Thugs R Us

   One afternoon many years ago, I had played hooky from work to catch the latest action movie.  Only a few people were in the theater -- all slackers like me, I assumed.
    At a climactic moment, the hero had an especially vile bad guy in the sights of an enormous handgun. With a squint and a growl, the good guy delivered his signature line: "Do ya feel lucky punk?  Well, do ya?"
    In one of the theater's forward rows, a man leaped to his feet and pumped his fists in the air. "Shoot the bastard," he shouted,  "Kill him!  Kill him!  Kill him!"
    In the years since, I've thought of that episode when listening to rounds of a perennial debate:  Do our attitudes shape our entertainment, or vice-versa?  Did the movie inflame my fellow slacker?  Or did the movie-makers have him in mind when they framed their offering for an audience?
    I've thought about that episode in connection with pornography.  I've thought about it in connection with the dreadful lows of reality television. And I've thought about it lately in the uproar over incidents of domestic violence among professional football players.
    If we consider only the statistics of the football thing, the incidents were few and isolated.  So, what explains a wave of reaction that has reached  all the way to Congress?   I think the explanation is this: Professional football is a haven for thugs, and the fact is widely known.   Thugs do not typify the men who play professional football.  But they are plentiful enough, and they are protected.
    An appetite for games is elemental in human nature. Children learn through play. Adults are restored by it. The late journalist and social commentator Walter Kerr argued that the word "recreation" means precisely what its component parts say: RE-CREATION.
    An instinct for sporting competition also is human.  We are naturally curious to know whose eye is keener, whose horse faster, whose arm stronger. Communally organized sporting competition comes down to us from antiquity. The scope of it would appear to grow in direct proportion to the availability of disposable time and money.  Thus the extremes of organized sport in today's America demonstrate the levels of extravagance that a fabulously wealthy society is able and willing to support.
    The barons of professional football -- the team owners -- are selling two commodities. One is entertainment in the form of performance by superior athletes. And a fine athletic performance is gratifying to watch. It reminds us that the human body and brain working together are capable of performing marvels.  Competitive sports can indeed have something to say to us about human skill, teamwork, perseverance, even courage.
    The owners' second commodity for sale is victory. And this, I think, is the party drug that begins to cloud our judgement.  We feel the better competitor should win, yes. We feel that winning is a token of merit, yes.This much is part of us as humans. But professional athletes who consistently win make more money. They enjoy more fame. And so, some of them begin to value winning even by means that have nothing to do with athletic skill. They resort to violence and intimidation. The ethic goes beyond winning the game toward beating -- in the full sense of the term -- the opponent.  Some players try to stack the deck of competition by injuring key players on the other side. The end not only justifies the means, it pays handsomely. And it pays those closely associated with the winner as well.
    We all know this.  We know that the sleek young wife beater in the pricey wardrobe is cruising through life on money that a great many of us have been ever so glad to pay him.  Thus I think that  the surge of reaction to recent events rises from the fact that in our heart of hearts we are not surprised. We are not surprised that men who display an aptitude for fan-financed violence display a taste for personal violence as well.
    As a dilettante follower of professional football, I am culpable, too.  And I was, after all, in that theater years ago to see a movie whose character I knew full well when I walked in. If I was not on my feet shouting murder, I do remember thinking that the punk deserved whatever he got.
    Thus we have professional football in 21st Century America: Human nature undergirded by societal wealth so lavish that average men and women can afford to spend thousands in pursuit of a game.  The owners' cartel -- The National Football League -- now announces that it will develop stronger rules about off-the-field behavior. With wetted finger aloft, the owners' kept regulators will weasel toward "reforms" until the wind of public opinion no longer offers to reach damaging strength.
    Clearly we do not feel, in the aggregate, that all of this amounts to mortal sin. If we did, presumably we would change our ways. But it is a shabby thing. And surely the lords of the sport could better refrain from riding their privilege to the very outskirts of decent limits.
 
 
 

Uncle Barlow Meets Dulcinea and Mitch McConnell

    I got another letter from my Uncle Barlow the other day.  He still lives way out in the country, in Barlow County. He thinks that because I live in the city I have more experience with certain kinds of things, so now and then he writes me to ask for my opinion.
    Lately he's been thinking about culture and politics. Here's what  he had to say.

