Brokeback Narnia

I saw two movies last weekend: Brokeback Mountain and The Chronicles of Narnia. For entirely different reasons, both were mildly disappointing but worth seeing. And while I’m not surprised by the uproar Brokeback is causing among Christian fundamentalists, I’m quite surprised by the support they are giving Narnia.

Among my favorite books from childhood, the Narnia series created a fantasy world of talking animals and wicked adults, explored and conquered by four young siblings. Though I may be forgetting crucial details thirty years later, I don’t remember many overt references to Christianity, and the overall tone and theme had no direct connection to religion whatsoever. The first of the seven books contains a Christ-like lion who sacrifices his life for others and is brought back to life, but allegory is as close as Narnia ever gets to Jesus.

Christian fundamentalists frame the world in black and white terms, stating absolutely and categorically that every single word of the Bible is the perfect, infallible word of God. So to them, the Bible cannot be interpreted as allegory. Why, then should any other book be seen as allegory? Further, Narnia revels in magic, spells and witchcraft--the very items that have made Harry Potter verboten among Christian fanatics.

If only Harry would lay down his life for a good cause--and be revived by justice-loving magic, he too, apparently, would get the fundamentalist seal of approval.

So here are a few other movies I’m expecting the God Squad to endorse, if they haven’t already.

Star Wars. Obie Wan Kenobi sacrifics his life and comes back, in spirit, to help his righteous friends. Sure, the Star Wars series suggests that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe and that the galaxy is full of other intelligent creatures, but Christian fanatics can overlook these heretical items, just as they overlooked the magic and spells of Narnia.

Groundhog Day. Bill Murray is perpetually reborn to the same day until he learns to be selfless and help others. Of course, he has sex with a woman who isn’t yet his wife, but Christian fanatics can overlook this trifle, just as they overlooked the White Witch of Narnia.

Vanilla Sky. Tom Cruise dies to the life of selfish fantasy and is reborn to the world of reality, authenticity, uncertainty and hardship. Yes, he lives in heathen New York City, and has sex with a lot of single women, but Christian fanatics can overlook these details, too, just as they overlooked the talking animals in Narnia.

Perhaps the Narnia endorsement is good news. It may suggest that Christian fanatics have some flexibility after all. In a hundred years, they might even entertain the notion that gay people are born gay, as God intended. Time will tell. Meanwhile, for all you aspiring screenwriters out there, write a script with a character who sacrifices his (but not her--Jesus was a man, after all) life for a good cause and is reborn, and you, too, can get the fundamentalist seal of approval. It might just get your movie made.

Tantrum Ted sees Red

This week, high-ranking Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska climbed down from his highchair to throw a tantrum about changes to the latest spending bill, but to no avail. Democrats and moderate Republicans filibustered the legislation to force removal of an item permitting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Stevens, a big-business, big-money puppet, best known for his screaming fit on the Senate floor when his two-hundred-million dollar “Bridge to Nowhere” boondoggle came under attack, would love to open the ANWR to oil companies even though the amount of oil expected to be found there amounts to a tiny, meaningless fraction of our needs. It is important to Stevens that we risk spoiling a national treasure to keep the people who pay for his Senate campaigns happy.

Like a toddler, Stevens bangs his fists and rails at anyone opposing his greed, but he has become the latest poster boy for all that is wrong with Congress, especially all that is wrong with the Republican party. Yes, Democrats are beholden to businesses and special interests, but Republicans like Stevens, Tom Delay and Dick Cheney have taken favors and payola to new, unimagined levels.

They make no excuses for doing the bidding of their deep-pocketed corporate masters, and seem to operate on the fundamental notion that the needs of corporations outweigh the needs of average citizens. Indeed, they seem to believe that because corporations are staffed by people, their best interests are automatically aligned with the interests of average citizens. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Corporations have no obligation to benefit the general welfare, and the vast majority feel little concern for anything but the bottom line. Their objective is to maximize profits in the interest of shareholders who own the company. And of course, many of the largest shareholders are often their own executives.

The maximization mindset has yielded highly efficient, productive and profitable industries, but history demonstrates that corporations are unable to conduct business and respect the environment at the same time. When faced with the prospect of polluting, corporations ask the following question: will we make more money by polluting and risking an expensive cleanup down the road, or by using a cleaner, more expensive process up front? This calculus is, in a sense, immoral. It does not reject pollution outright, considering it unacceptable on its face. Rather, pollution is a potential cost.

