America: From Christ into the Void

Response to a letter speculating on America’s drift from Christian faith

Dear … :

I agree with some of your analysis of the why here. At least in immediate terms. You evoke a shift away from the faith that’s occurred over the past couple generations--reaching, say, back to the 1980s. And it works. But only to a degree.

My own framework is different. For me the shift not so much a matter of the choices of younger Americans against older, recently dominant generations.

Yes, it sure looks like what we have in America is the mass of the population making a conscious, informed choice for freedom and self-determination against the religious strictures and judgmentalism of the 1950s. But I don’t think masses in general make really “conscious, informed choices.” I think rather they are molded by the Zeitgeist, which gives them justifications for the worldview they adopt. This is true in every culture, and it’s true for ours. It’s true for both educated and uneducated. Among the highly educated only a very small minority will ever challenge currently fashionable thinking.

So we in America assume we are following our desires and that those desires are self-chosen, but the truth is we’ve absorbed most of our desires from others. In this respect consumer behavior (the burning desire for some new fashion or product for example) is a microcosm of human behavior in general. Even including our choice of “beliefs” or ideological positions. For most of us, we don't so much choose our beliefs as mimic the beliefs of people we admire. We are monkeys.

The question for me, then, is somewhat different. What social forces led younger generations to "choose" as they did? The answer to that is complicated, and I'll hardly be able to address it in one email. But I can give some hints as to how I see this "choice."

When the writers cited in that Substack post underline that the West has replaced Christianity with a Void, what they mean is that our culture has made the Desiring Self the origin of all values. “Woe to you if you offend my Desiring Self!” This may well stand as one of the Ten Commandments of our new national religion.

You point out that "everyone worships something," but the problem with the Desiring Self is that it can’t be a sane object of worship--or rather, the circularity of such worship means the culture is bowing down to a Void. Worshipping oneself is an illness, not a civilizational model.

We Americans believe we champion freedom, and we do, but what has happened beginning in the last century is that our concept of freedom has shifted radically. The Founders of the 18th century, and really all of the historical West, would look at our way of talking about freedom and immediately see a glaring problem.

Notice that we don’t use the word “liberty” so much anymore. We use “freedom” to mean the same thing. But what we mean is something different. The shift in terminology here is a tell.

Most ancient philosophers and most thinkers up through yesterday would look at our contemporary, “supremely free” Americans and insist: “No, you are not free.”

Why not? Because almost all thinkers from the western past recognized that one can be enslaved in multiple ways. One particularly destructive kind of enslavement was to be slave to one’s own desires. Thus liberty, in the original formulation, is only posessed by the person who doesn't allow his whims and desires to lead him around by the nose. An adult who self-defines by what he desires or what gives him kicks (whether money, or sexual behavior, or fame) is not free.

You say the mid-20th century largely invented “the teenage years,” or rather made a big thing of them. Note that it also quickly extended them. I’d say, more or less, that we extended adolescence first to age 22, then to age 26, and now indefinitely. Why not be a 30-something teenager? It’s called Sex and the City. Why not be a 60-something teenager? Who can criticize you? “I have a right to fulfill my desires. If you say otherwise, you are OPPRESSIVE. You are HARMING me.”

Our culture is everywhere therapeutic in orientation, much of this arising in the wake of Freud. We equate health with being liberated from the harmful “repression” that civilization imposed on us. Civilization is the problem we must be cured of. We believe this without being conscious of it, which is to say that it's now axiomatic. It's a belief inculcated in us through education, film, music, pop psychology. Since it underpins everything, it need no longer be explicitly taught.

But what nobody seems to notice here is that this Freudian axiom ultimately means that barbarism is identical to health. And since we can't avoid enculturation, i.e. civilization, we are in a double bind that's making our whole culture ill.

Although most people now reject Freud on most things, and don't read him anymore, we still live in the house he built. We're haunted by a grandfather of sorts, who's set us walking in therapeutic circles.

Of course our invention and then extension of the teenage years is also a luxury, possible only because of our stellar economic power following WW II. But if you look back at my point about freedom vs. liberty, you will see the cost. There is everywhere a kind of enslavement. To what? Not to the Christian God, not to the Nation, not to the Family Clan, but to one’s own circular round of frantic desiring.

This is the Void they are writing about. And if it's dangerous for us as individuals, it's also dangerous for us as a civilization.

Our cultural industries are happy to keep dangling ersatz fulfilments in front of this Void, whether in the form of lifestyle upgrades, sexual identities, political posturing, etc. From The Atlantic to pop music trends to "vibes"-based campaigns for the presidency, all of it has the same tedious character.

Some of it is sophisticated. Certainly many of the cultural producers in question have high levels of “education.” But to the extent they continue to believe in ever-expanding self-definition, they’re shallow. They’re not asking the meaning of human being, the meaning of our being here, but rather planning the Next Thing. Because they take it for granted that we are actually heading somewhere, toward greater self-autonomy and justice and “liberation.” It’s a hollow utopianism too frantically busy to question itself. A narcissist on a merry-go-round in a hall of mirrors.

These points might clarify what I meant at the beginning by my different framework. I’m not looking at a shift of generations that have made "choices" so much as a wider historical malaise that's resulted from dominant cultural trends. What I see is the unfolding of a certain perversion in western ideas of what our liberty is, or what it’s for.

Some argue that this perversion was already baked into the cake of our 18th century Enlightenment project, i.e. it’s already there in our Founding. I’m not so sure about that. I think most of the problem stems from a warping of what used to be the western left, and the rise of this new warped leftism to the status of dominant faith. But these are complicated questions.

You ask what Christianity has to offer young people facing these major shifts. I’d say what it offers is what it has always offered. I notice that you mostly seem to define Christianity in terms of those things in the sexual revolution to which it said No. This makes sense, but then again, you will understand that this only makes sense in the present, a present that lives under a different religious dispensation, the religion of the Desiring Self. Of course the thing we will first notice about Christianity is that it says No to some key part of this new religion.

“Christianity is obsessed with sex!” we say.

Imagine a tribe that lives by pig farming coming to a Jewish village. “These people--their religion is all about pork! They’re obsessed with it!”

That’s what the accusation looks like to me. A culture that worships the Desiring Self and generates constant new niche sexual identities, making these identities the center of individual meaning--this culture accuses Christians of being obsessed with sex?

I must admit, however, that if Christianity is viewed this way by current generations, it likely isn’t only because of their new religion. The particular kind of Protestantism that dominated mid-20th century America shares some of the blame. That Protestantism had jettisoned much in Christianity and ended up with an easy-peasy bourgeois version of the faith that managed to make sexual sins the only sins one should condemn. This was not all American Protestants, of course, but was a defining tendency of the national faith.

Perhaps there’s little surprise in such a development. Though pride is the primal Christian sin, pride and greed were endemic to America during those years of expansion. In our capitalist culture, they were even touted as virtues.

But that American Protestantism was only one iteration of Christianity. It was recognizably Christian, yes, but rather hypocritical, no? The tragedy is that because of the flaws and manias of that version, the whole has been rejected. Baby thrown out with bathwater.

I have much more I could write about, sure. But I hope this gets at some of how I see the new American religion vs. what came before. I don’t at all think we’re getting closer to the truth, nor do I think we’re flourishing as a culture. Quite the contrary. We are sick. We are lost and groping in a Void. Because the Desiring Self is not the meaning of the universe.

Best,

Eric

A Gay Man Returning to the Catholic Church?

It was in an online discussion of Milo Yiannopoulos’ interview with the Jesuit magazine America. Myself I thought Milo had done a great job of it. Matt, a 20-something gay friend of mine, who’d grown up in a very Catholic town, weighed in to say he was stunned a Jesuit magazine had even agreed to interview Milo. This same friend had recently surprised me with the news that he was attending Mass again. He'd even gone to Confession.

I’d describe Matt as brilliant, precocious, complex. Though part of Catholic culture, he’d always criticized the Church, and for the years I’ve known him was certainly far from being a “practicing Catholic”.

Our discussion that day, in chat, is very brief, but I want to post it because it allowed me to summarize a few points I keep wanting to make--points that also relate to Milo's interview.

Thing is, Matt was already despairing over his future as a practicing Catholic. Here’s how it went:

MATT: Meh. I probably won't go back to Church. I don't want to live a celibate life, and I can't be arsed spending time around people who consider me fundamentally immoral and spiritually disordered. Some crosses are too heavy to bear.

MYSELF: But here's the thing--the point, if I may raise it, that I think you're missing. I don't think any really serious Catholic will think you're "fundamentally immoral". Or rather: they will think we are all fundamentally immoral.

The mistake of post-1960s Westerners is to assume that we are fundamentally defined by our sexuality. This is why we’ve been subject to so much of the SJW cultural ranting regarding this whole question. I myself have come to realize that this shift in the definition of the person is more a late effect of Protestantism, bending toward Gnosticism, than anything else. The shift has taken in many Catholics too. But it's a mistake; it's a modern perversion of the faith. Even the coded definition of people as hetero or some letter of LGBTQwerty is a modern invention. Most cultures through most of human history have just recognized that humans are sexual.

Something eccentric is going on with us. We're out on a limb in our basic anthropology, and we're moving further and further out.

So if I were you, I'd keep thinking this through. And I don't think you're even close to fundamentally immoral. You're probably more fundamentally moral than plenty of the others attending Mass. Milo in his interview was right, I believe, to recognize that he has sin, but that the sin society defines him for is not his worst sin--rather that pride is a more dangerous sin.