"Dear Nephew,
    "Well, I just came back from spending the morning with Scooter over at the cafe, and I want to tell you, he's down in the dumps in the worst way.  You see, his wife Ida has got it in her head that she needs to be more cultured.  She has been after him to take her up to Charlotte to see the symphony, and he figured she wasn't going to let it go, so last week up they went.
    "Scooter said the music was mighty pretty, but he just couldn't figure out the method of the thing. He said a fellow in a funeral suit stood in front of the musicians and waved a little stick at them, even though they weren't looking at him, since they had to keep their eyes on the music they were playing. He said the only thing he could dope out was that the fellow must have been some kind of big wheel and they had to let him get up there with the rest of the bunch if he wanted to.  Kind of like when we were boys and Booger Braxton owned the football so we always had to let him play quarterback.
    "But anyhow, that's not what Scooter is down in the dumps about. On the way home in the car Ida started going on about how she didn't like having such a plain name, and she was thinking about starting to call herself Dulcinea. Scooter said he checked around, and that's a name from a story about a fellow who rides around trying to stick a spear in a windmill. So now Scooter is afraid that Ida's butter is beginning to slip off her noodle. He doesn't quite know what to do. He's saying that he read something not long ago about recreational therapy and maybe he will try to get her interested in football.
    "Ordinarily I would have stopped by the library on the way home, but I skipped this time because it's kind of tense over there nowadays. Millie the librarian got mighty cranky when all those Republicans won in the election.  Millie would sooner kiss a snake than smile at a Republican.
    "Well, who should come into the library the very next day but Orlo Babcock?  He owns the tractor dealership out on the bypass.  I guess Orlo got to going on about how the Republicans are going to fix things so the free enterprise system prevails and folks are only rewarded for working hard on their own initiative to get ahead. And I guess Millie said she thought he and his kind are mighty free about recommending bootstraps to people who don't have any boots to begin with. And then he called her a woolly minded liberal do-gooder, and she got to stabbing him in the chest with her finger and calling him a buffoon, which is a touchy thing to say to Orlo Babcock, because it's true.  Well, Orlo used to be on the library board and still has friends there, and Millie is stalking around saying she won't be bullied, and I'm thinking to steer clear of there until things settle down.
    "Now, ordinarily I don't spend much time studying on politicians. I figure those folks are a lot more interested in each other than they are in me. As long as they don't raise the taxes on my land or my liquor I figure I'm pretty much OK. But I have to admit this election does have me puzzled about a couple of  things. The first thing is, how did all those Republicans get elected? I mean, near as I can tell, they didn't say much of anything except that they really didn't like President Obama, who's not going to be around much longer in any case.
    "It kind of put me in mind of when that fellow Nixon was running for president and said he had a plan for ending the Vietnam war, but it had to be a secret, but he wanted people to vote for it anyway.  Well of course he went right on and got elected, which proved I guess that voters sometimes will actually buy a pig in a poke, and now by golly it looks like they've done it again.
    "So, come the new Congress in a little while, the Senate Republicans are going to be led by this fellow Mitch McConnell from Kentucky.  You can recognize him right away if you see his picture in the paper. He's the one who looks kind of like he's not all there. He says he and his bunch are going to end the gridlock in Washington, which may be pretty brassy of him  to brag about, since I hear he was one of the leaders causing it in the first place. It's kind of like somebody asking you to admire them for agreeing to stop hitting you in the head.
    "And that brings me to the rest of what I'm wondering, which is,  now that those Republicans are in control, what are they actually going to do about things?  They can't go on just giving President Obama the dickens.  Well, I guess they could, but I mean they've already made it plain they think he's worse than your ex-wife's second husband.  What's the point? And what does that have to do with the work they are supposed to get on with themselves?
    "The Widow Cumbee says I should try to look at things in a positive way. She says we should all try to see it kind of like we'd been given a mystery gift for Christmas.  But I can't get very far with that, because I'm kind of nervous that maybe the people who got together to give us the gift don't know what's in the box, either, but we're all going to have to live with whatever pops out.
    "The widow Cumbee says I'm just a worrywart. I sure would like to know what you think about all this, nephew. And in the meantime I hope you keep well.

                                                                                  "Sincerely,
                                                                                  "Your Uncle Barlow."