America has scores of examples. In fact, our nation still contains hundreds of chemical dumpsites that were supposed to be cleaned up long ago. But our government didn’t have the will to enforce its own laws. Indeed, once the Bush Administration took office, it stopped litigation against Ohio Valley power plants polluting the air with nasty chemicals like mercury--the same plants who gave millions to Republicans in battleground states like Ohio.

Which brings us back to the problem. Because big business cares more about profit than people, Government needs to be a strong watchdog. Federal agencies need to have an adversarial relationship with corporate America. But in the Bush era, the watchdog turns out to be a fox, and the fox has been raiding the henhouse for five years.

This week, despite tantrums from Ted Stevens, the general public and the environment had a small victory. And this victory highlights the shameful way conservative politicians fail to protect the public while scurrying to protect big business. Our government is for sale, and, like many others in his party, Stevens is a disgrace to his office.

Big Brother Bush

It has become impossible to anticipate what manner of horrific, disgusting news will come out of Washington next, simply because nobody can make this stuff up. At the center stands President Bush, now embroiled in a secret wiretapping scandal rivaling the problems of the foul Nixon Administration.

As I’ve written before, people forget that Nixon was impeached not just for Watergate, but for conducting secret surveillance on American Citizens and ordering agencies like the IRS to audit his so-called enemies. I know, because my family was on his infamous “enemy list” (for donating money to George McGovern’s presidential campaign).

So King Bush has now admitted skirting an existing law to order wiretapping on American citizens without warrants. Considering his statement in 2004 that wiretapping always required a court order, he was either a liar then or a flip-flopper now.

Bush often states that you can’t protect civil liberties if you’re dead. But he misses a much more important point: Many Americans would rather be dead than live in a country that spied on them, tortured, sold policy to the highest bidder, gave breaks to the rich while screwing the poor, destroyed the environment, or compromised our cherished values for the sake of a false sense of security.

As the saying goes, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

But this week’s bad news doesn’t end with Bush. Picture a row of fat pigs gorging themselves at a trough. That’s the best image I can find for the current members of Congress, particularly the Republican leadership. Every spending bill, including the latest Iraq war authorization, is chocked full of cuts for the wealthy, giveaways to industry, takeaways from the poor and blows to the general welfare.

One such giveaway, drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, is at best a short-term band-aid on a much larger energy problem that our so-called leaders don’t have the vision, courage, foresight or ingenuity to address. Which is another way of calling those officials shameful failures. True cowardice is avoiding substantive, long-term issues (and destroying the environment in the process).

With every week bringing yet another disclosure of a secret program, secret giveaway, indicted official or similar shameful, disgusting scandal, it has become increasingly difficult to be diplomatic in characterizing the current political situation.

I’ve heard nothing to dissuade me from the conclusion that King Bush and his piggish colleagues in Congress are failing the American People. They seem beholden to a broken, reckless ideology and to the corporate money that put them into power. They have much to answer for, and sadly, the list of horrors just keeps growing and growing.

Magical Fascism

Despite protests from Governor Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Legislature recently enacted a law requiring hospitals to dispense “morning after” pills to rape victims likely to become pregnant. Predictably, Catholic hospitals screamed bloody murder, claiming the law goes against their beliefs.

On CNN, Father Williams, a CNN expert, priest and Vatican spokesman, explained that the morning after pill prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, which makes it a form of abortion, not contraception, and unacceptable to Catholic faith. If the pill simply kept the egg from being fertilized, he noted, the church would not object to its use in cases of rape.

His “faith” somehow dictates that a two-celled zygote not yet implanted in the womb is substantially different than the sperm and egg they were just moments before. It’s worth pointing out that the Bible says nothing specific about this, and in fact seems to condone abortion in at least one of its passages. But regardless, lets be real clear about this: Father Williams is crazy.

Crazy: suggestive of insanity…as if broken in mind. (Websters, 1986)

What has substantially changed at the moment of conception? Has a “divine spark” suddenly been lit in those cells? Has God touched the union of cells with a special magic? Is personhood an instantaneous force that comes into being out of thin air when the sperm and egg join? Does an invisible monster place a little green gremlin into the zygote, transforming it into a human life?

