While the Pope conspires to "poach" good Anglicans back into the Roman Catholic Church, leaving both the head of the Anglican communion, Rowan Williams, and the head of the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth II, speechless, another religious, Dark-Ages era battle looms on this side of the pond.
Westminster, Ca., is not only proving to be a small enclave of Orange County but full of small minds. Or, at least one: Judy Ahrens, a school official, has started a campaign, in 2009, to ban a Maya Angelou classic, "I Know Why the caged Bird Sings." Why? Because Angelou's autobiographical book details the rape that left her from speaking for a few years.
Bernard Shaw wrote that while the soldier says war is hell, we yet say it is a sin. And not even the good, small people of Westminster have started this campaign against the sin of war, particularly as started from lie upon lie [another sin, n'est-ce que pas?]
But we are talking, again, about Orange County, honorary member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [aka, The Inquisition] in the tarnishing state of California.
Gratuitous carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan of the nation's young in desert tombs is implicitly OK. That it be continued by the Conundrum in Chief, Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Laureate, should tell us who did what in the parlor and with which weapon.
But this continues to be besdies the point. Only off-the-grid weirdos, like San Francisco, makes stands against war crimes and give LGBTs rights.
A tiny mind in tiny Westminster takes the rostrum on behalf of our children's "innocence" to ban a book.
That such claptrap is still suffered, that this loony isn't responded to like the Black man who appeared at the LA City Council dressed in Klansman regalia, says something about the peculiar ghosts of this young nation.
The Dark Ages were hearkened precisely by such acts as the burning of libraries by the nominally "Christian" warriors.
21 October 2009
08 October 2009
National Equality Farce on Washington Oct 10
Equality or liberation? This weekend LGBT activists will stage a National Equality March and continue their demand to be equal to those heterosexuals so unimaginative as to continue to feudal wedding rites.
Of course, Martin's March on Washington comes to mind, an event much celebrated in our national discourse today but critiqued by leftists of the day and maligned by then-Nation of Islam spokesman, Malcolm X, as the "Farce on Washington" for its very careful stage management so not to upset the power structure. Further, Bayard Rustin was dis-invited and James Baldwin kept from view.
In seriousness, any people demanding rights of their government is not a laughing matter or a thing to be mocked. I do not. Neither should the love and partnership decisions between two people.
But anywhere else in the Dark Corners of the world such a march would be proof positive of a foreign government's worthiness of US sanctions and brow-beating. Secy of State Hillary Clinton assures us she will press the cause of human rights with her upcoming meeting with the Chinese: if only she's turn that mouthpiece of hers toward her homeland. It might have more effect since the Chinese are about ready to excavate us sorry selves and pair us with Lucy the missing link in a museum.
By our government continuing to brow-beat the dark world, which finds us fairly irrelevant, while neglecting rights issues at home puts them on the same pedestal as Bull Connor, chief law enforcer of the Old Ways. No problem here: just some outsiders stirring up trouble!
The LGBTQ community does suffer discrimination. Better than take their case to Washington, the seat of our national problems, let them take their march and a petition to the UN and World Court for a hearing. The World Court, after all, found against the US in what it ruled its terrorist attacks against Nicaragua.
But only oppressed people of those aforementioned Dark Corners do such insolent things because their own governments are unresponsive at best; lethal at worst, and for which these activists are given prizes by the former imperial powers. More jokes.
I write as a queer socialist, a former Queer Nation member, not a baroque suburban "Gay American" whose goal is to be just like the Joneses. They aren't normal, and equating myself to that wretched state would be a step down into mental illness. Demanding the Congress of Go-Slows and Do-Nothings to extend me an equal status to the Joneses is ... peculiar. But so are the poor who think that hard work and thriftiness will raise them into the 1% wealth owners.
So, why? Americans it has been said are a people without a history. This is rather cliche at this point. But the serious consequence of this is their firm belief that rights come from government - that every liberty they enjoy, from freedom from chattel slavery to the eight-hour work day to votes for women, end to child labor, have come from government waking up one frosty morning and melting the ice off the cherry blossoms with its warm heart.
