Is this the sort of rhetoric the left needs to use to counter Rove and Limbaugh?
Bush is no nazi
05.13.03 | Permalink | 9 Comments
Lessons from Alisdair MacIntyre
05.13.03 | Permalink | 2 Comments
The usual concept of altruism–that giving is truly generous only when the giver gains absolutely nothing from the act of giving–is a cynical rhetorical move to justify the primacy of self-centered behavior. In addition to those-things-that-are-mind-but-not-yours, and those-things-that-are-yours-and-not-mine, there are also those-things-that-are-mine-only-insofar-as-they-are-yours-too.
In fact, human life only persists because of these common goods–the biosphere and language among them. Therefore, any revival of civic virtues–or civil society, public intellectuals, or “the commons”–must be based upon a full appreciation of just these common goods. Even more, it must be based upon the advocation of these common goods over against their commodification as “yours” and “mine,” as competing interests jockeying for position in the corporate nation-state.
“Yours” and “mine” have Karl Rove. What do we have? A rejection of irony in favor of ernestness is not a promising start. Lamentation does not a vision make.
A God-talk of expedient means
05.11.03 | Permalink | 4 Comments
From a paper I wrote in seminary, during the waning days of my identifying as a Christian. I’m reminded that I posted this on a now defunct website I called “the center for spiritual procrastination.”
Our larger question concerns how God operates in this borderless city. Georges Bataille has suggested that life is so fecund that it generates much more than it needs. In fact, life generates so much extra that the disposal of this extra portion, or the “accursed share,” becomes a problem. Throughout history humanity has disposed of this accursed share through different means: slavery, warfare, eroticism, art, religion, etc. For Bataille, what defines a society is how it disposes of the accursed share.
We do not have to wholly swallow Bataille’s “general economics” to make use of it. I propose that grace is at least as fecund as Bataille imagines life to be. Grace is total, all-encompassing. There is nothing that escapes grace, nothing that is beyond it. All things and all actors are influenced by grace. The world is upheld, moved, and grown through grace. Because grace is total, it is inadequate to speak of “responding” to grace, as though grace were an email that we can choose to reply to at leisure. We are constantly “responding” to grace, through a multitude of actions, gestures, emotions, thoughts, and speech-acts. Everything we do, for good or ill, is a response to grace.
To follow Bataille further, if grace is total, then there is more than enough grace. There is enough grace for us to create flourishing cities that affirm the full humanity of their citizens, but there is also enough grace for us to create cities that dehumanize, that rely on the exploitation of many for the benefit of a few. The theodical implications should be clear. Evil is not the result of God’s granting us free will, the result of the inscrutable weighing of God’s desire for justice and mercy both, or due to a lack of God’s power or desire to stop evil. Evil is a direct consequence of God’s goodness, of God being too good. Frankly, there is too much grace to go around. Put differently, God is too much to handle. We are awash in the abundance of God. Like the blue collar family who fights while cleaning out a lifetime of accumulated junk from a packrat grandparent’s messy home, we are the inheritors of our forbears’ “indisposal” of grace, and we are continually finding new ways to “indispose” what God has given us. And so we fight over the house, the tools, and the photo albums, manipulating each other to do more or less work, using our gains to assert status over one another, and in more pressing moments even talking about lighting the whole thing up in flames–all the while adding to our own cluttered homes the accumulated junk of another. We are bad inheritors of a bad legacy.
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No more activists
05.09.03 | Permalink | 5 Comments
The Howard Dean meetup was mostly good. About half of the people there (and most of the leadership) had never helped with a political campaign before. Some have never voted. If this is a sign of things to come, Dean is going to be tough to beat. Dean’s meetup has 22,000 people registered, the third largest one yet. The best part of the evening–aside from discovering Anchor’s porter–was the premiere of a video of Dean speaking to the California state Democratic convention.
I suppose it’s inevitable that “activists” were present. Here are some gems:
“I think we should make sure X county gets some more attention.”
“But our base isn’t from X county, so we shouldn’t do anything with that county.”
“I think we should use the internet for everything.”
“I think using the internet excludes poor and minority voters, so we shouldn’t use the internet for anything.”
Of course, this was actually a conversation between about eight of the more than fifty people there, and it took up over half an hour. Thankfully. one person interrupted to say she’d come to hear about Howard Dean and that they should save the logistics for a campaign planning meeting. What a thought. So the “activists” shut up after four or five more speeches.
“Activists” can’t hold off. They need their speechifying fix. Nevermind the fifty people held hostage, because the “activists” have a point to make.
To the Dean campaign: Of course you can’t tell all the “activists” to shove off. But if you want the help of the many non-activists drawn to your campaign, you need to handle them. Many of us haven’t helped with campaigns previously because we can’t stand “activists.” It’s a sign of respect for Howard Dean that we’d brave the sea of activists to show our interest. Do not lose this chance to build a new politics.
To the “activists:” Unless you have the public speaking talents of FDR or MLK (and you don’t), a captive audience despises you. Repeat that to yourself five times every morning: “a captive audience despises me.”
Is you wicked?
05.07.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Is you wicked?
God bless Sacha Baron Cohen.
Lack of empathy
I didn’t cry when Princess Di died. I get excited when there’s a tornado warning, even though it means people could die. I laugh at people who think standing in a doorway will help. And I can’t sympathize with animated oven mitts doing painful sit-ups under the direction of a personal trainer named Lars, even if it’s to get in shape for the debut of Arby’s new roast beef sandwich.
But then again, I think God died in a gas chamber in the Holocaust.
Am I being bitter? Yes. Melodramatic? Probably. But I grew up in Oklahoma City, and all the tornados I have ever seen put together pale in comparison to one morning with Timothy McVeigh.
When one of your best friends survives only because his alarm clock didn’t go off, then you can judge whether or not I lack compassion. When your wife gets post-traumatic stress disorder from trying to help, then you can judge whether or not I lack compassion. When your church and the park where you used to hang out are destroyed in a blast, then you can judge whether or not I lack compassion. When not noticing the passing of April 19 is a personal milestone, then you can judge whether or not I lack compassion. Until then, shut the fuck up.
Raising children in comfortable upper-middle class suburbia gives you no upper hand in the compassion department, no surplus of moral fortitude, no wellspring of love for your fellow man. But judgemental sentimentality? That’s another question altogether.
I guess I’m just a cold, heartless stone. Maybe you should send me a fruit basket.
Yet another nail in the hand of the Savior.
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