Who’s Afraid of the Tea Party, or, What Are Those Silly People Talking About?

At a Rand Paul rally, a woman who intended to present Paul with an ironic award (Employee of the Month from RepubliCorps) was assaulted by Paul supporters, shoved to the ground, and then stepped on. Police had nothing to do with this, it was all the supporters of one of the Tea Party leading lights. What they thought she intended to do may never be known, but they kept their candidate safe from the possibility of enduring satire and questions not drawn from the current playbook of independent American politics. Another Tea Party candidate, Steve Broden of Texas, has allowed that armed rebellion is not “off the table” should the mid-term elections not go their way. Sharron Angle of Nevada alluded to “second amendment remedies” in a number of interviews in the past six months. “Our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government,” Angle told conservative talk show host Lars Larson in January. “In fact, Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” Next to this kind of rhetoric, the vapidity of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware is more or less harmless and amusing. In a recent debate with her opponent she appeared not to know that the much-debated Separation Clause is in the First Amendment. Of course, a close hearing of that exchange suggests that what she was looking for was the exact phrase “separation of Church and State” which is not in the First Amendment. She thought she had won that exchange, as, apparently, did her staff, and they expressed dismay later when they were portrayed as having lost. The best you could give her is points for trying to make a point through disingenuous literalism. Not understanding the case law that has been built on the phrase that is in the First Amendment does not argue well for her qualifications to even have an opinion on the matter. Leading this apparently unself-critical menagerie is Sarah Palin, who despite having a dismal record in office and a clear problem with stringing sentences together has become the head cheerleader for a movement that seems poised to upset elements of both parties in the midterms. It’s one thing to throw darts and poke fun at the candidates, many of whom sound as if they have drawn their history from the John Wayne school of Hollywood hagiography and propaganda. But the real question is why so many people seem to support them. A perusal of the Tea Party website shows a list of issues over which supposedly grass roots concern is fueling the angry election season. [More . . . ]

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On A Christian Nation

Polls recently indicate that more and more Americans link being an American with being a Christian. Yet the consensus on what this actually means is as nonexistent as ever. We hear a lot about how this country was founded on "Christian principles" and that the Founders wanted this to be a "Christian nation." Yet with a few exceptions, most folks would likely chafe horribly should be actually try to return to anything close what that meant in 1787. The question of what the Founders intended is an interesting one, since even cursory research produces conflicting statements on both sides. Many of the most prominent clearly felt that what they had wrought in the Constitution was a device for keeping religion from distorting government. They intended, it seems, that people as individuals should decide for themselves, within a private sphere, how to believe and subsequently how to worship. The government, they claimed, should not be permitted to interfere with that. The question, of course, is whether they intended this to be the case in the other direction. In a way, it's a ridiculous question. How do you prevent an individual's religious ideas from informing his or her political actions? You don't. However the individual believes, that is what will be taken to the polls. All such questions may be similarly addressed---what goes on within your skull is yours and the government cannot interfere with it. But public displays, judicial acts, and legislation ought to be free of overt religious sentiment. Passing laws should be based on common welfare---if an exhortation to god is necessary to make a law seem "right" then that law is not Constitutional. It has to make secular sense. But the issue is muddy, because the same Framers often talked about christian principles and the common bonds of christian community, at least in private, and often in speeches. Is this a contradiction? I believe not. The problem is, the idea as currently framed and debated is simply out of context, not broad enough. What did it mean to be part of a christian community in 1787? That everyone went to church, prayed the same way, believed in the same god or description of god? At that time, I suspect, "christian community" was a label for a total package of cultural markers. One didn't have to believe overtly in any specific christian doctrine in order to accept social ideas about what made a community. Being a christian was a political, social, and economic condition as much if not more than a religious conviction. While you might not pray in that church down the street, you would defend it and move easily in the externalized community around it. What would this have meant in practice? [More . . . ]

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Dialog with a Republican.

