I Like Mary Pipher

I’m enjoying a great book about writing: “Writing to Change the World” by Mary Pipher. She also wrote “Reviving Ophelia”, a book my wife read a few years ago about the maze of conflicting messages that poison adolescent girls against themselves in our modern society. I need to read that soon, now that my oldest daughter has just entered the jungle of junior high.

“Writing to Change the World” reminds me of things I should already know, but only spottily do. Like treat those who disagree with you with respect. Write what you alone can say. Write bad first drafts. Move the world just a little bit.

Here’s her take on success:

“Success means we have done our best. We have not squandered our gifts or ignored our responsibilities. We have given our time and talents to help others. We have used our freedom to free someone else. Success is not fame or awards; it is having our ideas discussed by other people.”

This sounded good, until I realized it is probably much harder to be responsible and use privilege for good than it is to get published somewhere. Defining success by quantity and fame would allow me to play guilt-free golf all day if I could just get someone to give me some kind of award.

I didn’t know much about Mary Pipher before picking up this book, but recently noticed a news item that she had returned an American Psychological Association Presidential Citation. The AMA shamefully continues to allow professional psychologists to take part in interrogation techniques that include torture, and she returned her award as a symbolic protest.

I must say I am duly impressed. She is an engaging writer, a social activist and someone to emulate. I hope she plays golf too.

Money for Love

I heard this NPR report yesterday on efforts to win hearts and minds in Iraq:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13903525

The idea is to pay Iraqis a huge amount of money to cleanup garbage in their village - $10/bag, which is an entire day’s wage for a government worker. It is a quintessentially American way to solve a problem - shower someone with money and expect love and devotion in return. Or, perhaps more charitably, we offer them the thing we most value to get the thing we most want.

And yet, even then, we go about it all wrong. American soldiers arrive in town “perched warily behind 50 caliber machine guns” while they negotiate with the locals. When a villager balks because he doesn’t feel he has the authority to make a deal (after he is mistranslated), the soldier in charge get impatient and says “I want to show him the money before we leave. I want to show him what a dumbass he is.”

They finally get arrangements made, but the soldiers are offended when the Iraqis then make their kids collect the trash, while the Iraqi men complain to the soldiers about their lack of health care, fuel and clean drinking water. When it is time to be paid, the soldiers tell them to line up. When they don’t, they tell them to move back unless they want to be shot.

What I found most ironic was the soldiers’ offense at making the kids pick up the trash. And yet, isn't this a perfect metaphor for the plight of the American soldier in Iraq? They are stuck grunting it out and picking up the trash for the neocons and oil interests that started this whole mess, and continue to profit from it.

Corey Flintoff’s commentary is quite apt:

“Soldiers do what soldiers do. They are trained to be forceful to get results. Villagers do what villagers do. They try to get maximum advantage from an unpredictable source of bounty and they try to do it within the structures they understand – the family, the tribe. In terms of numbers, hundreds of bags of trash, dozens of villagers paid, the patrol’s mission seems to have been accomplished. The village is slightly cleaner but it seems unlikely that civic pride will keep it that way. The residents have some very easy money and while that may promote cooperation, it’s unclear whether hearts or minds have been won on either side.”

Sweet Land Review

I've decided to post some occasional movie reviews at the EbertFest blog site, for those rare instances that I actually see a newly-released movie (or newly enough released on DVD and it didn't play in Champaign-Urbana). I'll link them from here when I feel inspired enough to do a review. I've enjoyed doing reviews during EbertFest, but want to get better at it, so will be practicing occasionally to get into better movie-review shape, so to speak. Call it trying to get rid of my movie-review pondus, or adding to it, depending on which meaning of pondus one likes.

As a counter-example, I was recently dragged to Transformers mostly against my will by some 8 year old boys who shall remain nameless. They enjoyed it immensely, which is not a surprise, since it seemed targeted directly at 8 year old boys. The characters talked the way 8 year old boys talk when fighting each other's action figures. The character names were ones that 8 year old boys would come up with if they didn't have very much imagination or had ingested a lot of lead paint and asbestos as toddlers. I won't be doing a review of Transformers.

However, I did do a review of Sweet Land, which is newish on DVD, and I don't remember it playing here. The short review is: Good movie, go rent it. The full review is here.

The slightly longer mini-review is: Good movie about a post-WWI German mail order bride coming into a Lutheran Minnesota farming community and which deals with issues of immigration and community. Of interest to this blog is that the community in this movie could have easily been Mennonite as Lutheran, especially during that time period, when Mennonites were very isolated and suspicious of outsiders. For hard-core Mennonites, imagine a movie about a Mennonite General Conference (GC) bride entering a Mennonite Church (MC) community, or vice versa, circa 1925 and the suspicion and wariness that would naturally ensue. It may sound absurd, but no more so that Lutherans who are afraid of Germans. Anyway, it’s a nice, wholesome, sweet movie.

Second Hand Pants

Just the right touch of that goofy, good-natured Mennonite humor that I enjoy so much, and for a good cause to boot. I especially enjoyed the unflinching portrayal of the scandalous nature of pleated pants.

