For All Those Who Worked Hard For Obama's 08 Campaign

We're beginning to hear it creep into conversations and at holiday gatherings: "I just can't understand how he could have changed. I honestly don't think I can vote for him again."  These voices are all the more plaintive because they come from the true believers. But as I see it Barack Obama hasn't changed; he's actually acting as the non-leader, uninvolved thinker and speaker he's always been.

I'm not sure when I wrote it, but I recall that sometime in the spring of 08 I expressed serious doubts about Obama's abilities and motives. I discussed that lifted chin and horizon gaze he uses to punctuate his rhetoric as stagecraft to highlight his gravitas. He can stir a crowd and the networks, but he obviously demurs at arm twisting and head banging, the stuff needed to get people moving in the direction he advocates.

And that's the pity. People like Baucus, Nelson, Lieberman and Landrieu would probably bend if Obama would at least threaten them with real damage in their home bases. Sometimes to lead in the right direction is to suffer losses in the wrong direction. LBJ, as he noted with clarity, said on the day he signed the civil rights bill, "Well, there goes the South for us [the Democrats]."

Huffington Post has an excellent article on this significant Obama character trait that enervates whatever political will he has. The author focuses on Obama's fundamental lack of leadership skills.

As I've thought about this, I keep thinking about Obama's press agents' use of his basketball playing as an indication of his attraction to competition. What we see and know, however, is that Obama has a fairly refined outside shot, in fact, a pretty good 3-pointer. The only competition there is between the shooter's skill and the distance to the basket. And let that stand as the metaphor of his faulty leadership. Obama is not a low post player. He doesn't get down in the low blocks to set up plays and bang for rebounds. He obviously thinks that's the job for somebody else, somebody who is better at taking the heat and the pain.

Theism And Pantheism: A Distinction Without A Difference

I often admire Ross Douthat’s writing on the Time’s Op-Ed page, but even good writers sometimes jam things into comparisons that don’t actually belong together. In most cases the result is awkwardly bad, but in Douthat’s case today it is finally rewarding once he rids himself of James Cameron and his supposed “apologia” of pantheism.

Douthat moves from a discussion of “Avatar” as allegory, or as he states, “apologia,” to the reason it has such appeal to an American audience (although I understand its European audiences are similarly mildly enthusiastic). Whatever the case and whatever private beliefs Cameron might hold as a pantheist, my guess is that Cameron’s primary motivation for distributing this $300+ million behemoth was to enshrine himself as the film mogul of the 21st century. So much for Cameron.

Douthat’s discussion of our culture’s believers lapsing away from standard theism (of whatever brand of hope and redemption and whatever imagery of falling and rising) into pantheism’s release through the conflation of the spiritual and natural worlds. Nature has always been a part of American succor, even before settlement began. America’s natural bounty and beauty existed in the minds of the Europeans as scripted by 15th and 16th century promoters…like Cap. John Smith. Through the years of our cultural development, the dichotomy between nature’s inspiriting and settlement’s dispiriting took its form in everything from placing our small colleges in faraway places amid pristine nature (Dartmouth, Kenyon, Hamilton, Wellesley, etc.), just as we decided that the true virtue of the post WW II generation could avoid the despoiling influences of hyper-consumption in the spiritual embrace of sprawling idyllic suburbs.

Douthat cites this duality in our cultural body, but he suggests that pantheism ultimately lacks the promise of meaningfulness that theism does. He seems to think that we need some imagined patriarch/matriarch as our guide. To believe in a living spirit ensconced in the articles of nature seems to be for him ultimately without proper eminence for huan religious regard. “The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its ‘circle of life’ is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short…This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one. Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago.”

And this is what I mean by a distinction without a difference. The essential question (apologies to my existential friends) is why humanity needs anything (pantheism) or any imagined being outside itself to justify life or death. Both the promise of life and the certainty of death can be equally terrifying. To suggest that traditional religion is an “escape upward” and that pantheism is “a downward exit” places value on our lives that is essentially beyond our ability to ascertain. Nature simply is. It has no value other than that which we choose to place on it. Traditional religion is similar: Because we need to have more to our existence than there is, we choose a positive approach. We believe in an “escape upward”, because “up” as we experience life, as we’ve been told what “up” means, surely feels better.

