I'm angry too.

If recent history is any predictor, more than six in ten eligible voters will stay at home on November 2^nd.  These paltry participation numbers give new definition to the greatest democracy on earth.  The last time more than 40% of us voted in an off year was back in 1970.  Even in Presidential contests, 2008’s 56.8% was the highest since 1968 (60%) and it’s been fifty years (JFK vs. Nixon) since we have seen 63%.  Contrast that with the 65% who only recently voted in the UK when New Labour was voted out or the almost 78% in 1997 when Tony Blair first came to office.  Only 49% of Americans had voted the year before when Clinton beat Bob Dole.  84% of French voters turned out when Nicholas Sarkozy was elected President in 2007.

To put my gloomy assumption about 2010 in some perspective, it’s likely that (given a split electorate) not much more than 20% of us will have voted in the Congress that will be enacting our laws for the next two years.  To put it bluntly, thanks to us, our representative government is hardly representative.  The next time you hear a legislator pompously say she or he speaks for the American people, remember how few people (their voting constituents) they are really talking about.  In this year of anger and rebellion, tokened by the much-hyped Tea Party, it should be noted that their primary victories came from a scant 8% of eligible voters — that’s right, 92% of us had no part in it.

So forget Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and their patron Rupert Murdoch, what makes my blood boil are the millions of Americans who just can’t engage themselves enough to spend the few minutes it takes to pull a lever or fill out a paper ballot.  In his speech before the assembled at the March on Washington, my immigrant-citizen father warned that we must not allow ourselves to be a nation of onlookers.  Well, when it comes to exercising our most precious right, onlookers are exactly what we have become.  His words in 1963 reflected the experience of someone who had watched the citizenry of his native Germany stand by complacently as their country was overtaken by a murderous totalitarian regime.  Not surprisingly, he took both his gained U.S. citizenship, along with the responsibility to vote, seriously teaching his children and grandchildren to do the same.

We’ve all seen the stories lately of Hispanics, African Americans and, most disturbingly, young people who are sitting out this election.  Somehow Barack Obama just didn’t live up to their expectations or push their agenda’s hard enough.  What a lame, self defeating, if not infantile, reason for not exercising your rights.  It isn’t only that our national attention span and patience is that of two year olds, it is that we seem perfectly willing to let a tiny minority determine our destiny, to be onlookers.  We like to complain, to say how our elected officials are letting us down, but in fact they are delivering the kind of governance that we deserve, in some cases much more than we deserve.  Do Hispanics, our fastest growing group of fellow citizens, really believe that staying home will produce legislators ready at long last to enact progressive immigration laws?  With all the talk about burdening the next generation with debt, do young voters really think they have no stake in 2010’s outcome, that voting in 2008 was the total fulfillment of their obligation to the rest of us, not to mention themselves?  Enthusiasm gap — give me a break!

Yes these are hard times.  Yes it’s difficult to buy into the platitudes that our best years lie ahead when so many people’s personal prospects look so dim.  But that’s a reason to engage, not to stay at home.  The sixty-plus percent of eligible voters who will be AWOL on November 2^nd, are no friends of our future.  Their prophecy will be of the self-fulfilling kind, and that’s inexcusable.  It’s what makes me really angry two weeks before Election Day.

Still don't know what for.

Bette Midler can belt them out, but so too can she deliver with a resolute quiet that brings you almost to tears.  I have always been particularly taken with her rendition of John Prine’s Hello in There.  It’s a poignant song about aging, both the process and resulting loneliness.  But the line that always stops me short concerns something else entirely.  It speaks to warfare and remains as fresh and disturbing today as it was when written in the early 1970s — we lost Davy in the Korean War.  I still don’t know what for…

Prine’s lyric, much as did Robert Altman contemporaneous film Mash, references Korea, but is a proxy for Viet Nam, a conflict still too raw and real for linking Davy’s loss with futility.  Midler’s Hello evokes life-fatigue where seemingly matter-of-fact reporting poses the most provocative question, one that haunts so many mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives and children.  We lost Davy or Suzy in the war and, truth be told, have no idea what for.  Of course, it’s a question left unspoken by both loved ones and the larger society, its implications too unbearable to contemplate.