As good as it is, it's not quite the best video of all time, which still must be Leonard Nimoy's rendition of The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins:

My Increasing Pondus

I learned a great new word from Johan, our Swedish ex-foreign-exchange student. He’s not ex-foreign so much as ex-exchange student, as he’s been back in Sweden for 7 years now. He’s more like a younger brother now, and we talk every now and then, usually about his love life, or US hegemony, or the socialist paradise of Sweden. I can’t confirm the socialist paradise part, but he likes it there. I guess all that free health care, education and other socialist ideals of basic access for everyone has really warped his sense of freedom.

Anyway, I was complaining that my middle-aged gut doesn’t seem to go away so easily nowadays, even after a few hard-earned days of reasonable eating. Johan taught me a word Swedes use for that – “Pondus”, pronounced, I think, “pewn-duss”. If I understood him correctly, it means something like “life-experience”, “weight”, or “gravitas”, but is often used when pointing at one’s enormous stomach as an example of why they are right or have authority or are intimidating in some way.

What a great concept. My ever expanding belly is not the result of eating entire pints of Ben & Jerry’s or spending too much time in the Chinese food buffet line. It is a result of my life experience, and just comes naturally to someone with as much gravitas as I have. It is the final word on why I should be listened to and respected.

So instead of continually fighting against it, I am just going to accept the burden of wisdom and righteousness that is my Pondus.

Interesting Ways People Find This Blog

I use MVtracker to gather stats for this blog. I’m about to pass the 5,000 unique visitors mark, which is not grandly impressive, but not embarrassingly pathetic either.

I often wonder whether I should continue it all, but then someone I don’t know puts me on their blogroll, or someone I do know comments on a piece they liked, and I trod on again for awhile. I know, I know – it shouldn’t all be about other people’s reactions. Still, I started the blog to be some kind of a voice, and a voice shouting to an empty void is really just a crazy person talking to himself, something which I promised my friends and doctors to stop doing.

Most people reach this blog via internet searches, and MVTracker records the search so I can see what it was that brought them here. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them are searching for something Mennonite related, and are therefore fooled into coming here, not realizing how minor I really am. Still, it’s nice to know that 5,000 have been here, even if they were tricked into coming.

I’ve been saving the search strings when I remember to look at the blog stats, and then I keep the ones that are funny or interesting. Here are ones that have caught my eye over the last year:

can champaign get you drunk
what if a body is taller than the casket
mennonite hussein hanging
football without touching the floor record
fort wayne roller dome terrorist
the president sent the flag in bubble
mennonite porn
hitler purify world of jews
consumerism and eisenhower administration
mennonite fanatics
oppression of technologically advanced societies
mennonites and terrorists
why i hate Mennonites
dwarf doors
jesus loves osama
sexual predator democrats
chicken bus guatemala attack
what do the mennonites hate
harvest time corn what do you do with it
why dont mennonites like slavery
mennonite murder
pacifism misguided
rich and powerful people dont pay taxes
amish homosexual
can mennonites drink beer
mennonite homosexual
mennonites america problem
unable to grow facial hair properly
children and cabin fever
do you place your hand on heart to sing the national anthem
the word gob
tuk-tuks in Guatemala
inappropriate workplace behavior stories
congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale
mennonite intolerance
chief illini jewelry
undeveloped sexually
fbi surveillance of Mennonites
mennonites on the ground in iraq
primitive physical torture photos
government spying Mennonite
dan schreiber comedian
do mennonite have facial hair
mennonite women photos
what happens when we are angry

I'm troubled that so many disturbing queries have led here, but hey, whatever it takes.

And yes, there are real people on the other side of these queries, so at one point someone did want to know how to get a large body in a casket, how to grow facial hair and why those incomprehensible Mennonites are against slavery.

Since I’m such a people pleaser, I can only say that I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help them, but that I now have a whole bunch of new ideas for blog posts.

But I can answer one question: Yes, as far as I'm concerned, Mennonites are allowed to drink beer. But only good beer. Mennonites should never drink Budweiser or Miller Lite.

Weenie Democrats...Again

Instead of impeaching Bush for his lawless wiretapping of Americans, Democrats have instead decided to just make it legal, apparently because they are afraid of being called bad names . I am truly appalled.

I can’t decide whether they are acting like Minister Fudge in ignoring obvious danger, or whether Cheney is actually a recovered Horcrux and is using the imperius curse from his dark dungeon to take control of the Democratic Party.

Either way, political theatre this absurd could only be topped with the introduction of a meaningless, non-binding censure resolution of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales, a move which is bound to fail anyway.

Come on, Democrats. What works for Republicans doesn't work for us. For example:

Republican Base: “Reducing constitutional rights? Expanding federal power and spending?”
Republican Politicians: “… Um…. Hey, Look! Someone is burning a flag over there! I think it’s Osama Bin Laden! And fanatical Muslims are going to be teaching your children to poop on baby Jesus if you don’t do everything we say!”
Republican Base: “Aiiggghhh! We’re all going to die! Please take our money and liberty!”

Democratic Base: “Caving unnecessarily on constitutional freedoms? Not standing up to torture, illegal imprisonment, and arch-conservative judges”
Democratic Politicians: “ Hey, look, a censure resolution!”
Democratic Base: “Yea, right. Are you only willing to stand up for our precious ideals when it doesn’t matter? You sicken me so much I’m going to vote for Ralph Nader again and give power to those who always disagree me with instead.”