One option is to, as it were, cordon off your sex life for the time being. By which I don't mean to actually become celibate, but rather to allow the contradiction to exist, but put it aside while you keep faith with those aspects of the Church's tradition that you can.

I haven't had coffee yet, so I'm not so sure these points are well put. But I think they're very important--that we've been more or less brainwashed by the culture into assuming that our definitional center is sexual behavior. It is not. Even most of the Christians around us are in this respect more "late modern Westerners" than they are Christian. But you don’t have to be.

MATT: Good points. And thanks for the advice! Maybe I’m being over-dramatic on this question.

I'm not all that obsessed with sex anyway. I just worked myself up into a tizzy thinking, "Who are THEY to demand that I be celibate!"--without realizing that, in theory at least, all Catholics could spend their lives celibate if they go unmarried.

I'll keep thinking these things through, and continue with my experiment. In any case, I'm not in a relationship at present.

* * *

And that was that. Myself I don’t know how most gays or lesbians will react to my points, but I do stand by them as important. The contemporary world, especially post-1960s, has sex on the brain in ways that warp what is essential in both the meaning of personhood and the meaning of faith. And, I'd add, in the meaning of sex itself.

E.M.

Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out Idiocy, Ltd. Dryest damn humor in the West.

Ah, Yes: the Open-Minded Liberal

“I appreciate people who are open-minded, who don’t judge others for their differences, who try to show openness and tolerance for other viewpoints. I don’t like dogmatic people, but see the world as woven of many different strands. Dogmatism is the only enemy!”

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard sentences like these from American liberals or self-described progressives. And the depressing thing is that the people who talk this way actually think they're giving an accurate self-description. They really seem to believe they are non-judgmental, or, as they repeat ad nauseum, “open-minded”.

Long ago, decades ago in fact, I learned what such people were all about. I learned that anyone who describes him- or herself like this will usually, within the next few sentences, prove just the opposite. And how could it not be so? Such trite intellectual gibberish as this is typically uttered as prelude to a strident, dogmatic rejection of some different position judged to be not open-minded enough.

In fact the “open-minded”, “non-judgmental” American liberal is one of the most close-minded, judgmental species of folk you’re likely to meet. Like the religious fundamentalist, but more dishonest, the typical liberal goes about the day seeking to erase or censure anything that doesn’t fit his or her own “open-minded” standards.

The "open-minded" liberal believes she has already decided all fundamental questions of right and wrong, all ethical conundrums the philosophers might struggle over, all deep cultural conflicts. And the answer to all these conundrums is: “Progress.” And how do we define progress? Like this: “Those who differ from me must finally come around to my way of seeing things.”

And so: "Open-mindedness" is good, it leads to "progress", and progress means: Eventually you must agree with me.

Paradigms that don’t mesh with the hedonistic self-worship of the American liberal are rejected as “dogmatic”, “close-minded”, “outdated”. Once any of these three latter adjectives gets stuck onto a view, the liberal can safely treat it as anathema. Those who hold to any of the rejected views must then be shunned by the group of “open-minded” people. They are a threat to polite society.

So much for respecting differences. The liberal way is: “We will respect your difference as long as, in all fundamentals, you are the same as us.”

Or course the truths these people take to be obvious and established wouldn’t be recognized as such in many world cultures. But what of that? One of the central dogmas of these “globally-minded” liberals is that world cultures that don’t agree with them now must eventually come around--they’ll come around either through force or the persuasive power of pop culture and Hollywood.

American liberals thus pay lip service to cultural diversity, while being the most avid cultural imperialists you can find on the planet today.

“I don’t like close-minded people” thus means, in American English, “Unless you see things the way we do, you have a closed mind. We're eventually going to fix that.”

Every group has its propaganda, you might say. So why be so disgruntled about this one, why expect American liberals to be any different? Why not just accept that they have their propaganda too?

Perhaps it’s because, unlike with doctrinaire Marxists, unlike with religious fundamentalists, unlike with dyed-in-the-wool misanthropes and cynics, the American liberal’s propaganda is so utterly dishonest. The religious fundamentalist will tell you he has the only truth. The Marxist too. But not the "open-minded" liberal. Their respect for difference and diversity is a transparent lie. Their supposed tolerance and flexiblity only holds up in their own little echo chamber. And their glib self-confidence is forged from another lie--that we, the smiling, credit-card wielding First World liberals, have the answers to everything. Naturally. Because we’ve learned to be “open-minded”, see? We’ve gone to university and have read, gee, almost ten books. And look: our friends are the cool people, so, well, we’re in the know. You others--time to get with the program!

Sounds a lot like the way high school kids talk, doesn’t it? There’s a reason for that.

Compared to these trite narcissists, the devout religious person makes for a bracing conversation partner. At least there’s a tradition, a content behind his or her belief that must be referred to. At least the religious person is not all about patting himself on the back. He or she acknowledges his difference from others; he recognizes that this difference implies debate, substantive debate, and struggle.

Put me at a table of hardcore Marxists, Hindu fanatics or angry Evangelicals any day. Just please, keep me away from the "open-minded" consumerist morons now dominating America.

Eric Mader

American Police Departments: Implement Officer Body Cameras NOW

An unarmed, fleeing man murdered in cold blood. What would have happened had there been no bystander filming?

Body-worn cameras for police officers should become standard in American police departments. It’s as simple as that. This is the most immediate and effective way to curtail the sick epidemic of unwarranted police violence that plagues our country.

I’ve seen no compelling arguments against body cameras. The advantages for all, both citizens and police, far outweigh the disadvantages.

The recent murder of Walter Scott (see article with video) in South Carolina reminds us again of how necessary video evidence can be. Where would this case have gone had there been no bystander there to film what really happened?

Sadly, the offending officer, Michael Slager, would very likely have walked.

And that’s not only a grave injustice to his victim, shot in cold blood from behind, but an injustice to all good police officers, who are put at ever greater risk because of the breakdown of trust between police and black communities.

A breakdown of trust that is due to systemic racism in far too many American police departments.

Racism is a deeply ingrained evil in our country. The battle against it must be fought on many fronts simultaneously. Body cameras won’t solve the problem of racism, but they will certainly help.

The evidence is clear that body-worn cameras reduce the likelihood of resort to force. And they reduce citizen complaints against police departments.

But most of all: body cameras will almost certainly stop this epidemic that has now resulted in far too many lives being cut short by trigger-happy officers.

We need to implement body cameras now.

Eric Mader
Taipei

(Yes, I’m an American expat in Taiwan, where I’ve lived since the 1990s. And this continued injustice against black Americans, fellow citizens of mine, aside from being deeply depressing in itself, makes me depressed in an additional way because I see how it makes my country look internationally. There are a handful of fronts on which America has gone seriously off the rails this past decade and a half. I sometimes think that if more of my compatriots could see how this makes our country look in the eyes of the world, they’d be more earnest about bringing about the changes that need to happen. We make great strides, but continue to mire ourselves in many of our worst vices. In a globalized world, we should be implementing domestic policies that make our country one we can be proud of, rather than one that gives the international community reasons to be taken aback, if not on occasion actually horrified.)

美國

美國的政治情勢像個車禍現場，全是我不知怎麼認領的一堆扭曲金屬、凌亂的碎片。我應該參加那些想奮力修復扭曲車架的人，或繼續再排列又重新排列碎片？書寫者別無選擇，只能找回拼圖碎片？

ISIS' British Faithful

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/08/26/ctw-dnt-paton-walsh-supporters-of-terror.cnn.html

Listen to this London Muslim preacher. I think ISIS is on the verge of overplaying its hand.

And he's got it all wrong ideologically. The battle is not between those who believe in God and those who believe in man, but rather between those who believe their own narrow idea of God should control everyone (the jihadists) and those who believe a society is best when it allows different religions and different secular visions the freedom to co-exist (as long as they don’t harm each other).

Against the jihadists and fundamentalists, we need to stand with pluralism. And we may be having to stand tougher pretty soon. If these folks really want to attack the West directly, I think they will find the West capable of fighting back.

Although I'm usually critical of US bombing campaigns (and was critical of the Iraq war to begin with, which only managed to destabilize Iraq) I'm fully behind any military action of ours that may weaken ISIS. I suspect we're going to be dealing with the loyalists of this new "caliphate" for some time.

And how is London managing to deal with these people? I really do strongly suspect that if ISIS starts launching anything like sustained attacks in Europe, it's going to end badly for the millions of moderate European Muslims caught in the middle.

The Denver Airport Anthropological Garden

In the middle of a long layover in the United concourse at the Denver Airport, I watch travelers file by as I wait for my flight. What would Hieronymus Bosch do with this scene?

I'm guessing he'd just use a camera.

Such a bizarre panoply of different human shapes and misshapes; different hair colors and discolors, skin tones and bloated legs and bone protuberances and make-up disasters of all sorts. The mix is inspiring and horrifying, by turns.

What can one see here in a mere five minutes?

