Job Killers

Has anyone really caught on to what’s happening with all this talk (and action) about deficits and the national debt?  Republicans have done it again.  They’re controlling the conversation and in doing so are creating an environment calculated to win the 2012 election.  Why.  Because the immediate effect of their cost cutting is to increase unemployment and keeping unemployment high is the only chance they have of regaining the White House.  So every time you read or hear of this Republican governor or legislature slashing a budget think of killing jobs, creating unemployment.  Not prudence but raw politics.  Think about the teacher or sanitation worker who is suddenly out of a job and, like fellow leveraged neighbors, is becomes an unwilling candidate for foreclosure.  At the very least don’t expect the formerly employed public servant to be buying up a storm at the local supermarket or mall.  And don’t think cutting the fat from government, think rather of the ripple effect on businesses large and especially small whose revenues will be pinched right along with their customers.  Can they hire, or more accurately risk hiring, with the prospect of lower revenues?  These are not unintended consequences they are caluculated and insiduous.

To add insult to injury, acclaimed Republican front runner Mitt Romney announces his candidacy blaming Obama for unemployment and claiming that he will be a job creator.  Really?  Romney famously decimated jobs in the companies that his Bain Capital took over during those years where he built his much touted business credentials.  And during his tenure as governor, Massachusetts ranked 47^th in job growth.  This is the same man who calls for repeal of the Affordable Care Act trying to rob the rest of Americans of the very healthcare benefits he promoted for his own state.  It’s par for the course in a field that includes a serial family values fraud and a performer/entrepreneur on a tease tour who’d like to be called President but found it impossible to complete her own term as governor.   In other words the title but not the work or responsibility.

The job situation is grim and there is no reason to believe it will get better soon.  That it hasn’t measurably imporoved may reinforce the contention of Paul Krugman and others that the stimulus was far too modest.  But it may also suggest the limits of Presidential power or that of the government in righting a systemically damaged economy.  Americans are long term victims of the great hoax perpetrated by greedy realtors and loan sharks (sadly that’s what our bankers seem to be) facilitated by a string of political leaders — yes Ronald Reagan but equally Bill Clinton.

What is it they say about the devil and details?   Cutting spending to reduce the deficit sounds great until we read the fine print and experience its inevitable consequences.  You don’t hear anyone suggesting that the number of state legislators or the House members be cut in half.  No those jobs, albeit supposedly up for grabs on Election Day, are secure.  Maybe Romney isn’t so out of place.  Elected officials these days are exactly like corporate titans who downsize (a euphemism for firing a lot of hard working people) while going on their merry way, their lifestyle or appetites unimpaired.

Democrats, you want a slogan to run on this year?  Brand the Republicans Job Killers, it’s a title that passes the both the fact and emotional test, one that can stick.  At the very least remind Americans what’s really afoot and start taking control of the conversation.  Please!

Bibi, have you heard the news?

Coming from a family that saw the creation of a Jewish State in the wake of the Holocaust as redemptive, an official visit by an Israeli Prime Minister was nothing short of thrilling.  That such a leader might actually address a joint session of our Congress, which Yitzhak Rabin did in January of 1976, was simply unimaginable.  The only analogy that comes close — and equally unimaginable — was that we would have an African American sitting in the White House.

It is in this context that I found the appearance of Bibi Netanyahu lecturing that President in the Oval Office, and seeking to undermine him on Capital Hill so profoundly disheartening.  What’s most troubling is that the Prime Minister and many of his supporters in Israel, at AIPAC and in the Halls of Congress don’t seem to understand that Barak Obama, like the tireless Bill Clinton before him, is among Israel’s best and truest friends.  It’s precisely the kind of friendship that any of us should want.  As Obama defined it at AIPAC real friends talk openly and honestly with one another.   A West Bank settler told a reporter that he feels sorry for President Obama, whom he characterized as being out of touch with reality.  Perhaps all those who so cheered Netanyahu on Capital Hill (political theater that shouldn’t be considered seriously) agree with that assessment, but I think the man has it exactly backwards.  He (and his Prime Minister) might do well to look in the mirror.

