Armistice Day

November 11, 1918. It doesn't mean a lot to many people, particularly in the US. World War I wasn't our war, not really; we became involved but we barely had a horse in the race. We weren't there for the worst of it, and we didn't learn much of anything, and now no one really remembers why November 11 should be anything other than thanking veterans and possibly a parade. Hell, we don't even celebrate the day in sync with the British commonwealth; they commemorate the day as Remembrance Day now, and it is much more like our Memorial Day (only probably fewer barbecues and drunken fights).

But November 11, almost 100 years ago, the War To End All Wars ended. When WWII ended, we had VE Day and VJ Day. Victory! Victory in Europe, victory in Japan! It's impossible to know whether it was relief, satisfaction, or true exaltation that made everyone celebrate Victory, but it was a celebration of Victory, winged and proud, presenting the laurels and saying that we had won and that they had lost.

November 11, 1918, wasn't like that. There was elation, certainly; one can't fault anyone who had been affected by the war for feeling joy now that it was over. But the day was Armistice Day. That should stick with us, because though the Allied Powers staunchly refused to acknowledge it, and though at the time perhaps it seemed that the day was a day of victory, November 11, 1918 was merely a day of armistice. Of cessation of hostilities. The dictionary defines "armistice" as a cease-fire, a truce. An end, however temporary, to war, to the violence, bloodshed, death, horror, and inhumanity.

Of course, if you know your history at all (and you should) you know that it truly was just an armistice, albeit one which lasted decades. There was a peace treaty signed which laid punitive damages on the "losing" side that could never be repaid or even tolerated, and as such it was not so much a peace treaty as it was both a punishment and an incitement. It was almost as if the Allies felt cheated of their victory through armistice and desired the Central Powers to reject the terms and go back to fighting. Perhaps there is some truth in this, because all the powers that be had to have known that the public were tired of the war, even if they were winning.  And the Allies had to have known that their citizens would approve of harsh measures against Germany, but not the arbitrary continuation of war.

There are plenty of arguments both for and against the idea that the Treaty of Versailles caused WWII, and there are arguments that WWI and WWII were really the same war, just with an intermission for everyone to get better at it.  That's not the point.  If I wanted to argue those points (and I do, sometimes) I wouldn't be writing this in a blog supposedly dedicated to homilies.

November 11, 1918 is in my mind because it should commemorate a cessation of violence. It should not be a paean to victory or a useless trotting out of veterans to be thanked one by one, many of whom were never in a war and are being thanked by people whose closest experience of combat was when they played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.  It should not even be a remembrance of those who have died while serving in the armed forces, unless that were to be used as a stepping stone.

The day commemorates armistice. A cease-fire. The day is buried in baggage, but at the bottom, there is a core. "These men died to end all wars," it says.  "They fought and died in places they may never have heard of, for causes that even now can't be completely understood.  And today, 95 years ago, the war stopped.

So I'm not thanking veterans today, and I'm not celebrating. Today is a sacred day, a day to remember that war is not the natural state of things and that no one wins a war, they just lose less than the other side. I will keep holding Armistice Day sacred until it's no longer necessary, when All Wars truly have been ended, when Cease-Fire becomes Peace.

When All Else Fails

I disapprove of crises of faith. Not having them, but referring to them with that nomenclature. It makes it seem like some sort of intellectual exercise, and I suppose that sometimes it is, in which case, call it an intellectual conflict of faith. But your real "crises" of faith aren't intellectual.

Two days ago, I said that the main reason I was sure I would live to be 150 was because God wouldn't kill me until He'd had all the fun He could have with me. I genuinely didn't want to believe in God because I'd rather live in a universe with no cruel deity who derives pleasure from my suffering. Now that's a fucking kick in the balls of faith.

What do you tell someone in a situation like that? If I were ministering to myself, what the hell do I do? It reminds me of a piece by Gordon Atkinson which no longer appears to be on the Internet (but the miracle of the Wayback Machine brings it to your eager eyes) and you should read the whole thing because it's about as good an expression of I don't know what as there is. To excerpt:

… people facing death don’t give a fuck about your interpretation of II Timothy. Some take the “bloodied, but unbowed” road, but most dying people want to pray with the chaplain. And they don’t want weak-ass prayers either. They don’t want you to pray that God’s will be done. …

Actually the post from which I learned of this powerful work has a thing or two to say on the subject as well. But that's neither here nor there.