We rarely think—there’s that word again—that “up” could be a setup for “a downward exit.” When you observe things in nature, you see both animate and inanimate objects, not thinking but rather adapting, moving towards and away from pressures and generally resolving into homeostasis. Nature seeks a balance. Humanity thinks there ought to be something more.

Skanks, Skeevers, Scummers and Slum-Slugs

I’ve always liked the word “skank.”  It’s one of those words that sounds like what it means.  Like “kerfuffle.”  Skank.  Say it aloud.  The “an” gets up there behind the sinuses and comes out as “aah.”  Check out any slang dictionary, and most will lead with references to a derogatory word for a female, suggesting bad hygiene and bad sexual behavior.  But if you read more deeply into the definitions, you’ll find it has a more general application, especially to any person who exhibits sleazy, skeevy, scummy, and generally reprehensible, uncivilized dealings.  You know.  Someone like Joe Lieberman.

Skanks are notable for having no self-transcendence.  They seem to be driven only by their ability to make the rest of us feel uncomfortable and frustrated, because we lack the supra-skankiness to override the skank.  What is in the nature of the skank is beyond our willingness to conjure.  From toilet training forward, we have learned the meaning of being civilized.  The skank languishes in the pre-toilet stage.  And he does this, because he lacks a sufficient ego, that civilizing gyroscope the rest of us have.  Like the infant, he will do anything necessary, no matter how irrational and anti-social, to get our attention.

But Joe Lieberman is only a minor skank in the current drama unfolding among the skeevers and scummers directing the future for the rest of us.  Those the President called “the fat cats on Wall Street” are of the same ilk, albeit existing at a more refined stage than Mopy Joe.  For example, while clearly dissing the President in not attending his mucky-mucks breakfast, they offered the weather as an excuse.  That’s major league in-your-face skank.

Then there are the invisible skanks (I know, an oxymoron, but maybe that’s the point?).  These would be the insurance company lobbyists—people who are not only selling their souls for their masters but would also sell their mothers.  The only time these people surface is when they go beyond the legal sleaze and get caught in an outrage.  You know.  Someone like Abramowitz. 

So let’s call out the skanks.  Let’s expose the fact that the health insurance, now being touted as the relief for the 33 million without it, will result in a monumental gouging of their fragile incomes.   Let’s expose all the slum-slug members of both houses of Congress who are in the tight embrace of the insurance conglomerates and their price fixing.  Let’s stop being liberal and start being progressive:  Join Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean to scuttle this travesty called health care reform.  Let’s bring universal health care to the United States.

Blowing Out (a fragment for players)

Act One

At rise WARREN stands alone down stage baby spotted.  The stage is otherwise black.  WARREN wears casual clothes, perhaps jeans, a T-shirt, an over-sized sport jacket with cuffed sleeves.  He's dressed too young for his age, in his fifties.

                                                WARREN

Excuse me for a second.  I wasn't sure what you asked.  (pause; he shrugs)  Did I ever wonder about it?  Personally?  Yes.  I did.  Uh, I have. (long pause)  I guess we could say then that you wonder about it impersonally.  (pause) It is a wonder, isn't it? 

            Laughs.  Walks to extreme down stage, stares, then glares, as though he is fixed on a specific image.  He shrugs.

I've always hated mirrors.  Has anyone told you about that?  Probably not.  I've tried not to let anyone see me avoiding mirrors.  (pause)  It isn't easy, you know.  Being married.  It isn't easy when you're married. 

            Walks back upstage slowly, back to audience, raises both arms and shakes both hands.

I know.  I know.  You said it was a wonder.  (pause)    Yes.  I know.  Did I ever wonder?

That was it, wasn't it?  (pause)  No.  I don't wonder.  I know.  I think I've known about it as long as I've known about anything.  You know.  You never wonder about certain things.  Like what makes your nose itch.  Or your fingers.  You don't wonder about having them or what to do with them.  (pause)  But it might be a wonder.  It could be, couldn't it?

           

            Turns to the audience, suddenly stiffens and salutes.

