slacktivist

A third possibility

"Attempts to confront or wake up patients during the events frequently lengthens the parasomnia episode and may induce resistance or violence from the patient."
-- WebMD's emedicine entry on Somnambulism

In comments for the previous entry, Doctor Science points us to an insightful post from Kit Whitfield (aka Praline) that suggests a possible third explanation for the insane popularity of the Munich Analogy -- an explanation other than the obvious ones of unbelievable stupidity or willful dishonesty.

To review, briefly, this analogy is employed to suggest that any response to hostile nations other than Kill All the Bad People is mere appeasement. This assertion is deeply confused and irreconcilable with the facts of any given case, with history and with any prospect for effectiveness. It claims that every enemy currently demanding our attention is ≥ Hitler and that therefore said enemy will respond only to the application of unrestrained lethal force (which is to say, they cannot be expected to respond, only to be exterminated in their unalterably non-responsive state). It claims that any approach other than such extermination is naive and ineffectual and thus the moral and practical equivalent of unconditional surrender. For proponents of the Munich Analogy, there is therefore one and only one possible response to hostility: extermination.

This is brutally, self-destructively stupid. The slightest thought or exploration exposes the idea as nonsense. It seems impossible that any sentient being could find the idea persuasive. The fact that someone is capable of speech, therefore, can be taken as proof that he is too smart to credibly believe what he is saying when he invokes the Munich Analogy.

In the previous post, I suggested there could be only one other possible option: that these people don't believe what they are saying, i.e., that they are saying something they inescapably know is not true, i.e., that they are lying.

But of course there is another option. When someone says something that they are smart enough to know is insanely false they may be lying, or they may just be insane. They may, somehow, have come to believe that this insane thing is true. (If insane strikes you as too strong a term, substitute "deluded" or "delusional." But keep in mind that we're talking about a form of delusion that leads inexorably to an exterminationist "Kill All the Bad People" mentality -- the same mentality that is universally described, in its aftermath from Sarjevo to Kigali, as "madness.")

Where does such delusion come from? How does someone become convinced that this unreal madness makes any kind of sense at all?

Here is where I will turn to KW/Praline, writing about "Macho Sue":

The essential story structure of a Macho Sue tends to revolve around untouchable pride. If love means never having to say you're sorry, being Macho Sue means the whole of reality loves you. Typically, Macho Sue's storyline follows a certain trajectory: he begins by acting egregiously, picking or provoking fights and causing problems. However much the ensuing difficulties can be laid at his door, Macho Sue is not about to apologize, in any way. So the problems continue -- only to be salvaged by some immense reversals that give the impression that he was right all along. The man he insulted turns out, suddenly, to be a bad guy. The woman who dislikes him falls into his strong arms when he solves a problem that is not the same problem he caused for her. People change their personalities, storylines shift and flip like a mechanical maze popping up new paths and lowering old gates in order to keep Macho Sue from ever, ever having to backtrack. As John Wayne says, "Never say sorry -- it's a sign of weakness."

Similarly, Macho Sue's suspicion of the unfamiliar is inherently right, because he already embodies all that is good and right: if something were good, he would already be doing it. Hence, anything new to him is some sort of corruption of the proper way of doing things. Usually it's assumed that Macho Sue has a code of honor that is at heart the right one, that if people disapprove of his behavior it's only because they don't understand him and his righteousness, that his code of honor is never found inadequate to a situation, and that he never falls below it. It's not only apologizing that's considered too emasculating for him to endure, it's learning. For his character to be improved and matured by encountering new circumstances would be a humiliating admission that he wasn't just as he should be from the beginning.

That passage is about a particular species of bad fiction, but it applies just as well to a particular species of bad person. The flaw in both cases is the same: characters incapable of change and growth. (I'm reminded of a saying from church: "God loves you just the way you are, but God loves you too much to let you stay that way.")

Characters that cannot grow, that see no need to grow, cannot adjust to reality and so they force reality to adjust to them. Funny thing, though, about reality: It doesn't care what you think. And it's got a nasty habit of reasserting itself with a vengeance. How does that proverb go? "Untouchable pride goeth before destruction, and a Macho Sue before a fall." Something like that.

I'm not sure that the self-deluded exterminationist is in an entirely separable category from the mere liar. The primary audience is different, but the act is the same. Yet where the liar is wholly willful, the self-deluded fool is only partly willful, and that "partly" may provide a toe-hold of hope ("There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead ..."). Neither utter stupidity nor wholly willful duplicity can be engaged, but delusion suggests at least the possibility of a productive response.

Here is where I wish I could tell you how best to present such a response. Instead, annoyingly, this turns out to be one of those posts where I conclude by asking you to supply the conclusion. Is such delusion something that can be engaged? And if so, how? Anybody found an approach that works?