Stand-in or not, the stalemated Korean War exemplifies the futility that became Viet Nam and extends into the present day Iraq and Afghanistan, all unwinnable conflicts.  The victories of the twentieth century World Wars are a dim memory.  Replacing them is the image of Kim Jong-il and his pudgy twenties-something heir apparent Kim Jong-un reviewing a military parade in Pyongyang.  Korea was a war that never ended and whose lessons remain strikingly unlearned.  Viet Nam’s senseless 47,424 combat deaths put that unlearning into sharp focus. But apparently not sharp enough to prevent our repeating its errors and deluding ourselves into thinking wars, especially of the current kind, are even remotely winnable, much less lending themselves to any semblance of reason.  Perhaps this stubborn resistance to learning can be attributed to the American psyche, not to mention a good dose of national hubris.   The former prevents us from letting go — still seeing Viet Nam as a moment of shame and disgrace that somehow must be redeemed.  The hubris, allows for the delusion that the world’s most powerful military is at once invincible and essential across the globe, if only in our own minds.

In these more antiseptic days when mostly other people’s children wage wars, few of us experience the personal anguish and bewilderment of Davy’s mother.  A hired professional military and unmanned drones permit us to avert our eyes, become complacent and, most of all, avoid assessing the cost or waste of war.  So we delude ourselves into thinking about bad wars and good wars, more a mind game than having any semblance of reality.   That it’s a game is evidenced by another Bob Woodward bestseller inside storyline, profiteering if not on the war itself then on our insatiable appetite for the gossip of court squabbles.  Who’s up and who’s down?  It is life as a TV reality show, allowing us to pretend we were flies on the wall in the room where history was being made.  It’s the all consuming world of make believe, or as Ecclesiastes would have it, vanity of vanities.

Sure the players on both Wall Street and Main Street brought our country to its economic knees, but they got a good head start from the twin unbudgeted wars whose foreseeable cost is now estimated to be as much as $2.4 Trillion.  We have begun our exit from Iraq and perhaps, the generals kicking and screaming notwithstanding, we’ll start withdrawing from Afghanistan this coming summer.  These wars, or our involvement, will end.  No peace treaties will have been signed, no victories proclaimed.  Most likely none of us will have the courage to say at long last that war doesn’t work.  At some time in the future, a mother will report on the loss of her Davy, admitting that she knows not what for.  But what should worry us most is the finish of Prine’s lyric line: we lost Davy in the Korean War, I still don’t know what for — don’t matter any more.  Sure it matters and that’s what we should be thinking about.

Slogans and sound bytes.

January 20, 1969, the day Richard Nixon was sworn in as President was also when Harry Robbins Haldeman became White House Chief of Staff.  Haldeman is best remembered as a central player in Watergate (for which he went to jail), but of interest here is that in the twenty years prior to joining Nixon, he was at J. Walter Thompson, one the country’s largest advertising agencies.  In the modern vernacular, Nixon needed help and called upon one of the mad men.  Ronald Reagan, a onetime pitchman for GE, put his trust in an ad hoc group of mad men superstars called the Tuesday Team including BBDO’s Phil Dusenberry (who created later GE ads) to hone his message and image.  Dusenberry’s subsequent News Hour interview provides great insight into the role of advertising in modern campaigns. We brought a perspective, he said.  Political strategists often [believe they] must cram everything there is to cram into this piece of communication. We believed just the opposite, that less was more…the way to go.

In recent years the GOP turned to Frank Luntz, a deft user to research to identify the most concise, compelling and persuasive language to sell ideas whether for political, commercial or other purposes.  It was Luntz whose research showed that, in campaigning for its elimination, death tax was a more powerful descriptor than estate tax.  In that regard, he also advocated climate change over global warming, a term that, while accurate, suggests less urgency with the obvious legislative consequences. As Luntz maintained in a 2007 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, all of the words and slogans he suggested (and that can be claimed by others like him) are truthful.  Indeed, death does precipitate the tax, but it is the impression that counts.   Words are pregnant with suggestive meanings that often transcend narrow definition.  That’s what advertising, not to mention much of effective (even private) communication, is all about.  Think about how many people won’t say that a loved one has died but prefer the euphemism that she or he passed away.  To be sure there are some theological implications in that terminology — passed onto eternity — but for the most part passed seems gentler, more transitional, less final.