God Love Darwin

    Endlessly we debate: Darwin or the Bible? And endlessly the debate is full of caricature.  The Bible is freighted with claims it does not make.  Hearsay versions of 150-year-old science are proclaimed as if they were holy writ.  Fact goes wanting.
    An open and literate society ought to do better.
    For starters, the theory of natural selection was never seamless.  With Newton and other pioneers, Charles Darwin explained much but not all in his field of inquiry.  He himself noted the failure of some phenomena to fit where his grid said they ought.
    Critiques, caveats and elaborations from other scientists soon followed publication of  "The Origin of Species" in 1859. They have followed plentifully ever since. Today's evolutionary thinking is far more varied than Darwin's. And around it even yet remain puzzles, anomalies and disagreements.
    The biblical side of the debate is compromised by America's culture of scriptural ignorance. The constitutional idea of church-state separation has spread widely into aspects of thought and attitude it was never meant to govern.  In our popular mindset, freedom of religion has morphed into freedom from religion.
     Even among observant Americans, the Bible is far more often cited than actually read. It may never be directly encountered in the completion of  a so-called liberal education. Ostensibly literate people may be little aware of its broad impact on Western culture.
    And what a pity for them to miss, say, the grandeur of Job:

    "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
    'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
    'Gird up your loins like a man.  I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
    'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?
    'Tell me, if you have understanding.
    'Who determined its measurements -- surely you know!
    'Or who stretched the line upon it?
    'On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
    'Or who shut the sea in with doors when it burst out from the womb?
    'When I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band
    'And prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors
    'And said, "This far shall you come and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped?"
    'Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
    'And caused the dawn to know its place,
    'So that it might take hold of the skirts of the Earth
    'And the wicked be shaken out of it? ' "

    Or how about Paul at his best?

    "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
    "Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist
on its own way;  it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
    "Love never ends ... ."

    A greater pity is this:  The Bible's confinement at the outskirts of cultural literacy makes Americans sitting ducks for quackery, chicanery  and foolishness -- for televangelist hucksters; for opportunists with a taste for political influence;  for all sorts of  glib nonsense about what the Bible is, and about what it actually says.
    Take, for example, the idea of measuring the Bible by the standards of a modern history  book -- a model that cannot be sensibly applied if only because the form was unknown at the time of the biblical writings.
    In this light, what of Genesis?
    It is nearer to being a sermon or, more precisely, a conflation of sermons.  Also, it is a treasury of artful communication.  Imagine being a writer-editor working in the context of an ancient and marginally literate theocracy. Imagine wanting to articulate the idea that humans had broken with God by arrogating to themselves the definition of good and evil.  Toward this end, the image of stealing fruit from the tree of knowledge is marvelously effective.
    And where outside of Genesis do seven words better capture a descent from innocence into worldly shame:  "Who told you that you were naked?"
    Or consider the example of Jonah.  If we are to take the Bible seriously, must we believe that a big fish literally swallowed a man whole and then spit him out, alive, days later?
    The question is without worthwhile point.
    In the story, God tells Jonah to take His word to Nineveh, where a great deal of sinning has been going on.  Jonah feels the people of Nineveh don't deserve that kind of attention.  He tries to run away, and in the process lands in the belly of the fish.
    Three days and three nights later he is back on dry land, hearing again the divine command to go and preach in Nineveh.   Reluctantly, Jonah complies.  He admonishes the Ninevites to repent -- and in a trice, they all do.  God sees their repentance and forgives them.
    Jonah's reaction?  He is sullen and resentful.  He thinks the Almighty should have handed out more justice and less mercy.  As the brief story ends, God leaves a still-sulking Jonah to ponder its real point: Why should God not cherish all His creatures?
    Understood in the context of its time, place and culture, this is a teaching story and a good one.  It is about obedience and the abundance of divine love. The business about the fish is peripheral to the spirit and the purpose of the tale.
    Even so, we moderns say, we are moderns, after all.  What might be something nearer to our own experience?
    Examples of teaching stories abound in our literature. I think of Harper Lee's classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."  It is a story about values, and about the potentially high cost of being faithful to them.  The human issues it portrays are quite real.  The lessons it advances are quite real.  Worrying about the historicity of Atticus Finch would be as useful as worrying that Lewis Carroll might never actually have seen a Bandersnatch.
    The Bible is a wonderfully diverse and sophisticated collection of books, poems, songs, letters and other forms of literature not seen today.  It is a record across centuries of how individuals, groups and whole cultures have lived out their need to express their experience of God.
    And nothing in it requires us to suppose that God could not have chosen evolutionary tools to bring the human race to the forefront of His creation.  There is no necessary conflict between science and faith.
    But American culture has traveled to an ironic extreme.  Reverence is reserved for technology, while religious faith is elbowed out of sight.  Nowadays you may be deemed merely colorful if, in polite conversation, you tell a naughty story or drop an expletive. But venture aloud a serious mention of God, and you may be charged with a true breach of manners.
    Yes, prudent minimums of courtesy do recommend that we refrain from pushing values on each other willy-nilly.  But when did we decide that Americans must be guaranteed of living beyond sight or sound of any manifestation of faith?
    And where did we lose the intellectual rigor to recognize that our culture has rigged the discussion of faith and reason?
    C.S. Lewis is helpful on this point.  He wrote of being in a dark tool shed on a bright afternoon.  A shaft of sunlight angled through a crack above the door.  From a position to one side he could see the sunbeam, the motes drifting in it, and the objects it fell upon.  Standing in the sunbeam and looking upward along it, he could see nothing inside the shed, only a framed view of leaves, branches and the sky beyond.
    We would quickly demur if someone claimed that one of these perspectives was inherently more "real" than the other, that one was objective in ways that the other was not.  So, too, we must demur from suggestions that the engagement of faithful people in the "real world" is not "impartial,"  that it is compromised ipso facto by their very faith.
    Yet our culture makes the claim nonetheless, and even hijacks the definition of terms.  Faith is characterized as chosen belief, in the way that one might choose to accept the word of a trusted friend.  Our cultural vocabulary does not credit the possibility of faith being an objectively real experience -- as can the experience of beauty, in a very pale analogy.
    Our idiom does not bother to assail the proposition but simply ignores it.  This mode of thinking is not rationalism or even skepticism.  It is intellectual dishonesty in expedient disguise. But it does simplify discussion by evading the essential questions.
    An open and literate society ought to do better.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 