I can remember being told that I did that.  I saluted MacArthur's picture in the window of a department store on a street in Philadelphia before I knew what a street in Philadelphia was or wondered what the people in uniforms really did for a living.  She told me that I did that and it was another reason people thought I was so cute.  That's what they said.  Can you believe that?  (pause)  Maybe that's something to wonder about.  Or maybe it’s just a wonder.  People thinking I was cute.  And she telling me that they had told her that.  As though I might have asked her.  As though I really would want to know.  Maybe that's something to wonder about.  Why she kept telling me that.

            Stage dissolves to darkness, then up on stage right.  WARREN sits in leather easy chair, arms folded tightly, legs wrapped tightly together.

                                                            WARREN

We’d have these times together when I was little.  I’d be home from elementary school.  We’d drink tea and have some ginger snaps.  (pause)  It was a little awkward.  That’s right.  Uncomfortable.  She’d say things like, “You look so sad, dear.  Did you have a good time at school today?”   One time she asked me about this kid, Liam Doyle.  He was kind of a neighborhood bad kid.  Kind of an archetype for all of us not to be.  You know what I mean?  Anyway, one time this Liam got into some serious trouble.  Set a clubhouse, kind of a shack, on fire and a kid couldn’t get out and got killed.  And what was her concern?  She said, “Why didn't you tell me, dear?  You're such a good boy.  (pause)  Why didn't you tell me?”  (long pause)  See what I mean?  I’d sit there and stare into the teacup, wondering what the hell I was supposed to say, because there isn’t an answer, any time, anywhere, to that question.  And they all ask it!   (pause) I wonder why they didn’t name him William instead of Liam.

(long pause, WARREN moves out of chair and light, down right, chair remains in light; light up on WARREN as he stands, looking out again, light fades on chair)

How do you figure?  I told her it was nothing.  It was at school.  (pause; light follows WARREN as he moves up center)   What did they tell you, anyway?  (pause)   Probably told you I set the fire.  That was it, wasn't it?   (pause)   But nothing happened.  Not at school.  Not that day.  Everyone got excited, but nothing happened!

WARREN faces rear, back to audience, then turns quickly)

What!  No.  It wasn’t me!  Who told you that? (pause) I’m sure she did.  Well maybe not her.  What?  Yes, of course, it’s in the record.  She’s dead, too.  Of course.  It’s in the record.  (smiles) Hah!  Must be some record.  Too much for one file.  Gotta have sub-files.  Fattest one must be tabbed (uses air quotation marks) “VIOLENCE”. (laughs)

Oh, yeah.  Right.  That’s why you’re here, right? 

(lights down to black, then up on WARREN in the chair again, chin resting on hand)

So we had a school kids fight in Miss Whoever’s classroom.  Happens all the time. Right?  (pause)  So Liam pulls this knife and comes at me.  Can’t remember why.  Anyway, I saw myself in this movie, the guy coming at me, and I went to the knife hand and banged it into the wall and papers and stuff went flying and the teacher screaming. (pause) But all I could think about was that knife. And twisting it and banging it away.   What?  I guess so, yeah.  (pause)  They said it was a compound fracture, but who knows?

                        Dissolve and up on WARREN down stage center.

                                                            WARREN

Was that true?  I can remember it.  I mean, it’s a fact of my memory.  But does that make it true?  I mean.  For her.  Does that make it true for her?  And what is her concern?  The other kids' papers or my bruised body and shredded ego?  (pause)   Yes, I know that's just one of those words.  But what's it really mean?  This is sounding a little like the stuff we did as freshmen, isn't it?  (pause, looks at audience)  Yes.  We spoke of such things.  You wouldn't think so, would you.  I mean, looking at me.  Looking at what I look like.  Isn't that so?  (pause)  Why do you do that?  Why do you say you're sorry?

                        Dissolve and up on Warren up left

                                                            WARREN

I can't remember.  He was hitting him. (pause)  Doesn't anyone remember?  Don’t people have interviews or something?  Yes.  That’s it.  Depositions.  (pause) You keep files.  Does anyone read them?

                                    CHARLIE enters Warren's space from shadow.