These are all magical, superstitious, childish fantasies. Americans have the right to believe anything they want, but they don't have the right to restrict the actions of others based on their superstitions. Fantasies like these have been infecting human thought since the dawn of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim era. They have nothing to do with reason, observation or common sense, and everything to do with wishful thinking, intellectual dishonesty and myth. To give two cells the same moral status as a living, breathing woman is absurd, and makes no more sense than believing that seventy virgins wait for us in paradise if we kill infidels. It’s all the same kind of crazy.

Of course, there are very good reasons to restrict abortion. For example, a third trimester abortion is almost impossible to justify given the fact that the mother has had ample time to consider the circumstances of her pregnancy, and more importantly, the fact that the fetus is likely viable and approaching some semblance of personhood. After all, personhood is really what matters. And personhood is defined not in mystical terms, but in practical, measurable, observable terms. People feel and think and act. Their value is not potential.

Person: a being characterized by conscious apprehension, rationality, and a moral sense. (Websters, 1986)

Clearly, a zygote has none of the hallmarks of personhood. It is only slightly closer to personhood than a sperm and an egg. The universe even sees fit to abort one in four pregnancies without our help.

Myths and superstitions have caused untold death and suffering to actual people for centuries, lately in the form of Islamic Fundamentalism. But even here at home, crazy individuals have killed doctors to stop them from performing abortions. They believe with absolute conviction the fantasy that conception is magic, which makes them scary and dangerous.

When you put all your faith in magic, very bad things can happen, and often do.

Bush vs. Enlightenment

President Bush continued his all-out media blitz this week, hoping to convince America that he is neither inept nor asleep at the wheel. Unfortunately, “Staying The Course” has come to mean staying the course of mismanagement and failure, and all the sloganeering in the world won’t change that fact in the public mind.

But Iraq isn’t the only damning problem for Bush. Many Katrina victims still live in a financial limbo thanks to the continuing failures of FEMA. In fact, the President has yet to appoint anyone to oversee the massive rebuilding he promised, which may be why little rebuilding is getting done and may never get done. The way things are going, New Orleans will soon cease to exist as we knew it.

Meanwhile, healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, real wages continue to stagnate, interest rates and inflation are rising, and heating oil is going through the roof. So it’s no wonder the average American feels squeezed and fearful. But hey, corporate profits and dividends are up, so at least the rich among us are getting richer. If only some of the fat would trickle down, but it hasn’t yet, not by a long shot.

Another absurd chapter in our national political catastrophe concerns pharmacy workers who refuse to dispense medications (usually birth control) on grounds that the medications violate their personal beliefs. So why did they ever accept jobs at companies known to dispense objectionable medications? Are these pharmacists anything but thoroughly hypocritical?

Imagine exempting certain citizens from paying taxes because their religion deems taxes immoral. Imagine pacifist soldiers being allowed into combat duty. Or imagine a doctor belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist. A patient comes into the emergency room with a gaping wound, but the doctor refuses to perform a blood transfusion, claiming the procedure goes against personal religious doctrine. Such doctor would get tossed from the hospital in a hurry, and for good reason.

But some backwards-thinking, convoluted, hypocritical fundamentalist conservatives would rather dispense with reason and side with superstition, myth and magic, screaming that to require pharmacy workers to do their jobs would violate their religious freedom. The freedom to force their superstitions upon others, apparently? If you believe a birth-control prescription is wrong, then don't get one. And stay out of businesses that offend your own values.

Whether it’s on the subject of Iraq, terrorism, the economy, supreme court nominees, social issues or tax legislation, the Radical Right takes every opportunity to yammer on about values as if they have exclusive rights to the word. But a review of their actions, decisions and policies leads to a single conclusion: they care about rich people getting richer and religious extremists gaining greater control of our country. It’s not surprising that these two groups--fundamentalists and the wealthy--had by far the largest impact on the successful re-election of the radical Bush team.

Few things are more bizarre than to hear non-stop rhetoric from our leaders about giving power to the poor people of Iraq and stopping Islamic fundamentalism, while the same leaders continue to push for the opposite here at home. Islam certainly needs an Enlightenment, but so do we.

Imagining Honesty and Competence

President Bush and Vice President Cheney gave speeches today, but both remain afraid to speak to gatherings of regular Americans. Speaking in front of soldiers has become a requirement for several reasons. First, the need to perpetuate the illusion that they are tough military guys, even though they are both prissy, country-club civilians who have never enlisted nor fought. And second, the need to speak in front of men who are trained to take orders and will not boo or shout out in the middle of a speech. If either man spoke in front of a random crowd of Americans, neither could be heard over the jeers and catcalls. Recall that these are the same two Republicans whose minions waged smear campaigns against critics, recently calling war hero Jack Murtha a coward. But what is more cowardly than avoiding the general public?