The winds of change in Israel’s neighborhood have been making headlines for months.  So it really boggles the mind that so many people there (and here) seem oblivious to the implications of what is, even at this early date, a total game changer.  The region’s durable fixture Hosni Mubarak who was grooming his son for inevitable succession is out of power and they both have been indicted for murder.  Israel is not immune to these seismic changes.  Whether they fired the first bullet (they didn’t) or can point to their own dislocations (they can) should be, but probably no longer is, relevant.  Netanyahu, with the assurance of an owner may talk about being generous and insist on a military presence on the Jordan, but he may not be in full control of the future.  Just ask Obama (or any President) how easy it is to see the best-laid plans go out the window when events take over.   In the face of a sea change, none of us, certainly not Israel, can rely on long held assumptions.  More important, those who blindly encourage staying the course are endangering Israel’s future not protecting it.  I’ve written about the implications of the Arab Spring before (Gandhi rebooted and Moment of Truth), so let me not repeat myself.  But do take a look at Tom Friedman’s similar views expressed in his excellent May 24 column, Lessons from Tahrir Sq.   Both he and I are American Jews who desperately want Israel to survive.

Bibi Netanyahu is a canny fellow when it comes to American politics, which is not surprising.  He spent part of his childhood here and was later educated in American universities.  He speaks unaccented English, the kind of foreigner we Americans instinctively like.  His politics are aligned with the Republican Party (the Boehner invitation), especially now that it has turned so far to the right.  George W. Bush was a soul mate; Barak Obama is not.  From the moment he arrived last week, Bibi has done everything possible to undermine our President, most especially playing Congress against him.  Of course, that they, including Democrats, followed like blind sheep may speak more to the condition of our own politics than his. 

Watching Netanyahu giving his history lesson in the Oval Office and addressing Congress on Tuesday (with the word for word text he might used before the Arab Spring) put the difference between being President and being a legislator in sharp relief.  Legislators have the luxury of posturing, which they seem unable to resist.  Presidents have the burden of getting things done.  Cheering, talking tough and saber-rattling is cheap and easy.  Sending young people into battle or negotiating peace is something entirely different.  The pundits and the public should keep that in mind when scoring these past days.  Netanyahu did great we're told; Obama was rebuked (including by Harry Reid).  Maybe so, but I’m with the President here and most especially with his sober straight talk. 

American Jews and Israelis would do well to pause for a moment and consider what our President’s told AIPAC attendees on May 22.  Because we understand the challenges Israel faces, he said, I and my administration have made the security of Israel a priority.  It’s why we’ve increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels.  It’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies.   It’s why, despite tough fiscal times, we’ve increased foreign military financing [already far larger than to any other country] to record levels.

Everyone who cares about Israel — and we all should — would do well to read the entire text.  As to that real friends talking openly and honestly with one another, consider just these listed facts that he suggested we all must confront: 

• First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian Territories.  This will make it harder and harder -- without a peace deal -- to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.


• Second, technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace.


• Third, a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region.  A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders.  Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.

Netanyahu ignored all three.  His focus was the ’67 borders and the width of the Washington Beltway.  He catalogued all the things that were wrong with the Palestinians — many of which are true — but absent from his forcefully delivered talk was even a single mention of something Israel might have done wrong.  He spoke of that generosity, but shut the door tight on even a discussion of Jerusalem (speak of unrealistic).

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians certainly can’t be blamed for all that’s wrong in the region or for all of the hostility of some Muslims toward the West.  We don’t know what will happen the day after a peace agreement is signed.  That the absence of an agreement has been used and manipulated by various nations and groups for their own purposes can’t be denied.  So, too, does Israel bare a greater burden in the blame game and is it often unfairly portrayed as the sole villain.  But at some point all of that ceases to have much meaning.  Settling the Israel/Palestine issue, the President has made clear, is in the vital interest of the United States.  For valid reasons, exagerated or not, it impacts on world peace.  Real friends level with each other.  So don’t be fooled by all the cheers that will turn on a dime if the wind blows in another direction.  Self-interest, perceived or real, ultimately prevails.

But also don’t lose heart.  Menachem Begin, founder of the party that was the seed out of which Bibi’s Likud grew, began his career as a terrorist.  As Prime Minister some years later, he signed the treaty with Sadat.  He is remembered not for the bombs he detonated in the pre-Israel Palestine but as a peacemaker.  Sharon was an often-ruthless warrior and provocateur whose last active days were focused on achieving peace, actually ceding Gaza as a sign of good faith.   I fear the current generation, is more interested in claiming their rightness and protecting an untenable status quo than moving forward.   Netanyahu’s aggressive foray into Washington didn’t allay that fear, quite the contrary.  Hopefully, I'm wrong.