Of course, the use of slogans and sound bytes in American politics is nothing new.  When Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders in 1957, he was commenting on a phenomenon long in place, even if it had then reached a new level of sophistication.  As early as 1840, in what has been called the first modern presidential campaign, Whig Henry Harrison, the log cabin candidate, ran on the slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!  It was a reference to a victorious 28-year-old military battle and to his running mate.  It was a slogan that lacked relevant substance, but one that carried a suggestive punch.  Pepsi started proclaiming Twice As Much For A Nickel Too in 1939 literally meaning that they were offering more ounces of cola for the same money, but implying that their product was certainly on a par, if not identical, with Coke.

In 2008, President Obama’s campaign developed one of the most powerful, albeit totally ambiguous, assertions of all time, yes we can! The words resonated because they implied empowerment that transcended the candidate and his team to include the audience — the message in the word we was citizen power.  Given how difficult the execution of change, one might argue that yes we can was an overpromise that has come to haunt the administration since.  But more important, is that Obama’s use of this powerful slogan coupled with the single sound byte word change was for Democrats the exception and not the rule.  For decades now, Republicans have been far more successful in both sloganeering and staying on the message, and that’s a gross understatement.

Republicans, whether with the 1994 Contract with America (in which Luntz was deeply involved) or characterizing their opponents as tax and spend, have taken control of the conversation.  They repeat their sound bytes with unshakable discipline until both the public and the media adopt them, effectively defining issues as they would like.  There is no revelation here.  The wordsmith skill employed by Republicans over that last decades have been widely written about and discussed by analysts and pundits for years.  What mystifies me is how inept the Democrats have been in responding and how lame their attempts have been in using language as a preemptive tool.  Think about the healthcare battle where probably the most memorable (totally disingenuous and misleading) term was death panels.  That characterization brought attention to seniors and Medicare, which were not the primary focus of a bill aimed covering the uninsured and containing unsustainable escalating costs for all Americans.  Democrats were at a loss to find the right words, which not only has led to a misunderstood bill but one that likely and unnecessarily fell short of what it might have been.  It’s hard to believe there is no Frank Lutz on the left.  I must conclude no one is really looking for one.

Without question the susceptibility of Americans to slogans and sound bytes has deep sociological roots.  As the Pepsi example suggested, and Vance Packard wrote about back in the 1950s, we are all subject to a constant barrage of images and words aimed at influencing our behavior.  The new episodes of the popular NCIS TV shows employ suggestive product placements of iPhones and iPads that reinforce the messages of Apple’s commercials during the breaks.   They expand an already powerful cutting edge user imagery brand into the heroic.  This is not to say that advertising is bad per se — I’ve spent most of my career in branding — but that the simple message, the most powerful, most suggestive and least offensive, does by nature blur, if not skirt, the truth.  Democrats generally believe Republicans use clever slogans to promote blatant lies.  Not that Democrats are guiltless in this regard, but maybe they are more uneasy about it.  Perhaps it’s a a matter of feeling obliged to explain the details, not wanting to dumb them down to some simplistic phrase that might leave the wrong or a bloated impression.  That of course is putting the best face on it.  Were that it was so simple.  For some reason, probably for many reasons, Democrats, including another cerebral President (and I mean that positively), simply can’t bring themselves to get in that game of obfuscation and disinformation.  Perhaps that’s admirable, but it sure does put them, and I would argue as a result the country, at a disadvantage.  We may soon be paying the price.  Again.

Megaenterprises.

