President Obama is not pleased by the hand on his back and the smirk on Mr. Putin’s face. Remember the Putin was KGB, the U.S.S.R. equivalent of the U.S.A.’s CIA, before he became President of Russia. CNN published this report about Russian bombers on patrol near U.S. borders.
in this picture, what do you suppose Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin thinking and feeling?
Obama: “Get your bombers off our borders, you SOB!” Putin: “Try and stop us, Black Boy!”
This picture taken by AP photographer Ria Novosti at the APEC Conference in Beijing is worth a thousand words. Look at the faces of the black President and the white President patronizing Mr. Obama with his hand on President Obama’s back. Put into words: “I own you, Boy!” and “Get your hand off me!”
Putin: “He’s my BOY”; Obama: “Get your hand off me.”
A song of lament for tonight’s midterm election.
The lyrics come from Psalm 137 where the people’s conquerors ridiculed their captives, taunting them to sing one of their native songs, the songs of Zion. Big oil and coal won tonight. Mitch McConnell won. So did the other deniers. Things like climate change action can’t wait for the next election.
God bless the memory of Pete Seeger who was always singing the aspirational songs of hope in times like this. God bless us all.
Today we go to the polls.
Yesterday a Minnesota voter from Minnesota House of Representatives District 7B noticed something very strange. She’s a Democrat. She also believes in fairness and clean play in political campaigns and was, therefore, distressed and confused by seeing a picture of Kerry Gauthier posted as the photograph of Travis Silvers (R) on an online voter ballot. Click HERE for the mistaken identity.
Travis Silvers is a Republican. He’s young.
Kerry Gauthier is a Democrat. He’s the older, one-term State Representative from District 7B who left the legislatures following a widely publicized encounter with a 17 year-old at a highway rest stop. The publicity was ugly.
So…how does the photo of Kerry Gauthier appear on the MN-voter.org website as Travis Silvers?
Did someone hack the MN-Voter.org website in order to deceive or confuse visitors to the site? Or maybe some smart-alec submitted the photo as a way of having fun? Or… dirty tricks?
Views tom the Edge reported the error to mn-voter.org yesterday, but we may never get a response.
Today we go to the polls. Finally, the alarmist campaign emails and phone calls will stop. But obfuscation and shenanigans will not. We will continue to substitute personality and personal stories for policy and substance. Dirty politics and slimy innuendoes will continue to be the order of the day.
Whatever the result of this election, it’s a sad day for the American people. Do we deserve better? Only time will tell.
Words are POWERFUL! Timothy Egan’s “Deconstructing a Demagogue” in the NY Times reminds us of just how powerful they are:
Back in 1994, while plotting his takeover of the House, Gingrich circulated a memo on how to use words as a weapon. It was called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” Republicans were advised to use certain words in describing opponents — sick, pathetic, lie, decay, failure, destroy. That was the year, of course, when Gingrich showed there was no floor to his descent into a dignity-free zone, equating Democratic Party values with the drowning of two young children by their mother, Susan Smith, in South Carolina.
Today, if you listen to the PAC ads flooding our television sets, you’ll hear the innuendoes and strategies from the “Language: a Key Mechanism of Control” memo
And that’s just the beginning of the story of how language is used for social manipulation. Gingrich knew that language is “A Key Mechanism of Control.” Those who are well-schooled in theology and politics know that language is the primary mechanism of mind control: truth becomes falsehood and falsehood becomes truth; beauty becomes ugliness and ugliness becomes beauty; goodness becomes evil and evil becomes goodness, twisted by the language of innuendo and word association.
The cynicism that pervades the American electorate is due, in part, to this demagogic use of language. Words are precious things. Holy things. Sacred things. When they get twisted, they become vulgar and profane, one might even say ‘demonic’ in the sense in which Paul Tillich defined ‘demonic’: the twisting of the good. “The claim of something finite to infinity or to divine greatness is the characteristic of the demonic” (Paul Tillich, “Life and It’s Ambiguities,” Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, p. 102).
