Bang and Blame

Lord, please forgive Brit Hume, for he knows not what he does. The sanctimonious former Fox host made headlines a few days ago for suggesting that Tiger Woods come to Jesus:

He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger is, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

Later, digging himself in deeper, he clarified to Bill O'Reilly:

Hume said that given Woods problems, he "needs something that Christianity, especially, provides, and gives and offers."

As Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly points out, such beliefs hardly helped Gov. Mark Sanford (Adulterer/Hiker-SC), Sen. John Ensign (Adulterer-NV), David Vitter (John-LA), Larry Craig ("Wide Stance"-ID), and a host of others. In a beautifully written post, Ta-Nehisi Coates puts into words how forgiveness and redemption truly work:

We like to think about redemption in terms of getting past a sin, but we don't really think about the process as teaching us something.

As someone who's done his share of sinning, I think the striking thing about a serious process of redemption is how it humbles you. It isn't simply a process of exoneration, or making amends, it's a fundamental questioning of bone-deep philosophy. You learn about the ignorance of your certainty. Having been deeply wrong before, you come to know that as a flawed thing, you are subject to being deeply wrong again.

What Hume fails to understand in the slightest is who needs to forgive whom here. If Tiger Woods needs forgiveness from those around him, or the public at large, in theory he should make amends to the former and start leading by example for the rest of us. This obviously doesn't have to involve JC. If Tiger Woods needs to humble himself, I think it is fair to suggest that any number of religions offer means for self-humility. Quoting the Dalai Lama for instance,

"The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, and forgiveness."

Perhaps Brit Hume lacks the humility both to learn the first thing about Buddhism before bashing it on national TV, or perhaps he can't forgive Tiger Woods because he views him as a heathen, even though, to quote JC in Mark 11:25:

And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.

Why can't Brit Hume forgive Tiger Woods, and by his own internal projection, the rest of us forgive Tiger? At its heart lies one of the creeping sicknesses in American society.

In Judaism, to paraphrase, sins against God must be forgiven by God (Yom Kippur is the day of Atonement for this purpose), but sins against your fellow man require atonement from the aggrieved party. I don't fully understand the Christian policy as it varies from sect to sect, but it certainly seems as if God plays a potentially larger role in forgiving all of us. Because Christianity is faith-based to a larger degree than Judaism, faith is placed in a more central role for achieving forgiveness. Here is where we have to carefully follow the chain of giver and recipient:If person X has faith in God, defined in appropriately Christian terms, according to my best understanding of Christianity, then God will forgive their sins. This does not imply that for person X to forgive person Y, then person Y needs to have faith in JC. This is only a condition for God to grant forgiveness from God to person Y. Brit Hume and the others of his ilk seek to hold others to a standard they try to establish for themselves, and also take on the judgment role for others reserved for that higher authority. Their belief, even if they can't admit it to themselves, is that if person Y has faith in God, then they will forgive person Y. This is not an idle argument, as it has been suggested that Mike Huckabee essentially used this background logic for granting clemency while governor of Arkansas.

It is a dangerous game when people not only assume the role of a higher power in granting forgiveness, but also for passing divine judgment as well. George Bush, Tony Blair, Joe Lieberman, and a number of other religiously motivated folks seem to have a pretty good idea about who we should go about the world killing, and shockingly enough those on the receiving end always worship a different name of God. The group responsible for setting up the Death Penalty in the US recently "pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it." And yet, the death penalty is still widely popular, and even Obama supports its use in some cases. Why does the taste for blood run so deep? Why did 58% of people support torturing the underwear bomber in a recent survey, and why do we assume that torture should merely be limited to terorists? What about drug kingpins, child rapists, and billion-dollar embezzlers? It is because we embrace punishment, and relish it. We wish to inflict pain and suffering when it has been inflicted on us, the Golden Rule be damned.

In the end, forgiveness, to quote the Dalai Lama, comes from a sense of humility, and it is a bastardized version that emerges when we assume the divine mantle instead. Perhaps we are so used to being a hegemonic nation, a country blessed by the divine to lead the world, that we feel as citizens of the country that the divine rights fall to us all individually too. To quote a Bush advisor back in 2003:

"I think President Bush is God's man at this hour, and I say this with a great sense of humility."

They keep using that word, but I do not think it means what they think it means. As painful as it is, we should probably try to forgive them, regardless of our religiuous beliefs, even though we should also point out their deluded idiocy when appropriate. Without sarcasm, let me suggest that their understanding of their own morals is so clouded that they really no longer understand the words coming out of their own mouths. It may be a product of their own willful ignorance, but they know not what they do.

