The Dish

A reader writes:

I’m curious how your HIV status has affected your philosophical development; perhaps you‚Äôve addressed this elsewhere. Your mention of it in your book made me remember how my HIV diagnosis changed my perception of religious conservatives.

When my new partner and I decided to get tested in 1990, I went to our campus health clinic and was shunted to a small office containing a severe-looking grandmotherly counselor. She was obviously uncomfortable with the topic, the procedure and openly gay men, and I was uncomfortable with her prominent crucifix necklace and Jesus-themed knickknacks on her desk. She drew blood and gave me the perfunctory lecture on safe sex, and sent me away to await the results. Ten days later, I sat down with her to open the lab report.  It was negative, she said (as I expected). She then gave me another perfunctory admonition about safe sex, while I was imagining she wanted to tell me that I had narrowly escaped God‚Äôs wrath. I went home to await my parter to share the good news. 

About an hour later, I got a frantic call from the counselor; she insisted that I come back over to her office that minute, and that she couldn’t tell me why over the phone. It was past closing time at the clinic, but the doors were still open, and she was seated in her office. She was holding my lab report, and her hands were shaking and she had been crying. She had misread my report; she had never had a positive patient before, and she had mistakenly sent me off thinking I was negative, and now had to call me back and tell me the mistake. She tried to explain her error, but broke down sobbing. So there I was, in the first few minutes of HIV+ life, and my first task was to hug and console and administer Kleenex to this chubby, sobbing, crucifixed heterosexual. I assured her I was going to be fine, and that it was a simple mistake and it was her first time, and soon we were both hugging and sobbing and pulling Kleenex. A doctor hovering outside finally knocked on the door and asked if we were ok, and she called out "Yes, I think I’m going to make it".

In many ways, my session with her was a real gift. At that moment, it made me realize that I just might have prejudged this woman, and perhaps she truly was concerned for me, and that perhaps I was the bigot. It also forced me to realize that being HIV+ didn’t give me even a temporary license to wallow in my own problems and ignore others. Somehow, being prodded at that moment to care for this stranger and comfort her was the best therapy possible.

I ran into this woman about three weeks later at the checkout counter in the drug store. We were both a little uncomfortable, and I watched her reaction as she looked down and saw the box of condoms in my hand. She smiled and gave my arm a little squeeze and said, "You two be careful, now".

I still think Ratzinger might be beyond redemption, though.

A psychological analysis of "reaction formation."

A reader writes:

I read with great fascination and a great deal more frustration of Fr. Neuhaus’ erroneous perception that we gay Americans are not part of, nor do we live in, America. I am a 59 year old gay man who lives with his 62 year old partner in one of the largest retirement communities in Arizona. I can assure Fr. Neuhaus that we are everywhere. Our circle of friends can easily muster 50 or 60 gay men and women for a friendly get together. That is without ever breaking a sweat!  Give us more time and we could just overwhelm Fr. Neuhaus with our numbers. 

Among our friends we are the newly partnered having been together only nine years. Most of our friends have been together for more than 20 years and one couple recently celebrated 52 years together. We represent retirees from many different businesses, professions and areas of the country. We recently lost a dear friend unexpectedly at the age of 56. He and his partner were together for over 27 years. There were over 300 people, gay and straight, at his funeral. We continue to care about and care for each other. Yes Dr. Neuhaus, this is America!

Off to a terrible start.

"When Tom [DeLay] and his bunch first ran, they campaigned against the cesspool in Washington. After a while they looked around and said, ‘Hey, this isn’t a cesspool, it’s a hot tub,’" – Richard Viguerie, conservative bomb-thrower.

It’s a good question and while I do not agree with everything in this essay by Austin W. Bramwell, there’s meat on its bones. Money quote:

After 9/11, neoconservatives championed any war that we waged in reaction. In this, they were acting opportunistically but not hypocritically: in their view, 9/11 is what happens when the United States suffers any challenges to its authority. The rest of the movement knew only that it wanted a ruthless response. Neoconservatism just happened to provide a convenient ideological infrastructure with which to justify metonymic revenge against some Muslim Arab or other. Before 9/11, the movement was praising modesty in foreign affairs; after 9/11, it did not so much embrace neoconservatism as blunder into it by accident…

What they need is analysis: the skeptical tradition extending from Machiavelli to Hobbes, Hamilton, and Burnham that seeks to understand the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be. 

Sound familiar? Bramwell wisely decides that the "conservative movement" is now dead. Conservatism as a philosophy and as a tradition is not, however, dead. How the one comes to reconcile with the other is the question now before us.

A reader writes:

Your Sunday Times column "That way, son" was on point. Only Shakespeare could have done this story justice. If Clinton was a comedy, W. is, clearly, a tragedy. And you’re right – that Wednesday after the election was W’s lowest moment:

"The moment of discovery or ‘anagnorisis’, which comes at the end of the tragic plot, is not simply the knowledge by the hero of what has happened to him . . . but the recognition of the determined shape of the life he has created for himself, with an implicit comparison with the uncreated potential life he has forsaken." – Northrop Frye, "The Mythos of Autumn: Tragedy", page 128.

I could not but reflect, however, on the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqi lives – not to mention our own troops – lost to fuel this family psychodrama. And I wonder when we as a nation will experience our anagnorisis.

This last election was it. Now we have to deal with the wreckage, good and bad.

I aired that grim possibility a while back. Tony Blair now gives it his public backing:

"However, most crucial is this: Just as it is, in significant part, forces outside Iraq that are trying to create mayhem inside Iraq, so we have to have a strategy that pins them back, not only in Iraq but outside it, too. This is what I call a ‘whole Middle East strategy.’"

More details here.

In South Dakota, no less. Fascinating state analysis here. Money quote:

"As you move west, voters tend to be less evangelical and more libertarian," [Jon Schaff, who teaches at Northern State University in Aberdeen] said.

The election results seem to confirm his theory. Only 17 of the state’s 66 counties rejected the same-sex-marriage ban, but 11 of the 21 counties west of the Missouri River voted against it. And two of the East River counties that voted against the ban hug the east bank of the Missouri.

Schaff believes that the abortion ban and the same-sex-marriage ban went too far for libertarian-leaning voters. "They’re saying they simply want government to leave them alone." [Bob] Burns [who teaches political science at South Dakota State University in Brookings] agrees. He said an additional sentence in the same-sex-marriage amendment that banned "quasi-marital relationships" may have cost the measure votes.

Schaff also notes that the abortion ban had no exceptions for rape, incest or health of the pregnant woman. If Referred Law 6 had included those exceptions, he said, "It would have passed with 65 percent of the vote, easily."

The Christianists over-reached. Even in South Dakota.

Tom Palmer asks for your help for an Egyptian jailed for blogging free thoughts in a police state. More details here.