Tread lightly on the things of earth

I attended my first Quaker meeting today.

BTW, the formal title of the Quaker movement is “Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).”

I had read Thomas Hamm’s The Quakers in America at Martin’s suggestion, so I was better prepped than I think I’ve ever been for attending a new worship context. In this case the reality I’d read about meshed perfectly with the reality I encountered in an unprogrammed Friends worship meeting. In a gentle and non-spectacular way, it felt like going home.

As I told one of the Friends I met, I was visiting because I haven’t been able to stay in community with my Christian brothers and sisters who support present U.S. administration policies — and because I value community, I simply need to find someplace else to be. No disrespect intended to anyone I know, but my peaceful experience at the Friends meeting highlights for me the violence I feel elsewhere in the cracks between worship among ones who agree with current U.S. foreign policy.

The good news is, there’s apparently somewhere to worship for everyone, even ones with nervous systems cranked up to 11, like me. :-)

(For anyone interested, Marsha provides a lovely one-page introduction to unprogrammed Quaker worship and values.)

I’m with these people.

Concerning the military draft:

I wrote to a young college-age friend last month that in a second Bush term, the military draft will almost certainly be implemented within months, affecting men and women ages 18 through 34. It’s not fearmongering to point this out; it’s self-evident and numerically inescapable: More wars are planned, and not enough volunteers are available. The draft will follow as night follows day.

Earlier this month, Congressman Tim Ryan, OH-17, explained on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives “why some people believe the Bush Administration has plans to re-institute a military draft” (October 5, 2004, video link).

The military draft has become, no surprise, a significant campaign issue. It’s rightly putting the fear of God into a lot of people.

I think the big-picture learning opportunity here is this:

If you support something only until you realize it costs you personally, and then you don’t support it, you can safely conclude it was never worth supporting at all. Being able to see this ahead of time is what “love your neighbor as yourself” means.

[draft age link via machopicasso]

Concerning flu vaccine:

How can we expect the Bush Administration to respond effectively to a catastrophic biological threat when it can’t ensure availability of flu vaccine?

This isn’t simply a question by analogy: Influenza (flu), of whatever sort, is itself a potentially catastrophic biological threat.

I’m keenly aware of this because my paternal grandfather and one sister were their family’s only survivors in the flu epidemic of 1918, their parents and other siblings suddenly dead:

In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. … Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world’s population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war.

I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the same production and delivery infrastructure for flu vaccine as for smallpox, anthrax, and other bioterror agent treatments. If the infrastructure is broken for flu vaccine when there’s no pressing epidemic, I feel no confidence it’ll work under a bioterrorism threat.

update:
Ah, I see several letters to the editor about this very topic in today’s New York Times (via Buck Fush).

2004-10-19 update:
Melanie speaks detail to this flu vaccine- and public health infrastructure issue, making clear how it potentially affects every one of us.

Here’s the bottom line: we have a broken system, extremely broken, for public health. And it is ‘way larger than the vaccine. Last year, I skipped the vaccine, and I’m one of the ones who should be getting, not for me, but for you. I’m in the at risk population and you don’t want me acquiring the disease and spreading it. …

Think about this: your health choices this year will affect others, as well as will the choices you don’t get to make, because the functionaries in public health were denied the resources they need. Tell that to your elderly neighbor and the mother of three in pre-school.

Can Kerry fix a system which has been eroding for decades? No. But I’ll settle for knowing that 45 Million of the people I meet on the street every day can afford health care and won’t be blowing bugs on me.

Melanie’s argument makes clear that even selfish individual motivation to fix this problem can collectively lead to tremendous public benefit. Self-interest transformed into public altruism, ah, a wondrous alchemy!

[caught by Steve]

My friend Dale writes about not only his Kerry/Edwards yard signs being stolen, but his God is Not a Republican or a Democrat sign was taken, too.