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Now when arrows don't penetrate, Cupid grabs the pistol

Happy Valentine's day, from me and some gentleman from Atlanta (note the video was made by a fan, and is not an actual music video...which should be really obvious after about three seconds). Tonight, I learned a crucial romantic lesson: if due to the combined effects of bad weather (we covered this yesterday), changes in planning (my wife had a meeting in Peoria today that got cancelled last minute), distractions (my car got stuck half in/half out of the parking spot in the snow), and all around failures on the part of a husband to arrange a Valentine's Day dinner for his wife, hope is not lost. Pick a nice restaurant in town (Biaggi's in this case, an somewhat upper midscale Italian chain, but this is Champaign, after all) and get there early!!! 5:30pm does nicely, getting us a 20-minute wait at what actually passes for a nice restaurant around here. Tiramisu for dessert will make sure that dinner ends happily for all involved.

A brief bit of history: according to the Wikipedia, Valentine's day as we know it was actually not invented out of whole cloth by Hallmark, like Sweetest Day (may those who invented it and ask us to celebrate it be accursed through the ages), but rather by Chaucer. Apparently, he made reference to a non-existent Romantic holiday in May to commemorate the first anniversary of King Richard II's engagement on May 2, the saint's day of Valentine of Genoa. This was confused with the feast of St. Valentine, on February 14, which fell coincidentally near a Pagan holiday, and was eventually used to mirror it, much like Christmas/Yule.

I'll note that starting tomorrow, dkon is welcome to name the second Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month, which will be features in our right-side sidebar up at the top. In honor of the final day for Kiva.org, I finally made my promised donation to Christina Schuster of Samoa, who is trying to expand the store that allows her to lead an independent life and support her family. I ponied up my $25, and all she needs is $50 more to get her loan. C'mon people, it's Valentine's day, so show the love to her and all the other people who want the chance to live a better life.

Just so I don't forget it, Ezra Klein has a summary from McKinsey about why the US healthcare system is so frickin' expensive. Essentially, they find we pay too much for basically everything. From the blog post:

The very short answer is that we pay more for units of care. McKinsey estimates that it is not higher disease prevalence. Differences in health account for only about $25 billion of the variation -- a drop in the bucket. The difference really is that we pay higher doctor salaries, higher drug costs, higher operation costs, more per day in the hospital, etc, etc. In essence, we're getting a terrible deal.

With that, peace and love to all y'all and remember to be nice to people and especially not to kill anyone if you can avoid it. My New Year's resolution is still going strong (click the link and scroll all the way down if you've forgotten about it)!

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

From Letter From Birmingham Jail:

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place In Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

...

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

In honor of the holiday, it seemed appropriate to recap our trip this past summer to the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis, TN.

It takes up the building formerly known as the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, as well as the boarding house across the street from which he was shot. Opened 15 years ago, the museum is an absolute treasure, whose relevance today is unquestionable. Much like the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC, it serves to illuminate the vast brutality in our very recent history, brutality that continues today in Iraq, Darfur, and numerous other countries.

Touring the museum, it is hard not to be impressed by the pioneers of the civil rights era, whose vision of a better society endangered their own lives but ultimately erased many, but not all, of the grossest injustices that defined American society a mere 40 years ago. King and his brethren fought not just for the rights of Blacks, but for the rights of the oppressed, a focus sadly lacking in today's all-too-narrow discussions of just how appropriate it is to marginalize certain fellow Americans. In fact, my wife and I were struck, repeatedly, by how little the rhetorical devices of the intolerant have changed in four decades. We still hear of how outsiders threaten our way of life (immigrants), our families (gays), and our very existence (Muslims), how they walk amongst us, how our traditions and status justify forcing them to the dark corners of American society. If you will, Muslims, gays, and Blacks are the new Blacks. The Reverend King would be ashamed of us, and would never stand for it, nor should we.

How to keep his legacy alive? First, remember that if you are either White, middle-class, male, or American, or some combination of them, your fortunate birth put you instantly into the luckiest human beings ever to walk the planet. If I seem at ease with life at times, it is probably because my troubles are vastly insignificant with regard to just about everyone else in the entire world. honestly, if you think you have troubles, suck it up and stop complaining. People around the world and in this country go hungry, lack medical care, and truly struggle to make it from day to day. Do something to help them. This means ever so much more than money, but if you do have some spare funds, try the following in honor of the holiday:

• Kiva.org: If you want to donate, leave a comment to this post, and I'll match it too.
  
  
  


• NAACP: if anyone here becomes a member, I promise to do it too. Special note: madpoet, you have to buy one for yourself and a gift membership for someone else.


• United Negro College Fund: If you give a donation, I match it.


• National Urban League: You know the drill, people.
  

Remember, just because life is ducky for you, it doesn't mean it's quite so nice for your fellow man.