OK, OK, it seems neither base is all that bright.

Despite my obvious frustration with the Democrats, I still believe there is a difference between the parties. For example, Democrats are weenies, as I’ve already mentioned. But they only usually vote for the moneyed interests in this country. Republicans do that all the time. And, Democrats occasionally have enough spine to slip in minor policy measures that help reduce suffering in the world.

Rooting for the lesser of two evils has never been so distasteful, but that’s just how the world works. If you want even a marginally better world, unfortunately you have to get your hands dirty. I think the best way to handle this particular situation is to take names and work to defeat specific, cowardly Democrats in their primaries.

Citizen Presidents

During the early, more optimistic days of this republic it was assumed that each individual citizen could become (and should prepare to become) President. For democracy was considered not only a collectivity of individuals, as was defined by W.H. Auden, but a collectivity of politically astute citizens who, by virtue of our vaunted system of universal education and our freedom of opportunity, would be prepared to govern. As things turned out it was an unlikely possibility – but not entirely, as is attested by the recent examples of a peanut farmer and the motion-picture actor.

-Ralph Ellison introduction of the 1981 edition of Invisible Man

“Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it”
- Albus Dumbledore, channeling Gandalf the Grey

I thought this was an interesting idea – that the goal of any citizen is to be educated and informed enough to become president if called upon. It is a quaint idea, and as idealistic and unrealistic as the notion that we can all be racially colorblind or that we can simply accept each other’s deeply held religious and political beliefs. Of course, our founding father’s ideals only reached so far. When they said ‘citizens’, they really meant ‘white male landowners’.

It is hard not to make jokes that any random person plucked from the populace could have made better decisions than many recent presidents. Heck, monkeys making decisions using magic eight balls could probably have done better over the last 6 years. Still, I’m not ready to make the jump that any random citizen is qualified to govern. I suppose that makes me elitist, but know that I also think many actual presidents are not qualified to govern either.

But idealistic notions like this are useful, if only to measure ourselves against our unattainable goals. How would we improve education in this country if our goal was to make everyone ready to be president? How would we change our infotainment-like news, our violence-ridden entertainment, or our winner-take-most-all economic system? If we were one lottery dice throw away from placing a possible inner-city drug lord as President, we might take steps to reduce the number of drug lords available in the pool, ideally by eliminating the conditions under which they arise.

Top Ten Chicago Movies

Sun Times columnist Tom McNamee recently listed his choices for the 10 best Chicago movies of all time. This sounded like a fun exercise, so I came up with my own list before seeing his. Turns out I missed some obvious choices (“Ferris Bueller” and “High Fidelity”), and there are some movies I now need to see (“Hudsucker Proxy” and “Things Change”). He did have one stinker on his list: “Stranger Than Fiction”, which I didn’t even remember being set in Chicago.

My own criteria are simple: A great Chicago movie doesn’t need to be a great movie, but it does need to have Chicago and its landmarks as one of its main characters. Both quantity and quality of landmarks matter here. Movies with Wrigley Field, the Loop, and Bonnie Hunt are better than ones with just a passing shot of the Daly Building or Jim Belushi. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that this is a list of the best Chicago movies, not the list of best movies set in Chicago.

So here’s the list. They are in no particular order, except that The Blues Brothers must be number 1.

[Blues Brothers section]

1. The Blues Brothers (1980). Can there be any question that The Blues Brothers is the best Chicago movie of all time, based its remarkable achievement of trashing so many iconic Chicago spots in so many different and innovative ways? It is the John Wooden of Chicago movies, if John Wooden lacked class. I say this protected from the safe confines of time, distance and memory, having not seen it in about 25 years. I’ve seen enough other movies I loved in high school (“Better off Dead”, “Meatballs”) to know that I should never see this movie again, so it will always remain perfect.

[Suburban Kids Having Adventures in the City Section]

2. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). Let’s face it – we all wanted to vicariously live the life of smart alec and nice guy Ferris Bueller. He skips around town on his final school sick day, taking in a Cubs game, a St. Patrick’s Day parade, and saving his friend from melancholy. Also, rather than give John Hughes his own section, this entry will also represent all John Hughes teenage angst movies.
3. Adventures in Babysitting (1987). Chris Columbus’ debut, about a babysitter traipsing around town trying to get her friend home to the burbs with babysittees in tow. Any movie with Elizabeth Shoe sliding down the diagonal-shaped roof of the Smurfit-Stone building is a great Chicago movie in my book.
4. Risky Business (1983). So, now I’m dating myself by putting in three 80s movies about suburban kids, but c’mon, how could I not include the heartwarming story of an innocent Tom Cruise, who hires prostitutes to sell to his friends in order to pay for repairs to his parents’ Porsche that he drove into a lake while they were gone? If that isn’t a typical American feel-good story, and a great Chicago coming of age story to boot, I don’t know what is.