Hip hop youths of every race jostle cream-colored Michigan retired dentists and their peers; Latino teens stare down overdressed Japanese businessmen. Here's a young Sri Lankan woman who came to to the States to study electrical engineering, and look--she's already found herself a pimply redheaded boyfriend of Irish descent. Behind them, dragging an oversized navy blue tote, comes a pinched, 60-something housewife who's spent her life learning to be polite and is now little more than a bundle of propriety and politeness. She's oddly without her husband this time: visiting a sister in Houston? Right behind her strides a Chinese couple in their late thirties in Chinese-couple traveling garb, the husband sporting an unobtrusive polo shirt and beige golf jacket--yecch!--the wife in the same color scheme but wearing white sneakers and carrying, of course, her LV bag. Then it's a pretend cowboy of about sixty with a huge beer belly and handlebar mustache listening apologetically as his 30-something daughter explains why she's pissed. Next a well-dressed black woman in her seventies, a wise Georgia matron with her middle-aged son, a woman who's stayed the course through thick and thin; and in her son's very features you can see how well she's raised him. Behind them a ragged looking white woman in her early thirties who pushes a baby stroller and drags two pre-Kindergarten keeners in tow. "Keep moving, Justin. Don't touch that." And catching up to the mother and her kids stride two tech guys with tight, focused eyes, heading to a meeting. Behind the techies lopes a grave-faced Rasta exploding in dreadlocks; he talks quietly with a short-haired white man carrying a guitar case. And they keep filing by, in such diversity of size and shape and sartorial foolishness that it's hard to believe they're all of the same species. And off to the side, watching them pass, sits a bemused, scruffy-looking man with somewhat Germanic features. He's in his forties, overweight, and on the seat next to him is a black shoulder bag overstuffed with notebooks and newspapers. His orange and blue sneakers clash with his corduroy shirt and black jeans. He's thinking whether he should write a paragraph in his notebook about the odd caravan he's watching. The people passing don't know it, but he lives in a Chinese-speaking country on the other side of the globe, where every day the city teems with mainly one race of people. Being in an American airport terminal and watching all this human diversity is something of a shock to him (he gets this same shock whenever he returns to America, usually once or twice a year) but this time, in Denver, the shock has almost bowled him over. The mix of races and cultures inspires; the obesity epidemic, on proud display, horrifies. What would Hieronymus Bosch do? Once he finishes his oversized coffee, and his head clears a bit, he'll start writing.

Dear New Atheists: A Letter to the Wise Guys

It is very odd that the New Atheists and their supporters don’t really understand the meaning of the word secularism. It is especially odd because they throw this word around so much.

When we say, rightly, that the United States is a “secular republic”, we do not at all mean that it is an atheist republic. Rather we mean that our government does not make policy on the basis of any one particular religious denomination. This is the Founders’ concept of secular.

Our Founders recognized the wisdom of not allowing any of the competing Christian denominations to control the new state. They presumed, of course, that America would be a nation populated mostly by believers, but they legislated so that citizens of different creeds would each be required to allow space for the practices and teachings of those of other creeds. This is the American meaning of secular, as it is also the sense of our idea of separation of church and state.

Neither the concept of secularism nor the idea of separation of church and state suggest in any way that religious Americans must give up working to bring public policy into accord with their unique ideals and ethics. This is emphatically not the meaning of "secular government" or "separation". Rather, these concepts only mean: No particular religious tradition has a special right to make of the state its own instrument.

Many sharp minds have observed in recent years that the New Atheists behave as if they were a new religious movement--an especially aggressive religious movement with a clear agenda of pushing others out of the public square.

I fully agree: New Atheism is a kind of religion--in my view a kind of fundamentalist religion. For them, as long as they haven't hounded faith out of America, there can be no peace. They will work indefatigably to curtail the rights of Americans to practice their different faiths because, by definition, those faiths, not being New Atheism, are a menace to public well-being.

To the growing number of supporters of this aggressive new clique, as a Catholic, I would like to say the following.

Welcome to the American scene. Please try to behave as if you had some understanding of what this scene is all about.

Especially try to keep in mind that you are just one creed among many. You are certainly NOT America's default creed. That is not at all what Jefferson intended by "separation of church and state". Neither does it do justice to the American meaning of "secularism".

In other words, New Atheists: You've no more right to call the shots (whether in education, or public health policy, etc.) than any of the other creeds you spend most of your time trying to misrepresent and belittle. (Each of which, misrepresent and belittle, seems to be a sacrament in your church. Am I right about this? How many sacraments do you have altogether? Will censor be one of them soon?)

Your right to seek followers and promote your tenets will be respected. When, however, you try to take this right away from citizens of other creeds, then you are offending against our constitution and our nation's founding principles. And be sure that we of other creeds will fight back; we will do it to keep your un-American ideas from gaining hold. We will fight back not because you don't believe in God--that is certainly your right--but because you seek to undo the basic political order that has kept us together as a nation for almost 250 years.

To conclude: If you show that you understand the meaning of "secular democratic republic", you may continue with your proselytizing. To the degree that you try to change our secular democratic republic to an "atheist republic", to that degree we will do our best to shut you down. To the extent that your mission is predicated on taking our rights away (and sorry, but that's exactly how you've presented yourselves so far) we will really have no choice.

A word to the wise.

Or rather: A word to the wise if there are any such among you. Because, you know, "wise" and "wise guy" are not the same thing. Nor are science and scientism--this latter being the intellectual basis of your new pseudo-empiricist religion.

Sincerely,

Eric Mader

* * *
SEE ALSO:

New Atheist Truthiness and How to Fight It: Three Words

The Long Decline of the American Left: Thoughts on Daily Kos, American "Progressives" and the PCA

Founded in 2002, hosting an enormous amount of blogging and chatter since, the Daily Kos community has become symptomatic of the decline of the American left in general. Willfully blind to their favored team's continual shift rightward, the community maintains its dogmatic allegiance to the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration. Since the start of the president's second term, the site has in fact only grown more blindly pro-establishment, its regular contributors doing their best to pretend their political goals are being realized.

As a progressive community in constant discursive action, DailyKos can be especially depressing to watch. I've followed the site for years, and since I'm in solidarity with many of the community's goals, it's been frustrating to see how easily folks there let themselves get sidetracked. How? The pattern is cyclical: 1) Republican talking points are quoted in a rage and then disproved by facts. 2) The mere fact of this typing out of the truth on the Daily Kos blog is then presented as a victory for the bloggers and the left they represent.

As if facts were what is at issue. As if the main goal of a movement of the left is refuting the idiotic and misleading cant that comes out of the GOP and Fox News. Because, hey, within days there arrives a new spate of Republican talking points, and the DailyKos bloggers all set to work mocking and refuting those.

Meanwhile the corporate coup continues, whether it's Dubya or Obama abetting it. The facts be damned.

It seems clear enough to me that for two decades now America has had just one political party. There are the Republicans (called Republicans) who are anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage, and there are the other Republicans (called Democrats) who are pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage. As Americans we get to choose between these two corporate-controlled right-wing parties: parties that pursue virtually identical policy goals--except in relation to sex and gender.

Strange, isn't it? Why is it our two parties are only allowed to offer choices in the specific areas of sex and reproduction? Have you ever stopped to think about that?

The answer is obvious. Wall Street and the big corporations don't give a damn if you're straight or gay, a mother of five or a woman who's had three abortions. All Wall Street and the corporations care about is being able to own your ass. And what d'ya know? They already do.

And why is that? Why do they? Why has the 1% gained so much control during these past decades? Why is it that in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 70s, why is it that America had strong protections for working people, truly effective public services, an actually sensible tax system? Why did our country have these things but does no longer?

In my own analysis much of the blame rests squarely with those people who now call themselves the "progressive" left. When fashionista leftists (media, Hollywood, gender studies academia) began stressing sex and gender issues, the Democratic Party proved more than willing to accommodate, because, simply put, it was no skin off their backs. It wasn't going to undermine their corporate support. After a couple decades of this, America's once left-wing party (the party of workers, farmers, teachers, civil servants; the party, in short, of the public good) had morphed into the party of abortion and gay marriage. The party of political correctness on all hot-button fashionista issues.

I refer to it in my title as the PCA, or "Progressive Corporate Agenda". The word progressive here carries a deceptive double meaning, one that, sadly, most American progressives refuse to recognize.

First meaning of progressive: American social liberals, tired of the bigotry of the Christian right, vote Democrat because they support the party's progressive social policies on abortion and sexual orientation. Holding progressive positions in these areas and actually voting for such policies, Democratic leaders then claim to be progressive as such. Which is an utter sham, isn't it? Because these particular sex and reproduction issues occupy only a small spectrum of any legitimate leftist agenda. Meanwhile, on most meat and potatoes issues, the Democrats vote with the corporate elite. And somehow they largely get away with it, election after election? Why?

In our current hyper-mediated culture, our society of the spectacle, where Lady Gaga carries more weight than any mere labor organizer or leftist scholar, Democratic candidates still get enough buzz to give them the progressive credentials they need. Offering pro-choice and pro-gay policies--namely, those things that so enrapture recent Hollywood and academic types--is enough to set them off as the "progressive party". They've won over those whose professions are in the "spectacular" industries (as Guy Debord would have it)--fashion, media, film, music. And who sets the pace in our society of the spectacle if not precisely these groups? And these groups, in their turn, continue the marketing of their "countercultural" gestures, (thus determining the progressive aura) as ever new commodities in a market which itself remains unchanged. All of which is fine for the Democratic party, who, it is painfully clear, fears any change that isn't linked to sex or reproduction.

Amazingly, the American "progressive left" pats itself on the back with each new turning of this cycle. And none of it has the least effect on the corporate coup which continues unabated.

Which brings us to the second meaning of progressive, to glimpse which we must look more closely at the actual accomplishments of this supposedly progressive party. What has been the result of these years of "change we can believe in"?