I don't pray. Or rather, I don't believe in prayer. Yes, sometimes when the chips are down, I beg whomever might be listening to grant some basically selfish request, but I know that it won't work. I don't even believe in the weak, watery sort of prayer where you just ask God to be present in your life and let you be worthy of God's love. God doesn't work that way. Every time we ask God for something, even the basic, general-purpose love stuff, we either get it or we don't, and saying the right magic words or thinking the right magic thoughts won't make it any more or less likely to happen.

So I don't "pray" because prayer is just another way of asking for something. I talk. I argue. I spit venom and bile. Sometimes I whimper. Yes, I know, that's "prayer" but this is all about semantics, ain't it? If I don't do "crises" then I don't do "prayer" even if both are accurate descriptors.

I get where dying people are coming from. I'm addicted to life, and it and I have an unhealthy relationship right now. So even as it's pulled from me, I'll be raging, grasping, wheedling, cajoling. I know they say that there are 5 stages of grief, but how many people actually make it to acceptance?  I probably won't. So yes, when the pastor shows up, I will want some deep hoodoo. Hell, I'll probably call in witch doctors and shamans to cover my bases. And like the man says, I will die anyway, because we're all going to eventually. So even though I will rage, right now I can tell Future Me that he is being a jackass.

But to return to my original question, what the Hell do I tell myself? I'm not going to pray, even if I believed in prayer; that's almost like letting slip more chinks in my armor. You don't tell the bully where it hurts the most. You act like the things you care about the most are the least valuable.

I could try to reassure myself that there's no reason to believe that God operates this way. But why should I believe myself?  I'm not Job; I don't deal well with God proving a point to Satan by fucking my life up royal. So I talk to God. I'm never certain that God doesn't find my conversation amusing too, but what else can I do? I give God my point of view.

And when all else fails... well, I cry a lot. It's piteous and ridiculous and helps no one. I laugh sometimes. They're cousins, you know: laughing and crying.  I've cried so hard I started laughing and laughed so hard that it swung back around to crying again.

All of this called to mind a hymn which I knew as a child. There are so many different versions out there, and if your taste runs more to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, they've got a version.  But my childhood is this one.

Pete Seeger - How Can I Keep From Singing

It's a happy, glorious song which just revels in the wonders of the world, but take that and turn it upside down. Strip out all the joy, take away the hope, and the song still holds.  When all else fails, sing.  When. Not if. Everything else will fail. Your faith will falter, your hope will turn to despair, your love will be lost to you. You'll be walking in the dark and there will be monsters all around you. You won't have the strength to cry out, to call for help, no matter how futilely. It will happen. And if in that moment you have a song, you won't be crying, you'll be singing, and that's better than nothing, isn't it?

It's not much better. And it's harder than simply sinking, letting go, letting it happen. And you're going to die anyway, whether you sing or not. And if there is a God, God is cruel and malicious and there is no love in the world for you. Sing out. Maybe someone's listening.

I'm not a motivational speaker, obviously.  And I still have my doubts about life and my place in it. But I'm a contrary son of a bitch, so you'll probably hear me bitching and moaning about it to a God with whom I might rather not talk. And you might hear me singing a little too, softly, just for me and God. I'm still here. I'm still not broken. All has not failed.

Scriptural History

I am absolutely in love with this:

Victory to the People

The title doesn't at all convey what you're getting. It's the story of the Bible, not the Bible story. The history of the text.  With a tone that I can't get over. Any time anyone can say, "Eusebius of Nicomedia got all butthurt over this, and remained pissed off for the rest of his life," that's worth celebrating.

I spoke with Eusebius of Nicomedia briefly, and he said, "I'm still not over it."  So there you have it.  I won't quote; you should read the whole thing

Okay, I will guote:

(When Constantine heard this he said, “Can’t you guys just get along? Why not agree to disagree like every other friggin’ philosopher since Plato was a pup, and get on with your lives?” to which both sides answered “No!!!!eleventy!!!” and thus Nicea.

Come on. How can you not like that.

Some time after that, Constantine went to Eusebius of Caesarea and said, “Yo, Pamphili!” (Eusebius’ friends called him “Pamphili”), “You’ve got the biggest collection of fanzines in the world. How about you put together the teaching anthology?”