Washington: Attack of the Microbes

      "Everything is changing.  People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."                              
          Will Rogers

                                                                                     

       When Joseph Medill was publisher of the Chicago Tribune in the late 19th century, the newspaper closely reflected his views.  Medill's views were not well informed on some matters.  Science was among these.
      For a time he was fascinated by sunspots.  And in the pages of the Tribune, as a matter of policy, all natural phenomena were attributed to sunspots.  Abruptly, Medill became interested in microbes. And abruptly, in the pages of the Tribune, sunspots disappeared. All natural phenomena were thenceforth attributed to microbes.
      It might be a stretch to call today's politics natural phenomena.  But in explanation of them, microbes and sunspots make about as much sense as anything.
      Consider Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In them, we lately have two of the most powerful people in the world pleading penury.
      Biden is known to be a wag. However, he did not appear to be in joking mode here.  And he amplified his claim with  particulars that were demonstrably -- let us try to put this as charitably as possible -- not consistent with fact.  Sometimes Ol' Joe's gaffes are only that. He's been called the kind of guy who'd bring a ham sandwich to a Seder meal.  Maybe this was just one of those times when he talked faster than he thought.
      Clinton's comic muse has long since decamped. The possibility of levity need not be considered in her case. So, what the dickens was she up to? She knocks down a six-figure fee for making a speech. Husband Bill's net worth is estimated  in the tens of millions.
       Sometimes, when we desperately want to be liked, we blurt things we regret.  It can happen to anyone. By all accounts she must be powerfully regretting this one.
      On other fronts:

      -- Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas vigilante, strikes poses suggesting he is available for a presidential nod.  The notion of a Cruz presidency is credible to people who think a diverse electorate could be led by a man who is genuinely offended by differences of opinion.
      -- Congress continues its serial homage to the Keystone Kops.
      --  Speaker of the House John Boehner continues hoping that his ranting will camouflage his bumbling.
      --  The Supreme Court has opened still another channel for fat cat political money. Chief Justice John Roberts decorated this ruling with a pronouncement that large contributions by wealthy individuals do not   necessarily create  a presumption that wealthy individuals will exercise extra influence. Television comedian Bill Maher said this opinion could have been written by "The Little Mermaid."  Sounds about right.
      -- The Supreme Court has ruled that businesses can have religion and are allowed to enforce it upon their employees.   Memo to The Little Mermaid: Maybe you want to reconsider your desire to become human.
      -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has tried to preserve his bona fides by claiming that when his staff locked the door to New York City he, gosh,  just didn't notice.  He remains presidential timber because he is such a stand-up guy.  We could give him the keys to the Pentagon and rest easy. He would pay attention next time.  Honest.
      -- Like tedious relatives who simply won't go home, an assortment of yesterday's crackpots and has-beens -- well, simply won't go home.