My neighbor, B, is a progressive republican and a tax partner in a large CPA firm. We had a conversation... "Obama needs to go", said B. Why? He's doing pretty well considering the mess he inherited! "Because all he wants to do is raise taxes! If we don't get control [of congress and senate] my taxes will go up by almost 20%. I already pay almost half my income in taxes: income, property, FICA and the rest" What? How do you get a 20% increase? "FICA - is capped at about 100k. As a partner, I pay FICA at 15%. Lose that cap and my taxes go up immediately by 15%. The top rate of income tax is set to climb to 39%, which is an extra 3%. And there are a bunch of others, too" No -- that's just wrong. Even assuming that happens... an example, if you earned $200k your effective FICA rate would be 7.5% on that $200k, right? So even without a cap, your effective FICA rate will never be greater than 15%. If you earn $200k, that means an increase of 7.5%, not 15%! "OK! But that wouldn't be a 7.5% increase if I earned 300k or 400k or 500k. It would be much greater than 7.5%" B, Sure it would, but if you earn $500k and can't absorb that kind of increase I'd advise you to start looking for a new tax accountant! LOL "Well ok! But do you think it's fair that 60% of the people in this country don't pay any taxes?" Where did you get that number? Do you think it's right that the US has such a large population of poor people they fall under the threshold for federal taxes? "Most of those people aren't poor!" But all of them pay taxes. You included property taxes in your 50%. I assume you included sales taxes, 7% for most everything here in GA? Then those people who pay nothing are paying way more in effective taxes than you - for food and energy and shelter [More . . . ]

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Culture as a collective fabrication facilitating our quest for immortality

I often wonder how people are capable of simply going about their business, chatting about last night’s sporting event, working on crossword puzzles or thinking about buying a new car, despite the fact that they will be dead someday, maybe even someday soon. And for those with children, their children will also be dead a few decades later. How can we possibly live with those dreaded thoughts hanging over us? In fact, every person now living will likely be dead in 150 years. How can we engage in mundane things like gossiping, consuming, traveling and amusing ourselves when every person on the planet is facing annihilation? How do we put death out of our minds so easily? Ernest Becker would suggest that I have it all backwards. According to Becker, people intensely amuse and distract themselves, and immerse themselves in culture, because they are anxious about death. They are not necessarily consciously aware of their impending deaths, but they feel it deeply, and their minds grind and sputter on this topic, under the surface, unconsciously. We do the best we can to deal with this terrifying thought that we will all be dead, and the best we can think of doing is to distract ourselves with the many bright and shiny bigger-than-us, bigger-than-life things offered by culture. We put these things on a pedestal and then we cling to them as if they were life preservers. We embellish our cultural treasures with accolades recognizing their “eternal” significance. “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Babe Ruth, stamp collections, being a trivia pursuit star, triathlons, Michelangelo’s David. And for some of us, Jesus Christ loves us and He will let us live with him forever in heaven. According to Becker, these cultural mainstays are important for keeping us steady, even while death (and the threat of death) lurks around every corner. I recently had the opportunity to watch the highly acclaimed low-budget 90-minute 2005 documentary titled "Flight from Death: the Quest for Immortality,” produced by Patrick Shen and Greg Bennick. The film is based on the works of Ernest Becker’s “terror management theory,” (TMT) on which I’ve written several times (see here and here). Even though I was well acquainted with the works of Becker prior to viewing this video, I found the film to be transformative, in that it offers a schematic of underlying “hydraulics” that help us to understand many things that otherwise seem so puzzling about culture. I’d highly recommend “Flight from Death” whether or not you sometimes find it stunning that you live on a planet where mobile intestinal tracks scurry about, drive buses and even serve you meals at your local restaurant. Here’s the trailer. Even though I was already familiar with Becker’s theory and many of the experiments substantiating Becker’s theory, I found the film illuminating. “Flight From Death” includes well-chosen imagery and music to accompany the interviews with thoughtful and eccentric people from a wide variety of backgrounds (including psychologist Sheldon Soloman and writer Sam Keen, among others). [More . . . ]

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