Mike and Erik

I am a believer and follower of Jesus Christ…[the] decision is a spiritual one.  That I was undertaking it (a run for the presidency) without God’s full blessing was unthinkable.  With those words, spoken on his Fox talk show, Mike Huckabee took himself out of contention in 2012.  He didn’t go quite as far as to claim that God whispered specific instructions not to run in his ear, but the implication was clear.  Jesus Christ, God and presidential primaries — here they go again.  It seems some of our politicians can’t resist putting words in God’s mouth.  Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise us coming from a group of people who depend so much on speech and ghostwriters to put words in their mouths or author their books.  In any event, the mix of religion and politics, especially with the return of social conservatives dressed in Tea Party costumes, is alive and well in America.  It’s not merely religion in general, but Christianity in specific.  Think of the disgraceful hoax about Obama’s alleged foreign birth, one routinely linked to the claim that he is a closet Muslim (wrong religion) not a follower of Christ like Mike.

The Huckabee story coincided with a New York Times investigative report detailing the United Arab Emirates mounting a mercenary army gathered and trained by Reflex Responses, the latest Erik Prince (of Blackwater fame) venture.  Like all those pulled and assumed gone forever destructive weeds in my garden, the entrepreneurial former Navy Seal keeps reappearing with more or less the same script.  His is the dark side story of the Special Forces that we so celebrated for undoing Osama Bin Laden and who, in retirement, people his and similar enterprises.  The Times exposé, clearly just the tip of an iceberg, is chilling.  The U.A.E. creating such a paramilitary force seems especially significant in light of the Arab Spring, though it was coming together long before Tunis and Egypt.  Who says these revolts came as such a surprise?

Aside from appearing at the same time, the Mike and Erik stories may seem unrelated, and to a large degree are.  But what caught my attention and connected them was Erik Prince’s governing recruitment rule: hire no Muslims.  His rationale, call it justification, is that Muslim soldiers could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims.  Others (assumably mostly Christians) the directive infers, would have no such problem.  They can surely be counted on to follow orders and do whatever killing the contract requires.

In all fairness, Mercenaries are almost always made up of people not associated with the population they are meant to fight.  So Prince’s argument probably makes perfectly good military sense, or at least as people like him and his current client Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan see it.  One can’t help but wonder whether the employers of Blackwater in Iraq — the US government — saw things the same way.  As often as we are assured that not to be the case, countless Americans see us, a Christian nation, at war with Islam.  Of course, it’s not only some religious people who hold this view.  A leading anti-Islam voice is the best selling atheist writer-polemicist Sam Harris.  At least he’s upfront and honest about his views, which should be seen as part of his more global anti-religious stance.  What makes Harris different from the many others is that he (to paraphrase Orwell) believes all religions are bad; Islam is just more bad than others.

The bottom line is that we find ourselves not merely in times of extreme economic and political stress but also caught in a religious war.  And it is not a war restricted to military encounters with Muslims in the Middle East.  A version of it can be seen in the assault on say Planned Parenthood or when self-described libertarians want government out of our lives except that is when it suits their purpose or personal ideology. For example, our bedroom or doctor’s office.  It manifests as a war within, pitting fundamentalist against modernist Christians and without between proclaimed people of faith and those they brand unbelievers.

The growing disparity between the select few who have much more than they can reasonably use and the very many who are barely getting by is in itself a potential powder keg waiting to explode.  Make no mistake, the Tea Party, with all of its inconsistencies (and regardless of who is manipulating if for their own purpose) is but a symbol of widespread unrest that transcends conservative ideology.  There are plenty of social and political liberals who find themselves, their parents or their children out of work, buried in debt (including college debt) and with only the dimmest of prospects.  At the same time Banks, Insurance and Oil Companies are registering historic profits.  Every time I go shopping prices seem on the rise — our dollar isn’t buying what it did just a few weeks or months ago.  The nightmare that we may be headed for class warfare is sufficient to keep me up at night and fretting throughout the day.  Add religion to that mix and you have a potential incendiary that history tells us can be catestrophic.  That’s what makes me cringe when Mike Huckabee and others inject their religious beliefs and ideology into politics and what tells me that Erik Prince’s no Muslims need apply policy is a mindset that will, by definition, lead to no good. 

