On missed opportunities and the art of self-deception…

I did not do the whole blog thing back in high school, so I have no electronically documented words from September 11, 2001.  I remember it, though, and the disgust with my fellow Americans that I felt shortly thereafter.  In light of the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden, I thought I would take the time to jot down some thoughts on the unfolding events within the context of those mixed feelings I had nearly 10 years ago.

That day, running out the door to catch my ride, I was met with somber faces and talk radio in place of the usual laughter and hip hop jams when I opened the car door.  I stepped up to get into the jeep when my friend simply asked, “Did you hear?”  Hear what?  I ran back into the house to my dad in his suit and told him the twin towers in New York had just been attacked, to which he responded by laughing out loud, so great was his disbelief.  So, I told him to turn on the TV, and there, clear as day, was footage of a plane exploding into one of the twin towers.  We sat and watched for a minute, watched the second tower go down, and then I ran back out to the car for the sullen ride to school.

We talked about the attack in almost every one of my classes that day.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, my first class of the day was “Faith in Action” or “Good kids pretend to do Christian things but just end up setting up chapel” class.  We prayed and talked and reflected.  What I remember from that day is being wary.  Very wary.

this is the america we live in

Following that day there was an outpouring of nationalism.  I remember the tension I felt, the internal battle between what is good and right and just and what is blinded by fear and pain and uncertainty masquerading as goodness and righteousness and justice. This tension never really went away, even as the dust around ground zero cleared and our sights were set on God knows who else.  Quite the contrary, actually, as I felt increasingly ambivalent about the situation, with new events, intelligence, and attacks only adding to the confusion as to who was and how to determine what constituted the good and the right and the just.  Then we found ourselves in the midst of war.  “War.”  Our war was a war on ideas, and ideas can never be “won” short of total elimination of their proselytizers, and what about that is not genocide?  And, then, in what situation, EVER, is genocide good and right and just?

Part 2: Disappointment and Uncertainty of a Pacifist

While (slowly) making my way through the promised four books, I’ve been short on writing (mostly due to inexplicable tiredness every moment I’m not fastidiously consuming coffee).  I’m currently working on a post about why I hate war and militarism, but in the meantime, I found these two papers I wrote for a Servant Leadership Class in DC called American Empire: It’s Disruption, and Possible Christian Responses. These two papers were in response to the first four chapters of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. As you can probably glean from the titles, they’re also a comment on pacifism and nonviolence and fairly adequately express my constant critical cycling of thoughts regarding the whole issue.

Part 2 expresses my complete exasperation at it all:

The Pacifist’s Rant (and Subsequent Plea)

Are there no good people left on earth? Did they ever exist in the first place? I try not to think of people as inherently bad, unjust, and unkind; to not give into the convenient conclusion that we are birthed with a desire to inflict grievances upon our fellow people with the rest of our lives spent suppressing this base persuasion. But it seems that, at least amidst the pages of Zinn, there is no good to be found. Providing a different historical perspective, we see that our fearless and righteous leaders were money-grubbing, manipulating, power-driven elitists using the people and their oppression for their own advancement, comfort, and security. Every good word they spoke was only honorable at the surface, for skulking below their woven tale of freedom and prosperity was a classist hierarchy preserving and nurturing the current disparity between peoples. The elites hid their intentions behind promises of upward mobility and unified country. As a consequence, and often rightly so, the oppressed rose up in protest of this injustice. They could feel, if not always articulate, the wrongs committed against them. But where does the oppressor’s “bad” end and the oppressed’s “good” begin? It seems that no line between the two is ever drawn, for the oppressed push back with violence and a destructive hunger equal in magnitude, if not direction or impact, to that of the oppressors.

Part 1: Criticism and Optimism of a Pacifist

While (slowly) making my way through the promised four books, I’ve been short on writing (mostly due to inexplicable tiredness every moment I’m not fastidiously consuming coffee).  I’m currently working on a post about why I hate war and militarism, but in the meantime, I found these two papers I wrote for a Servant Leadership Class in DC called American Empire: It’s Disruption, and Possible Christian Responses. These two papers were in response to the first four chapters of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. As you can probably glean from the title, they’re also a comment on pacifism and nonviolence and fairly adequately express my constant critical cycling of thoughts regarding the whole issue.

Part 1 is what I like to think of as the rallying cry. (Though you’ll likely note that I ran out of time there at the end and it all just sort of tapers off into oblivion rather anticlimactically.)