[Romantic Comedy Section]

5. High Fidelity (2000). Even though this was a Nick Hornby novel set in London, John Cusack and Chicago make it their own. Plus, it unleashed Jack Black onto the wider world. Cusack wanders around town looking for old girlfriends and records to buy and produce, and it works as both a movie and a tour of the north end. I can still almost smell the musty, weedish record store he owned.
6. Return To Me (2000). A film that would otherwise only make a top ten list of guilty pleasures, there’s nonetheless something about this movie that tugs at my heart in a girlie sort of way. Bonnie Hunt (who wrote and directed) pretty much sums it up when she barks at Jim Belushi: “Grace has Bob’s dead wife’s heart!” In addition to Hunt and Belushi, it’s got large helpings of the Grant Park zoo, quaint Chicago neighborhoods, a charming Minnie Driver, and an incredible helicopter shot at the beginning where the camera swoops into the city and down onto the platform of a newly erected high rise.
7. While You Were Sleeping (1995). Another Chicago neighborhood movie, and curiously satisfying in the way it throws what would have been a typical Peter Gallagher character under a Metra train and keeps him unconscious for most of the movie. Mostly, though, it has Bill Pullman at the top of his ordinary guy game, making all us other ordinary guys feel like we don’t have to be Keanu Reeves or Brendan Fraser to have a shot at Sandra Bullock, if only our brother would get thrown under a Metra. Then, later, we could save the world from aliens as President. I knew people would eventually wake up (heh heh) and notice that Bill Pullman was just one of us ordinary guys, rather than a leading man, but it was nice while it lasted.

[African American Section]

8. Barbershop (2002). I’m revealing my white person bias by not including/remembering/knowing about more movies that present the Chicago African American experience. Guilty as charged. But I enjoyed Barber Shop quite a lot, where Ice-Cube desperately wants to do anything in life except what his neighborhood needs him to do, which is keep his barbershop open. It also includes a comprehensive series of the funniest and most unsuccessful ways to open a stolen ATM machine.
9. Hoop Dreams (1994). This Documentary doesn’t really fit my list, because it is actually an important, quality film. Nonetheless, it was set in Chicago, so must be included, I guess as the exception that proves the rule. It follows two inner city high school basketball players who are recruited in junior high to play basketball for a white suburban high school team, and proves the old adage that truth is often more interesting than fiction.

[Gangster/Thriller Section]

10. The Fugitive (1993). Tommy Lee Jones chases Harrison Ford around Chicago and Northern Illinois, while Ford looks for the real killer of his wife. A fine, fine chase movie.
11. The Untouchables (1987). I don’t actually remember much about this one, except that any list of great Chicago movies should have one with a scene of Robert DeNiro (as Al Capone) bashing someone’s head in with a baseball bat over a dinner table filled with gangsters.
12. The Sting (1973). Nothing says Chicago like a small time con artists scamming a big time crook. There are probably only a few scenes in this one that were actually filmed in Chicago, but hey, when I was a kid and saw it for the first time, I believed.

So there you have it. My top ten list of the best Chicago movies of all time, which I’m quite proud to have contained in only 12 entries.

After looking it over, and noticing the large number of low-rent movies I’ve included, I guess you could complain that I don’t have a very high opinion of Chicago. But you’d be snooty for thinking so. Chicago may not be as classy as New Yorkor as fashionable as LA, but it does provide more real people having real conversations over pizza and beer than NY and LA combined. In fact, this probably explains why they find it so entertaining to watch their landmarks get trashed by desperate bluesmen.

Hillary oh Hillary, Why Do We Hate Thee So?

My good friend Eric wanted to post the following on his decidedly non-political blog, but chose not to (because politics, like religion, doesn’t play well with others). He agreed to let me post it here though, because it makes for an easy response post of my own:

Title: Advice from a Republican to the Democrats

Dear Democrats,

Every time I see a poll in the news, Hillary Clinton is leading. This tells me that you people are terribly confused about how to win the 2008 election.

You see, over here on the right, we are not at all happy with our current crop of candidates. But I promise you, we /will/ vote for one of them in November 2008 if Hillary wins the Democratic nomination. We /hate/ her.

In this primary, don’t vote for the candidate you like the most. Vote for the one that we Republicans hate the least. Give us Barack Obama or John Edwards and you’ll get lots of us voting for a Democrat for the first time in our lives.

Thanks for listening,

Eric Sink

PS. Don't ask us why we hate Hillary, and don't try to change our mind. Either one would be a waste of time.

The Hillary phenomenon has always fascinated me, and it is the same with all Republicans I know – a seething hatred of her that goes beyond all normal logic. Kind of like how I felt about W before I really had a right to (circa Aug 2001). Sure, he was a war deserter, had a history of shady business dealings, executed people giddily, and had failed at just about everything he did, but that didn’t really explain the depth of my dislike for him. It might have had something to do with the frat-boy smirk. But I didn’t really understand the illogical hatred of the Clintons until W came along. After W, we now all get to wallow in the same emotional sinkhole.

The irony of Hilary is that while conservatives hate her for being so leftist (or whatever it is they hate about her), she’s managed to alienate much of the left as well with her hawkish pandering to the right in the last 5 years. She has been a big war supporter, hasn’t stood up against torture, didn’t fight very hard against arch-conservative supreme court judges and even tried to introduce some legislation about flag burning. The right isn’t buying any of this, but many on the left are now convinced that either she’s serious, or will at least continue to pander to the right if elected, which is effectively the same thing. She is the only Democratic candidate that I would consider voting against in a general election (with a 3^rd party vote) simply because she’s turned up missing on so many important issues.