Who are we, anyway?

We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.  It’s not hard to imagine whom President Obama had in mind when he spoke about the release of his birth certificate.  But let’s not limit that to a group of right wing fringe activists and potential presidential aspirants, one in particular about whom Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker.  The press, as Hertzberg’s piece illustrates, has played a significant role here.  While the Times suggests that included a large measure of debunking and that a viral Internet was at play, print and broadcast News organizations continued to cover the lies as news, and with greedy (ratings) abandon.  I for one think the whole matter is a national disgrace in the ongoing saga of demonizing the Other about which I have written before.  That’s not only our first African American president but anyone who isn’t like us — wrong color, accent, sexual orientation et al.  Let’s not even get into that no other president has been subjected to such questions or that this particular one is the product of a biracial couple, still frowned upon in some circles of prejudice.

Some Republicans who have happily either given voice to the so-called Birther nonsense or have remained audibly silent throughout were quick to denounce the timing of the President’s remarks.  According to CBS, the RNC…sent an email mocking the notion that Obama has "better stuff to do" than worry about the birth certificate issue.  Indeed, in the face of a still weak economy, turmoil overseas and an allegedly out of control deficit, it would seem so.  But I’d suggest the birth certificate lie is very much related.  All of them, most particularly to raging deficit debate, speak to who we are as a nation.

None of us had to read the results of a recently reported CBS/New York Times poll to know that few Americans are very happy about the way things are going these days.  That poll focused largely on matters of political consequence.  However, important they may be (especially for the prospects of both major parties in 2012), to look at our unhappiness as a narrow who’s up and who’s down or even in a broader partisan context is essentially to miss the point.  What makes us unhappy these days is not only that our politics has become both shrill and dysfunctional or that most Americans (employed or not) are losing not gaining economic ground.  It’s not that we find ourselves in three wars and can’t really understand why, not to mention if any sort of victory is even remotely possible.  It is something far more profound than the moment — the news or election cycle.   America stands at an identity crossroad.   It’s not so much as a world power in the face of emerging giants like China or a shifting Middle East — though that is also the case — but in the most basic sense of who we are and who want to be at home.

In a recent Op-ed, Paul Krugman characterized the budget proposed by Paul Ryan as ludicrous and cruel. Ryan’s effort has been widely hailed by others in the press and elsewherre as a courageous start on an important debate, finally a serious look at all those third rail entitlements.  Krugman sees it differently.  His critique may be right on substance and even on intention.  That said, we shouldn’t be distracted by the details in and of themselves, nor by the intentional distractions of whether Planned Parenthood or NPR make the cut.  Cliché or not, follow the money remains sound advice.  That means not just the numbers but what the numbers express.  You can argue, and some do, that the whole deficit discussion is overblown.  Perhaps, but I see it as an important opportunity, not to be missed. Rather than dismissing the Wisconsin congressman, we should welcome the Pandora’s box he has opened.  So, too, should we welcome Tea Party and Religious Rightist attempts to introduce those narrow ideological distractions into authorizing spending for the remainder of the fiscal year.  I totally disagree with their point of view, but they are absolutely correct: it’s not only spending, but also how we spend and on what.

For as long as I can remember all of us (left, middle and right) have done a lot of talking past each other and around the edges of what should be a real conversation about who we have been, who we are today and who we want to be in the future. Yes George HW, the vision thing.  It is very easy for liberals such as myself to demonize those on the right, to cast them as in Krugman’s words as ludicrous and cruel.  So is it for conservatives to look at us as bleeding heart taxers and spenders.  It is also simplistic to say that those who are concerned about deficits are politically motivated or, in the case of the President, are simply caving in.  There may be some truth in both of those assessments, but just as it’s hard to deny global warming so is it undeniable that sheer demographics and the trajectory of non-discretionary spending, without significant changes, is unsustainable. 