The policies pursued by the Obama Administration have only served to maintain the status quo. In terms of corporate hegemony, financial regulation, tax policy, foreign policy, the Obama Administration has been indistinguishable from any right-leaning Republican administration of past decades. It is here we can see the second, or what I would call true, meaning of "progressive" in my title. It's called the Progressive Corporate Agenda because it allows for the ongoing progress of the corporate takeover of our democracy. Shamefully, this progress of corporate power is being expedited by a party that itself holds onto power only by flattering the sex-and-gender thinking of liberal voters. On all other issues, in terms of the traditional goals of any truly left-wing platform--well, see for yourself. After six years of Obama in the White House, it's business as usual for Wall Street and the corporations and the 1%. And for the military and the NSA. In fact on some of these fronts it's business unusual--the drift is even further rightward than we've seen during any previous administration.

I too was largely taken in by Obama. I thought he would likely bring significant change--not a thorough remaking of society, but concrete change. I thought the idiocy and excesses of the Bush years, having triggered the 2008 meltdown, had shown Americans once and for all that trickle-down economics and deregulation don't work. But Obama has proven to be essentially a continuation of Bush. A few turns on health care, yes, a few turns in the culture wars, blah blah, but these things, really, do not a left party make.

If I could impose a twenty-year truce in the culture wars I'd do so immediately. Because it is the culture wars that have greased the wheels for the corporate coup that has ruined our democracy. And on the left, allowing these issues to occupy center stage with all the shit that's going down is dangerous, naive, ultimately self-destructive. That American liberals have chosen not simply to uphold LGBT rights (which was the right thing to do) but to push for same-sex marriage, a fundamental change to our culture's very definition of marriage--really, could one think of anything better for keeping the citizenry polarized? To me this move more than any other shows the subtle workings, the cunning, of the Progressive Corporate Agenda (PCA) in action. The American people are led to squabble about sex and marriage while the 1% continues to impoverish them, undermine their education, pass destructive new trade pacts, etc. When Obama came out for "marriage equality" I'm sure guys in board rooms across the country were slapping their knees in glee. And it wasn't because they'd soon be able to tie the knot with Steve or Abdul or Matt. Rather it was "Good job, Barry! That'll keep the rubes busy!" And by rubes here I don't just mean those red state rubes we all love and know--"Rube Classic"--but also the new and supremely rubish bunch that makes up most of our progressive so-called left.

In the past fifty years the American left has learned three or four neat new things. Good job. At the same time it has forgotten fifty essential old things.

This is part of the political impetus behind much of my recent writing and thinking on same-sex marriage. Though I've always been in solidarity with the struggle for LGBT rights, I'm disappointed no end to see the second-tier issue of "marriage equality" continuing to fire liberal passions. I'm despondent to see a youth culture that thinks this kind of thing is worthy of political center stage. Considering all that is going down! Gays and lesbians I can't blame for getting behind it (though some LGBT people have been against) but the heterosexual majority? Can't you people see how you're being systematically distracted and led by the nose here?

In short: The Progressive Corporate Agenda keeps you all so busy you don't notice it's really the Progressive Corporate Agenda.

The right has their Liberty, Patriotism, Christian Family Values. Which when their politicians take office simply means pushing the agenda of the 1%. And you on the left have your "progressive" issues. Which when your politicians take office simply means pushing the agenda of the 1%.

I began by writing here about one "progressive" online community, Daily Kos, but what I say obviously takes in a much wider slice of America than just that group of folks.

If they've nothing more to offer, Democratic candidates deserve to lose. Simple as that. Republican candidates don't deserve to win, but Democrats who continue to abet the corporate impoverishment of the American citizenry do not deserve our votes. If some third party or outside force is not mounted to shake up our current one-party circus, there is in effect no American left at all.

Eric Mader

What is a marriage? Who has the right to validate a marriage?

This is the sixth installment in an ongoing debate/dialogue on same-sex marriage in America. All installments in this debate are indexed in order and can be linked from here. The letter below is a partial rebuttal to Steve Johnson's letter in the previous installment.

Dear Steve:

In my last letter to you I said I was disappointed because, in my eyes, you had hardly bothered to respond to my actual points. And I went after you with my historical hammer. But now I feel you might accuse me of the same selfishness: not bothering to respond to your real points, going off on my own rant. So I want to get this second letter off to you quickly. Because I'm well aware there were arguments in your last rebuttal I needed to address but hadn't.

What I didn't bother to address was your stress on “third-party verification”. You imply in your letter that this is crucial to understanding where you're coming from in this debate. You also point out that our legal system wouldn’t function without such verification. That you keep coming back to this point of licenses or certificates shows how important these questions are to you. In fact (though I think of the term third-party verification as something mainly used in telephone transactions) I have no argument with you as regards the necessity of like kinds of verification in a culture as complex as ours. An instance of what you mean, I suppose, would be the phenomenon of witness signatures on a marriage license. They verify they know the people involved and verify they were present for a civil wedding. Yes?

But even though we may agree on the necessity of such kinds of verification, our differences here are great. I've tried to make sense of what you're arguing, but, honestly, in places your argument still isn't all that clear to me. I will do my best to seize on your main point so that I may then show how it relates to my own way of thinking.

I may be able to get at what divides us by considering your remark about how people "mix up" the "two aspects" of marriage. "When I think about the issue of a marriage," you write, "I think that sometimes people confuse the value of the marriage ceremony with the value of the legal framework." I think I understand this sentence. I believe you would say, using this language, that I’m one of the people who stress the “ceremony”, whereas you would stress the “legal contract” (for which "third party verification" is necessary). Am I right on this? Or perhaps you would say that the "ceremony" is one thing, up to each religion or family to decide, whereas the "legal contract" is what is decisive, as it is indifferent to individual preferences (religion, sexual orientation, etc.). Yes?

The problem (and this will help you recognize our differences) is that I wouldn't use this kind of language myself--this language of "ceremony" vs. "contract". Once you understand why I wouldn't use this language, you'll better understand where I've been coming from since our debate began.

For me a ceremony is merely the culture’s way to mark that a valid marriage has begun. We can see this by looking at actual ceremonies. In almost every culture a marriage ceremony is a matter of showing the couple to the community for all to acknowledge. The success of the ritual, in the presence of the whole community, proves that all agree: “These two are now married.” The ceremony, then, is not the marriage itself, not even in my mind. The marriage, rather, is that couple’s particular manner of existence within the community henceforth. What does this mean? Perhaps I could say (although for some people the term will lead to confusion) that the marriage is that couple’s social status as it plays out between them and in the community starting from the day of the ceremony. Marriage in my thinking, then, is a particular kind of social status. The status married that a couple acquires involves certain rights and obligations between the spouses, yes, but it also, crucially, involves rights and obligations in terms of the couple’s relationship with the community. The couple and the community recognize each other in terms of the culture’s ideas of marriage. The couple says: "We are married, as you acknowledge, and therefore we claim these rights." The community says: "You are married. We can expect such and such behavior from you." That is how the status is lived, that is the meaning of the married couple, that is the marriage in its existence.

The fact is that I don't think your remark about people mixing up the "ceremony" with the "legal contract" applies to me. Or are you trying to say that in our debate I have been mixing up the "married status" with the "legal contract"?

In my view, all a marriage contract does is set out in writing what the terms of the agreement are. These terms, in America, are very slim indeed, because our society is so fragmented. As for a marriage license, all it does is record the status of the couple as married for legal purposes. Both are important, yes, but I think you will agree: There have been marriages for far longer than there have been agencies or state bureaucracies to license them. Would you want to claim, Steve, that the countless marriages effected over the centuries in Polynesia before the arrival of Europeans and their paperwork were somehow “invalid"? I doubt you would. And so: The marriage is not the licensure or the contract or even the ceremony--it is rather a special status conferred on married couples.

Please keep these facts in mind as you consider my next question: Who, Steve, has the right to confer this special status, who is it that must acknowledge that a couple is married? The answer is simple: It is the whole community that confers this status. Not 58% of the community, not state officials, no--the community as a whole confers it. Do you disagree with me here? When our parents married, back in the day, they married with the acknowledgment of their whole communities. No one would have come forward and said, "No, you two are not married."

Now where does this bring us? I'll tell you. A functional and truly representative government will only provide a marriage license to couples who are recognized as married by their whole communities. In other words, if most of the neighbors agree it's a valid marriage, but one in three insists it isn't, the government should not get involved in the business of giving a license. We might consider America as one huge community in this respect, it comes to the same thing. To the degree that America is a community, it must be at least near unanimous on what counts as a marriage. I think, for our purposes, 95% is near unanimous. Are we anywhere near that? We are nowhere close, not even in states that have legalized same-sex marriage.

Now you might raise the issue of anti-miscegenation laws in protest. In fact through much of our history it was illegal for blacks and whites to intermarry. So, you will say, what about the transition period, when interracial married couples were not accepted as such by some of their neighbors? Isn't this the same thing? "Are you then arguing, Eric, that state governments were wrong to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples?"

I think you'd have a point here; it is indeed a similar kind of situation. But I don't think it's "the same thing". And I'll tell you why. Because anti-miscegenation laws were not universal; they were not in effect in many of the cultures with which the US had contact; they were certainly not in evidence in the history that learned Americans could consult at any time. America, being a more universally minded nation, was likely soon enough to realize, if only half-consciously, that its laws in this respect were not in accord with its universalizing mission. Such laws, rather, were instead a matter of a local injustice, an instance of America not taking its rightful place in the community of nations. For these reasons, the laws disappeared, and the culture has largely followed suit. A man and a woman don't have to be of the same race to be married. Looking at the history of the world, this is an obvious observation to make.