Both so-called leaders have been giving a lot of speeches in front of soldiers lately, trying to persuade people that the fiasco in Iraq is something noble and worthwhile. But the American public has long-passed the point of persuasion.

Suppose, if you will, that we could turn the clock back to March 20, 2003, and the President said the following as our tanks and soldiers prepared to roll into Iraq:

“My fellow Americans, we are invading Iraq, along with our friend England, because we need more control over the region that produces oil, and we’ve given Saddam Hussein so many reasons to hate us over the years that we fear he might someday hook up with Osama bin Laden, or invade our friends in Saudi Arabia, or do something to damage our supply of oil. And since my father screwed up and didn’t take out Saddam during the Gulf War, we figure this is the right time to finish the job. We’re not stupid enough to assume that we will be greeted with roses, and we don’t have enough men to secure important assets like weapons stockpiles, but if we wait any longer we may give others time to build a solid case against our invasion, so we’ll have to wing it.”

“Over the years, Saddam rubbed out tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen. And our invasion is likely to rub out tens of thousands more. But their families will forgive us since we are killing them to help their country. Our help will come in the form of democracy, and since we’ve been listening to a broad range of experts, we know that the best we can hope for is a government coalition of three distinct sects, who will likely form a theocracy similar to the evil empire next door, Iran.”

“We suspect that Iraq will be a very difficult country to pacify, especially once the iron grip of dictatorship is broken. And yet Islamic radicals are convinced that we want to control the Middle East forever, and will use this fear to recruit terrorists. So it is safe to assume that we will either have to exit Iraq long before it is a stable, viable nation, leaving the likelihood of serious strife and civil war when we are gone, or stay for a prolonged period, which will multiply our losses and give credence to the Islamic radical position that we want to control the Middle East.”

“But we believe that the thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars spent will be worth the try. If things work out perfectly, which they seldom do in nation-building, Iraq will become an Islamic state run by radicals who will probably not kill or torture quite as many people as Saddam. And the citizens of Iraq will get to vote for those radicals, just like we do. They will appreciate this freedom, and despite the chaos of invasion and horror of war, they will decide to keep the oil flowing, which is very important to us. This is surely a noble cause.”

Would Congress have applauded this speech? Would the American people have applauded this speech? Of course not. Congress would have put a stop to this nonsense, and Bush would have been tossed out of office in 2004.

But neither honesty nor competence has ever been a part of the Bush playbook. Even with the public turning against him, his Administration’s response is to use the same old tricks. Deception, spin and sloganeering. They worked for a while, but people finally see them for what they are--big, costly, dangerous lies.

Incapable of Change

President Bush gave another speech this week trying to resell his Iraq war "strategy", but his rhetoric never went beyond its usual shallowness. For Bush, looking strong means never changing your mind or your phrasing, no matter what the consequences. And faced with withering pressure from Congress this week, Bush remained stuck in old habits.

Rejecting calls for a timetable of withdrawal, Bush stated: "I will settle for nothing less than complete victory." He went on to explain that, "Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."

Unfortunately, the underlying problems preventing these objectives are the result of our occupation, and didn’t exist previously. More distressing is the fact that Bush's stated objectives are a virtual impossibility. Even if we stay for another decade, the terrorists and Saddamists will still threaten Iraq from within, as terrorists will continue to threaten our nation long into the future. And though the Iraqi security forces may be able to provide something approximating security someday in the distant future, Iraq will be a safe haven for terrorists as long as there are large groups of Iraqis who resent our invasion, resent other tribes or resent other religious sects. Which is to say, forever.

Bush’s black-and-white mindset consistently keeps him from a clear view of reality, which is gray and complicated. And his "complete victory" sloganeering is a ridiculous, childish farce. If his objective is to kill all the terrorists, he will fail miserably, and we with him. Clearly, for every terrorist we knock down, two more pop up.

Bush has learned nothing in office and his response to the growing concern from both parties is confirmation that he is incapable of change and unable to get us out of the mess he and his Iraq-obsessed posse created. And his denial of reality and absolutist rhetoric renders future flexibility and policy adjustment as likely as global cooling. So the bigger the Iraq mess gets, the more he’ll try to convince us it’s not a mess, rather than do something different in order to clean it up.