LGBTQ liberation is social and economic liberation, and it demands simply universal health care, guaranteed housing, guaranteed income, publicly funded education, from kindergarten through college. Some LGBTQ activists speak about the many rights extended to married couples, and unimaginatively think the route to these rights is to extend an exclusive system to middle-class LGBTQ's. So not only do they want to emulate straight marriage but also the class stratification of capitalist society.
Of course, Martin's March on Washington comes to mind, an event much celebrated in our national discourse today but critiqued by leftists of the day and maligned by then-Nation of Islam spokesman, Malcolm X, as the "Farce on Washington" for its very careful stage management so not to upset the power structure. Further, Bayard Rustin was dis-invited and James Baldwin kept from view.
In seriousness, any people demanding rights of their government is not a laughing matter or a thing to be mocked. I do not. Neither should the love and partnership decisions between two people.
But anywhere else in the Dark Corners of the world such a march would be proof positive of a foreign government's worthiness of US sanctions and brow-beating. Secy of State Hillary Clinton assures us she will press the cause of human rights with her upcoming meeting with the Chinese: if only she's turn that mouthpiece of hers toward her homeland. It might have more effect since the Chinese are about ready to excavate us sorry selves and pair us with Lucy the missing link in a museum.
By our government continuing to brow-beat the dark world, which finds us fairly irrelevant, while neglecting rights issues at home puts them on the same pedestal as Bull Connor, chief law enforcer of the Old Ways. No problem here: just some outsiders stirring up trouble!
The LGBTQ community does suffer discrimination. Better than take their case to Washington, the seat of our national problems, let them take their march and a petition to the UN and World Court for a hearing. The World Court, after all, found against the US in what it ruled its terrorist attacks against Nicaragua.
But only oppressed people of those aforementioned Dark Corners do such insolent things because their own governments are unresponsive at best; lethal at worst, and for which these activists are given prizes by the former imperial powers. More jokes.
I write as a queer socialist, a former Queer Nation member, not a baroque suburban "Gay American" whose goal is to be just like the Joneses. They aren't normal, and equating myself to that wretched state would be a step down into mental illness. Demanding the Congress of Go-Slows and Do-Nothings to extend me an equal status to the Joneses is ... peculiar. But so are the poor who think that hard work and thriftiness will raise them into the 1% wealth owners.
So, why? Americans it has been said are a people without a history. This is rather cliche at this point. But the serious consequence of this is their firm belief that rights come from government - that every liberty they enjoy, from freedom from chattel slavery to the eight-hour work day to votes for women, end to child labor, have come from government waking up one frosty morning and melting the ice off the cherry blossoms with its warm heart.
LGBTQ liberation is social and economic liberation, and it demands simply universal health care, guaranteed housing, guaranteed income, publicly funded education, from kindergarten through college. Some LGBTQ activists speak about the many rights extended to married couples, and unimaginatively think the route to these rights is to extend an exclusive system to middle-class LGBTQ's. So not only do they want to emulate straight marriage but also the class stratification of capitalist society.
02 October 2009
Is a socially just civilization possible?
Despite the real elation behind the Barack Obama presidential victory, the US has installed the Goldman-Sachs candidate to run the country: old wine in new bottles. Progressive historians will look back at this and hopefully note the real elation should be placed at the huge, diverse coalition that worked to elect this man, and not the man himself, who presently ponders how to follow the errors of the British and Russians by digging deeper in the Afghan desert. Or, the US's own error in Southeast Asia.
OK, I'm feeling pessimistic. So I've been submerging myself in my bottle-of-choice: the Pacific Ocean and my penchant for rough-water swimming. It's during these swims I can exercise my body and exorcise a few demons. Obama is not a demon. He first deeply impressed me in the LOGO channel debates in 2008, where he alone struck me as someone who spoke the LGBT language, even more than my personal favorite, Rep. Dennis Kucinich. I thought someone so versed, so exposed to the complexities of the US community was better than the parochial men of our past.