With that said, we dare not move ahead and will be destined for certain failure, unless we at long last discuss the who we are question before we address the numbers themselves.  To do otherwise, which I fear we will again be the case, is to put the cart before the proverbial horse.  Structuring a budget, or for that matter a financial plan of any kind, requires first deciding what you want that plan to achieve and why.  Defining the objectives and setting priorities is actually the hard part.  The numbers will follow, a relatively easy task.  And there is no mystery here about the content of the discussion we need.  Sure it relates to the role of government in our society, but more importantly it is a matter of how we see our national community.  For starters we could begin by asking if this nation is a community, a word that implies shared interests, aspirations and responsibility.  The choice is not merely whether we should be business or people (whatever is meant by that) oriented, but whether even within a Capitalistic society the disparity between those who have everything and those who have relatively nothing should be so wide.  That isn’t just the question of whether CEO and worker pay should be so far apart — the first getting obcene annual increases while the other’s remains either in place or only marginally enhanced — but what we as a nation think is right.   These are moral questions, not religious but human morality.

It was true under President Bush and so it is now under President Obama.  A growing number of Americans think we’re headed on the wrong track.  That of course speaks to the big hole we’re in and how hard it is to dig ourselves out.  But it mostly speaks to that crossroad, to the uncertainty about who we and where we’re headed.  What exactly is it that our birth certificates imply and what road will we take going forward?  Without answering that question, we’re doomed.  We have a choice.  Let’s take it.

 

American theocracy redux.

They're back.  At the eleventh hour, it appeared that funding abortion providers stood in the way of averting a government shutdown.  Ah abortions, so that’s why we have this huge deficit.  In case you missed it, God is not only against abortions but also same-sex marriage and remains so about gays in the military (sure hope none of that kind are buried in Arlington).  What’s more, and this may really surprise you, it seems the Almighty is for smaller government, much lower taxes (especially for the well-healed), destroying unions, upending the middleclass and perhaps mostly gutting euro-style safety nets.  If you believe all that, you might have interest in the bridge I have for sale. 

According to The New York Times our American Christian Taliban are on the move again thanks in part to the Tea Party (thought they were concerned about unemployment and deficits).  Their resurgence was manifest in the early political maneuverings in Iowa where Republican hopefuls were falling all over themselves in assuring their deep commitment to bringing God back into government.  That is to say the god seen through their eyes and for whom they speak loudly with arrogant abandon.  Mike, Newt, Michelle and Haley have The Word (constitutional liberties like the right to bear arms were ordained by God), so all of you who’ve gone astray these past two years, watch out!

Who would have thought?  It turns out the Tea Party wasn’t simply a front for the Koch brothers but also for a new and improved version of that beloved Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson duo.  Not to be left out (and to remind us where they stand these days) a Supreme Court majority weighed in for God as well, poking its own big hole in Jefferson’s ungodly Wall of Separation.  I’m so glad the originalists are in firm command there.

The odd thing about all of this is that the very people who systematically seek to impose their religious ideology on the rest of us want no religious rule in places where Moslems not Christians hold sway.  Their biggest fear today is that religion will dominate a reconfigured Egyptian state or call the shots in the inevitable Palestinian one.  For them, secular (much like liberal) is a pejorative in the good old U.S. of A. but the ideal elsewhere.  Confused?  Don’t be and certainly don’t ask for consistency.  This comes from the same people who obsess about our deficit but want to drastically cut taxes.

I disagree with the Right’s approach to our politics and policies.  I see through their current game of cutting the public (federal and state) workforce including the teacher corps to the bone.  What an ingenious and sure way to insure a high unemployment number come next November.  I see their hypocrisy in bemoaning our not making things at home while their heroes in corporate America (did I mention their prime funders) are those most responsible for shuttering and shipping overseas our manufacturing and even services like tax preparation and (God really help us) tech support.  I disagree, but they have as much right to hold their view than do I.  We can and should have a legitimate debate about these things, where our country is headed, and why.

What I can’t handle is bringing God and religious ideology into that discussion.  It’s like two kids having a disagreement in the playground and one bringing in their mom or dad — the word of unquestioned authority — to take sides.  At least mom and dad are flesh and blood about whose existence we can all agree and whose words we can hear first hand.  Mom or dad interfering in the playground can be, and often is, inappropriate. God brought to us by some self-proclaim intermediary mixing into our political disagreements is really scary.  It was when Jerry and Pat pontificated or when Rick Warren called his command performance of candidates in 2008 and it remains so.  And, with all due respect, your supreme honors, any hint of theocracy is definitely not good or right for America.

 

Extinction: probably not, but.