Look at their shoes

Matthew Yglesias recommends Jeffrey Record's monograph, "Appeasement Reconsidered: Investigating the Mythology of the 1930s."

I realize no one is going to read that and think, "Ooooh, a monograph! How exciting!" But if you've got a crazy uncle/co-worker/president who makes a habit of invoking Neville Chamberlain to dismiss any hesitation to invade Iraq/bomb Iran/annihilate Fredonia, then Record's thoughtful separation of reality and myth may come in handy. Record can't be dismissed as a dirty hippy, and his paper was published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College -- so he's got the kind of hawkish credentials to which your crazy uncle/co-worker/president likes to pay lip service.

Much of the monograph is remedial history -- an explanation of why what he calls the "Munich Analogy" isn't really applicable even to Munich. But let's jump ahead to Record's conclusion:

Invocations of the Munich Analogy to Justify Use of Force Should Be Closely Examined.

Such invocations have more often than not been misleading because security threats to the United States genuinely Hitlerian in scope and nature have not been replicated since 1945. Though the Munich analogy’s power as a tool of opinion mobilization is undeniable, no enemy since Hitler has, in fact, possessed Nazi Germany’s combination of military might and willingness -- indeed, eagerness -- to employ it for unlimited conquest. This does not mean the United States should withhold resort to force against lesser threats. Nor does it mean that Hitlerian threats are a phenomenon of the past; an al-Qaida armed with deliverable nuclear weapons or usable biological weapons would pose a direct and much more lethal threat to the United States than Nazi Germany ever did.

The problem with seeing Hitler in Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats in turn encourage resort to force in circumstances where deterrence, containment, even negotiation (from strength) might better serve long-term U.S. security interests. Threats that are, in fact, limited tend to be portrayed in Manichaean terms, thus skewing the policy choice toward military action, a policy choice hardly constrained by possession of global conventional military primacy and an inadequate understanding of the limits of that primacy.

If the 1930s reveal the danger of underestimating a security threat, the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating a security threat.

That's all quite thoughtful, reasonable and factually sound. The problem here, though, is that the people Record is responding to don't give a damn about thought, reason or facts. They are not arguing in good faith.

No one who invokes Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Analogy is arguing in good faith. That goes for your crazy uncle, your co-worker, President Bush and John McCain. Just look at their shoes. Are the laces tied? No one smart enough to be capable of tying their own shoelaces is stupid enough to really believe what they're saying when they invoke this analogy.

The one-size-fits-all Munich template requires that we pretend that all diplomacy is capitulation. It requires that we pretend that containment, deterrence, isolation, sanctions, international pressure, inspections, soft power, summit meetings, aid, withholding aid, trade and every other form of possible influence whether political, economical or cultural are all just cowardly euphemisms for surrender.

To really believe that, one would have to be sublimely ignorant of history, geography, politics and the basic vocabulary of the English language. That level of perfect ignorance takes too much effort to achieve and sustain for anyone to master it accidentally.

It is simply not possible that these people are sincere. They do not -- they cannot -- believe what they are saying.

So there's no point in responding to them by patiently attempting to explain that diplomacy does not equal capitulation. Anyone who really required such an explanation wouldn't be capable of understanding it.

Discussions of civility often focus on the superficial, such as avoiding name-calling and not using dirty words. But those minor transgressions against civility are nothing compared to the fundamental duplicity of the sort practiced by those crying "appeasement" and "Chamberlain" at every turn. Such duplicity and dishonesty precludes civility, it makes honest conversation and dialogue impossible.

When confronted with such disingenuousness, then, the only way to defend civility is to put those lying mofos on notice by calling bullshit. That's not a dirty word, it's a precisely accurate and appropriate response.

'torture is wrong'

Here's an elegantly simple idea from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture: Banners Across America.

We are asking congregations of all sizes, from every state, and all faiths, to join in a public witness against torture by displaying a banner outside their place of worship during Torture Awareness Month (June 2008).

Our goal is to have banners displayed by NRCAT member congregations in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico.

Each banner will have the NRCAT logo and you may choose from one of two messages -- "torture is wrong" or "Torture is a Moral Issue."

They also have customized banners, so a congregation can hang a sign reading, "First Baptist Church says ..." or "Nativity BVM says ..." or "Congregation Beth Shalom says 'torture is wrong.'" Any one of those signs would be wonderful to see. Seeing all of them hanging along the same Main Street would be a powerful witness.

The word "witness" there is important. Bearing witness does not entail telling others what to think or what to do. It entails, to use another good religious term, testifying: "This is what we have seen and what we attest to be true."

The testimony of the local Lutheran church might not be, on its own, compelling to those of us who aren't Lutheran. So too the testimony of the local Catholic parish might not command much attention from those of us who aren't Catholic. Yet when local Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish and Quaker congregations all bear witness to the same thing, that testimony requires serious consideration even from those of us who do not belong to any of those traditions.