                                                            CHARLIE

I was there, Warren.  Don't you remember?  Christ, you were pretty smashed.  Yeah.  And Flynn wasn't doin' too bad either.  (laughs)  Christ.  What a night!  (returns to shadow)

                                                            WARREN

Christ.  Good Christ!  My Christ Almighty!  (laughs)   That was Charlie.  Not a very reliable witness.  Not the kind of roommate you'd want to depend on.  (pause)   He was my roommate.  (long pause)   I think that's when I became aware of it.  Yes, I know I've denied being aware of it.  Isn't that why we're here?  Digging and sifting.  Isn't that what we're about?  (long pause; he paces, rubbing his hands, nervous,)  I saw him.  The next day, I saw him, 'cause Charlie said I hurt him pretty bad.  Flynn.  (pause)  When he answered the door to his room, all I could see were the huge scabs.  Don't even remember seeing his face, his eyes.  Only the scabs.  They covered both sides of his head.  (pause)  I had beat his head to scabs.  (walks toward audience, staring)  Have you ever seen that?  Someone who's been beaten into scabs on his head?  (long pause, walks back into lighting)  I didn't think so.

MOTHER

(up left, turns as if to speak to someone in other room)

Did I tell you what Molly told me?  She said Warren was such a fine lad.  A good, clean son.  Those were her exact words.  I told her that's how we felt.  Not a genius, not a great student.  But he is good and clean cut, always neat, the neatest of the three.  And I told her about how well he's doing in football.  Did I tell you what he told me about..." (lights fade with the lines) 

                                                            WARREN

(center stage in baby spot)   Drinking?  Yeah.  Of course.  But that's not how it went.  Not the way you're thinking.  (pause, walks down  right, turns to audience)   Nope.  I arrived and grew with the football.  When I was on the field, I was free.  I was free because I knew I could trust the violence.  The more violent I could be, the better I performed and the better I felt about myself.  And then I was free. (pause)   I don't know when I first heard it...probably sometime early...in junior high...the coach would get us pissed off at him...worked us to a hatred...and then he'd tell us to blow out.  BLOW OUT!  He'd scream down into the mud and sweat and blood where we lived.  (long pause, walks back to center)   I can remember believing in that.  Believing in that more than I believed in the all-loving God I was told to cherish.  I could believe in that mud-gritty force because it belonged to me, because I could do it.  I became the only one there, the only one pushing the blocking sled.  I could pop that sled and steer it anywhere I chose, far beyond the strength I actually had and the strength of those around me.  I blew out so well I snapped the quarter inch steel plate that formed the dummy.  (pause)  Twice.  I snapped it twice and it felt good.  I had no pain.

(spot up on Charlie, down right)

CHARLIE

That's when we began to wonder.  Jaybird and Cheese.  All the guys on the floor.  We all thought about giving him some more room.  Don't get me wrong.  We'd all seen some fights.  Christ, Cheese was from McKeesport, for God's sake!  He'd seen some fights.  (pause)  But that's not what he was about.  He had something else going on.  And we thought about giving him some more room.  (long pause)  Then he was gone.  That’s it.

WARREN

When you do that.  What?  When you blow out?  It's not like being there.  You go for something that's beyond where you are.  You don’t think about it.  You can’t remember being there after it’s over.

 (Stage closes into black, very long pause)

Act Two

(The same.  24 hours later.  WARREN sits extreme down right in baby spot, dressed as before, but no jacket and different shirt.)

WARREN

Let's see.  (pause)  What?  No, I don't mind.  I kind of like it.  Part of the problem has been who I am.  (pause)   And that's it.  The blowing out.  I thought about it and that's it.  (long pause, WARREN walks upstage center)   But there's another problem.  It doesn't fit.  I'm supposed to be somebody else.  (pause)  What?  But I like this.  You said we would do this until I discovered something.  (pause) Yes.  I know.  But that will come up later, won't it?  I mean, this is supposed to take time, isn't it?  (pause) They?  They don't care about this.  I hope you realize that.  Especially you.  (long pause) OK.  Thank you.  Now, where was I?  Yes.  I was supposed to be somebody else.  Odd thing, isn't it?

MOTHER

(upstage right, to the audience)

Your father was so proud.  He was telling them at the office about how Princeton had just called him.  Princeton, Warren!