So how can she be ahead in the polls? It is a mystery to me. Maybe people are just nostalgic for that innocent era in American life when a Clinton was running the country, prosperity abounded, and all we had to worry about was the president’s sex life. Maybe people are pulling for the first legitimate woman candidate. Maybe all the other Democratic candidates are splitting the informed, reasoned vote, and she will have a huge surprise ahead of her when some of them start dropping out.

But I do agree with my Republican friend. If Hillary is nominated, she will get clobbered in the general election (assuming the Republicans put up someone to the left of Attila the Hun, which isn’t a given). Too many people just can’t stand her. While Democrats don’t want to repeat the mistake of nominating someone based solely on whether Republicans might like him or her, it would still be foolish to nominate someone who is right of center in practice AND widely vilified by the right.

Besides, if we want to be historic, Chris Rock points out that a black man would win a suffering contest against a white woman any day of the week.

Apocalypse and Children of Men

I’ve always been drawn to stories of apocalyptic doom, which is strange, because I’ve also always been attracted to theories of utopia. It seems these interests should be in direct conflict with each other, but I think they are simply different spots on the same line. Both are about wiping the slate clean and starting afresh with a new human society. Both tap into a deep interest in how humans might live with one another, under widely varying environmental and social circumstances. We only get to directly experience a very limited number of societies and human organization, and apocalypses and utopias allow us to both critique our current situations as well as envision what else might or might not work.

I think that is one of the reasons I like science fiction and fantasy. What makes science, technology and magical powers interesting in stories are their ability to create new possibilities and rules for human interaction, or between humans and other possible beings. Good sci-fi/fantasy will create a new twist on social interaction and then play it out in a way that reveals something about human nature. Bad sci-fi/fantasy merely imagines new powers and toys as ways to blow stuff up.

Unfortunately, apocalyptic doom stories are inevitably followed by post-apocalyptic visions of humans reduced to their basest, most violent survival instincts. And yet, I can’t look away. It started with Dawn of the Dead in high school, continued through The Stand, Escape from New York, Twelve Monkeys, The Matrix, and a host of other guilty and non-guilty pleasures. It isn’t hard to envision the collapse of civilization causing a lawless future where those with the guns violently rule over everyone else. But it is hard to square these stories with my semi-recent pacifism, and what I might do in such a situation. Or heck, what I might do if I were in Iraq today. Sin boldly, perhaps, at best.

-----------

I saw Children of Men last week, and it is another fine entry in the list above. It offs the human race in a curiously original yet obvious way – stop the reproductive process for no apparent reason. In this world, no new babies have been born for 20 years, and most people have simply given up on humanity. It is actually as much Orwellian as apocalyptic, since it a world of surveillance and control interspersed with social breakdown and random violence.

The plot of the film is actually a nice little chase/thriller, and it succeeds well enough here. However, the interesting part is the thought experiment of what would happen to the human race if babies suddenly stopped being born. Obvious though it may be, it never occurred to me that civilization literally depends on there being children around.

And it isn’t just the biological necessity of filling the pipeline with more humans. Without *any* children, there is little external motivation to build anything, work towards a better society, or even be moral examples. As politicians know, people can often be shamed into doing things by invoking The Children As Our Future. No such outs in this world. Most people feel little reason to act morally in a world where God has apparently given up on the human experiment, seemingly for good reason.

Another thing that resonated with me was the film’s use of the iconic images of our day. It created scenes that seemed to come straight from video cameras out of Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and even had those eerily familiar columns of smoke rising in the distance that we’ve seen in both gulf wars. It also tied in the immigrant issue nicely, with riveting scenes of immigrants being given Nazi-like treatment.

My brother made a good observation about the film in relation to an everyday practical issue – taxes for schools. We’ve both been annoyed in the past at people without kids in school who complain when they have to pay for schools that “they don’t use.” Anyone who believes this should be chained to a chair and made to watch Children of Men until they gladly empty their pocketbooks.

All in all, it was a clever critique of our current social values – if we continue on the course we are on, we are going to doom ourselves. I’m glad to see Hollywood tackling these kinds of subjects - it reminded me a bit of V for Vendetta, another modern Orwellian fable set in England. Mostly, it challenges us to think about the extent to which the human race depends on actual humans, and why it might be a good idea to start treating those actual humans with a little more dignity.

Tagabu Investigation

Seymour Hersh has another great (and long) article in this week’s New Yorker. It’s about Antonio Tagabu, the army general who was tasked to investigate the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. His integrity and honesty in the task cost him his career in the Army.

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

Another thing the article mentions is that Tagabu was only allowed to investigate the people who actually did the abuse, and explicitly not the chain of command to find out where their orders came from. Republicans in Congress blocked any attempt to investigate further. Once again, don't tell me there is no difference between the parties. Democrats may be weenies, but at least they are not sycophants.

