not, strictly speaking, realistic.  Some pieces like “The Scream,” for example are as fundamentally true in their translation of the human condition as “The Pietà.”

This is because some times what it means to create something that seems real is not as easy as making a trompe-l’œil picture.  The reason why Pablo Picasso is so universally revered as an artist is because he chose to eschew the kind of realism that this commentator puts on a pedestal, favoring something much more visceral.  If you look at his early works, you will see that he was indeed perfectly capable of making paintings in the style of Jacques-Louis David, but these weren’t the works that made him famous.  The haunting images like “The Old Guitarist” are what make impressions on people, in part because they reject established notions of perspective and the traditional view of beauty.  But even his works from that period held onto much more realism than, what I believe is, his most true work of art.

“Guernica” is perhaps the truest depiction of war yet created by an artist.  It has everything, from the panicked rush of people running in desperation from the next airstrike to the primal scream of a mother mourning over her child.  War is not beautiful, it is not glorious, it is not human, and yet humanity is thrust into war perpetually.  Without the use of “accurate colors” this painting captures the full pallet of emotions created in the horrifying tragedy that was the Spanish Civil War.  Yet, this commentator would have such works relegated to the trash heap because they supposedly just aren’t as good as the “method of the masters.”

Now why am I talking about this in a blog that is primarily concerned with politics?  For the same reason that this video came from the Prager “University” youtube page, and yes the scare quotes are justified.  This video was made as a defense of the virtues of the good old days and an attack on change, well I’m sorry but the world keeps on turning.  What’s more, the arrogant attacks on modern art are put in such a way as to discourage diversity of thought and background.  Only those who imitate what has been decided to be the great masters can hope to someday bask in their reflective glory, any attempt to do something different is necessarily “silly, pointless, or purely offensive.”  This is the ultraconservative mindset in a nutshell.

I don’t listen to a ton of heavy metal or twelve-tone music, they’re just not my favorite genres.  However I can recognize talent, moreover I can recognize that not all music is made with me in mind.  Every art and every movement within it has its detractors and its fans, and that is fine.  There is no reason why all people should be expected to like the same things, though it would probably help us get along if we listened momentarily to people when they explain what it is they do like about it.  And just maybe, you can pick out the one or two exceptions to the rule that do float your boat even if the genre as a whole doesn’t appeal.  For example I do have at least one Ozzy Osbourne song on my iPod, and I do enjoy the occasional Stravinsky symphony.

What you can’t do is just put down the things that other people enjoy on the mere basis that it isn’t your cup of tea.  I probably wouldn’t even be writing this if it weren’t for the fact that Mr Florczak refused to even acknowledge that any art made after the impressionists could be good.  Every example of the greatest pieces from before the modern era is juxtaposed with pieces that he feels certain will earn the scorn and disdain of his audience.  I mean really, using feces to paint a picture?  That is absurd, right?  Well just as in the good old days there is a difference between high art and low art, there is a difference between great and good, and there is a difference between all people.

When I hear a person like Mike Huckabee calling for a return to the values of the good old days, I have to stop and think about what it is he is longing for.  Does he mean a return to a time when people who weren’t Christian, straight, white men would simply hide in the background and only appear when called upon?  This is certainly what it sounds like as he calls for the return of school prayers, the end of marriage equality, the exclusion of women from the workplace as equals, and the end of any potential progress that may have occurred between now and when he was born in 1955.  From his point of view the whole world has gone “silly, pointless, or purely offensive.”  For the rest of the country that may or may not be Christian or white or straight or male or nostalgic for the good old days when bigots could live comfortably in their closed minds, this is what is truly offensive.

What people like Mr Huckabee and Mr Florczak want is, in fact, not a return to a time of higher standards, but the return of the time when they could simply be unchallenged.  I understand that it may seem comfortable to live in a nice little bubble, safely quarantined from the pesky ideas of people who think differently, but it is a dangerous game you play living a life that is so unchallenged.  If you go through life hearing only the things you already believe, then how can you learn?  This is why instead of embracing education, they reject it because kids these days learn different things than the things they learned when they were kids.  The conservative landscape is filled with closed minds and closed hearts as far as the eye can see, which is both what makes it attractive to some and dangerous for all.

Artists need the freedom to do what hasn’t been done and create what cannot be shown through the same pretty pictures as before.  Because sensibilities aren’t the only things that have changed since the 19th century.  The invention of the modern camera and the continual improvements on it since then have all but made realism in art redundant.  Make no mistake it is still incredibly impressive when people are able to paint pictures as accurate as photos.  But that’s just it, they’re competing with a machine that does it better, faster, and cheaper.  If all artists are supposed to do is make “realistic” portraits of benefactors, well we just won’t have many artists at all.  Yet photography is not the end of art, far from it.  It is, in fact, the beginning of all new forms of art and new movements to go with it.

So for a man so obsessed with objective answers and so critical of “aesthetic relativism,” I am more than happy to tell him that he is objectively wrong.  We live in a society where we are all free to think and express ourselves, so he is entitled to live unchallenged.  More than anything, he is free to be wrong; it is his right.  As for the rest of us, we will continue to live in a world of different people, different ideas, different languages, and different art.  It is a world made better by change, so we do not fear change.  It is a world where challenges are our chance to change as well and to be better than we were, better than we are.