Yeah.  That's good stuff.  Go. Read it.

Metaphor

It's a classic defense to claim that you were employing a metaphor, just as it is a classic defense to claim that your listeners were employing one incorrectly. Metaphor is dangerous, because you never have to say what you mean, and people don't like that.

It's not like a simile, where you say, "Hey, racists are like pigs because they eat slop, their shit smells awful, and they're only good dead."  People expect an explanation to a simile. "Okay, so you're saying that this thing is like this other thing. How so?" they ask.  And the answer satisfies them that yes, while you can describe the first thing by evoking the second, the first thing is distinct and different and it's merely a way of describing and not a literal equivalence.

But metaphor doesn't work that way.  "Racists are pigs, stewing in their own offal, declining to contribute anything of benefit to society except their deaths."  Yes, you might see that I am indeed saying the same thing about racists as I did before: they eat, and smell like, shit, and we enjoy them more dead than alive.  But note: I am not explaining; I am elaborating on the metaphor, thickening it, but I'm not saying anything about racists, I'm saying it about pigs and then saying that a subclass of the pig is the racist.  Racists are pigs.

That's confusing.  I mean, do I really think racists are pigs?  Of course I don't; that's an insult to pigs, which are wonderful, loving, intelligent creatures which just happen to possess certain attributes which can be used to amplify how I feel about racists.  And it's convenient, so I start simply saying, "Racist pigs," when I mean to say, "Racists who embody these traits which can be metaphorically illustrated by a comparison to a pig."  And then I just say, "pigs," because the rest is implied. The metaphor has legs.

Surely not.  Surely it doesn't work that way.  Why would I remove the racist part?  That's the part that's important.  Because language is literal and never figurative, and what I say is exactly what I mean, and I won't die and have my words passed down and translated and misheard.  If I preserve the exact condition of my original statement of metaphor, people can tell that I mean it metaphorically.

But let's look closer: sure, people might know that I meant, "Racists are pigs," metaphorically, but what about "stewing in their own offal?" Do pigs literally (using the term which has come to mean the exact opposite of its literal meaning, which is irony of the highest order, another term that doesn't mean what it literally means) stew in shit?  They cook themselves in a pot filled with shit?  I think not.  Stewing is a metaphor so far removed that it has become simply figurative language.  And do I think that, describing racists as pigs, I am saying that they wallow around in their own fecal matter?  Dear God, there are layers here, and I'm terrified, so instead of following the trail and discovering that maybe there might be turtles all the way down... well, it's hard to be entirely literal because the sentence I'm currently finishing had at least two easily-identifiable turns of metaphorical phrase, and if you keep digging, pretty much everything we say and do that isn't a concrete noun or verb is a metaphor at the bottom.  Language is symbolism. Language isn't literal.

That's terrifying to people who want a straight answer.  Absolutely baffling and terrifying.  You know (or may be, in which case I'm sorry but you should get your head out of your ass, though not literally) one of these people: they were the kids in school who, when the teacher was reviewing what would be on the test, would always want to know what the answer should be, even to the essay questions; they're the folks who don't like long passages when a short summary could do; who don't like nuance; who don't read "hard" books or, if they do, think Moby Dick is about the whale and Dante's Inferno is a tour guide to Hell.  They're not bad people, but they can't deal with uncertainty.

The world is an uncertain place. That's scary. But believing that something is literal, or can be literal, just because it's hard to understand any other way isn't helping. It's sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly while the doctor tells you that the cancer isn't responding to treatment, then going home and having a "Cancer Free!" party, then wondering why everyone is surprised when you get sicker.  It's... well, it's a metaphor, because that's the only thing I can do to continue to talk about it without just saying exactly what it is again, which is, "believing that something is literal, or can be literal, just because it's hard to understand."

A lot of time is spent on "literalist" readers of the Bible (to pick something totally at random) and how they don't get that even though they claim that there's only one literal meaning to the text, they're applying their own interpretation.  There are some very good pieces being written on the subject; I link to this one because, well, it's apropos.

