(Ir)religiosity

Two things up front: 1.) I believe quality health care is a fundamental right that should be afforded to all persons regardless of _________, 2.) I believe governments have a moral responsibility to ensure that said care is provided to its citizens.  For me, these are non-negotiable.  Period.

Our country is the closest it has ever been to ensuring the most of its citizens have access to quality health care.  I will be outraged, not to mention deeply disappointed, if we fail to push it through.  At this point we’re our own worst enemy.  As Jon Stewart pointed out in a recent episode of The Daily Show, it wouldn’t be all the surprising if President Obama’s approval rating of the American people has plummeted over the last month or so.  The lack of civility and reasonableness in our public discourse on this issue would be disappointing if it weren’t so pathetic.

I’m continually perplexed at the various ways in which people either hear or see what they want to or intentionally caricature what is said by resorting to scare tactics (I’m looking at you Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck).  Most people simply aren’t working with the facts and if they are the choose to sideline them in favor of something that sounds controversial and may gain some shock value or media attention.¹

Health care is too important of an issue for us to play games.  I’m afraid if we keep screwing around we’re going to miss our chance.  Then we will be responsible for the lack of care and ensuring that the uninsured remain uninsured.  There won’t be any passing the buck.  The blame will rest squarely on our shoulders.

Yesterday President Obama published an op-ed in the New York Times that clearly and carefully articulates his position yet again.  You should stop right now and read the whole thing.  Here’s what I think is the nucleus.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

I read that and I simply don’t understand what the great end-of-the-world, apocalypse inaugurating problem is that I keep hearing about.  What is so wrong with providing a public option for those who can’t afford it?  Please tell me.  Or better yet, let’s tell those who currently can’t afford care why it is that they were just dealt the wrong hand and don’t have the right to the same quality care that the rest of us enjoy.

It is deeply disturbing, I think, when this idea is met with such anger and hate by people (mostly white people who can afford health care, by the way) at town hall meetings and not accepted with a sense of great urgency.  Perhaps the health care debate is what racism and classism looks like in the 21st century.  It looks more and more like Gordon Marino was right when he wrote that “the fact that a significant number of Americans do not feel any urgency to revamp a system that leaves millions of our sick without care is symptomatic of the fact that we must be suffering from a hardening of more than our arteries.”  Indeed, our irrational and childish behavior is demonstrative not only our compassion deficiency but our collective moral bankruptcy.

Perhaps the recent recession extends to more than our economy.

1. One of the best places to keep up with what is fact and what is fiction is http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ [↩]

Regardless of your position on abortion and your opinion of Notre Dame’s controversial decision to allow President Obama to speak at their commencement, you have to admit that his speech was compelling.  I absolutely love this quotation:

“[R]emember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.” (ht)

This sort of epistemological humility is something I admire and a quality that is becoming for a President (especially given the last eight years).  Not only that, it is a quality that is inherent in Christianity regardless of the trajectory of Church history over the last 200 hundred years.  Faith, by its very nature, welcomes this sort of tension between belief and doubt and resides in a position beyond certainty and absolutes — a position that trusts in the absurdity and welcomes the impossible when it ruptures the predictable, mundane monotony of mere possibility.

Ok, I can’t help it:  Obama sounds very postmodern in that quotation, I daresay very emergent.  I know, that’s probably not a fair assessment but the sentiment is strikingly similar.  It jettisons the smug certainty endemic on both poles (call them whatever you want) and opts not for a via media — no that would be to play by the rules dictated by modernity, allowing the them to limit and colonize the imagination — but a supra media that transcends the old boring binaries and bifurcations, completely rethinking our conceptual framework altogether and continually pushing the creative envelope.  That is exciting to me.  And whether or not our current system allows him to completely succeed, I’m glad that Obama understands that and is willing to put it out there.

Although it doesn’t directly flow with everything else (or does it?) I can’t help but draw attention to a final quotation:

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth. (ht)

If there is anything that I can claim to be certain of it is that I have a divine mandate to love, to do justice, to hope, and to participate in a reality that is not merely my own, a reality that binds us all together as human beings and bearers of the divine image.  Beyond that, I live with inherent doubts.  I embrace them and find them beautiful because they remind me of my finitude and that I am part of something larger than myself.