Doing the right thing often has negative consequences, and Tagabu was the unfortunate recipient of that on this occasion. Despite all the darkness, fear, and intimidation this administration has spread throughout all corners of the earth, I still believe that in the end, truth leaks out. Tagabu paid for his truth-telling with his career, but he is on the right side of history, and there is no better legacy to leave to one's grandchildren.

Peanuts, Power and Policy

Below is an essay I just sent off to Bethany Seminary for an essay contest: What Story Will a Peace Church Tell the World?

There's not much new content here from my other musings on power, but I thought I'd wrap it up in a fresh package and see what the Church of the Brethren thinks. :)

Peanuts, Power, and Policy for a Peace Church

While traveling with my wife and young children a few years ago, we reached that point in our journey where rising agitation from the back of the van needed to be swiftly quelled by a snack of some kind. My resourceful wife opened a jar of peanuts that she had ready for just this situation, and we each took a handful and passed the jar back. There was a short moment of relative peace, followed by sharp outcries of injustice and suffering. Our eldest daughter had dumped the entire jar into her lap, out of reach from her siblings (who were now sobbing and gnashing their teeth). We confronted said eldest child and demanded to know what in the world she was doing.

Without missing a beat, she replied “I just wanted the peanuts so I could share them with my brother and sister.” She then proceeded to give small handfuls of her enormous pile to each of her siblings.

History teaches us that it is common for people to gather all peanuts unto themselves, and that it can almost always be explained as simple greed or desire. It is trickier when peanut gathering is done in the name of providing for others. It is admirable to want to be God’s hands, but we run the risk of mistaking our own desires for God’s. Whether we gather peanuts for good or ill, one thing is certain: peanut distributors are the ones in charge. They will eat far better than others and will become all too acquainted with places of honor at banquet tables. To their eventual sorrow, they will discover that peanuts are loaded with hidden saturated fat, and that they will suffer from heart failure if they continue to eat more than their share of them.

Whether it be peanuts or armies, the fundamental problem we all must face when attempting to do good is the double-edged nature of power in this world. We need power to do good, yet power tends to corrupt even the best intentions. That corruption may not fully blossom into depravity, exploitation, or an invade-other-countries-for-the-glorious-benefit-of-God kind of arrogance. But even reconciling a comfortable life with all the suffering that exists in the world is a small corruption, a turning away from Shalom. We all have blind spots, and power without accountability often ends up being a greater opportunity for sin than for good. Whether we are children, kings, nations or peace churches, we should be wary of gathering power in too few places, and we should encourage social policies that ensure power is properly distributed among many.

- - - - - -

The natural course of the world is to collect power into mighty kingdoms that demand allegiance above even God, but which eventually and inevitably crumble as corruption eats at them from within. History affirms this sad reality century after century. But must that reality apply to the Church as well? At its worst, the Church has been a shadow of the State, seeking power and control over others to increase its influence. In post-Christendom times, these impulses have reduced the Church to blessing the violence of the State in exchange for whatever shreds of power the State decides to trickle down to it.

However, at its best, the Church is a counter-weight to the reality of power. It is a voice crying out from the sideline, urging the rich and powerful to share their wealth and privilege and calls them to account when their corruption becomes too enormous for others to bear. What makes the ancient books of Israel remain so unique and relevant for our time is not that God spoke to a tribe in the desert, but that one’s very loyalty to God is put to the test by one’s care and concern for the oppressed in society. The victimized share space in the same sacred text as the stately kings and priests, and to remain faithful to their calls for justice is no easier today than it ever was.

The source of the difficulty is that power presents us with a paradox: We can gain power to do good but also gain hidden corruptions along with it. Or we can avoid power altogether and lack much influence with which to do God’s work. Historic peace churches have struggled mightily with this paradox over the centuries. Choosing variously between engagement and withdrawal at different times, we keep circling around, hoping to find a faithful balance. We often find ourselves between the rock of faithfulness and the hard place of effectiveness.

Part of the problem is Jesus’ ambivalence towards power. He rejected political and ecclesiological power offered by Satan, and in so doing revealed that his kingdom was something quite different. But in the Parable of the Talents, he demanded that those with money and power use it to good benefit or risk losing faithfulness. Is he recognizing that power is something humans can get addicted to, yet is a necessary temptation to accomplish kingdom work?

The answer may lie in what Jesus was unmistakably clear about: advocating for the least among us. Instead of concentrating solely on individual salvation through forgiveness of sins, perhaps we should focus more on community salvation, through the practical results of children clothed, bellies fed, and power equalized. This is the story Jesus told, through his unwavering insistence to care for the poor and the suffering, through his message of an upside-down-kingdom, and through his proclamation of the year of Jubilee. If we view the arc of Jesus’ message as a call to distribute power to minimize human corruption, we are given not just a story but a guiding principle of social organization towards our work in the larger world.

Indeed, what progress has been made towards human dignity in the course of history has come through this basic but effective strategy. Democracy, the rule of law, and institutional checks and balances are all strategies to distribute power, and while they do not succeed in eliminating corruption, they do dampen its effects. We’ve also experienced (all too recently) the tragic effects of subverting those checks and balances by those in power. The church need not compete with secular energy in these areas - at its best it has been the conscience and forerunner of social causes like slavery, poverty, and civil rights, all of which righteously distribute power.