That's part of why I support cooperative efforts like the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. I'd love to see their banners hung not just in all 50 states, but on every church, mosque, synagogue and meeting house in town.

But why stop there? "Torture is wrong" is a statement every religious congregation can agree to bear witness to, but it is not exclusively a religious testimony. Next to the banners on every church on Main Street I'd like to see other banners: "Little Anthony's Pizza says 'torture is wrong,'" "Prime Cuts Salon says 'torture is wrong,'" "John's Tavern says 'torture is wrong.'"

Can I get a witness?

Bacchanal

I haven't seen Prince Caspian yet, but since it was the "No. 1 Movie" this weekend, let's revisit what that wonderful little book was about:

Prince Caspian is about beer.

Here is C.S. Lewis elsewhere (in Mere Christianity) in defense of one of his favorite things:

It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotalers; [Islam], not Christianity, is the teetotal religion.

Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons -- marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

Lewis enjoyed meat and the cinema, and he later came to appreciate marriage, but the motivating passion for the passage above has to do with that other thing. Lewis loved his beer and defended it fiercely.

The same point, often expressed with a grumpy impatience, can be found repeatedly throughout Lewis' popular devotional writing. Lewis saw that many Christians -- particularly American Christians -- were trying to take away his beer and he wasn't going to stand for that. In Mere Christianity he refers to such Christians as "a certain type of bad man." In Prince Caspian, Lewis gives these anti-beer Christians another name: "Telmarines."

When the Telmarines came to Narnia, they banished all the wild things -- the talking beasts, the dwarves and centaurs, the dryads and naiads and magical creatures of every sort. Old Narnians have been driven underground, literally. The Pevensies arrive to right that wrong, with the help of Aslan himself.

And lest readers miss the point, Aslan's return and restoration is accompanied at every turn by fat old Bacchus, calling out "Refreshments! Time for refreshments!" It is Bacchus who, at Aslan's bidding, tears down the bridge that symbolizes and enables the rule of the Telmarine King Miraz. And it is old, pagan Bacchus whose wine restores to health the old nurse who had surreptitiously taught a young Caspian about the wild ways of Old Narnia.

I grew up, as Caspian did, among the Telmarines. Lewis' story was, to me, like those tales the old nurse told the young prince -- a secret, forbidden glimpse of something older, wilder and more joyous.

I read all of the Narnia books again and again, with the unwavering approval of my Telmarine teachers at school and Sunday school. By the third or fourth time I read Prince Caspian I began to realize that this approval was due to those teachers not having read this book. It was about them, and I doubt they would have approved if they had understood that.

L.B.: That girl

Left Behind, pp. 436-438

I can somewhat relate to the situation Buck Williams faces here. You've probably faced a similar dilemma yourself.

Your friend finally seems happy. She's Met Someone and she's caught up in the excitement. All she needs from you just now is for you to share that enthusiasm and unqualified happiness, but you can't do that because you know the guy, or you know something about him -- you heard some stories from his third ex-wife, or you recognize him from an episode of Cops. But whatever this cautionary information is -- his past infidelities or his arrest record, his incomplete rehab stint or the reasons why he can never return to Canada -- you're going to have to be the bearer of bad news, and that's never pleasant.

That's the situation Buck is in here with Hattie. Buck's situation is even more awkward, in fact, since he's the one who actually introduced her to the special someone she's now so excited to see. Now Buck faces the unpleasant task of having to tell Hattie that the guy she thinks is Mr. Right is really Mr. Antichrist. That's the subtext here for the final phone call before the final showdown here in Volume 1:

He phoned Hattie Durham.

"Hattie," he said, "you're going to get a call inviting you to New York."

"I already did."

"They wanted me to ask you, but I told them to do it themselves."

"They did."

"They" here would mean Steve Plank. Or maybe Steve and Chaim Rosenzweig on speaker phone.

Although it's strange to rely on your press secretary or your Nobel laureate lackey to ask someone out, I do have to give Nicolae some credit here for not contacting Hattie personally and thus, apparently, refraining from using his mind-control mojo to pick up women. Then again, it's still not clear how his powers of super-charisma work -- Could he mind-whammy Hattie from a different time zone? Do his powers work over the phone? Can he channel this power to work through Steve? -- so maybe he is being secretly coercive, bending her to his will through some means we just can't see at work.

"They want you to see Carpathia again, provide him some companionship next week if you're free."

"I know and I am and I will."

"I'm advising you not to do it."

She laughed. "Right, I'm going to turn down a date with the most powerful man in the world? I don't think so."

"That would be my advice."

"Whatever for?"