Eddie Long has much at stake in clearing his name of sex abuse charges, not the least a substantial amount of money and that ostentatious lifestyle — home, cars, jewelry and custom made outfits.  In a story on his current troubles, it was reported that in 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published tax records showing that from 1997 to 2000 Bishop Long had accepted $3 million in salary, housing, a car and other perks from a charity he controlled.  This was from just one of his multiple enterprises.  He likely also draws as generous salary from his 25,000-member megachurch. 

In the most immediate sense, Eddie Long’s saga brings to mind the 2006 downfall of Ted Haggard, leader of another blockbuster megachurch, this one in Colorado.   It isn’t only that each regularly inveighed against homosexuality from their pulpits — Long also conducting seminars promising to “cure” homosexuals — both were accused of engaging in sex with, in Haggard’s case a male prostitute, and in Long’s with what were then four boys.  Upon the advice of counsel, he won’t deny the allegations, but told congregants that he will fight.  Our system is built on a presumption of innocence and we should leave judgment of the specific allegations to the legal process.  That said, Long’s situation is an opportunity to consider anew the megachurch phenomenon. 

Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute has written extensively about it and is well worth a look, but just consider this.  Haggard’s and Long’s churches bear very similar names — New Life and New Birth — and that shouldn’t be surprising.  Theirs and all the megachurches around the country have much in common.  All share nearly identical narratives, a kind of religious Horatio Alger story of humble beginnings with a handful of followers that over time become behemoths with thousands of members. Robert Schuller’s Garden Grove California church, now housed in Philip Johnson’s imposing Crystal Cathedral, stared in a drive-in theater parking lot; Joel Osteen’s huge Lakewood Church (the largest) began in an abandoned feed store and now occupies the $75 Million renovated stadium in Houston, once home to the Rockets.  While some have connections with larger denominations, many are freestanding evangelical ministries, all led by a charismatic leader (often accompanied by his wife as co-pastor), some holding self proclaimed ecclesiastical titles like bishop.  These are often family businesses — Osteen’s father founded Lakewood, Schuller’s daughter now leads Garden Grove.

Given the notorious fall of Haggard, and before him Jim Bakker, one is tempted to liken these ministers to Sinclair Lewis’s fictional Elmer Gantry, played so compellingly by Burt Lancaster in the classic movie translation.  But I think the more apt and timely figure to consider is the greed-driven Gordon Gekko, currently taking a curtain call in the just released sequel to Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street.  Long and many of his counterparts preside not only over large congregations, but also in over vast empires that include charities (some clearly doing good works), commercial businesses and substantial real estate holdings.  They have become, and are unashamedly, personally wealthy.  Many, like Bakker in his day, are televangelists whose syndicated programs combining sermonic fire and brimstone with unabashed entertainment reach far beyond their own communities.  This provides them with great leverage and a built-in audience for, among others, books that in Osteen’s case have brought in millions.  In more the Gekko than the Gantry tradition, these ministries would better be described as religious enterprises, more akin to business conglomerates than what we think of as churches.  In fact, while Long and his counterparts would vehemently deny any such notion, it may fairly be said that the church effectively serves more as a cover for their activities than its essence.

Eddie Long protests that the media is responsible for his current problems, just as the Vatican has done in their defense of now well-documented sexual abuse by clergy.  In both cases, the protestations have as much to do with protecting their enterprise as in protecting their personal (or church’s) integrity.  The Roman church has vast real estate and other holdings and its hierarchy maintains (in contrast to the average parish priest) lifestyles that, while perhaps paling in comparison to the megachurch leaders, can be quite lavish.  They’re called Princes of the Church for good reason.  In Gekko theology, the stakes are extraordinarily high when anyone dares question the moral compass of either the leaders or the institution.  As recent events across multiple faiths have shown, hypocrisy abounds.

The members of New Birth who so heartily applauded their leader during his Sunday remarks may consider Long’s alleged wrong doing and practices internal matters.  The Catholic Church certainly has made that point over and over again.  But, especially with regard to megachurches who have sought over the last years to exercise substantial influence on the political landscape, I think their doings should concern us all.  They are our business.  Remember how Pastor Rick Warren sought to influence the 2008 Presidential election.  These mega pastors have substantial power and clearly evoke fear among our elected officials.   They play an often-critical role in what legislation is passed.  The pastor accused of having sex with boys lobbies against same-sex marriage and of course is opposed to gays in the military.