Destruction: The Panacea of the Empire

The Europeans were a determined and confident people: Determined to succeed, determined to follow-through, and confident in their methods. Empowered by this determination and confidence, their goal was clear – be it attainment of wealth, land, resources, or progress – and any obstruction of their ambition was dealt with in the most immediately effective and exacting way. Simply put, to destroy it. However, their display of power and self-assuredness was only a mask for their cowardice. Often their arrival to new lands was met with a multitude of obstacles. But rather than address these challenges with a calculated plan and conviction, they sought a scapegoat in the indigenous people. The responsibility to ensure Europe’s success fell to the Indians but more importantly, the indigenous people were held accountable for the often certain and unavoidable failure of the Europeans. With this displacement of blame the Indians were seen as an obstruction preventing Europe from acquiring their goal, an obstruction that needed to be dealt with by destroying it so that Europe’s path to success was smooth and clear.

Real Food Science or We’re All On The Same Team Here or I Promise All Of My Posts Won’t Be About Science…

In starting these four books, I honestly thought Wendell Berry was going to provoke me the most, get me to put my mental fists up in defense (“mental fists”?  really?)  So, I’m a bit surprised that one chapter in I’ve found Berry rather soothing and beautiful to read, and it’s Michael Pollan who has me running to my computer to get down some rebuttals.

I’m five chapters in, but not quite out of the Nutritionism section, which is probably to blame for my defensiveness.  Let me preface this with the comment that, at the root of his argument, I agree with Pollan.  We both have clear issues with reducing our food to insufficient components (vitamins, nutrients, fats, etc.) that mean little outside of context, relationships, biochemistry, and behavior.  We also both think that policy, public health, and industry have many ulterior motives that do not seem to include public well-being.  Further, we often find science, or “science” as I like to call it, in bed with the latter three.  Finally, food modification (abomination) is simply out of hand.  I don’t need cows to eat flaxseed (instead of grain feed which is eaten instead of grass) to give me Omega-3 fatty acids when I eat a steak.  And, I have often wondered what in the hell a “natural flavor” is.  If it’s so natural, why don’t you tell me it’s real name?  And, if it’s artificially created in a lab to be chemically identical to the real thing, then fucking just tell me that.  I might actually be less creeped out by that then simply “natural flavor”.  It’s so mysterious.

With that said, there are a few things I would challenge, or at least question, in Pollan’s argument thus far.  First, it seems (though not yet explicitly stated) that Pollan believes a “commonsense” theory of food would lead us to healthier and happier people.  In fact, he states that before nutrition science, we did and were just that.  Fine.  But I have to say this: commonsense is only better than science if commonsense is sound, which is the same that can be said for science.  Pollan has yet to posit anything inherently wrong with science, and I would argue the many negative implications of science cited thus far can be attributed to bad science and a complete (though possibly intentional) misinterpretation and misuse  of science (more on that in a bit). 

An unintentionally long (and somewhat incomplete) beginning…

Here in starts the beginning.  Well, that was redundant.  And we’re off to a great start!  

As I said in my other post on my other blog, I’m hoping to write my thoughts regarding various books I will be attempting to read simultaneously.  These thoughts, while I wish they were well thought out and worded for maximum impact, will likely be haphazard and stream of consciousness (my specialty).  I’m not the writer many of my friends are and that will most certainly come to the fore in this (hopefully realized) series of writing.  My hope is that I’ll be able to formulate some essay-like prose, but as I am prone to making lists, my thoughts may come in bulleted fashion more often than I would like.  With that said, here goes.

The books:

1. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

2. The Gift of the Good Land by Wendell Berry. (If I somehow manage to get my hands on the Unsettling of America instead – which I once had a copy and now seem to no longer possess – I will be substituting that in instead, as it is somewhat of a forerunner to The Gift of the Good Land.)

3. Deep Economy by Bill McKibben.

4. Nevertheless by John Howard Yoder.  (Because you probably can’t tell by the title, this book is a typology of the various forms of religious pacifism.  Hopefully I’ll figure out which one I am by the conclusion of my reading, because I’m tired of defending something so nebulous for most people.)

These are all books I once meant to read and never followed through with (no surprise there).  I’m almost certain at least one will drop from the list as I get further in, though think that they all may have an interesting way of speaking to each other.  I also think some of the information will be redundant, thus allowing me to navigate multiple rather than few.  We’ll see.  First thoughts after the jump.

“You Can’t Say That On Television, Mr. President”

I woke up this morning to Donnie Simpson’s voice (yes, my alarm clock is tuned into morning hip-hop jams on 95.5) discussing Barack Obama. Over the last several months, hearing Obama’s name in the morning has been anything but a rare occasion. But what shocked me out of my morning sleepy stupor much quicker than usual was the clip of Obama’s interview on Leno last night. From President Obama’s mouth:

“I bowled a 129…It’s like – it was like the Special Olympics, or something.”