The campaign for control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is in full swing. So is demagoguery and the Gingrich memo on mind control.
Words are sacred. Abuse of them plunges the speaker and the hearer into the darkness of the demonic twistings that led James Russell Lowell to write the hymn lyrics I sang as a child:
Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood…. Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet t’is truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong, Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadows, Keeping watch above His own.
– James Russell Lowell, 1945, “Once to Every Man and Nation”
I hope. I hope…and pray we’re as smart as Paul Tillich.
Apple CEO Tim Cook acted with courage yesterday. Click Tim Cook Speaks Up to read his October 30, 2014 letter in BloombergBusinessweek.
Every parent of a gay child, every gay person, every relative or friend should give an apple to the Apple teacher whose inspirations are Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
Political folks just repeat
…and repeat,
Keep saying it over
…to win that great seat,
But I have a limit,
My ears just can’t hear it,
When words from that goat’s
mouth become one more BLEAT!
– Steve Shoemaker, October 28, 2014
BTW, Don’t forget to vote next Tuesday! May the best goat win.
“Hello. NSA?” “Hello, CIA.“ “Hello, Homeland Security.” “Hello, whoever you are, listening in on my phone conversations.”
I’m on the phone with the Church Administrator of the little church I serve. A loud whining noise suddenly over-rides her voice. I try to talk with her; she keeps talking as though everything is fine. I hang up and call again. She wonders what happened. I tell her. “It’s the NSA,” she says. We both laugh.
But it’s no laughing matter.
The timing of the unexplained noise on the phone coincided with arrival of an email from a JFK assassination researcher who is providing overnight lodging for another critic of the Warren Commission Report, Judyth Vary Baker. Judyth is Lee Harvey Oswald’s former lover, controversial author of Me and Lee: How I Came to Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald. Ms. Baker makes the case that President Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing, anti-Castro, Mafia-linked group within the CIA.
Judyth is in town this week promoting her latest book, David Ferrie: Mafia Pilot, Participant in Anti-Castro Bioweapon Plot, Friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and Key to the JFK Assassination. David Ferrie is the shadowy figure with whom Judyth worked in 1963 in a New Orleans cancer research lab she claims was a covert project of the CIA.
At the request of her publisher, my friend here in Chaska approached several bookstores, a church, and a senior citizens center. One of the bookstores, one of America’s largest, originally said yes, but the next day reported back that “it wouldn’t work out.” An event at a church was scheduled, but was cancelled at the last minute because of a scheduling conflict.
“Hello, NSA.” “Hello, CIA.” Hello, somebody. Someone is listening in. Someone who doesn’t want the rest of us listening to the likes of Judyth Vary Baker or reading the allegations about David Ferrie and the connection between the anti-Castro, Mafia-linked cabal within the CIA.
Or maybe no one is listening in and my friend and I are making it all up. Maybe there is some other reason for the noise I’d never heard before on my phone. It’s just a strange coincidence that the noise happened while the email was arriving on my MacBook Air. It’s coincidence that the phones of people I called the rest of the day did not ring but showed as voicemails without messages, a new wrinkle in their experience and mine. It’s coincidence that my computer and those of several others I had emailed or phoned began to behave as though they needed the Geek Squad or Prozac.
Although I’ve never asked to see it, I’m confident that the FBI has a file on me, and, if they do, I’m rather proud of it. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., a group in Decatur, Illinois identifies a picture of King’s alleged assassin as the man who’d shown up out-of-the-blue while a crowd of youth was still on the church parking lot following the dismissal of that night’s youth outreach program.
The FBI shows each of us three photographs, asking if we can identify the man we met. Each of us, interviewed separately, identifies one of the three. The picture matches the photograph of James Earl Ray on the cover of Life magazine.
A cub reporter who gets wind of the story publishes a column in The Decatur Herald. The Chicago Sun-Times publishes a story on its front page. Right-hand column. Right there in black and white. The headline reads something like “King Assassin Spotted in Decatur, Illinois.” Several of us are quoted in both articles.