But I think a deeper issue exists than people being unable to understand that there's no way to read something without interpreting it.  It's recognizing that, regardless of "interpretation" you might be missing the fact that the whole thing is a metaphor.  When it says, "Samson slew the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass," maybe we have to take that in context and realize that The Bible isn't sanctioning the slaughter of Palestinians with a very small bone in that verse, but more than that, maybe we have to consider that, "slaying the Philistines," and, "jawbone of an ass," might very well not mean anything like what they "literally" mean to anyone, even if we were able to divine exactly what literal meaning they should have somehow.

I'm not a Biblical scholar. I don't pretend to be. So my example is necessarily wrongheaded and stupid because I don't know what the metaphors were and thus I'm as at sea as anyone trying to read the Bible as a literal text with literal intentions.  But suppose we take "Philistines" for a moment.  In our wonderfully figurative language, "Philistine" has become "philistine" and is used to refer to those who... well, let's let Miriam Webster take a crack at it.

a :  a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values

b :  one uninformed in a special area of knowledge

Because at some point, someone said, "Boy, that materialistic person who has no knowledge and is disdainful of intellectual or artistic values sure is a Philistine, an enemy of God's Word (that's what it means, so let that be a lesson to anyone)."  Metaphor. Give it long enough, it takes off and everyone forgets everything but the object being metaphorically used for comparison.

So there's a legend about slaying enemies of God's Word that didn't make it into the Bible, probably because it wasn't actually about slaying enemies of God's Word and in fact may have predated the whole idea of God's Word(shocking, I know).  And in it, the hero slays his enemies, who happened to be people who could be described as Philistines at the time the Bible was written down, but who may have been Canaanites or Syrians or whoever was the enemy of this particular Semite hero. Now, the audience (never forget that it wasn't written down at first) for the Samson story would have known this other legend, and they would have known that the anonymous Semite hero of that legend was vain and had slain these enemies because he was showing off for a woman, and the audience would have said, "Aha, so Samson is John Q. Semite as he slays his foes, so what does that tell us about Samson?  It's an object lesson in humility, even in the service of one's cause. We must not be proud before Jhvh, nor should we be proud in His service, for He is the one to be exalted and we are merely his instruments."

Eventually, it became, "Oh, so Samson is a slayer of enemies, so we must be humble before God."  Then, when it was written down, the Israelites weren't fond of the Philistines, so "enemies" became "Philistines," and "we must be humble before God," became implied.  And then other people took the story but didn't look at the book of commentary where it explains, "So, you see here that Samson was killing the Philistines because he was proud of his strength, plus he's going to have girl troubles later on, so maybe, you know, make with the less showing off, nu?"  And those other people didn't have a clue what the metaphors were, and Samson himself became a metaphor, and pretty soon you've got folks from the South saying that literally the Bible wants us to kill everyone in Palestine and give it to Israel.

None of the above is true.  I have no idea whether "slaying the Philistines" was a metaphor for something.  And that's the point; I don't know, and neither do most of you, including pretty much every joker who claims to be reading the Bible "literally."  The "jawbone of an ass" might be a reference to a popular folk song of the time where Avram makes a marital aide out of a donkey's jawbone so he can please his wife since he can't get it up any more, and this is all a smutty joke about how Samson was gay, since he was "slaying Philistines with 'the jawbone of an ass' if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge."  As far as I know, that's not true either, but you don't know.

And the scariest metaphors I haven't even covered yet.  Those are the kind where you don't even make a comparison.  Where you say, "Boy howdy, pigs sure do like to wallow in shit.  I wonder if we should buy them some white hoods."  Whoa, too fast for me buddy, slow down.  You're alluding to your subject without mentioning it because you're assuming that the audience has the context to be able to pick up what you're putting down.  And you can be satirical on top of that; my racist pigs don't really support an example because they're too simplistic, but suppose we take Gulliver's Travels and say that not only is Swift using metaphor without telling you what the subject is, but he's deliberately exaggerating the metaphor's characteristics so as to satirize the original, unstated subject.  No, Gulliver's Travels is not a fantasy about visiting different strange lands filled with different strange people.  A literal reading might let you interpret, which is why movies made from the same book aren't the same, but unless you get that it's all a metaphor (in several layers, with satire) you don't get it and you don't even know you don't.