The issue of same-sex marriage is very different. Because the validity of these marriages is so easily contested, and it is contested on good grounds. Communities throughout history, except for very rare exceptions, have only conferred the status married on heterosexual couples. In my 2012 essay I explained why this was likely the case. But why it is the case is not so important here as simply that it is the case. Since same-sex marriage is virtually non-existent as a human practice, those demanding same-sex marriage as a "right" have virtually no historical precedent on which to claim this right. They have in fact, in America's major religions, which are indeed very central to our culture, scriptural passages and traditions of moral teaching that insist homosexual desires in themselves are wrong and sinful. I personally don't accept the Christian teaching that homosexuality is inherently sinful. I don't find this teaching has such a strong grounding in the New Testament, and don't agree, in any case, that ancient people understood human sexuality well enough to make such strong judgments on sexual orientation. (St. Paul, though he was indeed inspired by the Holy Spirit and his writings most certainly are Holy Scripture, nonetheless was not 100% correct in every aspect of everything he wrote about.) But even so, I am not going to force my fellow Christians, who may disagree with me on this, to conform to my own religious interpretations. And the bare fact is, like it or not, that tens of millions of people in our nation think "same-sex marriage" a contradiction in terms. Tens of millions? Certainly well over a hundred million.

And they have history on their side; they are decidedly not, in fact, weirdos for refusing to recognize these so-called marriages. On the contrary: we may say pretty confidently that heterosexual marriages have accounted for around 99.9999% of marriages globally over the past 5,000 years. If we look specifically at Western cultures (and we are a Western culture) that number jumps to 100%. I know, Steve, you are not influenced by such numbers, you have faith that history is progress. But even so, please keep these numbers in mind as you consider my following assertion, which is, when push comes to shove, quite important to me:

With such a long and universal cultural norm as backup, any American individual has the right to look at a gay couple claiming to be married and say: “Sorry, I disagree. In fact you two are NOT married. Regardless of what the government says on this, you are certainly NOT a married couple.”

Will you disagree with this assertion, Steve? Will you say that American individuals don't have the right to take this stance? I personally think it is the right of a culture or religion to hold to its basic definitions. Especially on an institution as central as marriage. And especially when that culture or religion accounts for half of a nation's population.

But look what is happening now, what is starting to happen all over our country? If I am at work in a hotel or restaurant or bakery, even if I am the owner of said business, and if in talking to customers I refuse to use the word “husband” to refer to one of the so-called spouses in that gay marriage, if I insist on saying “boyfriend” instead, I may very well lose my job or possibly even be subjected to legal action. Perhaps such a refusal is not yet being defined as a “hate crime”, but it will be soon enough. Regardless of your own stance on same-sex marriage, do you think this situation is really just? Citizens unwilling to change their thinking on a fundamental cultural institution, unwilling to agree to a merely novel way thinking which is not even two measly decades old, being accused of a “hate crime”? Do you think this is right, Steve? Are you and other gay marriage supporters so confident you have a monopoly on truth?

Eric

Against Same-Sex Marriage: Am I a "bigot"?

On Facebook last week my friend Renge Grace posted the above picture of actor/activist George Takei, captioning it with the words: "Let's move beyond bigotry and let love be love! Who are we to say one type is better than another?"

I have to admit I was disappointed to be yet again implicitly labeled a bigot.

I don't know Renge well, but she's always posted things of interest to me, and I've become one of her regular "first responders". That she supports same-sex marriage isn't the least surprising. Many of my friends do. I've often avoided discussing the issue with friends, because I know how quickly misunderstandings can develop. Normally, in this vein, I will also leave alone friends' Internet posts on gay marriage. But that Renge felt she needed to drag out the epithet bigot--this challenged me to respond.

I posted a link to something I'd written in 2012, along with a challenge to her. She was to decide if I in fact deserved this epithet.

So I'm again taking up the question of same-sex marriage--specifically whether it is marriage or not. The essay I'd written on this, trying to clarify my thinking, became the opening of a discussion that Renge then entered in kind. Renge read my essay, and replied with a guns-blazing defense of her own thinking.

My opening barrage in this debate is here. Renge's spirited counterattack is here. One will best understand what follows if read in the context of these previous posts. But I know: Life is short, USW.

NOTE: I am an American Catholic who is on the left on most political issues. This might explain somewhat where I'm coming from in these remarks. I'm entirely supportive of our current Pope Francis' willingness to raise discussion of homosexuality within the Church. I don't believe there are any grounds for excluding gays and lesbians from full participation in political or religious life. Nonetheless I do not support same-sex marriage. If the Church, after thoughtful discussion, were to formulate grounds for accepting gay marriage, I'd almost certainly be in support. I say this with confidence because I know the Church isn't likely to make such a change unless it finds very good reasons, both theological and anthropological, to do so.

What follows is a whole new tack in the debate--a rant of sorts, written in reply to Renge's own ranty post. I'm surprised and not surprised I ended up writing at such length.

Eric Mader

On Same-Sex Marriage and "Progress"
Renge:

Though I've taken a few days to respond to your hard-hitting rebuttal, I'm afraid I still won't be able to do justice to all your points as I've too many projects on the burner now--editing and class preparation and such. Still, as you've written so well on the issue and linked it with such an array of other issues, I'm inspired to do likewise. So I'm going to give some something of a far-ranging rant in return for yours.

As you can gather, I'm more on the border on this issue than most people, but truth to tell, my thinking hasn't much changed since my 2012 essay.

Some of the arguments you make I agree with. In other places, where you strongly disagree with me, I still find your points pertinent to our debate. Other things you write, however, I have to label straw-man arguments. I will give you examples of each.

For instance, I can fully agree with you when you write this:

Someday I hope we’ll grow up enough to realize that sexuality is a continuum and we are all on the line somewhere. (This may even change as we age, adding further complexity to our human experience.) Very few among us are completely straight or completely gay. Under sufficient application of alcohol, most people will admit to sexual experiments with their own gender, but this openness is discouraged and people are shamed in both worlds for admitting their bisexuality.

I've long thought this way about sexual orientation, but can't recall anyone ever putting the point so well. It seems obvious that everyone is indeed somewhere on a continuum.

Your arguments seem most pertinent to our differences where you point out, as you do several times, that institutions need to be "updated" in order to keep up with a changing society. As I believe you would put it: Modern societies have created different ways of living, and our institutions--like marriage, parenthood, etc.--should adapt to contemporary realities. Do you agree with this? This seems to be your "general historical position", if I might call it that. It is how you explain and justify social change, it informs your thinking on gay marriage, and I presume that it underlies much of your thinking on other cultural/religious/political issues. For me it's a perspective on the world that can't be brushed aside. In fact I disagree with it, but that you adopt this angle is certainly pertinent to our debate. I'll address the issue later.

You're also arguing very much to the point when you quote Wikipedia on what marriage is. But I have my reasons for doubt here. I strongly suspect the very encyclopedia article you quote from has been pressured into shape by the same-sex marriage crowd. Why do I suspect it? First: Because I studied marriage and kinship in anthropology in the 1980s, and at that time the consensus was that marriage had only one universal meaning, one common element across cultures: marriage was a socially conferred status given to male and female partners that legitimated offspring. In other words, in cultures across the world and throughout history, marriage might feature a division of the daily labors necessary to life (distinct roles in the family); it might feature romantic love; it might feature this or that ritual; it might be monogamous or polygamous. The one thing that it always featured, aside from its character as a status established between the sexes, was the legitimation of offspring. This, then, was the essence of marriage, at least as anthropologists could then best define it. Why, I wonder, is your Wikipedia article suddenly listing this universal aspect of marriage after other features like companionship, mutual obligation, arguments over which drapes best offset the carpet, etc.? I have an idea why. I suspect the sudden shift in perspective has something to do with the era that has given us Wikipedia. (It would be very interesting to check a range of encyclopedia articles on this, comparing the 1980s versions with the current offerings. I haven't done this, but will when I have a chance. I can't be certain, but I have a strong inkling of what I will find. Anthropologists, being academics, work under special pressure from the waves of political correctness that have been sweeping our universities since, yes, the 1980s.)

Another place where your arguments are pertinent is where you write as follows:

Children are still at the whim of the mental/emotion/financial stability of their caregivers. Heterosexuals have absolutely no biological monopoly on sanity, stability, or ability to provide a healthy and loving home life. There is absolutely no reason I can think of that one man and one woman are somehow better biologically/socially/mentally/emotionally/spiritually/financially equipped to raise a child than two men, or two women.

You put your convictions here very strongly and in the clearest possible terms. But do you really believe what you write? There is "absolutely no reason"? I will be blunt about my own thinking on this question of child-rearing. All other factors being equal, I think the best home for a child to be raised in is one with a (female) mother and a (male) father. All other factors being equal, homes with single parents or same-sex parents are not as good for a child's social development. It is better for children to have both male and female role models in the house, as it helps with their own gender development and integration into the culture at large.