Don't cry yourself a river, just do something!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Nothing really matters, anyone can see

I'd like to think I take something of a maximalist position on ethics issues. I believe that sins of omission are equal to sins of commission, and that we face many more ethical choices than we care to think about on a regular basis. What we buy, what we do with our time, these choices have ethical components. One problem with this philosophy is that it makes it exceedingly difficult to live up to one's ethical obligations; I am only a fraction of the person I could be, and that takes some getting used to. Still, I'd like to think it helps to focus attention on things that actually matter, as opposed to things that only seem to matter. Three news stories from today highlight this.

Sins of Omission

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, and it can be debated whether or not they are the lucky or unlucky ones. Still, I think it should go without saying (it doesn't, but it should), that we have a responsibility to them, because we were the ones who blew the place up. This would be true even if it wasn't a war of choice, which it was. It should surprise no one at this point that we are going to fail at that basic moral obligation. From the New York Times:

With thousands of Iraqis desperately fleeing this country every day, advocates for refugees, and even some American officials, say there is an urgent need to allow more Iraqi refugees into the United States.

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month...

Some critics say the Bush administration has been reluctant to create a significant refugee program because to do so would be tantamount to conceding failure in Iraq.

Holy crap this is a poor excuse. In order to save face now (let's face it, saving face in the long run would require a plan, and we don't actually have one of those, nor a prayer for that matter), hundreds of thousands of people find themselves in danger. It's been suggested that some of them may be terrorists in waiting, but this is a lame excuse for avoiding responsibility, and it is insane to think that wannabe terrorists can't find other ways into the country. Furthermore, no Iraqi has ever been involved in an act of terror on US soil, if I remember correctly, so it's not like they even have a history of it. No, even if it means some risk for us, that risk has to be considered an acceptable one, for one cannot just ignore the damage we've done to thousands. It's about time we grow up enough as a nation to realize this uncomfortable fact.

Sins of Commission

I realize that journalists have a duty to get information out, but sometimes they really just serve as the weapons that the powerful use against their opponents, or in this case, former employees. Bush, having screwed up the war, is looking for a fall guy. Who better than a soldier to fall on the sword. From the NYTimes and the poison pen of Sanger, Gordon, and Burns:

Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

This is what's known in the biz as a "hit piece". Notice no one criticizes Casey on the record; this is a purely professional takedown for political gain, not anything personal. Josh Marshall at TPM gets it right:

In so many words, Casey's policy (which, reading between the lines, it's pretty clear Casey thought was Bush's desired policy) was maintain current troop levels and 'standing down as the Iraqis stand up'. You may have thought that was the Bush policy. But apparently not. "Over the past 12 months," the Times now tells us, "as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy."

There's a simple way to figure out if this is fair or not. What have Bush and Casey said in the past? Well, Casey's currently arguing against an escalation while anonymous officials say he's arguing for one, but the liar in chief is our President himself, praising Casey on September 15 (2 months before the election):

And I'm going to tell you I've got great confidence in General John Abizaid and General George Casey. These are extraordinary men who understand the difficulties of the task, and understand there is a delicate relationship between self-sufficiency on the Iraqis' part, and U.S. presence.

Nice of the NYTimes reporters not to mention this little detail. That's what you get from the finest journamalists in the country (and no, that's not a misspelling).

Spotting the bigger picture

Democrats taking over the majority in Congress face something of a dilemma, as noted by Steve Benen, guest hosting at Political Animal:

There's obviously a bit of a conflict. House Dems promised to use certain procedural rules, and they promised to pass certain bills. In the very short term, they can't do both, so they decided to pass the policy agenda first. I can't say I blame them.

Here, the procedural rules in question are those that allow the minority party in Congress the power to actually amend bills and have some tiny bit of input into the process. The bills in question are the legislation the Democrats promised to enact, things like raising the minimum wage, establishing new ethics rules, and allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies. Here's the quick question: which is more important? I would have to say that as Congress' job is to pass legislation, the agenda comes first, even if feelings are hurt (Benen concludes this as well). Raising the wage for hundreds of thousands comes before the hurt feelings of 200 Republicans in the minority. Eventually, there will have to be compromises, and I hope this happens sooner rather than later. Still, there is a time to establish policies, and that time is know. All other concerns are secondary, and decorum doesn't matter a bit, especially given that two years from now the month of January 2007 will be largely forgotten in the grand scheme, except for people making something marginally closer to a living wage and seniors not paying the same exorbitant drug prices as Medicare costs continue to skyrocket (more on that in a later post). It's important to be nice in this world, but your duty is to help as many as possible. That's ethical principles for you, sometimes they can make your life difficult (especially if you're a Republican), but you gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes, baby, you've gotta be cruel to be kind...