It's like the Bible is a satire that nails its subject too well, and so people don't think it's satire.  It's a metaphor so convincing and complex that people are fooled into believing that it's literal.  Except that's not true; people aren't fooled, they're duped, or they willfully believe against proof, or they know and are lying.

This was all an excuse to link to the post to which I linked in the text, plus this:

Destroying the ballet in the name of artistic freedom

Unless you know the context, it looks like the Federal Theatre Project is about to make a resurgence, and that, while it might seem like a good thing, would not be.  Keep government hands off of artistic expression, I say. Unless you know the context.

A Fine Sermon

I really couldn't say it better, so just read it for yourself.

You Cannot Be Replaced

Depression and sin – not one and the same, but in this alike – tell us that we are replaceable. That those who love us do not really know us, that our failings and our brokenness are the only memorable things about us. That they are all we will be remembered for.

But those are lies. Depression, sin, self-loathing: they lie to us. For we are all, each of us, beloved by God. The Lord God remembers, not the mistakes and fears on which we ruminate and base our self-loathing, but the steadfast love from which we are created and which is ever extended toward us.

I Shall Not Be Moved

I have a dim recollection from my childhood of going to a church service at a church unfamiliar to me, one of a denomination different from that of my family. The town in which I grew up was, and still is, small, and many people we knew were there, all of them coming to this place of meeting, all with a purpose.  I should say also that my home town was (and still is, I hope) fairly liberal and activist, so we weren't getting together to protest Obamacare or demand that the rich take our money (that's what they want, right?).

We were gathering to protest something.  I believe it was Nicaragua, or if not that, some other injustice in Central or South America, land where there have been so many injustices that it's hard to determine which one was happening when.  But we were there to protest, mostly middle-class white people gathered in a church in the middle of a small, liberal town, to say that such things were unacceptable, that atrocity and injustice are never acceptable.  And that's the first time I remember hearing, and singing, "We Shall Overcome."

I sang pretty well as a child, and I didn't then have the baggage that I have now, the fears and neuroses which make me unwilling to simply give up my voice in song whenever asked. So I sang, not really understanding, but knowing that this whole thing was about something important, and that I was singing on the right side, because why else would my parents and all the people I knew be here?  I'm sure I'd heard the song before; one of my favorite childhood artists was Pete Seeger, whom I had the opportunity to see live, but I don't remember that. I do remember singing in the church.

"We Shall Overcome" isn't really a song that the privileged should sing. Yes, if you're on the right side of a cause, you might be justified in joining with others and singing, but even then, you're not really the one who is overcoming.  If a middle-class white man joined in the Civil Rights struggle, he should be viewed as being on the right side, and maybe he could have sung "We Shall Overcome" with his brothers and sisters, lending his voice to theirs as he lent his support to their cause. But he wasn't the one who was going to overcome someday. He wasn't oppressed.

So we were singing a song, all of us lucky not to be in Nicaragua and being killed by death squads or raped or burned or mutilated, and we were doing it in private, essentially, not out where someone who might have been able to help might have seen us and been persuaded to do so.  We weren't going to overcome shit. As Dave Barry puts it:

[W]e held hands, black and white together, and sang "We Shall Overcome," and we were absolutely positive that we would. I got into a friendly argument with a bystander, a black man not much older than I, who laughed and assured me that nobody was going to overcome anything.

 It was that, minus the black people and anyone arguing that we wouldn't overcome anything.

You know the end of the story: we didn't. I'm pretty sure Nicaraguans continued to be killed, raped, mutilated, and generally treated like shit for a while after, prayer and song notwithstanding. I'm not trying to be flip about that either; I wish that it weren't so.  But, like most prayers, our Nicaraguan-oriented, non-denominational ones didn't produce instant gratification.

I'm not encouraging cynicism, far from it.  If all you can do is stand and sing in solidarity, even if it does nothing and you're thousands of miles from those who really need to overcome, even if you do it alone, even if it costs you nothing, standing is a start. It's not sufficient, but it's better than not standing and singing.

We also, I dimly recall, sang "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," (which I went on to hear as a piano work performed by the composer, Frederic Rzewski, in another church, which is another story entirely, but it's an amazing work).  Good song.  Perhaps too Marxist for most people, but still stirring, and since I believe at least one, possibly both, sides of the conflict in Nicaragua were Marxists and Spanish, an apropos choice.