Please note the importance of my mitigating clause "all other factors being equal". It means, of course, that I fully recognize there are same-sex or single parents who do a great job raising kids, just as there are heterosexual couples who do a dismal job. I am certainly not claiming that children can only be raised well if they are raised in a traditional family. Still, I believe the battle over same-sex marriage has led progressive-minded people to overstate their confidence in the other direction. Me, I'm not convinced there is "absolutely no difference" between different kinds of household in terms of a child's well-being. (I know, by the way, what recent studies have shown.)

As to your straw-man arguments, these would include things like:

Truthfully, I am not sure how [seeing gays or lesbians as abnormal] is any different from bigotry against someone for their skin color? If someone doesn’t belong to a group which has more than (51%? 66%?) of the same shade of skin color in a given school/state/country, then they don’t deserve equal rights? If your sexuality is only reflected by 6-10% of the rest of the population, you are abnormal, deviant, disposable? At what point, what percentage, does some condition or state earn the right to be considered “normal?”

Here you're not debating me any more, but going after a generalized right-wing bogeyman (one that exists, to be sure, but one that is not me). In reply, I would remind you, and anyone else who lightly uses the term bigot, that it is entirely possible to strongly believe both of these statements:

1) Homosexuality is normal for 6-10 percent of any given human population; it is not perverse or anything to be ashamed of.

2) A man cannot marry a man; a woman cannot marry a woman.

I don't see how I'm treating gays or lesbians as "disposable" by being against same-sex marriage. I don't at all agree that I'm a bigot by taking this position. Please explain. I may point out, by way of illustration, that I also strongly believe both of the following statements:

1) In any given human population, a large percentage of people are raised with siblings; having siblings is not perverse or deviant.

2) One cannot marry a brother or sister.

Thinking this way makes me an incorrigible and unrepentant siblingphobe, right? Nonetheless, Renge, I will have to stand my ground here. Laws against inter-sibling marriage should be maintained, whatever you might say. (Before you scoff and try to claim my comparison here is merely glib, please note--irony of ironies!--: there is actually more historical precedent for sibling marriage than there is for same-sex marriage.)

The simple truth is that our culture and most world cultures currently share a few common exclusionary principles that inform the definition of marriage. One cannot marry one's parent, one's child, or one's sibling. One cannot marry a person of the same sex. I don't see any reason to change our basic definition of marriage on these fundamental points--but, again, that is exactly what same-sex marriage supporters are doing. They are not extending marriage rights to a previously excluded group; rather they are changing the meaning of marriage itself.

I was trying to stress this same point when I wrote that, in the strictest sense, gays and lesbians already have the right to marry; but that, since marriage is by definition between male and female, they understandably are not likely to pursue their right. I was not being, as you say, "disingenuous", but making a point about what the right to marriage entails.

When the Nineteenth Amendment to our Constitution was ratified in 1920, it extended voting rights to women, a group who'd previously been excluded from exercising that right. The Nineteenth Amendment did not, however, alter the definition of what it means to vote. This was a true extension of rights, not an attempt to tamper with fundamentals. People who liken the push for same-sex marriage to the suffragette movement or the civil rights movement are getting it very wrong. Neither of these movements tried to alter the meaning of the rights invoked. But same-sex marriage does just that. To put the difference metaphorically: One can discover a new species of bird. But deciding that we might also start referring to squirrels as birds is altogether different. It radically alters the meaning of the term bird.

The fact that I have long supported establishment of civil unions for same-sex couples means that the good points you make about hospital visitation, tax benefits, etc., are also somewhat a matter of straw-man arguments. I've long supported extending these rights. The compromise I discussed in my essay, suggested by Anderson and Girgis in 2009 (a compromise according to which conservatives would agree to support civil unions in return for the LGBT community agreeing to support DOMA, thus ensuring that civil unions not be used as a stepping-stone to force legalizing of same-sex marriage) would have been well worth pursuing, as it would have kept our country from becoming so bitterly divided on this issue. This route is now unavailable, since Section 3 of DOMA was declared unconstitutional in 2013. Which leave opponents of same-sex marriage where? I'll tell you: the serious ones no longer support civil unions. In this regard, because I recognize gay and lesbian rights as important, I'm not among these serious ones. But I'm on the edge here. The sudden aggressiveness of the gay marriage push, the demonizing of people who refuse to go along, is as disgusting to me as the virile homophobia we see on the lunatic right.

I consider the movement for same-sex marriage to be an impertinence. I mean this word in all its possible senses. The movement is an impertinence because it is an instance of aggressive provocation at a time when gays and lesbians were already doing very well. They already had laws preventing discrimination against them in universities, in the workplace, in housing. They could live their lives as they chose. But no--they had to take the further step of demanding a change to marriage customs.

The movement is also an impertinence because it has caused an enormous stir at a historical moment when there are, as you recognize, much graver problems to be addressed. The same-sex marriage crowd has only further exacerbated the "culture wars" that our current political class uses to keep itself in power. Though we are a two-party democracy in name, it is obvious we have become a one-party oligarchy in fact. Since rapacious corporate capitalism is the only politics available to American voters, our ruling class has come up with two "flavors" in order to create the illusion of a democratic process. And so, we must choose between the economically right-wing corporate servants (called Republicans) who stand against abortion and same-sex marriage, and the economically right-wing corporate servants (Democrats) who are okay with abortion and same-sex marriage. It is not a choice, but a not-so-subtle scam that allows the corporate powers to continue to run roughshod over the natural environment and the American people. I would insist that the push for same-sex marriage is an unlooked for gift to our ruling oligarchs. No doubt the corporate crowd chuckles together on their yachts about it. Starting in the 1990s, really picking up steam after the millennium, here they have the gay/lesbian community offering them this huge political gift on a Jean-Paul Gaultier silver platter, as if gays and lesbians everywhere were standing up and declaring in a loud voice: "Here, Oligarchs, we give you this to make the masses squabble while you continue to rob them and rape the earth under their feet. Let them squabble about us. We're kind of getting used to the attention you know!" What a gift! The Koch brothers are almost ready to dress up in leotards, they're so delighted at the LGBT contribution. But for me--what an amazing piece of political impertinence it is! After being on this earth 200 centuries, our species is likely to render itself extinct after a mere three centuries of "modern Enlightenment culture". According to many scientists, we may very well no longer even be here in 2200. But hey--why not introduce an entirely new kind of marriage to the world, right? Now is the time to devote ourselves to this historic push to reform marriage!

I suspect you feel I'm starting to go on a rant here, Renge, getting a bit ranty and drifting from topic. Actually I don't quite think so. It was you who raised the question of how the push for same-sex marriage fit in the general movement of history when you stressed repeatedly how institutions need to "change with the times". I'm just stressing how I think it fits with the current times. It will likely go down in history--if we have any long-term history--as an unfortunate distraction. I'm aware how in this debate I'm standing on what many people are starting to identify as "the wrong side of history". I believe this is likely so, that the momentum is now with gay marriage. So I probably am on the wrong side of history in terms of short-term history--the history, say, of US society and politics. In terms of the long picture, however, I'm more confident. And in terms of my rant, I'm only just getting started. I did promise a rant after all.

I want to return to consideration of what I mentioned above as the general theory of history you seem to be basing so many of your arguments on. You seem to believe that politics and history is a matter of moving "forward"--of growing into the future by developing and implementing our ever-expanding human wisdom. You refer to "outdated" religious thinking and insist that institutions must "adapt". I'll admit this is a strong way of approaching history and politics, and I'm also often tempted to think this way. But when I'm thinking honestly about the world, I snap out of it. I've come to believe there's something fatal in this approach to history, that it contains a fateful seed that still isn't finished sapping the life from us. I see this weed growing in most of us.

Such "onward" and "forward" thinking is a kind of virus we injected into ourselves during the Enlightenment. Infected with this virus, we cut an ever-widening swath of mayhem and destruction across the planet. Peoples and ecosystems go up in smoke at the touch of our burning scythe.

So certain religious ways of understanding the world are "outdated"? Maybe. But it's not just in religion or ethics that things get outdated. And when you confidently adopt this language of progress, as if it were somehow obvious or unproblematic, you need to remember that this is precisely the same ideology of progress that is causing so many of our most dire problems. Indeed, it is just this kind of thinking that is, on many fronts, enabling your enemies. I'm going to play Devil's advocate and speak in the voice of "progress" on some other issues here. See how it sounds to you in these registers. First off, Renge, when I hear about people running small local farms trying to grow produce for a local community, I really have to laugh sometimes. It's so "outdated"! Everyone knows we now have a huge world population to feed. Agriculture has come a long way toward meeting this challenge, and we now have genetically modified crops that offer much better yield. Why continue with ridiculous medieval methods of farming? Or, to use your precise language: agriculture needs to "adapt" to the "current social reality", no?

Feeling a bit warm around the collar?

Or what about public safety? Yes, there are still some quaint people out there who want us to hire police to patrol the streets and interact with and protect the citizenry. What a laugh! Don't they know it's expensive and impractical and, frankly, it's sooo twentieth century? Now we can just install security cameras on every street corner and one police officer can easily surveil a whole borough. And we can even make his or her job easier by using facial recognition software in the system. The system will then automatically identify and begin to track anyone who's ever been arrested the moment they leave their dwelling. A little red dot will come to float over the heads of any troublemakers who happen to be on the street. Of course we'll have to make wearing masks or obstructive hoods illegal. But that's a small price to pay for the leap forward in policing that these technologies will allow. Remember, Renge, we live in a dangerous world. Strict notions of individual liberty, the kind of thing you'd hear before 9/11, are "outdated" and we must "adapt". There are terrorists plotting this minute to murder us. Safety first, no? Besides, it's inevitable: the technology is there, so we should use it to our advantage.