I’m at 7-8 9 10 11 12 Kerry/Edwards signs stolen during this past month the past 6 weeks. Just flat-out made to vanish under cover of darkness. This phenomenon recapitulates for me an entire worldview’s unfortunate M.O.: trespass, steal, suppress dissent and all contradicting evidence. It’s a strange and unconvincing plan from people preaching “freedom” and “democracy,” I think.

Two things help me short to ground my occasionally flaring anger at practitioners of this M.O.: specifically, a boxful of K/E signs that allows me to replace the sign daily if necessary, and generally, (mis)remembering the adage “Anger is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” (Google reveals Malachy McCourt actually said “Resentment is like …” but that’s close enough to work.)

Beyond my obvious-but-ridiculously-hard choice not to take poison, my prayer asking how I’d best respond keeps returning an image of the prodigal father — that is, one extravagant with his love — who watches, watches, watches for his wayward son to repent and come home, and when he finally sees his son a long way off he runs out to embrace him.

Yikes, that’s a difficult example to follow. (Whether father or son.) But imagine the result — the homecoming — what a celebration that will be!

Dale’s sign, “God is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat,” refers to Sojourners’ ongoing petition to “take back our faith,” a stance I support as well. (Sojourners is “a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.”)

In his About.com article on this topic, Charles mentions the conviction —

A politics that privileges the powerful over the weak and the rich over the poor, and favors violence and the unilateral use of force over the use of diplomacy in the resolution of international problems, cannot be reconciled with biblical ethics.

That’s my inescapable conviction, too, one that arose in me during several years of seminary study:
I cannot reconcile prevailing U.S. political behavior with biblical ethics.

It’s not an exclusionary, “my way or the highway” kind of conviction — because I don’t know everything — but it’s nonetheless a fire-in-the-bones conviction in me that I understand as providing sufficient work-that-needs-doing to last me the rest of this lifetime.

For me and my house, then, this conviction is why I’m happy to support, work for, and vote for Kerry/Edwards and the Democratic worldview, however short of perfect it may be, and why I’m unable to ever, ever, ever support the Bush/Cheney worldview.

(“My house” tells me right away whenever she thinks otherwise. :-) )

half a day later:

And sometimes, like now, rage seems like a perfectly appropriate response, not to be shorted to ground. Meteor Blades reminds me:

In between my unfettered rage at the ideologues who lied us into the Iraq war and my cautious elation that we may elect someone who brings an end to that nightmare, I sometimes catch myself going numb. The statistics are numbing. Perhaps 25,000 people dead, most of them civilians. Perhaps 100,000 wounded, many of them maimed forever. …

Damn, bouncing between idealism, rage, and numbness is awkward. But part of human being, I think. Seasons turn: buds of spring burst to life, ease into fiery summer, wind down to autumn spent and brown, then cool down to icy winter, and back again. Likewise, our bodies run in cycles, ebbing and flowing throughout the day, the month, the years. Even scripture is cyclical, boldly wandering through the range of human emotions, unflinchingly touching on all extremes.

Life’s a rollercoaster all over, I think. Some of us loop-de-loop more than others, and some of us half fall out, but none of us bounces alone.

O Lord, just please deliver us from permanumb.

Watching this now on Sundance: awesome, awesome! I set the TiVo to catch this, then looked forward to it all day. But I didn’t expect to be this exhilarated.

Check the site for details — it airs again at 11:45 PM ET (315 min):
National Anthem: Inside the Vote for Change Concert Tour

In the tradition of these legendary works, Maysles and Pennebaker unite to take America’s social pulse with a new documentary project, “National Anthem: Inside the Vote for Change Concert Tour.” This film marks their first collaboration in forty years. Conceived by a loose coalition of musicians six months ago, “Vote for Change” is a multi-city, multi-artist swing-state tour taking place in early October. The “National Anthem” special captures this pivotal moment in US history through informal footage of musicians (including Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews Band, Dixie Chicks, and R.E.M) and their audiences in intimate moments from the tour. The documentary will be followed by a live broadcast of the final “Vote for Change” concert in Washington D.C.