Buck has several very good answers to that question. Why should she turn down an apparently innocent invitation from the "Sexiest Man Alive"? Well, for starters, because he's the Antichrist, the Beast from the abyss of Hell bent on mass slaughter and the destruction of all that is good. That would seem to be a good reason to caution Hattie not to date the guy.

Buck might be reluctant to just come right out and say that, though. He knows that Hattie has already heard all about the Antichrist from Rayford (twice), and that she didn't find such talk very persuasive. But Buck doesn't need to talk about end times prophecies to answer Hattie's question. He could simply tell her about Nicolae's involvement in the deaths of Dirk Burton, Alan Tompkins and Eric Miller. He could tell her about his shady past in Romania and the suspicious death of his business rival. He could tell her about Nicolae's dubious back-channel bribery to ensure the removal of the previous secretary-general. He could, in other words, talk for hours about all the reasons that no one in their right mind should consider dating this murderous megalomaniac without ever even having to get around to mentioning that, oh yeah and by the way, he's also the Antichrist.

But Buck doesn't do any of that. Instead, he says this:

"Whatever for?"

"Because you don't strike me as that kind of girl."

"That kind of girl," I take it, means here the same sort of thing it always means -- morally suspect, loose, cheap, concupiscent. The "kind of girl" upon whom young men's "wild oats" are sown, leaving them forever morally tarnished. (The girls are left tarnished, that is, the young men, well, boys will be boys -- or at least that's how it seems to be viewed by the sorts of people who use the phrase "that kind of girl.")

I really can't figure out, though, why Hattie accepting Nicolae's invitation to New York would make her "that kind of girl." The only way that could be true is if we interpret "provide him some companionship" as a euphemism for something exclusively sexual. I'm reminded again of Eric Idle in Monty Python's "Nudge, Nudge" sketch, licking his lips, winking salaciously and leering like a dirty old man. This apparently was how Steve must have sounded when he extended Nicolae's invitation: "... to New York to 'provide him some companionship,' know whatahmean, know whatahmean? Companionship, eh? A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh? Com-panion-ship? He asked him knowingly ..."

Hattie, we should remember, has been completely chaste for at least the past year or however long it's been since Rayford started stringing her along as the "woman he had never touched." Now she's being told that accepting a public dinner date with a universally respected world leader would mean she's some kind of slut. She's entitled to a bit of indignation:

"First, I'm not a girl. I'm almost as old as you are, and I don't need a parent or legal guardian."

"I'm talking as a friend."

"You're not my friend, Buck. It was obvious you don't even like me. I tried to shove you off on Rayford Steele's little girl, and I'm not sure you even had the brains to pick up on that."

Once again I find myself applauding where the authors don't intend as Meta-Hattie struggles to make herself heard. Meta-Hattie is ticked off at Buck here, so she lashes out and mischaracterizes her earlier match-making. She hadn't really just been trying to "shove him off" onto Chloe, of course, that's almost never what motivates match-making in the real world. In the real world, it's usually due to fondness, affection and a desire to make others happy.

That explanation makes the most sense here. Hattie liked Chloe, and while she wasn't interested in Buck, he seemed like an OK guy, so she nudged them together in the hopes that they might find some happiness. It turns out she was right, they're perfect together -- even if Buck, Chloe and the authors never give her any credit for that. Now, after she's helped him find happiness, Buck turns around and tries to deny her her own shot at it. This is the thanks she gets?

But I don't think that's what the authors intend us to take from this passage. I think they want us to read "I tried to shove you off on Rayford Steele's little girl" as a literal and accurate representation of Hattie's earlier motives, rather than as a way of saying something more like, "You're making me regret I ever set you up with poor Chloe."

Buck could clear all this up easily just by telling Hattie what he knows, telling her why Nicolae Carpathia is an exceptionally bad guy to get involved with (Antichrist, murderer, etc.).

But he doesn't do that. He doesn't say, "Don't go on a date with this particular man because this particular man is evil incarnate." Instead he just keeps saying, "Don't go on a date with any man because going on dates makes you a slut."

And the authors make it clear that they share Buck's opinion:

"Hattie, maybe I don't know you. But you don't seem the type who would allow herself to be taken advantage of by a stranger."

"You're pretty much a stranger, and you're trying to tell me what to do."

"Well, are you that kind of a person? By not passing along the invitation, was I protecting you from something you might enjoy?"

"You better believe it."

"I can't talk you out of it."

"You can't even try," she said, and she hung up.

Buck shook his head and leaned back in his chair ...

We readers are intended, apparently, to share Buck's head-shaking, condescending pity for this loose woman. What I find myself wondering, instead, is how the human race could possibly continue if the authors' concept of morality were universally embraced. They are not merely saying that sex before marriage is immoral, they're saying that dating before marriage is immoral. Seriously, how is that supposed to work?