      As we see no witch crushed beneath a fallen house, we must conclude that Auntie Em is not on her way to wake us from an outlandish dream. All this really is happening.
      About the Supreme Court we can only sigh and wait.  Not for the first time it has been peppered with appointees better known for ideology than for ability.  The court has seen a resurgence of competence before, and eventually it will again.
      Of political discourse we must say there's not much of the genuine article nowadays. Nor does Hillary Clinton's performance so far offer improvement.  In her silly claims of financial struggle, and in her response to the hoots that followed, she has been notably tone deaf. In interviews she can pirouette through an answer without honestly touching on the substance of the question asked. And she regularly does.
      Our public life is crowded with figures who seem less interested in messages that will resonate than in messages that are easy to swallow. It is as if they have so long urged us to think in the idiom of bumper stickers they've begun doing so themselves. Or they use sloganeering to costume mere ambition. Or they resort to it because they genuinely don't know what to say to the public in these complex times.
      Seen through the knothole of the 2016 presidential election, our next few years may be an era of conspicuously weak leadership. Hopeful hearts have wanted Hillary Clinton to be an exception. But so far she doesn't reliably stand out from the crowd.
   
   

My Secret Shame

    In the  spring, when others' fancies turn to rebirth and renewal, mine turn to introspection and self- discipline.  I belong to a tribe of men who share a serious existential problem. Mother Nature doesn't like us. Not one bit.
    I have learned this cosmic truth in a succession of suburban yards.  My first,  years ago,  had been owned by a retired couple with a passion for flower gardening. Friends asked me gingerly if I -- a neophyte -- really meant to tackle the care of it on my own.  With grand assurance I told them I did indeed.
    Foolish me.  Mother Nature quickly brought me to heel.  Shrubs that had thrived for years sickened when my shadow fell across them.  Hardy leaves grew odd tumors.  Blossoms wilted mysteriously overnight.   My visits for advice at nurseries occasioned impromptu staff meetings and murmurs of puzzled amazement.
    Over the years I've had similar luck with lawns.  They defy my every effort. If one corner thrives, another withers. I have been host to the United Nations of weeds.  My yard care has had the single virtue of consistency.  Through many years and five states I have replicated one result.  Picture corn stubble.
     We outcasts of Mother Nature are a tribe of secret shame.  We recognize each other by the look in our eyes.  However, our shame has nothing to do with a sense of failure. We are perfectly happy for our egos to shelter in the mastery of some other skill -- in a facility for card games, say, or a way with hammers and saws; in a knack with dogs or a flair in the kitchen. In these modern times the definition of manliness has acquired enough scope to offer us a variety of havens.
     No, our shame is of a moral sort.  Our affliction causes us to resent perfectly decent people
     A man who lived near one of my homes was both a neighbor and a friend.   A fine fellow all around.  Good company and a solid citizen. We shared drinks and fun, and serious conversation, too. I was glad to know him.
    And I lived in fear of his discovering that I ground my teeth whenever I looked in the direction of his house and yard.  They were a portrait of perfection.  The grass was a carpet.  The trees were manicured. He maintained this Eden with scarcely any effort.  In the Spring, he sprinkled a little of this and that.  His plants prospered. In the fall, when he blew away leaves, they stayed where he put them.  Every one. Year-round, he achieved in minutes what I labored at for hours without a scrap of proper result. I cherished my friend in fellowship but hated him his yard.
    Another friend in another town had only to gesture and Mother Nature danced.  He grew his own herbs. His tomatoes thrived.  The first time I tried to grow tomatoes, the family dog plucked them from the vine at secret times of her own mysterious devising.  I contrived to have this friend visit my house more often than I visited his.  He never seemed to notice the manipulation.
    Nonetheless, we humans are a hopeful lot. We endure, and sometimes through endurance we prevail.  At length I decided that I need not be forever exiled from harmony with the natural world.  I would feed birds.  As this involved no expectation that seeds would actually germinate, it seemed a reasonable undertaking.
    I had not reckoned on squirrels. They were so many and so hungry that the cost of birdseed became a noticeable item in my monthly budget.  They devised acrobatic means of defeating squirrel-proof feeders.  They did pause briefly when I laced the birdseed with cayenne pepper.  Then they learned to like it.  They could have been tasters at a Cajun cooking contest.
    Squirrels still harass me, and I still harass them. A while back, in a naive spasm, I planted pansies.  The squirrels ate the blossoms. I now possess an arsenal of chemical repellents. All natural, the labels tell me.  All vile, my nose tells me.  The squirrels watch until I forget to spray.  Then they dine.
   Ours is a relationship of sorts, even with its overtones of guerrilla warfare. I persist because it just doesn't seem right for a man to be totally excluded from involvement with the natural world.  It doesn't seem -- well, natural for all the territory beyond my window panes to be a foreign land.
    In every other regard my life skills are simple but solid. I do a good job of cleaning a bathroom. I can tell a decent joke.  Small children seem to like me.
    And I have learned, I believe, to carry with grace the burden of my guilt.  To soldier on.  I can smile serenely through the longest discussion of horticultural success. Others do not glimpse my inner struggle. I am a rock.
    In fact there is a man in my neighborhood who has a perfect yard.  He is also a friend, and ...
    Oh, well.