5-1/2+ hours later …
Man oh man, that was the most powerful concert performance I’ve ever seen, multiple times over. As the DMB was playing, I thought nothing anywhere could top their energy and spectacular quality. But a while later Springsteen started and he never let up. Bruce and the E Street Band exploded into the most full-on performance fueled by burning smart passion I have ever seen. There’s fire in that guy, the best kind — the fire of hope, determination, commitment. I want that kind of fire to ignite the world.

I’m pumped. Does it show? :-)

Bruce Springsteen to undecided voters: “What the hell are you waiting for? C’mon … You take a country to war for false reasons, you lose your job. It’s not rocket science.” (I think it’s imperative common sense.)

James Taylor to voters asking his advice: “Examine the candidates, then vote for the smart one.”

Here’s what I think is the simplest basis on which to decide one’s upcoming vote (or nonvote) for U.S. president.

Observed sequence of events:

1. Command given to invade Iraq for a stated reason ¹

2. As a direct result, so far

• 1,067 Americans dead
• 7,531 Americans wounded
• ~15,000 Iraqi men, women, and children dead
  100,000 Iraqi dead according to study published in British medical journal The Lancet (approximately zero of whom had anything to do with 9/11)
• Iraqis wounded “too high to count” in April 2003 (Red Cross).
  How many more 10,000s since then?
• $140B spent in Iraq, $200B committed
  (Note that given 280M Americans, $200B -> $700/person.)

3. Stated reason proves to be wrong ²

¹ Primary stated reason: “Iraq has WMD including nuclear and biological weapons, and intent to use them, and is therefore an imminent threat to the United States” (paraphrased) (more info).

² Actual outcome: Iraq had no weapons and posed no threat to the U.S. (Duelfer report, Oct. 7, 2004: WaPo summary, actual report).

Time’s up, game over, no do-overs.

No one in any field keeps their job after a mistake of this magnitude. It’s nothing personal; prudence and public safety demands leave, demotion, or outright firing of the person or persons involved in massively deadly mistakes like this. Always.

Further, just as in the corporate world, we the people who exercise oversight over the position of U.S. president will be held accountable if we don’t demote or fire the person or persons involved.

Every other voting consideration in this election, while many are important, factors out of this particular equation.

I think the bottom-line decision really is this simple.

Bonus upside:
The field of rehires looks really good. Great resumes, fine presentation.

NOTE: Making up alternative reasons for invading after the fact is not allowed. (For example, say your kid wrecks the car. If he keeps making up reasons why he did it, will he eventually hit on a reason you’ll buy? Of course not. Reasons aren’t retroactive.)

Of itself it’s not a big lie. But what does it say to his Religious Right supporters when Dick Cheney asserts he’d never met John Edwards until last night’s VP debate when in fact they obviously had met, at a prayer breakfast! (I find this debate tidbit simultaneously sad, funny, and deeply revealing; I keep imagining this little thing turning the Aha! light on for some of my Bush-supporting church friends, whereupon I leap for joy.)

VP debate, October 5, 2004 transcript:

Cheney: The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

This assertion is rather cleanly debunked by this C-SPAN footage photo dated February 1, 2001:

and Cheney’s remarks from that event:

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY DELIVERS REMARKS AT NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST FEBRUARY 1, 2001 SPEAKER: VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD B. CHENEY [*] CHENEY: Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I honored to be with you all this morning.

(They’ve previously met elsewhere, too: at Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s swearing-in ceremony, and backstage at Tim Russert’s Meet the Press TV program.)

This teapot tempest is nonetheless a tempest because it implies a habitual pattern of not telling the truth — why else would you lie about something of no consequence?