But in the several months of the Obama Administration, fair and balanced is grossly skewed to the ruling, corporate elite and not the workers, the poor, the disabled, LGBTQ community, and what Prof. Ogbe called "involuntary immigrants" - Black and Brown communities. Commentators enchant about a second Camelot, straining comparisons with John Kennedy, but this man is more comparable to Lyndon B Johnson, whose Great Society architecture was seriously undermined by our evil war against Vietnam and a federal police run by J. Edgar Hoover.
I am not a Christian but the cards dealt me were that I was born in a Christian country, and it behooves anyone so unfortunate to know the lingua franca of its master class. Yes, Christianity is essentially a rationale, a poor excuse for the Dark Age, the Inquisition, and massive ethnic cleansings. Still, it's better to know your enemy and his "good news." So on a recent swim some words from the Old Testament came to mind, from Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities."
It would be the height of arrogance to think I am the first to present a certain angle on, say, capitalism or the public option or the insidious ruling class. Like flesh, all is recycled. Marx inspired Henry George, and it was this American author of POVERTY & PROGRESS who convinced a young George Bernard Shaw to become a socialist.
At my current job, I have gotten my fill at seeing coworkers sitting on the morning shuttle deep in the pages of their Holy Bible. In private conversations, I hear them quoting passages to one another. I hear them citing with academic precision those men supposed to be the followers of the Jewish teacher who has been appropriated as a Christian prophet.
No one quotes Karl Marx. Marx being either a Hollywood comedian or an Unknown, I may see him cited only in my online life, in discussion groups of the left, progressive, and socialist/communist persuasion. Our prophets: Lenin, Stalin, the Fabian Society, CLR James, or Walter Rodney, George Bernard Shaw or Annie Besant, Emma Goldman or Rosa Luxemburg. Fidel and Che. Poor Angela Davis is not even reduced to being an iconic Afro; just another unknown.
Nearly 2,000 years of Christian doctrine and maybe 200 of communism, and where has it got us except feeling a deep, false sense of satisfaction? Where's the progress?
Is knowledge really power? History proves that in brittle minds knowledge is equal to the ashes of the burned libraries of the Dark Ages, blowin' in the wind.
What have these opposing doctrines, thoroughly studied, committed to memory, inspiring murder and revolution, brought to the final analysis of human psychology? Yes, the Christian doctrine, as it is so construed, stands opposed to communism, as it so constructed. This is not to say Jesus is at issue: I have said again and again that Jesus was not a Christian but a rabbinical social justice, communist hero.
Are human beings, Shaw queried, hopelessly depraved? He said we are certainly lazy, as we have not dared attempt to implement the Jesus Program, which would more likely be found in those ancient synagogues of East Africa, which predate Jesus, than in the palace at the Vatican. But why bother with history?!
And Marx or Marxist-Leninism or Stalinism or the Fabian Society's parliamentary socialism? The first successful socialist revolution was invaded by the Western powers and arguably not allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits. Today, Cuba is held up as further proof of the failure of communism, but to me it only proves the stubborn lengths to which the West will go to starve a whole aspiring people who want to re-order the economic order. Tropical Communism has not failed; it has never been allowed to flourish.
So communism as written by its Framers and the admonishments as spoken by Jesus, while they seem to be rigorously studied - you may see me with my worn copy of Fidel's speeches sitting next to a coworker with his worn Bible - neither civilization has been achieved.
If the US weren't on its deathbed - and it is - we could go another 200 years in this Dark Age. I do not presume its disintegration will hearken a Golden Age any more than the demise of the USSR ... for, as the Book says, there is nothing new under the sun.