Ditto with the Internet. The reality of ever more sophisticated terrorists demands that we record and follow every communication between citizens. Outdated concepts of privacy have to be tweaked a bit to ensure the security of our nation and economy. Our notions of what government can access in our private lives must adapt. It's progress. Why try to buck it?

I could go on with any number of examples of how we must accept institutions changing to keep up with a changing social reality. This is your same logic of history at work, Renge. Monsanto, security cameras, government making records of all communications between supposedly free citizens--all these are being justified in terms of inevitable "progress" and "adapting to current social realities". And this is just the start of a list of "progressive" initiatives we swallow without protest because we all, as Americans, have been somehow convinced that the new, the updated, is an improvement on the old, the time-tested.

Foreign policy? Foreign policy in the age of the Super Corporation is sure difficult, isn't it? It's best we just acknowledge the current reality and work with it. Concepts of the "nation state" are a thing of the past. It's a new world out there.

Or what about the university? It must adapt to the challenge of the modern job market. Humanities studies are a luxury and a waste of scarce university resources. Or what about our prisons? . . . Or what about . . .

The important thing is to make sure institutions keep up with the current social reality, right? Because our awareness of so many things is expanding. To stubbornly stick to concepts from the past-- It's outdated.

Your arguments are well put, and you're clearly a very articulate debater, but I'm sorry, these are the kinds of things I actually I hear when you talk about "outdated" religious ideas and the need to "adapt" to the new. I hear the massive ongoing onslaught of "the new"--from the food we eat to the way our government works to the way we educate the next generation. I hear Miley Cyrus and a culture made of tweets and soundbites, brought to you by BP ("Beyond Petroleum"). I hear Kanye and Kim missionary style on a Harley, motoring through a landscape shining gold with GM wheat. Each celeb has their own fashion label, their own style of "subversiveness", backup vocals by Monsanto. In short, I hear the claptrap of an out-of-control capitalism, where everything is malleable to the dictates of the market.

So many things that you hate, Renge, are being brought to you by this same ideology of "adaptation" and "progress" and leaving behind the "outdated". I would think you'd be a bit more skeptical of this way of thinking about history.

And mysteriously, the movement for same-sex marriage arises out of this same world. But why is that? I don't have a good theory why, but I think it's a valid question. In any case, no culture has ever recognized same-sex love as compatible with marriage. What exactly is pushing us to do so now?

I have long been doubtful of the viability of modern culture. I am not enthusiastic about our neoliberal capitalism, the "society of the spectacle" now thrown into hyperdrive by the Internet. (Cf. Guy Debord, with whom I can travel in some basic insights.) I am not convinced these things are here to stay. By the same token, I am not enthusiastic about same-sex marriage. To me, the fact that we can study millennia of human culture without finding precedent for it is not, as you see it, irrelevant. It is evidence there is something incompatible between homoerotic love and marriage, an "essence" of marriage that has established this border since time immemorial. Perhaps there is not an incompatibility for the same-sex individuals involved, but I suspect there is one for society as a whole. And that is my main frame of reference, because marriage is not merely a status between two individuals, but is also a status between the married couple and their larger community. Marriage is social before it is individual.

When I think of same-sex marriage, especially if I think of it in the context of the confident "forward thinking" you espouse, I have to ask myself: Is it mere coincidence that, although homoerotic love is as old and universal as humanity, yet it is only in our hyper-consumerist "postmodern" capitalist world that people are suddenly demanding gay and lesbian couples be recognized as "married", that this is suddenly somehow their "right"? In the comments section of my previous essay, which you may not have gotten to, I point out that in the past a minister conducting a marriage ceremony would say:

Into this holy estate these two persons now come to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together--let them speak now or forever hold their peace.

Given that marriage is a status conferred by the community, what does it mean for America that for every same-sex wedding now conducted there are literally tens of millions of Americans who might stand up to say: "Yes, I have a reason they may not be joined together in marriage. They are of the same sex." To me, this particular social reality suggests something of the arrogance of gay marriage activists. These tens of millions of people, many of whom do not deserve the epithet bigot, are part of the community in question, and have good reason to reject what is, after all, an entirely unprecedented re-definition of marriage. For the time being, I'm standing with them.


Responses
The above rebuttal of mine did not sway Renge's thinking. She repeated her assertion that my ideas were "outdated"--stressing that she had no problem with the term--and in fact she was deeply offended by parts of what I'd written. I apologized to her at length. I recognized that much of her offense came from the fact that she'd misinterpreted some of the ironies in my writing as my straightforward opinion. This has happened to me with readers before, and I apologized that I'd shifted around so much in terms of perspective in my piece. Renge accepted my apology, but didn't want to continue with the debate. Understandably, and I was feeling it too, we'd said more than enough about our positions for the time being.

Then my friend Steve Johnson weighed in. Steve had commented at length on my original essay. Reading Steve's rebuttal, Renge wrote as follows: "I am thrilled to read your friend Steve's comments--he has said it all for me as I could not, did not, do."

Steve's piece and my response to it are here

A complete index of all these posts in order is here. This index will be updated with any further new posts.

America's One-Party System

A Facebook post I put up August 31 along with the comment thread:

Many complain about America's two-party system, the limited choice it offers. I think they're getting it wrong. Our politics makes more sense when one recognizes it as a one-party system. Where some see a Democratic Party and a Republican Party, I just see two versions of the Republican Party. One the one hand there's the Republican Party that wants to outlaw abortion, on the other the Republican Party that wants to legalize gay marriage. This is what Americans get to choose from.

CJL: So what would you choose? I'd choose gay marriage if I were an American citizen.

DA: So, oligarchy or plutocracy.

Eric: Exactly, DA.

PR: Better dead than red, Eric Mader.

Eric: As I've said before, PR: They will pry my Che Guevara action figure from my dead frozen fingers.

K: Eric, I think your assessment is accurate, but overly granular. I think there is more value in moving up the so-called zeitgeist totem pole. Even the choices in terms of plutocracy versus oligarchy are actually archaic notions if you ask me. I do understand that my preferred word is not even a word, and is probably already overused too. It is corporatocracy. Spell check never finds this word, so that's how I guess it isn't a word. But, if you look closely at what is wrong with all things "structural" in our times, there is no "one" to blame. Everything is run either by a corporation or other grouped-together, 3rd-party-controlled mechanism (a corporation is run by shareholders) wherein no individual is actually responsible for the corporation's actions. If a corporation knowingly sells a deadly object/chemical/device and it actually kills dozens, or hundreds, or let's just say, millions... there is no one who is actually responsible. No one hangs. Sure you can sue, and force corporations to pay up, but there is no moral responsibility that is imbued into the corporate soul. If a human being were to commit the many sorts of acts that corporations do, they would suffer other than in the wallet. The human version of "personhood" has enormous cultural, and individual, and real expectations. To the contrary, corporations are only legally bound, with the threat of job loss or jail to the CEO, of return on capital to the shareholders. If a company attempts to do long-term thinking, or even provide notional constructions that one might call "moral fortitude" to any decision, the CEO can be fired or jailed. What complicates matters is that our culture is so deeply specialized and individuated that the experts in any given field are the only ones who are qualified to work in government as a watchdog. But if you live long enough in our system, you find out that the price to pay for being a watchdog in your career/profession is much higher to you as an individual. However, the rewards are vast if you are not a watchdog but instead support your professional colleagues' endeavors. In this context, any "political" party is nothing but a bobber on the corporate current. It has no real power, except around the edges. So, I do agree that the USA has a single party, one that provides choices around certain issues, that generates pretend differences, which are, however, of little impact on the actual direction of the consumption and distribution of resources. Gay marriage and abortion are merely issues that generate lots of emotive energy, but change nothing in terms of: Is there too much radiation in the Pacific Ocean? Should we burn all the coal on Earth if we finish burning all the oil? How much insecticide should a corn plant actually ooze from its pores before it is not safe to eat? At what point is the price of war too high when it comes to human deaths? Since these sorts of questions require rethinks on the direction our humanity goes, it's better to argue about unborn humans, and what genitals are suitable for legal contracts to be state recognized. Why are those more suitable issues? Because it is always better to inject the question of what the Invisible Man in the sky, who sees all, knows all, and loves all (except for the millions of specific little situations where he hates and needs to destroy you for all eternity), thinks about these matters. And as we know, only the ballot box can discern the almighty's actual feelings on such matters.

Eric: K: Yes, I agree with some of your points. In fact I would argue that THE main problem the world now faces is the centrality of the profit motive as combined with the nearly total irresponsibility that corporate structure allows for. Corporations privatize profits and (given their almost hand-in-glove collaboration with states) both socialize losses and leave all environmental fallout to the future to swallow as it will. To the degree the corporate model continues to dominate, to the degree our governments continue to dance as its paid puppets, it seems obvious to me that we are headed for extinction or something similar. Our own government has been more or less overthrown by a corporate coup, democracy for us is increasingly window dressing, and there is little chance, given the technologies of control now employed, that our population will be able to right this situation. Yes, I think America is VERY different from what it was through most of the post-war period. Ten more years of drift in the current direction and we will be justified in talking of "soft totalitarianism" Or perhaps not so soft. / I understand why you insist terms like oligarchy aren't really applicable here, but I still think the term has its use. After all, those who benefit from the central place of corporate structure in our society are largely that top 5 percent. And it is largely the needs of corporations that our government is responsive to: again ensuring that top 5 percent always ends up at the top, no matter how their card houses may topple. / The question of the day of course is how the left might begin the work of transforming this Doomsday machine we're riding. I say the left because I think it's only from the left that solutions are going to come--the right is still too busy applauding itself for the fall of the Soviet Union. / In terms of this discussion, the following deserves a careful read. In any case, Ackerman's article addresses the issues that need be addressed if there's any hope capitalism can be transformed before it takes us over the cliff it's heading to. But what kind of social upheaval would be necessary to enforce the kind of reforms he suggests? Is such a coordinated political platform even possible beyond its presence here in article form?

http://jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/

The article is largely on economics. Ackerman argues that the triumphalism of mainstream economics is unjustified given the evidence. For one, the maintenance of a laissez-faire environment is not as relevant to an economy's performance as is often assumed.