A new and provocative study presented to the American Physical Society last week by a trio of mathematicians predicts that organized religion is on its way to extinction in nine countries.  Their work (using census data going back a century) was based on the same mathematical model employed in 2003 by the lead author Daniel Abrams to predict the extinction of little used languages.  What stimulated Abrams interest this time was learning that none is the fastest growing religious group in many countries around the world including here in America.  Moreover, those who have left religion behind represent a significant portion of their populations — already a 60% majority in the Czech Republic.  In a CNN interview, Abrams said that he and his colleagues were not trying to make any commentary about religion or whether people should be religious or not.  Rather they wanted to understand the long-term implications of the growing disaffiliation, particularly in Western-style democracies.  The United States was not included in the study because its census doesn’t ask about religion, but among the countries that do and where the researchers posit religion is likely to become extinct are Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and our neighbor Canada.

The trio developed a model to study competition between religious and irreligious segments of modern secular societies.  Again, as in America, none is the fastest growing group and trending higher.  The model, they write in their conclusion, indicates that in these societies the perceived utility of religious non-affiliation is greater than that of adhering to a religion, and therefore predicts continued growth of non-affiliation, tending toward the disappearance of religion.  Talking to the BBC, co-author Richard Wiener said, the study posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join.

Higher mathematics is far above my pay level, so I have no way of knowing if the trio’s model holds water.  My own sense is that their extinction prediction may be overstated.  That said, there is little doubt that in many countries trends are going against religion not for it.  What intrigues me about this work is that it leans so heavily on social dynamics, which I would argue under the umbrella of community has played a critical role in building and then protecting religion throughout history.  One of the questions with which I have been wrestling in my own work regarding those who have left religion behind is how and if non-religion can be viable without community?  It’s complicated because many people have left religion precisely, sometimes mostly, because they are rejecting community — religion in its organized form.  Lack of community may suit their immediate and personal needs, but their no religion stance may be difficult to carry into future generations.  Also, and hardly inconsequential when the Religious Right is again (Iowa’s Conservative Conference) raising its ugly head, the absence of community translates into having no place at the table.  Simply put, those without community lack political clout.

For that reason alone — there are others — I think some semblance of community engagement may be required.  The question is how, absent creating the very kind of organizational structure that is so anathema to them, can the nones both survive ideologically and protect their rights in the larger society?  When starting to think about this some years back, there was no good answer.  That may have changed in the face of social networking and the emergence of virtual communities.  And that’s exactly what Abrams suggested to CNN.  It's more attractive, he said, to be part of the majority than the minority, so as religious affiliation declines, it becomes more popular not to be a churchgoer than to be one — the majority effect.  People are more likely to switch to groups with more members.  Social networks can have a powerful influence.  Just a few connections to people who are (religiously) unaffiliated is enough to drive the effect. 

I would add that the rise of social networks could potentially accelerate the move from religion for a number of reasons.  First, because it may give voice to people who identify with religion solely because they’ve been told it’s what everyone does or should do.  Through social networking they may discover that the everyone in question is a myth.  Second, social networks often benefit from the viral effect, spreading the word in a way heretofore unknown and doing so instantaneously.  It’s not reading or hearing that some statistic says an amorphous 16% of Americans have moved beyond religion, it is that a someone specific to whom you can relate personally, call it a friend, shares your views.  Finally, social networks can lead to action — old fashion people power — influencing perceptions and conventional wisdom.  Just look at what’s happening in the Middle East where the idea that everyone is loyal to the dictator is being debunked across the landscape.  That no such everyone loyalty exists empowers those who thought themselves to be in the minority but are not — think Abrams’ majority effect.

Community has been essential to the world’s religions and might well be equally so for those who have left religion behind.  It may simply require rethinking what it takes to make and be a community, and clearly that’s no longer restricted to a village.

And now, Mr. "McCing".

I spent some time last week watching Peter King’s controversial hearing.  Okay, I should get a life.  The Long Island Congressman is said to be obsessed with the Muslim menace, ostensibly because he was so traumatized by 9/11.  Standing on a Riverside Park pier that day, Manhattan neighbors and I watched in shock and disbelief the smoke and ash rising into a crystal clear sky over what was left of the Towers downtown.  But horrifying as that brutal invasion of our beloved city was, I haven’t emerged with an obsession about what Joseph McCarthy called Enemies from Within. 