Buck wondered what Rayford or Chloe would do if they knew Hattie had been invited to New York to be Carpathia's companion for a few days. In the end, he decided it was none of his, or their, business.

Buck's a bit confused here about what is and isn't his business. He's perfectly comfortable lecturing Hattie on the evils of dating and telling her she's acting slutty for spending time with another unmarried adult. But letting her in on the secret that the man who's invited her to dinner is Satan's minion, a murderous tyrant destined to revel in the deaths of millions? That he decides is none of his business.

If Buck Williams worked for the National Weather Service he would never issue a tornado warning. When he spotted a tornado, he'd just tell residents to go to their shelters because only sluts walk around outside and you wouldn't want people to think you were "that kind of girl."

Es Tut Mir Leid, Evelyn

There's a flaming red horizon that screams our names ...

"Es Tut Mir Leid," Mark Heard
"Escher's World," Chagall Guevara
"Etcetera Whatever," Over the Rhine
"Eternal Life," Jeff Buckley
"Euphoria," Skatman Meredith
"Eurotrash Girl," Cracker
"Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," Ella Fitzgerald
"Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," Annie Lennox
"Evangeline," Matthew Sweet
"Eve of Destruction," The Dickies
"Eve of Destruction/Machines," Charlie McGloughlin
"Evelyn Is Not Real," My Morning Jacket

Charlie's little medley there is from one of my very Favorite Things. Charlie had a weekly show on our college's campus radio station (25 watts, baby, 25 watts of pure AM carrier current mono) called the "Radio Campfire." He'd sit down at a microphone with a guitar and a stack of cheat books and open the phone lines for requests. Charlie'd play whatever he felt like playing until the phone rang, and then he'd play whatever the caller wanted to hear. Even when it didn't quite work -- when he didn't know the song, or when whoever was working the sound board really wasn't up to the task of being recruited to sing backup on "California Dreaming" -- it still had the energy of live, without-a-net radio. But when it did work, nothing was better.

College nostalgia aside, this is something I'd love to hear a professional radio station try. That's probably never going to happen, but it should.

California

"California Court Affirms Right to Gay Marriage"

and also --

"Gay Couples Celebrate California Court Ruling"

Game on.

From that first article:

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

... “The right to marry,” Chief Justice George wrote, “represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual.”

Chief Justice George conceded that “as an historical matter in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman.” But “tradition alone,” the chief justice continued, does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right. Bans on interracial marriage were, he wrote, sanctioned by the state for many years.

... “No religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples,” Chief Justice George wrote, “and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.”

So a right for me must also be a right for thee. I'm not alone in finding that reasoning difficult to argue with. Lots of people will be upset by this ruling -- or at least they will feign outrage as fundraising fodder -- but you won't hear any of them directly engaging that part of the court's opinion. What you'll hear from the most vocal of these opponents will be, instead: A) contra the last paragraph quoted above, fearmongering claims that your church will be forced to perform same-sex ceremonies or even be forced to hire gay clergy; and B) fearmongering claims that this will mean the End of Marriage and thus the End of Civilization and the End of the World. There's a reason they call it homo-phobia. Those fears are in the former case factually incorrect and in the latter case hysterically unreasonable. But appeals to fear aren't supposed to be based on facts or reason.

We'll also hear a great deal, I suppose, about "activist judges." If the people want rights to apply equally to everybody, this argument goes, then they should pass laws that say so, not simply rely on a constitution that says so. For the judicial activism complaint to be credible, those making it need also to make the case that the activist judges have made a bad decision. A proper interpretation of the state's laws can't be condemned as undemocratic judicial fiat. But don't hold your breath waiting for the anti-judicial activism crowd to make that case.

Apart from the squawking clique of demagogues and those who follow them unquestioningly, there will also be a larger group, comprising millions of Americans even in California, who oppose and lament this decision. They do so based on sincere religious convictions and, to a surprising extent, without the visceral fear and hate that characterizes the demagogues' response. Yet this larger group will also be unable to engage or respond to the core logic of the court's decision. They will also be unable to explain why a legal right should apply to the majority but not to the minority. Instead, they will speak of God and what God has ordained; they will speak of sin; they will cite verses from the Bible. They will, in other words, present a theological argument while side-stepping the legal and constitutional questions.

I disagree with the theological argument presented by these faith-based critics of the equal right to marry, but that's actually a secondary point of disagreement. It seems to me that the more important question has to do with why these friends and brothers and sisters of mine think that such theological arguments can or should be persuasive to those who don't share our religious perspective. I don't think they quite really believe that everyone else can or should be compelled to act in accordance with our particular religious beliefs. I think, rather, that their unexplored assumption is that everyone else can be expected to live as though we all believed the same thing.

That's a peculiar expectation for a "peculiar people."

Manifested

I've now had a chance to read the "Evangelical Manifesto" that we discussed earlier.