WARREN

(to the audience)

When did he tell you, Mother?  Where is he this week?  And why didn't he tell me about Princeton!  (laughs)  Or something like that.  The main thing is I didn't know about it.  Imagine.  (walks downstage speaking)   I could feel my father at the games.  (pause)  I guess you've noticed all this stuff about sports.  Remind me of that later.   Anyway, my father had told me what it would be like and I could feel him there.  At the games.  Even when he wasn't there.  (pause)   But he didn't tell me about the blowing out.  I don't think we shared that.  It was all mine.  (pause)  If he had it, he hid it well. (smiles)  So yeah.  And then there's the story of how I got the nickname ... Tough Luck.

MOTHER

(on the phone)

What does that mean?  He considers it an emergency operation?  But what about the other doctor?  I see.  OK.  Yes.  You'll be late.  OK. Bye. (long pause, hangs up)  Who's going to tell Warren?

WARREN

(the same)

They tell you that sports teach lessons about life.  That's not true.  (walks extreme down left )  The difference is absolutes.  Sports have absolute rules and absolute boundaries.  If you violate either, you are penalized.  (pause)  Most of the time.  Some of the rules have little exceptions.  Most young players don't know about these exceptions.  (long pause, walks to down center, faces the audience)  They learn about them the hard way.  I will tell you about how I learned about an exception.   It occurred at a bad time in the development of my potential future.  (pause)  And it hurt.  I mean, at first, the physical pain.  The kind that makes your teeth itch.  It hurt very much.  And it's part of why I'm talking to you.  A large part.  (walks to the edge of the stage, stands perfectly erect, hands at his side, staring ahead)  In the fall of my junior year in high school I learned that roughing the kicker applies only if the punter doesn't fumble the ball.  I was the punter.  Actually, I wasn't very good, but I had a stronger leg than anyone else on the team, so there I was.  And we had a weak center.  A nice guy, I guess (can't even remember who he was, but I'm sure he was a nice guy), BUT he wasn't reliable. And on this play…in this game…at that time… in my life, he threw it over my head.  (pause) I jumped and tipped it.  Hence a fumble.  And being the good, reliable person I was, I tried to punt the ball.  That's important.  Reliable person.  Write it down.  (pause,  looks at audience)  Anyway, two players from the opposition simultaneously hit my extended leg at my knee joint, hyperextending my hamstrings and tearing the cartilage.  (pauses, turns, walks back to center)  My father took me to an osteopath, who misdiagnosed the problem (of course), my right thigh muscle atrophied and I'm walking today only because I finally got to a surgeon who removed the cartilage.  And what is the lesson here?  My only ticket to identity had been removed with that cartilage.  The only acceptable arena for my rage dissolved with the stitches — oh my! how poetic!  Yah da yah da yah da.  And so like a good clean son, I turned my rage on myself.  (pause)  And some unfortunate others.

MOTHER

(on the phone)

Yes, dear.  We'll be there.  You know your father, he has to drive, which is hard on me. But that's ok.  We'll be there in time for the kickoff.  Look for us after the game.  Bye.

WARREN

No it wasn't over like I thought.  At least not the rage.  And not the ability to play the game.  Remember, it was all I had.  Almost drank myself to death on some lab alcohol my freshman year at Disaster U.  Oh yeah, I was really raging against myself.  Isn't that what you call it? (pause)  But anyway, when I bottomed out my sophomore year and felt nothing else mattered, I tried out for the football team.  Yeah, imagine.  Out of shape everywhere except in my mind.  Know what the first day of practice was like?  Line scrimmage.  They put me opposite the starting varsity end, me at defensive tackle.  I figured, what the hell, I BLEW OUT, and pummeled the shit out of him!  (pause)  Yeah.  I tried to put some hurt into his face.  (long pause)  What?  How do you think I felt about it?  (laughs)  Can't get there, can you?  I can't tell you how great it made me feel.  I was back.  I was doing what I knew how to do and doing it well.  I was between the lines in the safe zone.  (pause)  I could make that guy move.  Who was it told me?  One of them.  A coach somewhere along the line.  "If you can make the head move, the body will follow."  And, of course, I embellished that to mean, if you soften the head, you soften the heart and you win the battle.  (pause)  That's important for you to know.  You can lose the game.  We lost plenty.  You can't do much about that.  But you can always win the battle.  There's no excuse for losing the battle.