Lies, Damn Lies and Republicans

    "There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity."
                                                Big Daddy Pollitt in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof



    Time was, politicians might fear being caught in a lie. If Big Daddy were to sniff the air today, he would surely say that times have changed.
    Lies are so common in political discourse that news outlets devote continuing features to enumerating and explaining them.  At the moment, Republicans would win a contest scored on frequency and gall. They are struggling with obsolescence in their brand, and with an acute anemia of leadership.
    Their presidential crop may be even thinner than in 2012, when their ticket featured a clueless plutocrat and a partisan hustler.  Now, in the echo chambers of their early season speechfests, a darling has been Sen. Rand Paul, son of former Rep. Ron Paul -- a pair whose behavior suggests the existence of a crackpot gene.  Sen. Marco Rubio's name appears occasionally on the marquee.  But it flickers.  The young senator is noticeably green, and his voter appeal could be debated: He gained his Senate seat by winning a  multi-candidate election in which more people voted for someone else than for him.
    New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is struggling awkwardly to rise above scandal.  He claims that when his staff took it upon themselves to lock the door to New York City, he just didn't notice.  Meanwhile, confirming that he is not a natural for the china shop of diplomacy, he startled an influential Jewish audience with references to Israeli "occupied territories."
    Christie confuses swaggering with leadership, or he hopes voters will.  And with magnified scrutiny he may begin to resemble Boss Tweed in more than girth.  Mindful of this, old guard Republicans are trying to gin up enthusiasm for still another member of the Bush family, former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Among those displaying markedly restrained enthusiasm is Jeb Bush himself.
    The weakness of the Republican brand is profound, and not only as it was symbolized in Mitt Romney's royalist view of government. Demographic shifts and evolving attitudes are moving the country away from ideas the GOP insists on standing for.
    In extremis, the party has resorted to chicanery. This has sustained mindless, showboat attacks on a duly elected president.  In Congress it has produced dangerous obstruction.  At the state level it has produced laws nakedly intended to impede voting by likely Democrats.
    And it is about to fuel fanciful claims that superior policy positions are moving Republicans toward gains in off-year Congressional elections.
    The truth is twofold:
    -- Republicans will gain Congressional seats in the November elections.
    -- The districts up for decision this year are so heavily gerrymandered that a fire hydrant could win on the Republican ticket.
    Time is against the Republican Party as it now stands, both the old barons and the Tea Party faction that is clutching them in a death dance.  Time is also against cranks, opportunists and vigilantes in public life. The American electorate -- patient to a fault in the aggregate -- eventually insists that leaders pay effective attention to the glamourless, sleeves-up business of running the country.
    For now we are left to regret that a major political party has passed into the hands of people who display little respect for the citizens they supposedly represent, and little regard for integrity in the democratic process.
    Thus an irony emerges for people who know  that thoughtful conservatism makes a useful contribution to political discourse:  Their best hope may be that today's Republican Party will finally shake itself apart and leave room for better.
 

How Republicans Say Amen

    I had a letter the other day from my Uncle Barlow, who lives way out in the countryside in  Barlow County.  He wants my advice about a new challenge. Here's what he had to say.
    "Dear Nephew,
    " I've got this new situation to deal with, and I'd be mighty curious to have your opinion about how it's going.
    "You see, my Cousin Mavis has asked me to spend some time with her son Orlo. She's been raising the boy by herself ever since her husband Mandrell went missing. (The Widow Cumbee says he ran off with a podiatrist's wife from over at Tabor City, but we don't actually know if that's so, and anyhow it never has seemed to trouble Mavis much, so we just leave it alone.)
    "Mavis thinks the boy has got to an age where he needs a man's advice. She asked me to help out. I said sure, thinking I'd be talking to him about bullies and girls and such.  But this boy has got a whole different kind of thing on his mind. You see, he's been following the news, and he's got some questions.
    "Well, over he came the other day, and we set up on the porch with some RC Cola and pork rinds, and he started right in. He wanted to record the whole thing for school, and I've sent along this copy so you can hear it for yourself." 