It's rather well done and there's much to commend here. The concluding "Invitation to All" is particularly welcome. So too is what is probably the document's strongest contribution and best hope for achieving what it seeks to accomplish, namely its tone, which is reasonable and almost aggressively civil.

I'm also quite pleased to find that this document, endorsed by some notable and influential leaders in American evangelicalism, includes concern for the poor and the powerless as non-negotiable hallmarks of the faith. And I'm even more pleased that it does so without any sense that such commitments must be over-defended as matters of "controversy." Ditto for the manifesto's repeated references to the stewardship of creation and its fleeting, but welcome, endorsement of "a high view of science" and condemnation of the oppression of women.

There are also several points on which I disagree with the writers and several more points I would need to ask them to clarify. Here, for example:

All too often we have tried to be relevant, but instead of creating "new wineskins for the new wine," we have succumbed to the passing fashions of the moment and made noisy attacks on yesterday’s errors, such as modernism, while capitulating tamely to today’s, such as postmodernism.

The writers here seem to be endorsing something other than "modernism" or "postmodernism," but what that might be isn't quite clear. The logical implication would seem to be pre-modernism, but I'm fairly sure that's not what they mean either.

Postmodern there seems to be a bogeyman word meaning, I take it, all the bad things that it might possibly mean and none of the good. (That's a bit odd in a document that otherwise seems to borrow an awful lot from Stanley Hauerwas.)

Elsewhere the document criticizes fundamentalism as "an essentially modern reaction to the modern world." That's astute, but it's difficult to understand such a critique if a discussion of the failures of modernism, i.e., postmodernism, is forbidden as "error." My best guess here is that what the writers are really on about is what they earlier condemn as "an inadequate view of truth." Their dedication to truth is admirable, but it's also troublesome throughout the document due to their own inadequate view of uncertainty.

One gets the sense that one is reading a document written by people who automatically translate "we cannot be certain" into "there is no truth." This makes it difficult for someone like me, who believes the former but not the latter, to engage what they're saying. In any case a bit of humble, postmodern, chastened, glass-darkly epistemology might have helped to rescue the manifesto's discussion of sola scriptura, which seems premised on the idea that certainty is readily and easily available to us humans. (That notion strikes me as, to borrow a phrase, "an essentially modern reaction to the modern world.")

The other bogeyman word here seems to be "secularism." Making this a bogeyman word leads to some serious confusion in the section of the manifesto subtitled, "A civil rather than a sacred or naked public square." What they're advocating here is secularism, but they've decided they can't call it that, so instead we get a page and a half endorsing secularism and the separation of church and state while simultaneously condemning "secularism" and the "strict separation of church and state." It isn't pretty.

The language they are thus forced to rely on comes from the man who led them into this linguistic mess, from Richard John Neuhaus and his book The Naked Public Square. Neuhaus' big idea there was that secularism is, itself, a kind of religion. Thus, for Neuhaus, a non-sectarian government is really sectarian -- it sides with and privileges non-sectarianism as a kind of state religion. The refusal to impose state-sanctioned sectarian prayer on public school students is thus, in this view, an establishment of the "religion" of secularism. And the refusal to accede to a sectarian argument based primarily on the particular tenets of a sect is thus mere bigotry.

That's just a slightly more sophisticated version of the whole "your 'tolerance' is really just intolerance of my intolerance" shtick, the boilerplate nonsense of bigots attempting to pose as victims. Since the writers of the "Evangelical Manifesto" explicitly condemn "posing as victims" for political gain, they might want to rethink relying on Neuhaus here for the framing of this question.

Where the manifesto ends up on the matter is this:

Our commitment is to a civil public square -- a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too.

"A civil public square" providing a "framework of what is agreed to be just and free" to "citizens of all faiths" regardless of sectarian particulars. If I were on the "$25,000 Pyramid" and Betty White said all that to me, I'd be shouting "secularism! ... separation of church and state!"

But here's my biggest problem with the document. "Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially or culturally," it says on page 4. "Evangelicalism must be defined theologically and not politically; confessionally and not culturally," it repeats on page 8.

Amen and amen. But then on page 13 it says this:

We call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and marriage, and a fuller recognition of the comprehensive causes and concerns of the Gospel, and of all the human issues that must be engaged in public life. Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman ...

The "A-word" is out of the bag, and I don't suppose there's anything I could write here to prevent that from becoming the sole and heated topic in the comment thread below, but my point here is not the substance of the anti-abortion and anti-gay stances that the authors say they "cannot back away from." Nor do I want to get distracted by the question of whether or not "the holiness of marriage as instituted by God" would be an adequate line of argument "within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too."