As a guiding principle, distribution of power is quite useful in unpacking the social issues of our time. Instead of asking whether a particular social policy is conservative vs liberal or secular vs religious, we need merely ask: Whom does it benefit? If the answer is that it will give more power and privilege to those who already have it, then we should be highly suspicious of whatever benefits it claims. If one of our jobs, as Christians, is to work towards increasing the power of those who don’t have it, then we need not be embarrassed to pursue social policy that attempts to achieve it. We may be fearful of being labeled unpatriotic or socialist, but we must claim our motivations as properly Christian - a natural result of following Jesus’ social ethic.

Here are some ideas for applying the principle of power distribution to a few current social problems:

Wealth: To rely on optional charity to distribute wealth is to rely on those with the peanuts to share them at their pleasure. Tax policy that distributes money also distributes power. Progressive tax policies need not be apologized for when the money is being used for social services and wealth redistribution strategies, be it education or basic welfare. It is when taxes are used to militarily control the resources of other countries that we should be concerned about what taxation is accomplishing.

Health Care: Current American allocation of health care resources goes to those with jobs at companies that provide health care benefits. This is just another way of distributing privileges only to those who already have some power. A universal health care system would ensure that the power of health is more evenly distributed.

Media Conglomeration: The media is an extremely powerful tool to shape social perception. When all the major media outlets are owned by a small number of global corporations, the voices of those without power are usually shut out. Social policy that prevents media monopolies or encourages alternative media outlets should be supported.

Policing: Corruption is common in police forces because the power of legally sanctioned violence is so strong. Without being accountable to a truly independent investigative body, police abuse is inevitable. Citizen reviews boards with real authority to sanction officers should be a check within our system of policing.

Voting. One of the many ways our democracy is broken is how lawmakers get elected, via large donations from moneyed interests. Public financing of elections would reduce the likelihood of representatives who are beholden to special interests. Alternatively, entirely changing the system to representational government or instant run-off voting would allow more than two parties to have practical access to office, which would help distribute power electorally.

The examples above are but a sample, and certainly open to argument as to whether they would actually achieve the goals of distributing power. But using distribution of power as a goal at least provides a proper framework for the discussion of social policy. For too long we have had to endure the loud complaints of the most privileged and their certainty that they still don’t have enough. They believe that the least among us deserve their poverty, and should be provided with nothing more than spare peanuts, and that only at the whim of those with power. If we hold to distribution of power as a worthy goal, we undercut selfishness as policy, and turn the discussion instead toward the direction of Jesus’ social ethic.

Is distribution of power really such an all-encompassing solution? Can’t people still commit terrible evils even when they have limited power in balance with others? Don’t high school movies teach us that geeks immediately start ignoring their friends when they gain the power of popularity?

Possibly - it is a very blunt tool, after all. It is not an ethic, but a strategy to reduce the likelihood of sin. In fact, sometimes, it is necessary to temporarily centralize power to address local injustice, such as civil rights. In this post-modern world, choosing a path isn’t usually a way to eliminate all problems, but a way to choose which set of problems we prefer to have.

Distributing power is like storing old newspapers, oily rags and matches in different places to avoid unnecessary fires. It is keeping bullets away from guns, and guns away from children, and even preventing guns from being in the house in the first place. It is a structural way to avoid problems and temptations. It does not stop those who want fires and gunshots in their lives, but it does limit their damage.

Unequal distribution of power harms everyone. Left unchecked, it eventually puts massive numbers of people under the yoke of injustice and oppression. But it also encourages those in power, who might behave better otherwise, to be in opposition to God’s will for themselves and for humanity. Resisting the temptations of power may start with peanuts, but if we are to be serious about reflecting God’s desire for us here on earth, it must end in practical, power-distributing social policy.

My Ensemble Experience

At my wife’s urging, I joined a choral ensemble this year at AMBS. I did not join because I have any singing talent - quite the opposite - I joined because I thought I might be able to improve myself without being too big of an anchor tied around the necks of the other choir members. Or at least my wife thought so. I was not convinced.

Throughout my life, I have been an atrocious singer and an even worse musician. After 18 years of living with my music-major wife, she has only been able to patch over some of my most glaring deficiencies. I no longer mistake the rhythm of the melody for the beat, and am now aware that picking any handy, semi-matching note is not how to sing a 4-part harmony. In exchange for these wondrous gifts, my wife is now able (after 18 long years) to hit, catch and throw a softball.

My two doomed attempts at playing instruments (piano and cello) have left me a kindergarten-like ability to “read” music. While others around me translate in real-time the circles and squigglies on a page into actual music, it is mostly accidental when any sounds coming from my mouth resemble the pitch, tempo, or volume of what is written.

In the midst of this functional musical illiteracy, choir also requires me to look up every so often at the director to receive arm movement instructions. I can roughly understand the intent, even though I am mostly unable to comply, as I struggle not to lose my place while also still desperately trying to match pitch. There are also a lot verbal instructions in foreign languages, like “mezzo-forte” and “adagio”, plus secret-coded English phrases, like “articulation of rhythms.” Everyone else nods in agreement and makes appropriate notes in their music. I also nod intently, and use the time to mark little arrows next to what I hope is the tenor line, so I don’t lose my place from page to page.