It is the specter of a McCarthy déjà vu that has so aroused Mr. King’s critics and with good reason.  Both the late Senator and this latter-day, shall we call him McCing, share a penchant for seeing exaggerated threats and making unsubstantiated fright-provoking assertions.  Some of King’s fabrications were enumerated in the NY Times editorial before the hearing.  Echoes of old Joe’s 1950s could be heard in Peter’s 2011 Washington with talk of a Muslim conspiracy.  South Carolina’s freshman Jeff Duncan raised the specter of Shariah law, implying it might be imposed on all of us.  To digress a moment — those who want to terrify us with this danger (as he put it) are the very same folks relentlessly seeking to incorporate their particular religious ideology on social issues — abortion, marriage, stem cell research and the like — into our civil law.  Perhaps they don’t call it Shariah, but to me it’s a difference without distinction.

McCartyites persecuted American citizens, particularly on the left, by declaring they were conspiring to turn us into a Communist state.  In the modern version, King asserts that Al Qaeda is actively grooming radicals who are lurking in every single mosque (think every government agency and university in the ‘50s) across America.  Assumably that would be part of the danger posed by the lower Manhattan Islamic Center, which he so vehemently opposes.  Even were we to accept the Committee’s exclusive focus on Muslims — which I don’t — the absence of objective experts or the presentation of hard verifiable data was in itself a glaring indictment.  The only credentialed outside witness was the LA Sheriff put forward by minority Democrats.  King opted to hear from the leader (good American Muslim) of a tiny activist group and (for drama) two individuals from whose anecdotal reports, however distressing, one can’t extrapolate even close to the comprehensive menace that King claims we face.

Speaking of that threat, let’s put all of this in context starting with a realty check.  To hear King and his like-minded committee members you’d think Islam, with its evil intentions, is spreading here ameba-like, infiltrating every city and town. In fact, according to the authoritative Pew Religious Landscape Study, Muslims account for a miniscule .06% of our population (behind Buddhists at .07% and slightly ahead of Hindus at .04%).  That’s important because what strikes me isn’t only the similarities between this wrongheaded hearing and those of the McCarthy years, but how it reflected our continued problem with racism and religious prejudice.  The tipoff is that virtually every speaker — Republicans and Democrats — felt obliged to make the obligatory and often disingenuous some of my best friends or most Muslims are decent law abiding people statement.  As a member of a small religious minority (1.7% qualifies), I am all too familiar with this code; African Americans and Hispanics can likely recite unending variations of it in their sleep.  Add to that the pompous pronouncement that terrorism is a perversion of a great religion uttered by someone, who likely hasn’t a clue about the nature and teachings of Islam but nonetheless feels empowered to make that judgment.  These are all manifestations of that disdain/wariness of the other, the subject of an earlier post.  Nothing typifies this more than the unending suggestions that our President is not native born and a closet Muslim to boot. 

Of course the larger context of King’s hearing is the post 2010 election environment in which a tea soaked Republican Party considers itself mandated (by the American people) to dismantle whatever gains the country may have made recently and revert to the old ways and more.  This smells more like politics than protecting our homeland's security.  It’s a blatant attempt to put up a smoke screen that might distract us from their real agenda.  With it comes the resurgence of people like Abramoff’s pal Ralph Reed and the Lazarus resurrection of the hypocrite serial adulterer and newborn Catholic, Newt Gingrich.  What we’re experiencing is a general retrogression into another déjà vu, the days of the Taliban-like Christian Right.   Make no mistake, what threatens us aren’t terrorist cells in every mosque but the resurgence of people who want to permanently disable government and undermine whatever meager workers rights and social safety net remain. 

Peter King rails against Islamic terrorists, while having built his early career as a vocal cheerleader for the then terrorist IRA.  Those were his people — right color, right religion — who he characterized as the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland and not morally to blame for, among others, 600 civilian deaths.  I remember being in London when some of those wonderful folks detonated a nail bomb in Hyde Park killing four members of the ceremonial Queen’s Guard and seven horses, all obviously oppressors of the Irish.  Mr. King sees no immoral equivalency, and that’s all we really have to know about him and his supporters.  The sad thing is that his prejudice extends far and wide, and that, much like the irrational fear and loathing of Communists in an earlier time.  Ultimately it’s this kind of thinking and what comes out of it that threatens our long-term security.  That’s truly scary.