My point here is the authors' perception, probably correct, that their call to move "beyond single-issue politics" needed to be followed immediately by an emphatic demonstration of their agreement with the majority of Evangelicals on those two issues. This document is not about those two things, but the authors recognize that unless they reaffirm these positions on these two issues, then none of the people they're trying to reach will listen to another word they say.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not questioning the sincerity of the authors and signatories when they reaffirm these political stances. I am sure they are being perfectly sincere. But what is it that they are doing here with such sincerity? What is the purpose of this ritual reaffirmation?

The authors affirm that they oppose abortion and same-sex marriage in order to demonstrate that they belong, to demonstrate that their voices are legitimate voices in their community, to demonstrate that they are "Evangelicals." And what is the key, the touchstone, the Shibboleth for that demonstration? Two, and only two, political opinions. To be anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality may not be sufficient to demonstrate that one is an Evangelical, but it is necessary -- far more necessary than any given theological or confessional belief.

The manifesto's splendid language about reaching out to "the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, and being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow-creatures" belongs to a different category. Such opinions are acceptable, perhaps even admirable, but they are not Shibboleths that demonstrate one's valid membership in the community.

Here, then, is the "Evangelical Manifesto." It is an often persuasive and eloquent argument that political and cultural definitions of "Evangelical" are illegitimate. Yet even here -- in the midst of that argument -- the authors cannot avoid bowing to the demands of exactly those political and cultural definitions.

L.B.: Speakerphone

Left Behind, pp. 435-437

In this little section Bruce Barnes and Rayford are playing the Antichrist Game, trying to reconcile what they know about their prime suspect with the many arcane details they've compiled in their check list. Let me briefly try to explain where such details and such check lists come from.

The Bible is full of warnings not to be deceived by false prophets, false teachers or false leaders of any kind, religious or political. Read through the Bible and you will encounter, again and again, various versions of something like this:

Don't be fooled by false leaders. They deceive people with their lies, so watch out to make sure you're not taken in by them.

In many instances, the writer will use a definite generic instead of the plural, so you'll read something like this:

Don't be fooled by the false leader. He deceives people with his lies, so watch out to make sure you're not taken in by him.

Here's the fun part for prophecy enthusiasts: What if that second version doesn't simply replace the plural with the generic? What if, instead, it actually refers to a specific, actual, singular False Leader?

Let the game begin! Get a highlighter and go through the entire Bible, circling every passage that warns against this false leader. (Read carefully -- he goes by many names.) Next, go back through and write down all the descriptions those warnings provide of this false leader/teacher/prophet -- anything that might serve a clue as to this single person's singular identity. And there you have it, your very own Antichrist checklist.

Your final checklist will likely be a bit confusing. Some warnings seem to be describing the False Leader as an Israelite. Other warnings make it clear that he is a gentile. In the first part of Daniel the False Leader sounds like someone very much like Nebuchadnezzar, but in the later chapters of the book he sounds more like someone very much like Antiochus Epiphanes. Later still, John's Apocalypse makes him sound almost like some kind of Roman emperor. This is where the game gets tricky. We seem to be looking for a Jewish gentile who is part Babylonian, part Syrian, part Roman. Trying to reconcile all of those seemingly contradictory descriptions in one single person isn't easy, but that's how the game is played.

(Note: The descriptive details in your check list may seem so irreconcilably disparate or so closely bound to the various biblical authors' distinct contexts that you may even begin to suspect that these details weren't really all intend to prophesy a single, particular False Leader. But that's just crazy talk. Press on -- your speculation about the identity of the Antichrist might end up being wrong, but you won't be any wronger than everyone else who's ever played this game.)

Bruce and Rayford have an advantage over the rest of us when playing the Antichrist Game: They've got a prime suspect carefully tailored by the authors to match every detail of the check list. Yet despite that, they've still got questions, like why is the Antichrist Romanian? This is the question they seek to answer here in Chapter 24:

After the core-group meeting, Rayford Steele talked privately with Bruce Barnes and was updated on the meeting with Buck. "I can't discuss the private matters," Bruce said ...

Bruce and Buck didn't really talk about any "private matters," so I like to think that he's just saying this to give Rayford a hard time. "Hey you know that 30-something guy who's been seeing your freshman daughter? He and I talked yesterday. I can't discuss the private matters -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- but we talked for quite some time."

"I can't discuss the private matters," Bruce said, "but only one thing stands in the way of my being convinced that this Carpathia guy is the Antichrist. I can't make it compute geographically. Almost every end-times writer I respect believes the Antichrist will come out of Western Europe, maybe Greece or Italy or Turkey."

Turkey, traditionally, is not regarded as part of Western Europe, what with it's being in Asia, but if we're going to have any hope of reconciling all of the things in our Antichrist check list then we can't allow ourselves to be constrained by such tired geographic conventions.

Poor Rayford is just trying to keep up. If Bruce says the check list doesn't allow for an Antichristescu, then he'll play along.