The New York Times reported last week that religious congregations were suffering a major decline in contributions.  As expected, part of the shortfall can be attributed to our deep recession.   Many members who have lost jobs or whose homes are in foreclosure simply can’t afford their dues or weekly contributions.  But the decline, it reported, may also be attributable to the growing number of Americans who have left religion behind.  Some no longer believe in God or in what religion teaches.  A good number are just turned off by the religion they see around them or read about in the press.  Eddie Long, not only what he might have done but his enterprising activities and what they token, throws coal on that fire of alienation.

All politics.

If in Tip O’Neil’s day all politics was local, today all is politics.  In a profound sense that isn’t only what’s energizing tea party folks in their purported anti-establishment movement but equally what’s enervating the Left, especially the young.  With all the noise about upsets in Republican primaries and the heightened often-ugly rhetoric of people like Newt Gingrich, one wonders what’s happened to the minions of enthusiastic Obama supporters who filled those stadiums to capacity and showed up at the Mall on Inauguration Day?

The easy answer is that it’s the economy stupid, the persistent unemployment and the growing sense that even the not so good old days aren’t coming back soon.  Some will argue that the President and Democrats under-delivered on their promised healthcare and financial reforms.  From a purist standpoint they did, but given the realities of what it takes to get bills through Congress, they actually may have done better than expected.  Some will say Obama himself hasn’t been forceful enough, that he should have abandoned any attempt at bi-partisanship early on, should have let the bastards have it with both barrels.  Maybe, but I don’t think its in his character and, more importantly, his entire campaign was focused on bringing people together, closing the divide.  Did he perhaps fail in sufficiently reinforcing that message with the electorate, in leveraging the Bully Pulpit?  Probably.

But for me, the overarching turnoff is that we have become, perhaps to a greater degree than ever before, mired in politics — all politics 24/7.  Just look at the state of our media, the domain of shouting-heads where any modicum of dispassionate and objective journalism has been replaced by rank entertainment, headlining political theater.  Newspapers are dying but the likes of Politico are thriving.  If a story doesn’t have political value it is either ignored or artificially politicized.  Look at the Islamic Center in lower Manhatttan that quickly went from what might have been a legitimate discussion to a partisan free-for-all. Indeed the torrid Right/Left debate has become so heated that it’s virtually impossible to have any serious discussion about the systematic problems that, if not addressed, could lead us over a cliff.  The unprecedented weather patterns of the summer just ending — we’re experiencing late September temps in the mid 90s here in Chapel Hill — haven’t produced a single moment of doubt among those who dismiss global warming, most likely because they fear being clobbered at the polls for opening their mouths.

For sure, the tea party movement evokes a mix of in some ways naïve and over simplified libertarianism, but their expressed outrage against the political establishment and politics as usual strikes a chord with the broader public.  As to the Obama supporters, particularly the young, many flocked to him because he was different, hoped he was not a traditional pol.  In fact, he is and he isn’t, a nuanced complexity that is too much for a lot of people who have been weaned on keep it simple, whether the tag line of a commercial or the catchall labels that we apply to people.  They are also a fickle group, notorious for being less than dependable one-off voters.  Well I voted last time around, worked my butt off, did my piece — on to my life.  But to be fair, they seriously engaged with politics in the name of change and have spent most of the time since watching same-old, same-old as if it was all for naught.

So, it wouldn’t at all surprise me if, despite the noise, we’re headed for an extremely low turnout on November 2^nd.  That’s makes for a very unpredictable outcome and the likelihood that a very small minority might control our destiny for the two years ahead.  It is potentially very bad political news for the President and the Democrats, but a low turnout is ultimately bad news for democracy and for us all.  But the more serious problem is that there appears no single individual or group of leaders out there who are ready to standup and call a time out.  It isn’t only that our unemployment bespeaks systematic and structural problems that no degree of tax cuts or stimulus can quickly fix, but that with the rampant politicization of everything our governance is broken.