Years later, researchers search the files of the Decatur Herald and the Chicago Sun-Times for the stories. They’re not there. There is no evidence that the stories were ever published.
“Good night, NSA.” “Good night, CIA.” “Good night, FBI.” “Good night, Judyth.”
“Hello, Patriot Act.”
“Good-bye Constitution; good-bye Republic.”
“Kyrie Eleison!”
That’s the subject of the email. “Notice: CANCELLATION“. I’m being cancelled. It’s late. I’m watching the my favorite baseball team. They’re finally winning. I’m enjoying the distraction. Then comes the email notification. I open it, fearing they’re canceling my credit card or something serious.
Here’s the content, not a cancellation, but a solicitation, complete with an end-of-time, shocking red background and graphics:
CANCELLATION NOTICE: TRIPLE-MATCH
UPDATE: THE TRIPLE-MATCH ENDS AT 11:59PM.
CONTROL OF CONGRESS IS AT STAKE. IF YOU’VE BEEN PLANNING TO DONATE, YOU ONLY HAVE A FEW HOURS LEFT TO GET YOUR DONATION TRIPLE-MATCHED.
Gordon — According to our records you haven’t had a chance to utilize your triple-match status.
Please don’t pass up this opportunity:
The race for Congress is a DEAD HEAT.
Boehner just launched his biggest TV ad blitz of the entire election.
We’re still 3500 donations short of what we need to fight back.
This is your LAST CHANCE to have your impact on the election TRIPLED by a dedicated group of Democratic supporters.
Remember: If you donate $5 right now, it’s matched up to $15! If you donate $50, it’s matched up to $150!!!
Step up now before the clock strikes midnight when your triple-match status will be voided!
Gordon Stewart
Suggested Gift: $5.OO
TRIPLE-MATCH: ACTIVE until 11:59pm
MIDNIGHT DEADLINE: ALL GIFTS TRIPLE-MATCHED!
Chip in $5 immediately >>
Chip in $35 immediately >>
Chip in $50 immediately >>
Chip in $100 immediately >>
Chip in $250 immediately >>
Or click here to donate another amount.
Thanks,
DCCC
We live in a sea of hyperbole and deception. I’d like to think we’re not this stupid, and that we don’t respond to deception, apocalyptic urgency, and trauma drama. Am I alone? What to you think?
“What are you going to do in retirement?” asks a friend who knows I will retire from active pastoral ministry in a few weeks.
“I’m not sure,” I answer. “I may spend the rest of my life getting arrested to help stop the rush to the cliff that is climate change.”
I won’t, of course. I’m a chicken. But being in large groups and protest marches have always made me squeamish. I’ve had the sense of losing my self. I’m uncomfortable with crowds, even the best of them. At this age, I’ve come to realize that I’m an introvert, an outsider, more observer than activist. Observing…reflecting…writing…preaching…connecting the dots are my thing.
Yesterday an estimated 300,000 ordinary citizens like you and me gathered in New York City for the People March on Climate Change. This week the Secretary General of the United Nations will convene a group of international leaders for a one day Climate Summit.
The problem with standing at the edge observing is that, without action at the lowest and highest levels of society across the world, the Earth as we know it will go over the edge, over the cliff to massive population displacement, mass starvation, mass death, extinction of species, death of nations and peoples, and an exponentially worse wealth disparity between the one percent and the 99. I tell myself that publishing what I observe is its own kind of action. As a minister of the gospel, I believe in the power of the Word – the power of speech.
But I may have to rethink and act on my off-the-cuff answer to the questioner. Climate change is the overarching issue – the developing dark global spiritual and moral cloud – under which all other ethical questions fall and pale by comparison. Everything else must be examined under this umbrella. To think otherwise is to be distracted and out-of-touch with the Lord and Giver of Life. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” wrote the psalmist. It does not belong to the one percent, big oil and coal, or any one nation. While greed reigns, I just may have to get arrested.
Views from the Edge 