Rayford didn't know what to make of that. "You notice Carpathia doesn't look Romanian. Aren't they mostly dark?"

"Yeah. Let me call Mr. Williams. He gave me a number. I wonder how much more he knows about Carpathia." Bruce dialed and put Buck on the speakerphone. "Ray Steele is with me."

"Hey, Captain," Buck said.

Upon reading the word "speakerphone" there I half expected confetti to drop from the ceiling as a Sousa march would begin to play and top-hatted officials would arrive to commemorate this apotheosis of LaHaye & Jenkins' weird fixation with telephony.

"We're just doing some studying here," Bruce said, "and we've hit a snag." He told Buck what they had found and asked for more information.

"Studying" makes it sound like they're translating obscure prophecies from ancient tomes rescued from the library of Alexandria. What they've actually been doing is watching CNN's replay of Nicolae's press conference and comparing his agenda to the Antichrist check list the late Rev. Billings left on his desk before he disapparated. One world government? Check. One world religion? Check. Peace treaty with Israel? Check. Babylonian/Syrian/Roman/Jewish heritage? Hmmm. ...

"Well, he comes from a town, one of the larger university towns, called Cluj, and --"

"Oh, he does? I guess I thought he was from a mountainous region, you know, because of his name."

Following the logic of the dialogue in Left Behind isn't any easier than following the logic of the plot. One bumps into these Python-worthy non-sequiturs at every turn: "Is the town in the mountains?" "No, it's a college town." Huh?

"His name?" Buck repeated, doodling it on his legal pad.

"You know, being named after the Carpathian Mountains and all. Or does that name mean something else over there?"

Buck sat up straight and it hit him! Steve had been trying to tell him he worked for Stonagal and not Carpathia. And of course all the new U.N. delegates would feel beholden to Stonagal because he had introduced them to Carpathia. Maybe Stonagal was the Antichrist! Where had his lineage begun?

The ambiguity of Steve's remark -- "my boss moves mountains" -- sets up what might have been an intriguing mystery. But at this point, 436 pages into a 468-page book, it's a bit late to be introducing a new red herring. The possibility that Stonagal, rather than Carpathia, is our Big Bad is emphatically ruled out a mere 20 pages from now. Jenkins half-heartedly tries over those few pages to milk the question for suspense, but this falls flat since he's already spent so much time establishing that Nicolae is, without a doubt, the Antichrist. Readers thus aren't thinking, "Hey, Buck's right, it could be either one of them," but rather, "Pay attention Buck, you moron, it's Nicolae."

The larger problem with the section I just quoted is that we're in the middle of a Rayford-POV section. The whole point of having Bruce and Buck's conversation on speakerphone was so that Rayford, and the reader, could hear what was being said. Yet we're also somehow able to see what Buck is doodling and to hear his unspoken thoughts. Either Jenkins has completely lost track of which character's perspective he's supposed to be writing or else Rayford has some kind of supernatural mind-reading powers. ... Hey. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's not Carpathia or Stonagal, maybe Rayford is the Antichrist!

"Well," Buck said, trying to concentrate, "maybe he was named after the mountains, but he was born in Cluj and his ancestry, way back, is Roman. That accounts for the blonde hair and blue eyes."

Then again, if this strange-but-apropos Blonde Map of Europe is to be believed, Nicolae's being from Cluj, in northwestern Romania, might also "account" for his hair color.

Bruce thanked him and asked if he would see Buck in church the next day. Rayford thought Buck sounded distracted and noncommittal. "I haven't ruled it out," Buck said.

Following that paragraph is another one of these:

 

 

------------------------------

Indicating a shift back to Buck's perspective for the following section, which begins:

Yes, Buck thought, hanging up. I'll be there all right. He wanted every last bit of input before he went to New York to write a story that could cost him his career and maybe his life. ...

So immediately after reading Rayford's perception of what Buck is thinking we switch perspectives to read what Buck was really thinking and find out that Rayford had it backwards. Again. This was mildly interesting the first time Jenkins did this trick, less so the next four or five times. Here it doesn't work at all because, again, Jenkins got confused and presented Buck's perspective as Rayford's.

If you're a book editor, you should own a copy of Left Behind to take along to your annual performance reviews. Just open to a random page, have your boss read it, and then remind them that this is why you're worth every penny and then some.

Detour to Diamonds

... It's hard not to fall apart

"Detour Thru Your Mind," The B-52s
"Detox Mansion," Warren Zevon
"Devil Inside," INXS
"Diamond Heart," Marissa Nadler
"Diamond Ring," Pedro the Lion
"Diamonds," Christine Havrilla
"Diamonds and Pearls," Prince
"Diamonds in the Sky," Husky Rescue
"Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," Paul Simon
"Diamonds/One Way," Larry Norman