Similarly important, it also suggests that Mr. Cheney, who as U.S. VP has been president of the U.S. Senate for the last four years, in saying he’s never met Sen. Edwards before, sounds like someone who pays attention only to senators he agrees with and ignores the ones he doesn’t (or, not quite ignoring one of the ones he disagrees with, he once said to “go f*ck yourself,” which I think still qualifies as not an actual meeting).

Wouldn’t cultivating cooperation among all senators — which would presumably include being on speaking terms with each of them — be preferable for getting things done efficiently and effectively? Especially if your boss claims to be a uniter not a divider? If Mr. Cheney hasn’t met some of these senators over whom he’s presided for the last four years, I have to wonder, what else has he not done? (One of the things, if Dave is right, is that he hasn’t done much actual presiding.)

What I find amusing is thinking about the Christian Right’s implied endorsement of behavior like this — as exhibited in its ongoing support of Bush/Cheney — in light of its having to face this gaffe in a prayer breakfast context.

What strikes me as a more Jesus-like response than any we’ve shown so far — especially for those of us who claim that’s important — comes from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who on The Daily Show Monday night (video) assured Jon that “The world loves the American people, just not what you’re doing.” His advice: “Export not bombs, but your compassion and generosity.”

I think that under a Kerry/Edwards administration we stand a chance of heeding this advice — really heeding it, not just saying we do — because compassion and generosity are nearly always onscreen in a Democratic worldview. In contrast, I’m convinced that under a Bush/Cheney administration we probably won’t move much beyond violence and retribution because its leaders think “sensitive” behaviors are foolish.

And honestly, if I were to think exporting compassion and generosity isn’t a major part of any solution to terrorism, confounding though it sounds, then there’s not much point in saying I’m a Christian, is there?

2004-10-07 update:
Bravo! Whereas I beat around the bush, this video makes the same point cleanly in 56 seconds using nothing but Cheney quotes and footage:
An administration that would lie about the small things … would lie about the big things.

Check it out:
Cheney vs. Reality

[via dKos]

I went to see the movie Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry this afternoon.

It’s director George Butler’s “feature-length documentary about character and moral leadership during a time of national crisis,” according to the synopsis: Vietnam, John Kerry’s experience in it, and his role in helping bring the war to an end when he returned. It’s almost all TV footage from the time, well edited and compelling, full of heroic deeds by many returning vets.

Now, moments after the closing credits, I’m thinking about how this movie ties together — in some ways for the first time for me — many of my young memories of these actual events with what I’ve learned since then about history, courage, and engaging the powers of darkness.

These actual memories plus subsequent study provides enough cross-check for me to recognize I’m not simply being swayed by propaganda. What I am instead is reminded, albeit with a gasp of fresh and deeper realization, that John Kerry qualifies as a full-on hero.

To be supporting a man of peace and courage like this feels exhilarating to me today. I sensed it before, and now I know it: Mr. Kerry is more than just a sane, competent replacement for what we have now — he has what it takes to be one of our great ones.

The movie’s sometimes-grainy footage reminds me: then as now, these are extraordinary days in which we’re making extraordinary decisions. We’re participating in events we’ll remember vividly 30 more years hence; we’ll see them as turning points in U.S.- and world history.

A couple of hours later …

• I’m freshly aware, after seeing this footage of veterans behaving honorably, just how little the Bush cabal comprehends war, sacrifice, honor, or morality. By their fruit we damn sure recognize them.
• There is no one I’d trust more right now than John Kerry to wade into the quagmire that U.S. foreign policy has become. Not because I’m a hero-worshipper — I worship no man — but because there’s something mysterious, dare I say miraculous, in our being presented with someone this precisely well equipped who wants the job.

2004-10-08 update:
Kevin provides a brief, positive review with more detail. I hadn’t thought about it before, but in light of the movie, JC’s comment there is exactly right:

Kerry really did lead the Forest Gump life. He really lived that era.

Except he’s more the Tom Cruise brother to Rain Man Gump.