That is the presidential equivalent of saying, “That’s retarded.” Well, isn’t this fitting in light of Eugene Cho’s post on sojoblog?  Calling out Miley Cyrus and that one Jonas Brother for racist photo poses is one thing, but what do you do when it is the President of the United States making an offhand joke about the Special Olympics? And not just any president, but a recently-elected and much-beloved president who is also publicly heralded as evidence of the progress our country has made toward equality.

“There Go Those Gays, Fucking Up the Military Again…”

“Oh shit! That boy just kissed that other boy!” ROTC Midshipmen Dave Perry and Nick Trimis then quickly left the frat party, stifling smirks and dry heaves, running to Lt. Kathleen Meeuf to tattle on their fellow ROTC-er.

Or something like that. Creative license, etc.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy Punishes GW ROTC Freshman

Todd Belok, a freshman enrolled in the Naval ROTC program at GW, was recently dismissed for kissing another boy at a party. Two fellow midshipmen, Perry and Trimis, witnessed the kiss and reported the breach to ROTC higher-ups. Despite contradicting GW’s own antidiscrimination policy, the university decided to uphold federal law without a fight. What in the hell is going on here?

Apparently, according to the article, homosexual acts like a kiss make for an “uncomfortable situation” for some ROTC kids. Ninety percent of women in the military who are under the age of 50 report sexual harrassment, with 1/3 of all women reporting sexual assault. Recently, guards humiliated, abused, and dehumanized detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. Rape and torture, whatever, but a kiss between boys really makes me squirm. “Strong words, Katie, you’re a wee bit off your mark here.” Sure, maybe. But I’m also a just a wee bit incensed here. The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell military policy has to be one of the dumbest and most bigoted long-standing policies around. How can such flagrant human rights abuses be taken in stride by the military, but Todd Belok gets dismissed for a kiss?

Faith, Atrophied

I started a class on Biblical justice and its (dis)alignment with our American notion of action. A Moral Creed for All Christians (Daniel Maguire), a book attempting to hold in tension a perfect creator and his/her creation wrecked with failure as it attempts to bring forth the kingdom, is the course text and the following is a reflection on (merely) its first chapter. I was hoping to spark some class discussion, but the opportunity wasn’t there, and now have my fingers crossed that this might be a welcoming (and outspoken) environment.

A quick note: For someone who has been a Christian for the last twenty-five years, I know very little about the Bible. I’ve lived my life and my faith in the gray area world of the Biblical Big Picture that exists under the larger moral arc of Christian love. Thus the following questions I pose and premises I depend on are tenuous at best. I welcome the aspiring Biblical scholars and theologians, historians and anthropologists, and those of you who’ve spent time in scripture and prayer to shake your head and let me know “how it really is.”

On Sin and Action: What is with our obsession with sin and depravity? Am I sinful? Sure. Am I imperfect? Obviously. Do I need God to save me from all of this? Yes, I do. But so much focus on the complete wreckage that is humanity can make it incredibly difficult to move: move to action, move to seek justice, move to make peace, move to love. And where is the merit in that? Humility is vital to working toward all of those virtues (and what better way to humble oneself than reflecting on the many ways we fail to measure up?), but it doesn’t necessarily require continuously dredging through our mire of insufficiencies. We needn’t endlessly suffer to the point of immobility to remind us of our dependence on God’s grace, and, likewise, God’s offering of grace is not contingent on us drowning in our sins.

Race at the Olympics

I can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about the Olympics (”Michael Phelps this, Michael Phelps that.” Thank God my friend finally told me who Michael Phelps is). But it wasn’t until I was over on Eugene Cho’s blog the other day that my interest was thoroughly piqued. Cho posted a photo of the Spanish men’s basketball team “making their eyes Chinese,” along with his response. (I encourage you to check out Cho’s honest and articulate posts — he has since written a second one — and the open conversation they have sparked.)

The New York Times has thoroughly covered the incident. The photo was an ad in a Spanish newspaper that also included an identical photo of the women’s basketball team. In order to assuage some of the reactionary discomfort surrounding the ad, the Spanish teams have alluded that it was an “affectionate gesture” between the teams and their Chinese sponsor, Li-Ning footwear company. And as a response to critical accusations from those offended by the ad, we are reminded that the Chinese embassy in Spain does not find it to be racist or offensive.

This seems to imply that everyone else is overreacting: “Look! Even China doesn’t care!” However, I see China’s willingness to overlook the incident as a diplomatic consequence rather than an admission that the act is not a racially loaded and dangerous one. Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad we don’t feel the need to start official conflicts over such things. Being able to recognize intention, distinguish between actions and actors, and, above all, gracefully forgive are hallmarks of mature relationships. But this does not equal rendering the act as “okay” and inoffensive. How do we keep from sacrificing loving accountability for diplomatic tolerance? Or more bluntly, how do we say a racist act is wrong but forgiven, rather than ignore the offended and excuse racism for the sake of appearances?