To say that the economy has become the dominant political issue over the last several months would be to state the obvious.  But even still there wasn’t a single mention — at least not that I know of — of an ‘anniversary’ that came and past last week.  Six years ago this month the long, arduous and costly (both in lives and money) war in Iraq began.  While the media pretended to be infuriated over the AIG bonuses and the rest of us marked our NCAA brackets the United States’ occupation of Iraq entered it’s seventh year.  Not a mention on the 24 hour news channels.  Even the blogosphere was silent.  I hope we haven’t forgotten.  I hope we haven’t moved on to the next trendy justice issue or the next big government mishap and neglected that one of the biggest justice issues and the worst government mishaps in recent memory continues on our watch.

I have hope that under President Obama this will end.  We shall see, but I have hope nonetheless. And until then I will — I hope we all will — continue to push and pressure my government to sever the tentacles of imperialism and put to death the attitude of exceptionalism.

Last year I organized and participated in war protest/peace demonstration in Oklahoma City and gave one of the speeches.  I’m re-posting it unedited (some of the language and statistics are now inflated) today as way of remembering that even in the midst of our economic crisis the war continues. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a political schitzophrenic.  Browsing through my posts on politics will prove it.  I’m happy that Obama got elected and I’m trying really hard not to be overly cynical about everything too quickly.  I do hope that things change — seriously change.  But part of me knows that he is just another politician and a member of the rich power elite who will likely maintain the general status quo.  I live with the tension.  And it causes me much grief.

Obama’s rhetoric has been inspiring, but if actions mean anything, then his recent appointments should indicate the general direction his administration will go.  So far he has enlisted help from the establishment, mainly old Clintonites who represent politics as usual.

I know.  The guy hasn’t even been sworn in yet.  I really am trying to remain positive.

BUT — I do have a random list of non-negotiables that will send me back into realm of dissent and criticism quicker than anything.  Here they are in no particular order.

1. Immediately close Gutanamo Bay
2. Seriously end the occupation of Iraq (and by seriously, I don’t mean moving troops around or reducing their number.  I mean seriously, like getting rid of some of those permanent military bases)
3. Repeal the Patriot At
4. Try George Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes and crimes against humanity
5. Begin a serious health care reform (serious = a new system)
6. Enact a plausible energy policy that will eliminate our addiction to limited resources
7. Scrap No Child Left Behind and start over
8. Get on board with Kyoto
9. Make the executive office more transparent
10. Scrap the BCS system for college football (!!!)

This list is by no means complete and I realize that all of these cannot be accomplished as quickly as I’d like.  However, if several of them aren’t in process by or before the midterms I will be very, very disappointed.  If none of them are, then Obama has blatantly lied.

What are your non-negotiables?

United Methodist bishops sent a letter to President-elect Obama today:

We applaud your willingness to articulate a vision of change for the United States that is based on hope for all the people, especially those who are disinherited and disenfranchised. We are also encouraged by your desire to construct a landscape for the United States that is inclusive of all people. We affirm your desire for a more peaceful and just world.

Here’s to hoping that holds true.

Join in for some fun and commentary as we finally put an end to this seemingly endless campaign.

Check back here for live updates beginning at 7PM EST and continuing through . . . well I’m not exactly sure how long

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” -Gandhi (Source)

I hope we vote tomorrow with no illusions.  While all signs are pointing to an Obama victory — which is good to a point — I hope that our collective enthusiasm is tempered with the reality that when our new President is inaugurated in two months most things will stay the same.  The United States will more than likely continue behave imperially, preserving its hegemony across the world in “the holy name of liberty and democracy.”

An Obama victory will be good, or, put another way, an Obama victory will be less bad.  Be that as it may, I hope more than anything that concerned citizens, “patriots,” and dissidents will not allow their political activism and their creative imagination to be colonized and limited to the most ineffective political action of them all — casting a vote in our system.

Straight from North Vernon, Indiana.  [Ht. Zack]

In case you missed it, former Sec. of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning on Meet the Press.  The whole interview if worth watching, but a particular quote caught my attention.

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian.  He’s always been a Christian.  But the really right answer is, what if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Here’s the video with more context.

Read the entire transcript of the interview here.

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In celebration of it’s 10th birthday Google is allowing people to search their 2001 database.  It’s pretty cool.  I did a search for Barack Obama and John McCain.  Here are some screenshots of the first couple of results.

You can see the results here and here and the archived sites here and here.

Interesting stuff.