    Here's what the recording said.  

"Orlo:  Well, Cousin Barlow, looks like the politicians are getting kind of wound up.
"Barlow:  Yes, they truly are.  There's some elections coming up, and they are maneuvering to get ready.
"Orlo: Looks like those Republicans are getting extra restless.  And what exactly is a Republican, anyway?
"Barlow:  Well, son, even the Republicans aren't necessarily sure about that one nowadays, but if I had to try to put it in a nutshell I'd say a Republican is somebody who thinks the government shouldn't be too big and should leave people alone as much as it can.
"Orlo: They think the government should pretty much try to leave people alone?
"Barlow: Yes, pretty much.
"Orlo:  Then why do they want to have all these rules to make women have babies?"
"Barlow:  Well, son, you'll begin to learn as you grow up that sometimes people say one thing but do another.
"Orlo:  Oh, I see.  Like those folks that flock down to the First Barlow County Church every Sunday."
"Barlow: Now you'll want to be careful about that. Religion and politics are two different things.  
"Orlo: Do those Republicans know that?  They sure do seem to be friendly with a lot of those preachers.  But I guess that does kind of make sense, seeing as how they are in similar lines of work.
"Barlow:  Pardon?
"Orlo: They both want to tell you what to do, and they both want you to send 'em money.
"Barlow:  Yes, I do guess you could say that.
"Orlo:  Do those preachers tell their people who to vote for?
"Barlow:  Not in so many words, no.  But they are pretty slick about letting it be known what kind of politics they favor.
"Orlo:  Well, then, do their friends the politicians tell people to go to church?
"Barlow:  No. Not in so many words.
"Orlo:  But what would happen if the politicians started favoring things the preachers didn't like?
"Barlow:  Then I guess the preachers would stop leaning their way.
"Orlo: So, to keep the deal going, the politicians have to favor the government doing things the preachers like?
"Barlow: Yes, I suppose so.
"Orlo: Like those rules to make women have babies?  That's kind of a big thing with some of those preachers, isn't it?
"Barlow: Well, that's for sure.
"Orlo:  So, the politicians don't tell people they have to go to church, but they do tell people they have to do what the preachers want 'em to do.
"Barlow:  Uh, huh.
"Orlo:  Is that why some of the politicians want to make rules against gay people, too? Because of what the preachers say?
"Barlow: That's certainly mixed up in it, yes.
"Orlo:  Is it contagious?  Can you catch it?
"Barlow: Is what contagious, son?
"Orlo:  Gay-ness. Being gay.  Some of those people act like they're afraid if we let gay people have the same rules as everybody else, then everybody would want to be gay. 
"Barlow: No, son.  Being gay is not contagious.
"Orlo: Then why are those preachers and their friends so hot against it?
"Barlow:  They say it goes against the Bible.
"Orlo:  Oh, my goodness.  Did Jesus say it's bad to be gay?
"Barlow: No, Jesus didn't mention it one way or the other.  The folks who talk about it being against the Bible are talking about the Old Testament.
"Orlo: Isn't that the part of the Bible that talks about not eating shellfish and such?
"Barlow: Yes, that's it.
"Orlo:  If a lot of those Republicans get elected, will I have to give up shrimp?
"Barlow:  No, son.  The preachers and their friends skip those parts. The Bible is a very long book, and it has a lot of different parts to it.
"Orlo:  So, they kind of pick and choose the parts they want to get hot about?
"Barlow: Yes, pretty much.
"Orlo:  But suppose I read the Bible, and I favor different parts of it than they do?
"Barlow: I guess they wouldn't like that.
"Orlo:  So these preachers want their politician friends to make government rules about what kind of religion people have to favor?
"Barlow: It does kind of amount to that, yes.
"Orlo: And about sex, and who's got to have babies, and stuff like that?
"Barlow: Among other things, yes.
"Orlo: Well, all I can say is, thank goodness.
"Barlow:  Pardon?
"Orlo:  Thank goodness those Republicans say the government should try to leave people alone. Heaven knows what they'd be doing if they said the government ought to get all up in our personal and private business."

    That's where Uncle Barlow's recording ended.  He went on in his letter to say that he isn't sure what kind of advice to give young Orlo, and to ask my opinion.
    I will drop Uncle Barlow a line and tell him I think Orlo has a pretty good handle on things all by himself.