But we didn't sing my favorite protest song. You can probably guess from the title which one I'm talking about.  I prefer it as "We Shall Not Be Moved" because there is strength in numbers, but a great many versions have been done in the singular, and one could make the case that by singing, "I shall not be moved," one is affirming a group promise not to be moved, since the only person one can promise shall not move is oneself.

It's a simple song; most good protest songs are.

I shall not, I shall not be moved
I shall not, I shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's planted by the water.
I shall not be moved.

You can vary the lyrics, but those are the ones with which you can sing along.

Why is it my favorite? Why did I tell you this long, rambling story about an ineffective protest? I'll admit, "We Shall Overcome" makes me cry like a baby in the right circumstances, and it lends itself to Gospel much more. And I'll admit that, unless you're on the line, as it were, singing it is a bit strange because who's trying to move you, really?

But it is the most resolute song. We shall overcome some day, but I shall not be moved ever.  You can sing it on the picket line, when forming a barricade against the onrushing aggressor, when standing up and being counted and saying, "No, I won't go away.  I shall not be moved."

It makes no promises of dominion, because there are none that can be made. Maybe all the singing in the world isn't going to stop them. Maybe they'll never stop, and the world will end in injustice and terror, the soul of man forever crushed beneath the heel of a boot. Not a pleasant thought if you're looking to win, but being right doesn't mean winning.

The Christian tradition from which the song comes has a prime example of this: Jesus was about as right as you can get, and yet he lost. Badly. But he didn't see it coming and turn around, run in the opposite direction, decide that hey, maybe the Pharisees were right all along, even though I for one could completely understand it if he had. Crucifixion is ugly, slow, painful, and just generally terrible in all senses of the word.

So the boot may go on stamping the face forever, and it might be that no amount of singing (or indeed, any other, more "practical" action) will change that. We can say we'll win eventually, or we can say we can never be finally defeated, but what point is there? There's no hope. Everything goes down to dust and all the the efforts of good cannot change that.

But Jesus didn't run. He let the heel squash him flat because he knew that standing was more important than winning. He knew that the only thing that he could guarantee was that he would not waver, that he would stand firm, that he would not move. And in doing so, in dying without giving up, he did win after all.

I shall not be moved. That doesn't say, "I will fight back." That doesn't say, "I will win," or, "I will be where you are some day and then you'll see." It just says, "I am right, and I shall be moved. My roots are deep. Go tell your boss, all the way up to the top, that I shall not be moved."  It's the sit-in rather than the riot. It's the passive resistance of peace rather than the active resistance of war. It's a stand, a line back from which one will not be pushed.

It's faith. "I shall not be moved," is a faith that winning isn't everything. It's a faith that, despite there being nothing else to do but stand and sing, some day that will change. It's a faith that boots may crush, that hope may die, that all may come down to dust, but I still believe and I am still standing and singing, wherever I am.

So why do I remember the useless protest of my childhood fondly, and why do I wish that we'd sung "I Shall Not Be Moved?" Because useless though it may have been, it mattered. Any time someone stands up and sings in solidarity, it matters, even if it doesn't make a difference.

And if we stop standing up and singing, vowing to stay standing and singing, then we aren't going to do anything else. It's the song that gives you courage to go and do more than singing. It's the song that you hear from all corners telling you that you aren't alone after all. Could we be heard in Nicaragua? Of course not. But we could hear ourselves. And though not going backward is a start, the song doesn't say, "I shall not move." Once you stand and sing, then go and do right with a song in your heart. You shall not be moved, you shall not be turned, you shall not be halted.

After the service, I'm sure my family went home. The details swim in my mind; was the fire and brimstone preacher there to whom I enjoyed listening because he was entertaining? Which church in my town was it? Who else was there?  I just remember the songs. They're still with me, long after memory has faded..

Surprised

When I read or hear someone expressing an opinion on something a fundamentalist fanatic has said, I always wonder: why are they paying attention? And also, why does it seem to shock or surprise them? And then I think to myself, "Gosh, that's a jaundiced view of the world." Because I should still feel shock and surprise when a human being says or does the things that fundamentalist fanatics regularly do. I say I believe in the basic goodness of humans; why then am I not surprised when that goodness continues to go un-evidenced?