But there is still more. I am asked to sing louder here or softer there or lightly or with enunciation or crescendo-y. Breathe here, but not with your chest and root yourself to the ground and round your Os and pronounce that hard G. There are apparently notations for each of these as well, as everyone continues to scribble in their music. I’ve already finished marking the tenor line, which is the only marking I’ve found to be useful.

My job in the choir, as I have defined it, is to surround myself with as many tenors as I can and attempt to amplify whatever it is they are doing. So, my singing often resembles an annoying person trying to mimic a storyteller in real-time. This role became evident in our spring performance. We apparently started one of the movements out of sync with each other, so much so that the organist simply stopped playing for a page or two until we got back in sync, which we eventually did. I say apparently, because I didn’t notice. I was standing between two outstanding tenors, and they were in agreement as to which notes we were supposed to be singing, so I just followed happily along. Ignorance is bliss, indeed.

I’ve been trying to come up with a metaphor that describes my contribution to the ensemble. My standard image for failing at something is that of the slow gazelle being eyed by a hungry lion as the herd passes. But that doesn’t quite work here, since it isn’t clear who the lion is. It would need to be the Slow Gazelle of Skill being run down by the Hungry Lion of Humiliation.

I’m the weak link in the chain. The faint black line drawn across a fine painting. The trivia partner who knows only what all his team members already know, but is slower to answer.

But it’s all OK. Too much of my life is spent avoiding situations that might reveal my weaknesses. My self-identity requires that I always be the one who is competent and talented. I want to be one who provides grace and mercy to others when they mess up instead of needing it myself. Choir is the exact opposite of this, and an opportunity to provide some perspective from the other side. I know I need help and must trust others to provide it.

And provide it they do. These are Mennonites, after all. You can randomly yank 20 Mennonites out of any potluck and you’ll have enough vocal talent to match the choir of any Catholic church I’ve attended. Plus, they love nothing more than to provide grace and mercy to others. Especially those slow gazelles.

This ensemble (and its infinitely patient director) was particularly strong, and easily able to accommodate an outlier like myself. But if it was all just confusion and compassion, I’m not sure I would have survived.

What kept me coming back were those transcendent moments at the end of a movement where everyone sings at their peak capacity – full throated and without inhibition. When they do, the sound is so strong and so powerful that my music sheet literally vibrates in my hand, and I feel it deeply within my chest and body and soul. It is here, and only here, that I am finally able to let go. The note is mercifully long enough that I am able to confidently find the right pitch. After withholding my voice for so long for fear of messing up, I can just let it rip, and sing as long and as strong as my voice will allow, joining with the rushing tide.

We’ve reached a destination that I can take no credit in achieving, and yet it gives me a profound appreciation for the gifts and talents of others in taking me there. There is a surrender of self in simply putting my elbows out and being carried away by a rushing crowd of those who are stronger, faster, and greater.

Finally, in these moments, I am fully a part of something greater, not only than me, but greater even than the sum of all of us in the ensemble. Our voices resonate together and fill the space between us all. For just a moment, we seem connected, somehow the collective embodiment of God that our spirits yearn for. And it is good.

Unless I forget and move before the sound dissipates.

Salvation Candy

The June issue of Sojourners reported on this gem, under the heading of “Real Product”: Salvation Candy Tubes. You can buy sugar for your children, and have them match the color with the message on the tube. Jesus' Blood is red, sin is of course some kind of dark, unpleasant color, and heaven is apparently yellow. Who knew?

I don’t know what it is that cracks me up about entwining Jesus with consumer products. It has something to do with the sacrilege of it all, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I do make a point of sending a semi-sacrilegious product to my brother every year for his birthday. He has received a Buddy Christ, a statuette of a Jesus playing basketball with young boys (inappropriately, it seems to me), a Moses action figure, and a "wash away your sins" soap bar with a small nun statuette entrapped within it (presumably with nail marks on the inside of the soap where the statuette has desperately tried to claw its way out before suffocating).

I suppose one way to look at Salvation Candy is that the company owners love Jesus so much that they want to spread his message of love and compassion via the sacred act of candy consumption. Another way to look at it is that they are using Jesus as bait to sell sugar to schoolchildren. Either way, it seems cruel to get children all hopped up on sugar and then make them feel guilty that they are suddenly physically unable to act like Jesus would want them to.

This particular product is the perfect metaphor for what I’ve long believed: that religious experience often resembles a manic sugar high. Churches pass out the spiritual equivalent of chocolate bunnies and peeps and everyone gets high on God for the morning. It’s all about being saved and feeling good about yourself. But there isn’t much connection between that and ethical choices for the rest of the week.

Many go the opposite way, and eat spiritual barley all day long and are healthy enough, but lack any kind of joy at all. That is one-sided too, and reduces spiritual life to rote ethical duties, devoid of any kind of spirit at all. Our spiritual lives need to be a nutrient-filled, healthy balance between joy and obligation, binding and loosing, spirit and flesh, sugar and vegetables.

How can we tell the difference between deep joy and communion and merely a sugar high? Can we even do God’s work when we are all sugared up?

Biblecandy.com says, of course you can – just load up on Salvation Sugar and Candy Pebbles Crunch Art of Sin, and be on your way!