OK, I'm feeling pessimistic. So I've been submerging myself in my bottle-of-choice: the Pacific Ocean and my penchant for rough-water swimming. It's during these swims I can exercise my body and exorcise a few demons. Obama is not a demon. He first deeply impressed me in the LOGO channel debates in 2008, where he alone struck me as someone who spoke the LGBT language, even more than my personal favorite, Rep. Dennis Kucinich. I thought someone so versed, so exposed to the complexities of the US community was better than the parochial men of our past.
But in the several months of the Obama Administration, fair and balanced is grossly skewed to the ruling, corporate elite and not the workers, the poor, the disabled, LGBTQ community, and what Prof. Ogbe called "involuntary immigrants" - Black and Brown communities. Commentators enchant about a second Camelot, straining comparisons with John Kennedy, but this man is more comparable to Lyndon B Johnson, whose Great Society architecture was seriously undermined by our evil war against Vietnam and a federal police run by J. Edgar Hoover.
I am not a Christian but the cards dealt me were that I was born in a Christian country, and it behooves anyone so unfortunate to know the lingua franca of its master class. Yes, Christianity is essentially a rationale, a poor excuse for the Dark Age, the Inquisition, and massive ethnic cleansings. Still, it's better to know your enemy and his "good news." So on a recent swim some words from the Old Testament came to mind, from Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities."
It would be the height of arrogance to think I am the first to present a certain angle on, say, capitalism or the public option or the insidious ruling class. Like flesh, all is recycled. Marx inspired Henry George, and it was this American author of POVERTY & PROGRESS who convinced a young George Bernard Shaw to become a socialist.
At my current job, I have gotten my fill at seeing coworkers sitting on the morning shuttle deep in the pages of their Holy Bible. In private conversations, I hear them quoting passages to one another. I hear them citing with academic precision those men supposed to be the followers of the Jewish teacher who has been appropriated as a Christian prophet.
No one quotes Karl Marx. Marx being either a Hollywood comedian or an Unknown, I may see him cited only in my online life, in discussion groups of the left, progressive, and socialist/communist persuasion. Our prophets: Lenin, Stalin, the Fabian Society, CLR James, or Walter Rodney, George Bernard Shaw or Annie Besant, Emma Goldman or Rosa Luxemburg. Fidel and Che. Poor Angela Davis is not even reduced to being an iconic Afro; just another unknown.
Nearly 2,000 years of Christian doctrine and maybe 200 of communism, and where has it got us except feeling a deep, false sense of satisfaction? Where's the progress?
Is knowledge really power? History proves that in brittle minds knowledge is equal to the ashes of the burned libraries of the Dark Ages, blowin' in the wind.
What have these opposing doctrines, thoroughly studied, committed to memory, inspiring murder and revolution, brought to the final analysis of human psychology? Yes, the Christian doctrine, as it is so construed, stands opposed to communism, as it so constructed. This is not to say Jesus is at issue: I have said again and again that Jesus was not a Christian but a rabbinical social justice, communist hero.
Are human beings, Shaw queried, hopelessly depraved? He said we are certainly lazy, as we have not dared attempt to implement the Jesus Program, which would more likely be found in those ancient synagogues of East Africa, which predate Jesus, than in the palace at the Vatican. But why bother with history?!
And Marx or Marxist-Leninism or Stalinism or the Fabian Society's parliamentary socialism? The first successful socialist revolution was invaded by the Western powers and arguably not allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits. Today, Cuba is held up as further proof of the failure of communism, but to me it only proves the stubborn lengths to which the West will go to starve a whole aspiring people who want to re-order the economic order. Tropical Communism has not failed; it has never been allowed to flourish.
So communism as written by its Framers and the admonishments as spoken by Jesus, while they seem to be rigorously studied - you may see me with my worn copy of Fidel's speeches sitting next to a coworker with his worn Bible - neither civilization has been achieved.
If the US weren't on its deathbed - and it is - we could go another 200 years in this Dark Age. I do not presume its disintegration will hearken a Golden Age any more than the demise of the USSR ... for, as the Book says, there is nothing new under the sun.
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