The first question is a valid one: if you are paying attention to your ideological opposites in order to feel outrage when they do something within their ideology that isn't within yours... well, look at how I phrased that. I'm pretty sure people who do that are the sorts of people who are no better than their "enemy" and in fact probably see their "enemy" as such, rather than as someone with whom they have a difference of faith. In other words, even if I agree with you, you aren't behaving in a much better manner than they are.

But I do think it's important to recognize that there are times when it's not just a difference of opinion. A difference of opinion is when I like sushi and you can't get over the fact that it's raw fish. But if you believe that God told you to kill gay people, I have more than a difference of opinion with that. If you believe that, we can't be friends, no matter how nice you are. I might be civil to you, but only because even though you're a living piece of excrement, you're still my fellow human and I love you, but I don't like you. I might view you as a problem that needs to be corrected. I'm sure that my not wanting to kill gays, and in fact welcoming them as full-fledged members of society, might make you believe the same things about me (although to be honest, I wouldn't expect the same level of civility from you if you believed that).

So sometimes one must keep tabs on the other side. It's a little mean (and I'm using the word "mean" in its sense of "inferior in quality") but sometimes it's important. I get why some people delight in torturing themselves in order to feel self-righteous, and I also get why some people listen to Glenn Beck just to make sure the outside world hears what a wackadoo he is.

But the second question is more interesting: why be surprised? A leopard does not change its spots. And yet, perhaps some (those who are not simply shocked because they want to be shocked) who hear outlandish things coming from the mouth of someone who regularly says outlandish things can still be shocked because at each moment, they hoped for redemption.

I can't find a parable to illustrate this, so I'm making one up on the spot. It's harder than it seems at first glance. Jesus was no mean parable-maker (and here again I'm using "mean" in the sense of "lower quality," not to imply that Jesus was a nasty guy).

There was a trader in Galilee who had a donkey, and he was on his way to Jerusalem with pottery to sell at the local kitsch shop because tourists would eat that kind of crap up. And as he walked, he swatted his donkey on the rump with a stick, and the donkey would bray.

He met another traveler on the road, a Samaritan (every good parable needs one) who happened to be a member of PETA. They agreed to walk together (because their cars were broken down or something, I don't know). Well, the Samaritan saw the trader swatting the donkey again and again, and finally he'd had enough. "Hey, you can't go on abusing him like that!" said the Samaritan.

"He won't walk if I don't give him a little swat," replied the trader.

"Take the pack off him and I'll carry it," said the Samaritan.

So the trader shrugged and took the pottery out and loaded the Samaritan up. The Samaritan was barely able to move, but he staggered forward, only to hear the donkey bray again. "The fuck, man?" groaned the Samaritan, staggering around to face the trader.

"How was taking the pack off of him supposed to make him move faster?" asked the trader, hitting the donkey again.

Okay, that wasn't really a good parable. Let's try again.

A married couple had a routine: every morning the alarm would go off, and every morning it would wake the wife up, and she'd turn it off and then she'd shake her husband until he woke up. And every morning he would groan like the world was coming to an end, curse, and then stagger off to perform his morning ablutions.

This went on for 30 years, until finally the wife said, "Look, why do you act like that? We've been doing the same thing for 30 years. Surely you're not surprised?"

The husband sighed and said, "No, but I keep hoping that this morning is the morning that you stop shaking me, and I've been disappointed the same way every time."

Maybe it's not shock so much as hope being dashed yet again. I mean, sure, there's some shock; how can they keep doing it, how can they do this particular horrible thing, how can they not see, etc. But we're supposed to love everybody, and as such we have to hope that some day all eyes will be opened and the blind will see, and all that. So continued blindness on the part of some people is painful. Plus, the things they say have profound consequences as well; it's all well and good to talk about differences of opinion, but if your opinion is that homosexuals should be hunted for sport and get get elected governor, what you're saying and thinking matters not just philosophically.

But I'm still hung up on my jadedness. Because I may think, "Oh, what a stupid asshole," but I won't usually be shocked by it. I don't usually consider it noteworthy when fundamentalist fanatics say fundamentalist-fanatic things. If they're fundamentalists, they're not going to come out and say that abortion is great or that gay people are wonderful. That this is continually confirms saddens me, but it doesn't shock me.