Pop Culture, the Enemy Within and Hope’s Folly

In an article I wish I had written, Frank Rich explores the cultural implications of “Up In The Air”, a film due for general release at Christmas, a film which, apparently, is anything but a paean for the season. Speaking of the season, I realize I’m a member of a miniscule minority when, during these times of good wishes and warm blessings, I’m nagged by this depressing awareness of the profound vacuity of our social and personal awareness. We double and triple our working time in order that we may have a better life, but in the process we leave very little time for living. And in the process we consciously and purposefully avoid an awareness of what is actually controlling our lives.

As Rich indicates, the updated version of Steinbeck’s Joads “are…mostly middle-class refugees from the suburban good life depicted in credit card ads…[existing in] a coast-to-coast wasteland of foreclosed office spaces where desk chairs and knots of dead phones lie abandoned in a fluorescent half-light.” The film seems to be using these images (I haven’t seen it yet) to represent the profound denial of actuality that accepts a combination of mediated smiley facing and pollyanna posturing as a meaningful life. We have met the audacity of hope, have discovered its meanness but continue to believe we have the best of all possible worlds. To do this successfully, we assiduously avoid contrary information.

You can find an example of such information in Jeremy Scahill’s “The Secret US War in Pakistan.” The article is compulsory reading for two reasons. First, virtually each sentence is expository, revealing one shocking and cynical maneuver by Xe Corporation (formerly Blackwater, scum by any other name…) after another, abetted by various administration and extra-democratic agencies and/or elected officials. And second (this to me being the ultimately troubling), the following revelation from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: “I’m alarmed when I see execute orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations Command…That’s backward. But that’s essentially what we have today.” And, as the article indicates, special ops are beholden for their success on former special ops working for Xe. The reason this troubles me more even than what’s going on in Af-Pak is that Xe listens only to the highest bidder and presumably will do their bidding. They will do anything for the money. No one controls them. If someone or some group were to bid high enough, what would keep these secret mercenaries from doing some domestic “counter-insurgency”?

We have witnessed during this holiday season, the actuality behind the audacity of hope’s scrim. The caving in on health care reform: the insurance conglomerates get increases while we sigh over the fact that 33 million uninsured will be covered—by the largess of the lemmingesque middle-class (see above); the banality and cynicism of the President’s jawing with his fat cats from Wall Street; the anted-up scoring of the US presence in Afghanistan, as its president plays our President.

We all willingly accept this folly of hope. As a vision, it gives us the feeling that we humans are not so bad after all. As an actuality, it has the substance of a mirage.

And Jesus Wept

I’m not a Roman Catholic. I’m not any brand of Catholic. I spent some Sundays during my childhood in Presbyterian Sunday school and church services; my clearest recollection is a fascination with the minister’s Scottish brogue. Today I suppose some people would call me a secular humanist. I have a spiritual sense mostly because I’m a bit envious of most peoples’ certainty in their faith. I’ve done a fair amount of study in the subject, faith being something authors write about even when they’re not writing about it.

Even the word has an unusual significance in our language: It’s one of the few nouns that can’t be used as a verb. You can believe something, but you can’t faith something. You have it or you don't, and according to the Puritans, believing won't get it for you. Moreover, in my reading of Garry Wills, the original apostles of Christianity were much more aware of this than the current ilk of the “apostolic” Church of the Roman Catholics. They have turned faith into a litigiously cynical hierarchy of self-justification and self-preservation.

Yes, I’m thinking here of the recently released documents regarding the alleged and documented instances of sexual harassment and abuse by priests and nuns. The details of these crimes are sickening by themselves, but the cynical evasions and coy trivializing by the Church “leadership” is outrageous as well as horrifying.

