I’m becoming ever more interested in advocating the cause of atheism in America. Especially when I read quotes like this one from Katherine Harris:
We have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.
and when I see polls that report 53% of Americans say they would not vote for an atheist (10% more than the group that wouldn’t vote for a homosexual!). Maybe Obama knew about these figures when he joined Trinity United Church.
I acknowledge that being atheist is only like being a racial minority to the degree that intelligence is heritable. Regardless, I am starting to feel oppressed to the point that I think we need stronger atheist advocacy groups in this country. And with end times theology increasingly shaping American foreign policy, our safety may depend on it.
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…and the Death of the Throwback to Positivism.
Robert Kagan has been all over the media promoting his new book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams (dun dun dun…!). Based only on hearing him speak, I think I agree with the central thesis of his book, which is totally contra his earlier thought and pronounces a shocking death sentence to neoconservatism. Turns out democracy is NOT the inevitable manifestation of the perfect movement of history. (!) What a hilarious revelation, ironically reached five years after the inevitable movement of history accidentally moved the American military into Iraq! Mr. Kagan has finally realized, after founding the Project for the New American Century with William Kristol and laying various other groundwork for the divine global democratic nirvana that he envisioned after the Cold War, that we’re not living in 1880s Europe and history is not driven by teleological forces. “The End of Dreams” is apt — indeed, history has ended his.
Congratulations to Mr. Kagan for catching up with 1960s social theory. What he thinks of as “The Return of History” is, to me, the end of the return of history. Namely, it is the end of that return to the positivism of the Modern period — called neoconservatism — in which history was considered a science and liberal democracy as a force akin to gravity in the holy evolution of society. While the rest of the neocons continue on in their solipsistic worlds, at least Kagan is a realist enough to see the failure of his experiment in the science of history and accomodate his worldview accordingly.
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Over the past several days, I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that the burning fire of my political interest burns cooler without being stoked by antipathy towards the duplicitous Clintons. Of all things, I suppose it is the absurd that truly interests me, and I think it was the vociferous absurdity of her campaign that ultimately drew me to the primary race. The ridiculous assertions that were sort of factual yet totally disingenuous — these were the sweet morsels of preposterousness that fed my interest in the Clintons and their pals. Looking forward, I realize I may be somewhat starved for absurdity in the remaining presidential campaign. Unless, of course, John McCain wins.
Obviously, I’m still enthusiastic about Obama, his judicial ability to deal with nuance, and his journalistic ability at self-analysis. As he addressed supporters in St. Paul after the Montana and South Dakota primaries, I was able to envision, for the first time, an Obama administration. I was inspired by the fact that I was inspired to maybe think about applying to work for his government — working for government being something I had never under any other circumstance considered.
I’m fairly confident that Obama will win in November. But not totally confident. However, this match-up of McCain vs. Obama is uninteresting because there’s really no contest. What I’ve said before about the primaries is really true here: this is not a test of Obama or of McCain, it’s a test of the American political system. The correct answer to the question “Who should be the next President?” is so obvious that we don’t even need the teacher’s exam key. Election Day ‘08 will not be the day that Obama and McCain find out who did better on the test for the Presidency, it will be the day that we find out if our country passes or fails the test of whether it still functions.
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Words of wisdom on Hil’s last stand from Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of truthdig.org (transcribed from KCRW’s Left, Right & Center):
“What really is at stake here is not whether she stays in. If she stayed in and had an honorable discussion about the issues and their policy differences — fine — we can applaud that and democracy needs that. But what’s happening here is that she’s…playing up the race and gender issues in a way that is not helpful. And to be campaigning that you are in fact the one who can swing unenlightened white voters…at a time when she should say, by the way, that if anyone votes for me because they can’t bring themselves to vote for a black man or a half-black man, that’s racism and I don’t want your support. She’s actually using code language to say that “I can bring over racists.” And one of the alarming things is that here you have Democrats, a significant percentage…saying they won’t vote for a black person. Well, why don’t we meet that head on? Just the same way…when we finally have a woman candidate that can carry the day, we’re going to have to meet sexism head on. But you don’t surrender to that, you don’t pander to that, and you don’t brag that you’re the candidate of uneducated, racist white voters.”
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from today’s front page…
and on page B1, Obama Pimps the Judiciary
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i believe that Barack Obama — indeed anyone of intelligence — who is raised by an atheist and who makes it into adulthood without a religious infection is an atheist. i’m inclined to suspect that his original merger with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was a shrewd (and cowardly) political tactic. the move he thought was necessary to make himself a viable American politician now threatens to strip away all viability. the way this relationship has played out in his political career is thus so exceedingly ironic, so karmic, it suggests a higher power. QED.
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I know, I know — a tired subject and late in the game to begin my own narrative. But i think there are a few things about the Democratic primaries that still haven’t been said enough, if at all, so I’ll record them here as the folks in Indiana and North Carolina decide how they feel about all this.
I’ll just start with what has been the most salient thought for me in this protracted campaign: Barack Obama continues to display a degree of open thoughtfulness that I’ve rarely seen before in my nascent political awareness. Stepping back from the details of this race, I think what can be seen as Obama’s greatest asset — and may eventually prove to be his greatest liability — is the complexity of thought he brings to the American public and asks for in return. The pluralism of his background expresses itself in the pluralism of his views; in his words I can see he has a judicious ability to understand the multiple perspectives that exist simultaneously in any one issue. I believe that a willingness to try to get Americans to look at the world this way is the basis for his claims that he can bring people together; this attempt is the major gesture and challenge of his campaign and it is the heart of what separates him from George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.
As this race goes on, the disgraceful junior senator from New York repeatedly exemplifies her reluctance to break away from the binary mode of thinking that is pathologically characteristic of the American public sphere, is responsible for the election of George W. Bush, and allowed him to declare a war on ‘evil-doers’ that brought us to Iraq. As Jon Stewart pointed out yesterday:
“All of a sudden she’s rejecting the opinions of experts, speaking in a folksy accent, threatening to obliterate Iran…”
It’s interesting to see the classic Clinton strategy — steal Republican positions and re-brand them Democrat — applied in a time when Republican positions have been so ridiculously unsuccessful. It’s embarrassing to see Republican values that venerate folksy ignorance and hawkish hostility to opposition repackaged as Democratic values in order to pander to fear.
Obama is right to push the gas-tax debate. Hillary’s rhetoric on this issue is by far the most sickening of the campaign. The gas-tax controversy is a fascinating development because the situation is so transparent that it in fact makes this election more like an experiment. This race is not a test of Clinton vs. Obama; it is truly a test of the American electorate and the American political system. If Hillary can win, it and we are broken.
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