And here the discussion ended.

Doing Everyday Business in Chinese: What Is the Problem Here?

I want to be clear from the start that I'm not writing this to complain and I'm certainly not writing it to imply that the people I deal with every day are idiots. No, I'm trying to raise certain questions about communication in English, say, vs. in Chinese. I'm trying to present what to me is a cultural mystery because, really, the people I deal with every day are clearly not idiots. The mystery is why they choose to communicate as they do.

The following runaround happens to me all the time. In fact it has happened to me so many times during my years in Taipei that I'm now going to take the trouble to type out an example of it verbatim. Today I walked into a restaurant to order food and the ordering process went like this:

At Mos Burger, a fast food restaurant. About 1:00 p.m. All dialogue is in Chinese:

SERVICE PERSON (a woman, about 23): I can help you here, sir.

ME: Yes, I'd like to order three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go. On the one to go I'd like no mayonnaise or butter.

SP: Okay, three original MosBurgers. Would you like them with a meal or a la carte?

ME: A la carte. All three a la carte. [I repeat the order exactly] Three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go, the one to go with no mayonnaise or butter.

SP: Okay. [she incorrectly repeats the order to me] Three MosBurgers, two to go and one for here. And you don't want any mayonnaise on them.

ME: No. I want two for here and one to go. And I only want no butter or mayonnaise on the one to go. The two for here are just regular, with everything.

SP: Okay. Three MosBurgers, two for here and one to go. No mayonnaise on the two for here. [she starts to pass my order to the prep people] Three MosBurgers. . .

ME: No, no. Excuse me. The one to go is for someone who is allergic to dairy. So it's the one to go that has no butter or mayonnaise. No butter on the bread or mayonnaise. The two for here are just regular, with everything.

SP: [she thinks for awhile] Okay. Do you want the original sauce on the three burgers?

ME: Yes, original sauce. Three original flavor. It comes with the sauce.

SP: Okay. So you want three MosBurgers, the one to go with no mayonnaise. Do you want mayonnaise on the ones for here?

ME: Yes. It's only the one to go that has no mayonnaise.

SP: Okay.

[Another service person has been listening. She helpfully pipes in:]

SP2: Would you like cheese on the one to go?

[I begin to feel like I'm on a sinking ship. Consider: 1) original flavor MosBurgers don't come with cheese, and original flavor is what I've now three times expressly ordered; 2) I've already said the one to go is for someone who is "allergic to dairy"!]

ME: No. I don't want cheese on any of them.

SP: Okay. Three original flavor MosBurgers, two for here and one to go, no mayonnaise or butter on the one to go.

ME: That's it.

SP: Would you like those with a meal or a la carte?

[What should I say at this point? Yes, a few years ago I'd have angrily pointed out that I'd already answered that question earlier, and that in fact I'd already given my order four times and it should all be clear by now. But I want to be helpful, the girl is in fact polite, so I just repeat:] All three a la carte.

So I've finally placed my order. But wait. Now the woman has to pass my order to the food prep people. And it happens almost just as I predict. I stand there and listen as almost the same conversation she's just had with me, only slightly less involved, occurs between her and her coworkers. In fact I have to talk to the food prep people myself to clarify what the order really is.

I go sit down at a table and wait for my food to arrive. In my experience, after all that has transpired, the chances are about 50/50 that the order will be screwed up. But when it comes, I check it and it's correct. I then go back to the counter and order a medium iced tea.

Why, you may wonder, didn't I order the iced tea to begin with? I made the omission intentionally. It's because I've been here many years and didn't want to add any further complicating elements to my order--radically complicating elements such as a drink. Since I knew I'd already have to place my order half a dozen times, I wanted to be sure the burgers were straightened out before even thinking about drinks.

This is how it has gone for me countless times in restaurants and other businesses. It was the same again today. Now let me make a few things clear.

1) This is not happening because the service person is stupid.

2) It is not happening because the service person is especially irresponsible or inattentive. No, she was polite and clearly trying to do her job.

3) It is not happening because the restaurant is busy or the service person feels rushed or is otherwise multitasking. No, I was the only customer ordering at the time.

4) It is not happening because Mos Burger doesn't like to deal with special orders. No, they deal with such orders all the time. And after all, my request wasn't even very special: I wanted three of their most common product, one with slight modifications to go.

5) It is not happening because of my Chinese. Though I'm a foreigner speaking Chinese to a native speaker, my Chinese is certainly good enough to conduct a simple hamburger order. A few years ago I used to suspect otherwise--that maybe these runarounds were my fault because I wasn't communicating clearly. Now I highly doubt it. Why? Because I regularly watch locals getting into the same kind of back-and-forth dialogues with each other that I myself just underwent. And today again it seemed the counter person had nearly as much trouble communicating my simple order to her coworkers as I originally had communicating it to her. But why? Why couldn't she just put it into a sentence and they listen to each of the separate elements of the sentence and make sense of them? Why all the back and forth for God's sake?

6) I am not exaggerating this phenomenon. In fact today I wish I'd recorded the whole thing so I could type it out in Chinese as proof. If anything, I've simplified the dialogue.

7) I'm well aware that such things occur in every culture, my own American culture included. But in the West so much back and forth is certainly not the norm. And the point is that even before walking into that Mos Burger restaurant I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen at the counter--that I was going to have to repeat myself at least four times. Because for some reason, in many situations here, repetition of details is the norm.

So what gives? There seems to be something like the following going on: When I as a Westerner go into a shop to place an order or conduct business of some kind, I expect that if I carefully formulate my request in a simple sentence that the service person listening to me will absorb my sentence and organize the elements in his or her head so as to get the desired result. But-- When the Taiwanese goes into a shop to place an order, things are quite different. What he or she expects, and the people taking the order expect, is that there will be a repetitive and circular back and forth about the order, a kind of verbal touch and go, that will continue until the order is all clear in both parties' minds. Further: If the person listening to the order misunderstands it the first two or three times around, this is not rude or inefficient service but rather just how things are expected to be. In short: Taiwanese don't mind repeating themselves: for them such repetition is part of the nature of communication. And further: Taiwanese don't bother to listen carefully, because they know whatever they hear will be repeated anyway.

Am I right about this?

My anthropological suspicions on this point perhaps get some support from another aspect of communicating with Taiwanese that I've long noticed--and one that has often driven me nearly mad. I'm talking about the tendency not to answer Yes/No questions with a simple Yes or No.

Example, on a Taipei bus:

A: Excuse me. Does this bus cross Chung-Hsiao East Road?

B: Where do you want to go?

A: Uh. It's hard to explain. I just need to know if the bus crosses Chung-Hsiao East Road.

B: Are you going to Chung-Hsiao East Road?

A: No. I'm going north of Chung-Hsiao East Road. It's straight north of where we are now. Does this bus cross Chung-Hsiao East Road?

B: What section of Chung-Hsiao East Road?

A: Never mind. Thanks for your help.

Now of course in this case the person might be commended for wanting to know precisely where I was going so as to better help me. But the gist of my question was clear. Either the bus crosses the road in question or it doesn't. The man I was talking to knew the answer, I believe. He just didn't want to tell me with a simple Yes or No. There were so many other issues to be raised, it seems.

I'm afraid this bus dialogue isn't the best example though. It's hard to capture these exchanges in print. It's true that at least weekly I will find myself posing questions to people--friends, strangers, etc.--that have simple Yes/No answers, but I will never get the answer I need. Instead I will get comments on tangential issues or answers to questions I didn't ask. I almost wish I'd kept a journal on these kinds of dialogues: some of them are almost uncanny in the sheer irrelevance of the evasion.

When I want to know if a bus crosses a certain road, why should I be made to feel that I'm trying to coax some secret out of someone?

I'm aware that in business negotiations refusing to give clear-cut answers is often a matter of strategy. And that Asians--Japanese and Chinese in particular--are particularly good at being noncommittal as the terms of a deal are hashed out. Still, why should this kind of dogged avoidance of clear-cut answers happen when the stakes of the discussion are minuscule?

I overhear Taiwanese conversing with each other and notice the same kinds of non sequitur. Namely, 1) a clearly stated order at a counter is not taken as such, but is rather a kind of invitation to go round and round restating the order's elements; 2) a direct question is not respected as such, but is instead an invitation to talk about something else.

What gives? I'm aware that linguists and people in East-West relations have probably studied these questions.

Make no mistake. I love Taiwan and its people. I've come to think of these linguistic oddities as a kind of mystery more than an annoyance. At times such runarounds are humorous because they are so predictable. But what are they grounded on?

Comments very welcome.