Reading notes

I was already agog with poetic amazement at Garrison’s term describing the Republican Party earlier this week, “the Christian party that conceals enormous glittering malice” (alt). Man, that’s so right on. The irony is that “Christian” and “malice” can exist in the same clause, but for now, to my deep sadness, they do. Jesus weeps.

Now I see We’re not in Lake Wobegon anymore. Go, man, go:

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. …

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, … Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous. …

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few [being accomplished by Republicans through deceit and distraction] is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good. …

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. …

This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger.

Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader.

Amen, brother. It is a brilliant, unexcerptable rant. Check it out.

One of the reasons I think this election is such a Big.Deal on a personal level is that a decision to vote for Bush is one quite likely to haunt for the rest of one’s days. This voting decision must be made with full knowledge and conviction, with no coercion, because the cost of a mistake lightly made but that can’t be undone is astronomical: a self-revealing choice that will not be forgotten by friends and family, especially not by one’s children, a regret not likely to be dimmed by the years.

[via peter]

We have another Ph.D. in discernment, Dr. Josh. This is a short treatise on the affliction of moral cowardice:

I’ve said several times over recent days that it is an example of the president’s moral cowardice that he has such a long record of having others savage his opponents — for sins of which he is usually more guilty than they — and then denying any responsibility for what’s happening. …

The current debate about these two men’s military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we’re talking substance. The real issue isn’t physical bravery but moral cowardice. …

On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It’s the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

Thanks, Josh.

As is probably obvious, I look at the world through a lens of Christian theology as I understand it (not Religious Right theology, which I assess as a spoiled facsimile of the real thing). It’s habit, through training and disposition.

What I think I’m seeing — as brought to mind today by Josh and Paul — is the Holy Spirit awakening a “discernment of spirits” in more and more of us. I’m not sure those in whom this gift is activated even have to believe where it’s coming from; as with the sun and rain, God has always been lavish in bestowing spiritual gifts on his kids with no demand for obeisance. Never have I been happier to see a gift bestowed in sweeping measure.

Because we cannot live a lie and please the Lord. We must see what is, then act to set it right.

Dr. Krugman not only passes Discernment 101, he’s apparently got his doctorate in it. This strikes me as insightful on the order of Solomon:

Almost a year ago, on the second anniversary of 9/11, I predicted “an ugly, bitter campaign — probably the nastiest of modern American history.” The reasons I gave then still apply. President Bush has no positive achievements to run on. Yet his inner circle cannot afford to see him lose: if he does, the shroud of secrecy will be lifted, and the public will learn the truth about cooked intelligence, profiteering, politicization of homeland security and more.

But recent attacks on John Kerry have surpassed even my expectations. There’s no mystery why. Mr. Kerry isn’t just a Democrat who might win: his life story challenges Mr. Bush’s attempts to confuse tough-guy poses with heroism, and bombast with patriotism. …

We have been living in what Roger Ebert calls “an age of Rambo patriotism.” As the carnage and moral ambiguities of Vietnam faded from memory, many started to believe in the comforting clichés of action movies, in which the tough-talking hero is always virtuous and the hand-wringing types who see complexities and urge the hero to think before acting are always wrong, if not villains.

After 9/11, Mr. Bush had a choice: he could deal with real threats, or he could play Rambo. He chose Rambo. …

All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Mr. Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act — and what he said then rings truer than ever.

Do read the rest.

One more and I’m done …

Michael Tomasky writes well, effectively reminding me how the Big Lie can be weirdly effective if we let our guard down, because its “colossal untruth” gives it a phantom, perhaps diabolical, believability.

The larger story here is clear: John Kerry volunteered for the Navy, volunteered to go to Vietnam, and then, when he was sitting around Cam Ranh Bay bored with nothing to do, requested the most dangerous duty a Naval officer could be given. He saved a man’s life. He risked his own every time he went up into the Mekong Delta. He did more than his country asked. In fact he didn’t even wait for his country to ask.

George W. Bush spent those same years in a state of dissolution at Yale, and would go on, as we know, to plot how to get out of going to Southeast Asia. …

While Kerry was plying the Mekong Delta, Cheney was safe and dry stateside, dropping out of Yale because his grades weren’t sufficient to maintain the scholarship the school had offered him. …

So now we’re having a debate about whether the man who did the honorable thing may have embellished his record a little (although nothing in the documentary record suggests he did this), while we have two cowards who did everything they could to stay miles away from the place Kerry demanded he be sent. This is the fundamental truth. …

Is it really Kerry who deserves scrutiny for how he behaved in 1968 and 1969? Why shouldn’t the major media be doing comparisons of how Kerry, Bush, and Cheney passed those years?

I do not condemn anyone for escaping a tour of duty in Vietnam, as I don’t think I could have survived it myself, but I will not tolerate anyone who wasn’t there slandering others who were there, serving honorably.

2004-08-24 update:
This LA Times editor sums up the extra-campaign campaign situation (MoveOn.org, SBVfT, etc.) this way:

There is an important difference, though, between the side campaign being run for Kerry and the one for Bush. The pro-Kerry campaign is nasty and personal. The pro-Bush campaign is nasty, personal and false.

[via Atrios]

U.S. use of depleted uranium (DU) and its permanent repercussions, moral and physical, chill me to the bone. We’ve unleashed it on friend and foe alike.

Since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation. …

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. …

Eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months. …

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. …

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. …

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.

I think this qualifies as a “generational curse,” one inflicted for no particular reason, that devastates cursor and cursee indiscriminately.

[also archived at Truthout]

I find this exchange (alt loc) wonderfully honest and funny:

In [his new book] Keillor, the host of public radio’s “Prairie Home Companion,” writes warmly of the homespun Scandinavian wisdom that informed his childhood — “Don’t Think You’re Special Because You’re Not,” which is just the local way, he notes, of reminding people to take care of their neighbors. It’s a basic human value, Keillor observes, that the party of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Tom DeLay gleefully abandoned years ago. “They are a party,” writes Keillor, “that is all about perceptions, the Christian party that conceals enormous glittering malice and is led by brilliant bandits who are dividing and conquering the sweet land I grew up in. I don’t accept this.” …

[John F. Kennedy] was a war hero who had a gift of public grace and utterance, which was quite remarkable, compared to the huffing and puffing of Richard Nixon, a cartoon pol. John Kerry has a similar gift of grace; you listen to him and you know there’s somebody home, the lights are on, the elevator is working. This is electric, compared to George W. Bush, who is the shallowest man to occupy the White House since Calvin Coolidge.

Worth reading in full!

[also archived at Truthout]