It is often said, think Israel/Palestine,  Afghanistan or any conflict, that solutions require partners.  I for one am not sorry the President spent so much energy, and yes perhaps valuable capital, on seeking bi-partisan — beyond politics — solutions to pressing problems.  The problem has been, and continues to be, that he lacks partners in that endeavor and that includes a significant number in his own party.  In the short term scoring political points may give the appearance of victory to partisans on both sides.   But once again, Lincoln had it just right; A house divided against itself cannot stand.   In that, the clock is ticking.

The silence is deafening.

We're coming onto the eve of the Jewish New Year.   Jews are an ancient people with an elephant like memory.  Sadly much of what we remember is not pretty.  When book burning raises its ugly head, as it has in the last days, we don't have to dig deep into that memory bank.  Adolf Hitler burned books.  Book burners are always a company of hooligans, — sometimes ruling hooligans.  They are small-minded people who in the end seem more afraid of ideas than anything else, especially the ideas of others.

I’m happy that General Petraeus has spoken out.  His concern about the safety of our troops is legitimate.  But threatening to burn the Quran isn’t the only thing going on.  Not only is the Islamic Center in New York being challenged, similar centers and houses of worship are under attack across the country.  Forget the affront to religious liberty, the freedom we beat our patriotic breasts about.  One has to really wonder what these people, many of whom mouth concern for national security, are thinking.  A growing number of Muslims around the world are convinced that America is at war not with terrorists as it claims but with Islam.  With the blatant bigotry now being displayed in many parts of the country, why shouldn’t they come to that conclusion?  In a time of Tea Parties and generally in an economic climate that provokes genuine frustration and understandable anger, these acts are not merely wrong they have the potential of being literally explosive.

General Petraeus has spoken out.  Bravo, but where are the voices of America’s religious leaders?  On October 25, 1962, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson asked his Soviet counterpart Valerian Zorin if he denied that the Russians had placed missiles in Cuba.  When Zorin put him off saying his answer would come in due course, Stevenson famously retorted, I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over.  Would that I had his patience.

All I know is that Lady Liberty is shedding tears again and many of those who should know better, whom we expect to know better, aren’t there to give her, and us, comfort.  Shame on them.

Addendum  Shortly after this post, a significant number of religious leaders including from Protestant, Catholics and Jewish groups, presented a very forceful denunciation of attacks on Islam in the country.  Their statement, and more importantly promised follow-up, is encouraging.  Equally strong words from the still silent people like Rick Warren would be welcome. 

God is Beck

Jewish law prohibits public viewing of the deceased, considered an act of disrespect.  In essence, the reasoning behind this prohibition is that the dead can no longer speak for themselves and are thus subject to manipulation by the living.  The same holds true for God.  Whether or not you believe in a God — and I confess profound doubt — claimed revelations notwithstanding, what we know of the divine ultimately derives from human attribution.  Big surprise: those attributions tend to coincide with the particular beliefs and views of the attributor; more often than not, serving her or his own purposes.  When all else fails, we justify our actions with a God says, directs or wants, all declared with absolute and unquestionable (how dare you) certainty.  I like to call it the arrogance of attribution.

Which brings me to Glenn Beck.  Perhaps the most significant bit of news by far out of last weekend’s Lincoln Memorial gathering was not the crowd’s size or any particular speech but his decision to shift from the expected theme of politics to one of God.  Perhaps the broadcaster was moved by the sage advice given months back to attendees at the February Tea Party Convention.  As Sarah Palin put it then, it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.  Of course to many in this group God and politics are an indivisible one.  God has been integral to the Conservative playbook, and perhaps to its success, since the Reagan years.  Sure the economy sucks but playing to anger goes only so far; playing the God-card is so much more attractive and potent.  How exactly this crowd would address high unemployment if in power takes some concrete explaining, invoking the divine invites no questioning.  As such, it’s a political no-brainer. So take careful note, George Bush may be gone but God is back.  That may not be good news.