There were two beggars, one with no eyes, and one with no legs. They slept in the same archway and had formed a sort of brotherly bond, except that every morning the beggar with no legs would moan, "Oh no, my legs are gone!" Which was understandably, a bit annoying to his friend. Still, the blind beggar figured things were bad enough without making them worse, so he didn't complain and offend his legless companion.

One morning, the blind beggar didn't hear anything from his companion, and when he reached out to touch the legless beggar, there was nothing there. The blind beggar immediately began running through the streets, knocking into people, crying, "A miracle! A miracle!" Finally, he calmed down enough to tell people that the legless beggar had grown new legs. No one believed him, and he want dejected back to his place in the archway, with no food in his belly because he hadn't been able to beg all day, what with the running and crying and so forth.

Then he heard his friend's voice. "My God, how does it feel to have legs again?" the blind man asked, rushing up to the other beggar, but when he reached the man, he could feel that the legless man still had no legs, and he became silent. The legless beggar explained that he'd merely gone to beg in a new spot earlier than usual, because someone had said the pickings were better there, but now he'd come back to get his friend. The blind man silently followed the legless beggar, and it was indeed better; the man who lived nearby gave bread to the poor, and there was a better place to sleep as well.

The next morning, the blind man was awakened by the legless one moaning "Oh no, my legs are gone."

"Shut up!" screamed the blind man. "You say that every morning! Of course your legs are gone."

"Why didn't you say something before?" asked the legless man, hurt.

"Because before yesterday, I had hope that one day my sight might return."

I'll get better at parables some day, I hope.

I don't want to be jaundiced, and of course I welcome with joy any sleeper who awakens or any blind beggar who can now see.  Because hope for that is hope for us all; we're all blind beggars, and if the lame can walk, then perhaps the blind can see.  But by the same token, that a legless man doesn't grow new legs is a generally-accepted truth, and if he tells us that he has no legs, that's perhaps cause for sadness but not surprise.

And we shouldn't wait for legs to grow back by themselves. If someone has no legs, offer them a prosthesis. If someone is blind, offer them a cane, a dog, or just a hand to guide them.  But if we're sure that someone will never change by themselves, try to help. It may seem hopeless, but the surest expression of love and hope is to try to help, even though it's hopeless.

So no, I'm not surprised when the latest screed by a right-wing fundamentalist talks about wanting to round up undesirables into camps. I'm not surprised by human nature in many cases, and perhaps I should be. But whether I'm surprised or not, that doesn't mean that I don't do something about it.

There's a difference between reading about some idiotic thing that someone said and reading about some dangerous-to-our-rights thing that someone has done, some law enacted, some election rigged. I might not be able to do much, and maybe reacting and spreading the word to people who can is all I can do. But I won't act surprised. I won't be shocked that there is gambling going on in Casablanca. These people aren't blind beggars. They're rich, they're successful, and if they're blind, it's because they refuse to open their eyes.

One more.

There was a man (I should have more women, but sadly these parables are mostly directed at men) of Galilee (why not) who had a working automobile and so was able to drive rather than walk to Jerusalem, albeit that from my understanding the number of checkpoints make it not a very fast drive either. So he was driving along at 100 mph, swerving around, hitting pedestrians, and the police are chasing after him.  They finally run his car off the road and into an embankment (the west embankment? Huh? Nothing?) and he crashes, totals the car, really hurts himself. So he turns around and sues the police. And he gets up on the stand and says, "It's not my fault; I didn't know those people were there because I had my eyes glued shut."

So the police officer is called to the stand, and the defense attorney says, "My client had his eyes glued because of a medical condition and also he likes to drive that way. If that was a problem, why didn't you get into his car and open his eyes up so he could see to drive? Then you wouldn't have injured him or destroyed his car."

The police officer says, "I was more concerned with stopping him than with opening his eyes. That's his responsibility."

If we lived in a just world, the above wouldn't be true, and moreover the jury would acquit the police department. Sadly, I think it might frequently be the other way around; the willfully blind and privileged are allowed to get away with it. No one even tries to stop them, and if they do, the willfully blind say that they shouldn't be stopped because they like driving with their eyes closed.

Shine a light in darkness. Make the blind to see. But if the blind are hurting others, maybe stopping them, even if they remain blind forever, is more important than opening the eyes that they've glued closed.