Month: September 2010

A Dish fave ends the experiment:

What I have found is that, the more I am animated by opinion that I find truly and deeply wrong, the less and less I am capable of entertaining the wild spaces of my mind. My opinions have become pallbearers to my imagination, and that's poverty.

This is a real concern, hence my annual retreat. But such a retreat is not enough. The unexpressed thought, the nascent idea, the emotion that struggles to become, over time, an actual argument: these can so easily be lost in blogging, and they are vital to a healthy mind and soul. My solution over time has been to create something that I hope is more than just the blog I began a decade ago: a multi-faceted ongoing conversation where my own thoughts are supplemented and corrected and enhanced by the minds of my colleagues and the collective wisdom of Dish readers.

The last ten years have therefore been both an increased engagement and an increased letting go. I have no idea whether it will work but I share Freddie's fear that a single blog reacting to the day's events and others emotions and provocations can make real thought and considered argument less rather than more attainable.

Thoreau applies Occam's razor:

[T]he simplest explanation for why W. has stayed out of this [and said nothing about Islamophobic rhetoric by the GOP] is that he doesn’t strongly oppose Islamophobia.  He may not be an Islamophobe himself, but he clearly doesn’t get too worked up over Islamophobia.

He's also too co-opted by the far right to say anything. If the grandson of Prescott Bush treated torture of prisoners as a no-brainer, and has said in public that he would do it again, why on earth would he take a stand on something like demonization of American Muslims?

Beinart heralds it in:

Ever since 9/11, according to opinion polls, Republicans have worried more about terrorism than have Democrats. Initially, this fear translated into overwhelming support for military action abroad. But as Republicans (like everyone else) have grown tired and embittered by America’s wars, they have turned their anxiety inward, lured by the same idea that attracted Palmer and the McCarthyites: that America could guarantee its safety on the cheap by ferreting out the real threat, which resides within.

They have found the new communism. It’s called Islam. But I fear, unlike Peter, that they have not tired of wars, just counter-insurgencies, and will never support actual withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan ever, because it reveals “weakness” in the war they want to escalate rather than defuse, and to use for domestic purposes rather than to understand and win.

I also predict that a military attack on another Muslim country, Iran, will be the next outward expression of this new McCarthyism. And if Israel does it, it will be used by the neocon and Palinite right as a sign that Obama was too Muslim and too weak and too un-American to do it himself. The script is pretty obvious. What the neocons have to do first is kill off the peace process to pave the way for the Greater Israel Palin supports and believes in. Watch them do it.

A funny story if the details weren’t so disturbing:

[British teenager] Luke [Angel] yesterday admitted he fired off a single email criticising the US Government after seeing a TV programme about 9/11. He said: “I don’t remember exactly what I wrote as I was drunk. But I think I called Barack Obama a prick. It was silly – the sort of thing you do when you’re a teenager and have had a few.” Luke, of Silsoe, Bedfordshire, said it was “a bit extreme” for the FBI to act. He added: “The police came and took my picture and told me I was banned from America forever.” … A Beds Police spokesman said: “The individual sent an email to the White House full of abusive and threatening language. We were informed by the Metropolitan Police and went to see him. He said, ‘Oh dear, it was me’.”

Joanne Ferreira, of the US Department of Homeland Security, said there are about 60 reasons a person can be barred. She added: “We are prohibited from discussing specific cases.”

Can you imagine what powers president Palin will invoke to punish her critics? Just ask Alaskans.

A simple sentence I missed on my break about the Beck rally on the Mall:

The numbers were impressive enough on their own, but the overall effect was large, vague, moist, and undirected: the Waterworld of white self-pity.

And a reminder of his democratic spirit in penning a private 1,000 word response to a writer he could easily have ignored in the intellectual wars of the past decade. The person who received that rather brutal letter now writes:

Hitchens’ advice [in that letter] is also the most important critical thinking skill I try to teach my students:  You have to take a stand.  This doesn’t mean the world is made up of either/or fallacies, but the process of critical thinking involves marshalling the facts, sorting out the ideas, evaluating the options, and coming to your own conclusions.  So, Hitch, if this somehow makes it to you, know that when you’re gone, in the very least your example will continue to guide about one hundred high school Catholic school students every day.  I’m not quite sure what you’d think of that, but I’ll bet you think it’s worth more than prayers.

Can something good come out of the recent wave of anti-Muslim fear and prejudice? An excerpt from a fascinating and nuanced conversation between two Muslim-Americans:

A reader writes:

I live in Brooklyn, NY attend one of the oldest Catholic parishes with my two sons every Sunday (my daughter is too young). I went to confession recently and said how I sometimes wished for the death of Benedict. The priest absolved me and wasn't surprised. He took the time to discuss it with me and the anger in my heart over the state of things with regards to the abuses, non-inclusiveness and hypocrisy of the Vatican . In his homily this weekend, our pastor actually came out and spoke openly of the abuses. "My sins affect all of you just as your sins effect everyone else. We see this with the sexual abuse that has taken place inside the Church. The sickness of a few has affected all of us." He stopped short of going any further. But I know he wanted to.

There is such a freeze over open discussion, questioning and challenges to the authority right now. But like you I know the Church is bigger than this terrible leader. I get faith from reading people like you, who do not, cannot, give up faith yet speak of their pain. I need to read it. I need to know that my seat in the Church is precious. That raising my children in the Church is not a mistake. That good people like you and many others, desire nothing more than to be reconciled in the one true Church.

Another:

I understand a little better why I can't give up reading you, since my background as an Irish American Catholic with ancestors from southwest Ireland colors my perception of the world in a way that I only comprehend as I age. The things you struggle with in your faith are similar to what I struggle with. The dissonance between the beauty of Catholicism and the reign of Ratzinger is painful indeed.

The woman who mistook her husband for a bear. Actually, pretty awful story.

If more parents did this, maybe the barbarism would end:

The parents of a four-year-old boy who was circumcised at a Miami hospital against their wishes are suing the facility. Vera Delgado, whose infant son Mario Viera was circumcised at South Miami Hospital in August, will announce the multi-million dollar lawsuit Monday afternoon with her attorneys from the Aronfeld Trial Lawyers. According to Delgado's attorneys, Viera's parents told South Miami doctors several times that they did not want him circumcised. Though Viera had spent over a week in the NICU for birth-related complications, at one point, he was taken out of the NICU and the circumcision was performed.

The hospital claims there was a mix-up of consent forms. The irony, of course, is that we're talking about the parents' consent, not the baby's. His body is mutilated regardless of his own views, and as the piece rather gently puts it, "the damage has already been done."