Before going further, let me digress to identify the God in question.  The one of this particular arrogant attribution is an ultra Conservative God as largely seen by a certain group of Christians — a Libertarian God would be a stretch even for them.  Beck and company have made it clear that this definitely isn’t an Obama kind of God — even if he is a Christian and a citizen, the President, they proclaim (inaccurately), follows that alien liberation theology not the real faith.  Theirs is the God who is opposed to abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage.  To be sure it’s the same one resolutely opposed to any separation of church and state.  And that brings me to the larger implications of God’s return that transcend Beck’s gathering.

For starters, let’s consider the June 26 NY Times column by Yale’s Linda Greenhouse, Nine Justices and Ten Commandments.  In it Ms. Greenhouse, who had the Supreme Court beat for thirty years, uses the backdrop of the still not completely resolved issue of displaying the 10 Commandments on public ground to suggest that at least four and perhaps five sitting Justices have no real commitment to separation, certainly not an absolute one.  This of course has major implications for the likely Proposition 8 appeal and the abortion rights cases that will come before the Court, perhaps sooner rather than later.  Add to that the August 14 decision by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth halting President Obama’s Executive Order modestly relaxing the Bush restraints on stem cell research.  By the way, that decision has stopped much of ongoing stem cell research dead in its tracks.

The issue discussed by Greenhouse reflects the generalized power of those, like Beck, who would impose their God-attributions on the rest of us, which includes a growing number of citizens who don’t believe in God or whose faith doesn’t include the big Ten.  But the others are even more to the point.  Abortion and stem cell research are ultimately medical/scientific issues.  The only reason to outlaw them is on religious grounds, what is attributed to God.  The stem cell issue is particularly troubling because however important reproductive choice, and I consider it fundamentally important, it can be said to impact directly on only a portion of the population.  Embryonic stem cell research has the potential of impacting on every one of us.  It boggles the mind how one can be pro-life and not leave a single stone unturned in an effort to prolong or improve its quality.  Forget the hypocrisy of opposing the destruction of embryos for medical research while happily dumping the same life-matter into the laboratory dustbin.  So, too, with the definition of marriage and opposition to same-sex unions, which are solely based on religious grounds, very narrow religious grounds to boot.  Why do all these things?  God says so, the arrogance of attribution.

The return of God in our politics is made possible and legitimized in part by the continuing myth of America a religious country.  This is not to suggest that many Americans, perhaps still a majority (if only in name), are not personally religious.  But that is not the same thing.  Part of the reason the political Right, particularly those with a religious agenda, have been so successful is that the media buy into that myth and fall into line even if the facts don’t match the words.  Once spoken, the language is set.  And the wordsmiths’ influence is powerful.  While not related to God is back, a case in point is that even now, and despite its own reporting discrediting that description, the august NY Times still headlines stories on the proposed Islamic Center as pertaining to the Ground Zero Mosque.  More on point is the headline accorded to a twenty-two and a half minute interview given by the President to NBC’s Brian Williams.  The setting was New Orleans on the 5^th anniversary of Katrina and beyond that subject there was considerable discussion of the economy and of the exiting troops from Iraq.  For less than a minute of that long exchange the subject of religion came into play.  What was the headline of the video on the Washington Post’s website? Obama discusses his faith.   Glen Beck wants to change the subject and he’s getting a great deal of help from people who should know better and upon whom we rely for accurate information.

If each an every one of us believed in God or even if those who held such a belief shared the same attribution and the same consequences, perhaps that God is back wouldn’t be so bad.  That is not the case, and without diminishing or disrespecting the rights or questioning the heartfelt belief of Beck and others on the Religious Right, overtly and aggressively bringing God and religion back into our shared national space is no step forward.  Forcing your attribution of me, or for that matter mine on you, can lead to no good, especially in a society so bitterly divided.  Instead of taking Ms. Palin’s advice of bringing God back, perhaps we should consider that of Lyndon Johnson who lived in another time of deep division.  Let’s reason together, and leave God out of it.