    

 

The Pope In Our Ear

    It is common to suppose that human progress, if represented on a graph, would be a steadily ascending line.  But some writers say otherwise. They say the line would be a curving one, sometimes ascending and sometimes descending along a horizontal axis.
    They see matters this way: Smarter machines and bigger buildings don't amount to human progress, because machines and buildings aren't human.  If we consider, instead, modes of thought and systems of values, we see that  some ancient societies were quite sophisticated -- and were already so at the earliest moments we are able to discern.  Yet the value systems of some later societies have been crude.  On the whole, we have not become better human beings. We have only become better equipped human beings.  If our modern tools and methods have empowered us to achieve great good, they have also armed us to do great harm. Our instinct for the latter has not diminished as we've achieved what we call progress.
    All of which brings me to a major treatise by Pope Francis. ( Full disclosure: I have never been a member of the Roman Catholic Church.)  Commentators of various persuasions have cherry-picked his long message for validation of their own views. At the admitted risk of doing the same, I would make these points:
    Only one part of the Pope's message was devoted to his much-discussed condemnation of trickle-down capitalism.  In it, he denounced a financial system that "rules rather than serves." He cautioned against "crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."  He warned that our times are  "pervaded ... by consumerism" that produces " ... a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. "
    Viewed whole, the Pope's treatise is a blueprint for the role of the Catholic Church in the world. It touches on a sweeping variety of topics: economics, politics, poverty, technology, racism, gender equality and more.  It is a thoughtful and balanced work.  It is notably well informed on the ways of the secular world.
    He cautions us against abdicating personal responsibility in favor of institutional norms.  He begins, of course, with the Roman Catholic Church. He challenges the church to channel its customs and methods more effectively toward service "rather than for her self-preservation."  He worries that the church "is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."
    Pope Francis clearly means these admonitions for other institutions as well, so let me now borrow them for application to American government and, in particular, the Congress.
    There, members sworn to govern in the interest of all the people have abdicated this responsibility in favor of intramural struggles for partisan sway.  Republicans are -- at the moment -- in the forefront of this dereliction.  Demographic and attitudinal tides  in the country are turning against them. They've tried to delay the arrival of the future by turning the Republican Party into a labor union for the well-to-do.
    Prominent in their strategy has been a fevered campaign against the President's new health care program. This opposition is manifestly nourished  by fear that the program will work, and will thus create a grateful larger constituency for Democratic policies.  Republicans in Congress first tried to keep people who needed the program from having it.  Then they and allies have tried to dissuade people from using it.  Party has mattered more than public needs.
    In the larger scheme, if free-market nostrums from the political right can be come-ons to the credulous, nostrums from the left can be as well.   To borrow phrases, they may invite crude and
naive trust in the goodness of those wielding political power and in the sacralized dogma of
government as problem-solver.  Even as our leaders differ on policy they are, at their worst, united on
one point.  They are Tweedledum and Tweedledee in wanting voters to think in bumper stickers and toe the party line.  Political careerists benefit from this approach.  The public does not.
    In  some of his thinking Pope Francis has an unlikely bedfellow:  The late anthropologist and writer Loren Eiseley.  Though his writing was not religious, Eiseley was keenly attuned to the concept of a natural order.  He thought we humans have learned to change it faster than we have learned to understand the consequences of changing it.  He saw us becoming  people who believe -- naively -- that everything worth knowing or having can be defined by technology and consumer economics. He had a term for this latest form of evolved Homo Sapiens:  Asphalt Man.
    The Pope used different language for similar concerns. Here is what he said about material advances not matched by human advances: " ... Epochal change has been set in motion by the enormous qualitative, quantitative rapid and cumulative advances occurring in the sciences and in technology, and by their instant application in different areas of nature and life.  We are in an age of knowledge and information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power."
    To my ear, Pope Francis is concerned that robots and rocket ships could become our golden calf.
     He is manifestly concerned about the state of the Roman Catholic Church.  A discussion of the many good reasons for this would require more time and space than are here available.  Perhaps useful evidence can be seen in reactions to the Pope's treatise.  Conservative elements of his church grumbled that he did not tread heavily enough on their favorite issues of abortion and the like. (They were joined by presumptuous voices on the American political right.) Institutional norms were challenged, and the challenge was not welcomed.
    Meanwhile, some of us feast in life while others starve.  Rich men have tried to buy the presidency for one of their own, and they promise to try again.  The Congress has brought itself into public disgrace.  And the Pope has become controversial by proclaiming an ethic of love and service.
    Like fish perceiving water, we cannot be certain where we are on that rising and falling curve of human progress.  But we can guess.  Mine is that, when history makes a list of societies whose value systems could have been better, we will be on it.