I hold Edward Egan in special contempt. He commented during the depositions that he thought the ratio of abuses to total church membership was so small that it represented a mark of the integrity of the church leadership. One wonders had he been in the leadership of the SS in Germany in charge of a small camp where, say, only 500 Jews, Communists, and gypsies had been gassed compared to the hundreds of thousands at other camps, would he have noted how he practiced nuanced restraint, focusing only on those who had airtight links to their obvious inferiority. His exact statement demonstrates the point: "These things (sexual abuse complaints) happen in such small numbers. It's marvelous when you think of the hundreds and hundreds of priests and how very few have ever been accused, and how very few have even come close to having anyone prove anything.” For more of the same go
here. Particularly sickening are parsings such as the following: “I didn’t make a decision one way or the other…I kept working on it until I resolved the decision.” To resolve a decision is to make it other than a decision.

Cardinal Egan will never have to worry about one of his children or his wife suffering from this especially egregious kind of sexual abuse. Apparently, he cannot even bring himself to imagine it. The kind of sexual abuse in these cases is a flagrant breach of faith, the faith that any religion must emphasize merely because it is a religion. This faith is grounded in trust, the trust that something non-material and unknowable has a viable purpose and transformative energy in a person’s life. Cardinal Egan’s words and posturing during the deposition, his condescension of the victims and their attorneys make it clear that his primary concern was protecting the Church and thereby sustaining a wall between the Church and its members. He was unconcerned about faith and trust.

In the wake of these disclosures, many practicing Catholics I know are now experiencing a deep crisis of conscience. For them the Church demonstrated that it is greater than any of its flock. In fact, it seems, the Church feels that if it were to lose a scant few of its members because of these revelations, the Church would be the stronger for it, those leaving having lesser faith. But, in fact, the Church itself is exercising bad faith, a veneer of holiness masking spiritual emptiness.

As I said in the beginning of this, I’m not a churcher, but I am someone who has read a lot about churching. Long ago, for a class I was teaching, I read into the records of the trial of Joan of Arc. Joan was an uncomplicated young person of uncomplicated faith and trust. The Church didn’t like that, because she was doing a better job of acknowledging and mustering the faithful than the Church was. So they destroyed her. Through obfuscation, evasion and hubris, the Church today is destroying the trusting faithful again.

And Jesus wept (be sure to read all the interpretations), indeed.

Addendum (12.9.09):  Egan's successor doesn't get it either, doesn't understand that wounded trust never heals (just ask any any adult who is a child of divorce) and, yes, can metastasize into obsession. Bishop William Lori learned well about trivializing and condescension from the master. Here he is on a case that refuses to bow to his will: "Imagine if you were held responsible for what your lawn man, plumber, or electrician may have done over 40 years ago! This is what the diocese is now fighting."  You see, they have so removed themselves from what concerned Christ that they see their flock, those seeking spiritual assurance, as hirelings.  Go here for more on this "fight."

Af-Pak Step Back

The commentariat rumbles on in the aftermath of the Obama bomb. My liberal friends and family are not smiling. To quote a poet that Mr. Obama has probably read, last night we were presented with "a dream deferred." The audacity of hope (as I've been saying consistently) has come home to roost in the form of a ton of if's and once's: If Karzai will discorrupt, if the "soldiers" of Afghanistan can muster themselves into a fighting force, if the (shrinking daily) Afghan police force can get whole, etc....and once we secure Afghanistan, once we settle things with the military dictatorship that's running Pakistan, once we get at least some Europeans to join us in numbers as well as spirit, once we get China and India to balance the pressure on Pakistan...and so forth.

If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bust its hump jumping.

So our visionary President sees things clearly...just over the horizon. He stared at the camera lens twice: When he addressed the American viewers, asserting their necessity to sacrifice in the name of security and when he addressed the Afghan people, asserting their necessity to help themselves so that we can help them.  I didn't witness any of the throng gathered at West Point—not cadets, not officers, not Joint Chiefs, not the Defense Secreatary and not the Secretary of State—none registered an expression of acceptance of a well-crafted call to arms and to national sacrifice.  Some frowned, a couple of cadets slept, others simply stared quizzically.  If it takes the President this long to put together what turned out to be a mealy, fuzzy, if/once/then proposal, I'd sure hate to go out to dinner with him. By the time he ordered his meal, the place would close.

You can go to all sorts of places on the Web to read what people outside the commentariat are writing. A good place to start would be here.

Meanwhile, would all those who think President Obama will be a defensible choice for a second term please step forward.  No, no. I said "forward."