Moderate Schmoderate

I go to Hampshire College. Yeah, that one with the Saturday Night Live skit about people getting high. Yeah, I’m shaggy from Scooby Doo. It’s not that bad of course, although I would say we have a disproportionate amount of people who smoke pot and cigarettes. But the reason I came here was because everything I read and heard pointed to this place as nonconformist and free-thinking. And here I’ve found a good amount of people who really do think analytically about subjects and who do consider all points of view. However, I’ve also found something else surprising about a place so liberal.

Apparently it is just as easy to be an ignorant liberal as it is to be an ignorant conservative. At my high school, it just so happened that all stupid people (don’t pretend they don’t exist) happened to be conservative, and all smart people (except for a few that we labeled as ‘bad apples’) were liberals. But here, something incredible has happened. The positions have reversed themselves.

People take positions on things that are extraordinarily complicated (let’s say abortion) without even thinking about it, and with the utter conviction that they are right. The conviction is what scares me. It is unrelenting and it is tireless in its protests. Not only do they consider themselves right, they consider everyone else wrong. They are so convinced that the majority of America has no idea what they’re doing, and that if only everyone else could see things their way, everything would be all right. They don’t seem to consider that maybe their economic policies would collapse the nation, or that utter-gun control could endanger our freedom, or that hugging the Middle East won’t actually make it all better.

It is what I’ve deemed (and I didn’t think it could exist!) Fundamentalist Liberalism. And before you all run to your dictionaries, Fundamentalism can actually apply to movements that aren’t religious, it’s just a very broad term. Now, there are two problems that I see with this movement.

One is the same problem that I have with religious fundamentalists, which is that in placing all belief in one thing, you immediately close yourself off from all other arguments. Although the aims are totally different, and I would argue that although Fundamentalist Liberalism is relatively harmless (simply because it has a much smaller base than any other fundamentalist movement), the results seem to be same as Conservative Fundamentalism. It’s kind of interesting how Conservative Fundamentalists want something, like more US involvement in the Middle East (which would, let’s admit, lead to nuclear war with Iran), and Liberal Fundamentalists want absolutely no involvement in the Middle East (which would eventually lead to nuclear war with someone like Iran), and both positions end up in the same way. Because of the fact that the US isn’t alone in the world, either complete view on a far end of spectrum ends up leaving us vulnerable to the other nations that choose the opposite way. Thus moderate (with good progressive intentions) seems to be the best way to go.

The other issue is a general lack of motivation on the Liberal side of the Fundamentalist gap. Because they believe that the rest of the nation is utterly moronic most have given up hope in terms of doing anything constructive. But Religious Fundamentalists have a strong motivation to move forward (converting the public), so it’s now a political force to be reckoned with. This lack of motivation stems from several beliefs: the two strongest are that fact that they think everyone else is stupid, and that the majority are strong atheists. Oh yeah, another similarity. In talking to someone, lets say a Christian, there is no argument that I can make that will make them cease to believe in God. In talking to an Atheist there is no argument I can make that will cause them to believe in God. (I’m agnostic by the way). It’s just interesting (and also quite terrifying) that in swinging to either end of the political spectrum you wind up in the same place, a Dr. Suess wonderland where logic no longer applies, a place that quickly crumbles under the weight of the real world’s demands.

-Erik

Election Night Fever, feat. John Travolta

So. Deval Patrick it is.

Eh.

I was only casually interested in this campaign from the start, not because I thought it would be boring or unimportant, but because I thought its end was fated. In fact, this has been one of the most exciting races in the state’s political history, and one of the more crucial as well.

The Romney governorship has literally starved the state’s towns and schools of money that is rightfully theirs, brandishing a token surplus and ambiguous jobs figures as “economic growth.”

As a centrist, I would usually find it desirable to have a Republican as Governor. But there is a huge difference between a northeast Republican—Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania—and a Utah one—frickin Mitt Romney—as governor. Our legislature is one of the most liberal in the country, and the counterweight of a moderate Republican governor can act to temper the near-socialist policies of the state house and senate.

Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci, and even the baby-toting, helicopter-commuting Jane Swift have acted in this capacity, and have checked and balanced the state’s ultra-liberal leanings. Republican governors have sat in the corner office for 16 years, but after Romney, enough is enough. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is not about to elect yet another Republican, especially with the severe case of Romney burn we’re nursing. Furthermore, in these polarized times, this population of liberal Bush-haters is not going to elect Keary Healy for governor.

So again, Deval it is. Rally behind “together we can.”

And there’s good news—he’s running on the platform of hope, whatever the hell that is.

I’m not crazy – just talk to me

Let me be up front with this. I’m coming out.

I’m a Christian.

I go to church. I believe in literal interpretation of The Bible. I am anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage, and lament the moral and cultural disintegration of our society.

But I’m not crazy.

I don’t own, have never owned, and will never own an exorcism kit or a piece of toast with the Virgin Mary on it. I do not run around beating people with my Bible. I do not try to “convert you.” I will not say you’re going to hell. I do not go to anti-gay demonstrations holding a “God hates fags” poster (by the way, He doesn’t). I am against banning or blocking access to birth control. I believe that in its implementation, abstinence-only sex education has been primarily ineffective. I will never stand outside of a Planned Parenthood and abuse doctors and patients with destructive words. I do not champion against stem cells (I’m for them) while preaching a “culture of life.” I support stem-cell research and acknowledge the importance and veracity of science and the existence of eons further back than 4,000 years old (and along with them, dinosaurs). I think that both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are an embarrassment, and are destructive to our nation and both the Christian and non-Christian agendas of our country.

Am I rare? Is this fusion of Evangelical (yes, I am) Christianity and un-insane, near-normal logic achievable? And furthermore, how many “moderate Evangelicals” exist? Is this an aberration in the thinking of a singular collegian male, or is this the biggest rising movement in Christianity today?

Well, I don’t need to tell you. I don’t feel I have the right. Ask around. Ask the Christians that you know, talk to them. Don’t let the conversation end if they say they’re against gay marriage, probe them on it. Ask what they think about the legal status of same-sex couples and about gay people coming to church. I have a feeling you’ll be very surprised.

Most Christians are not bigoted. Our beliefs are not derived from hate and exclusiveness, but from compassion and love. We cannot have our opinions summed up in one-sentence blurbs. We are not sheep. We can and do disagree with our ministers/pastors/priests. It is not the Middle Ages anymore, and we do not fear the presence of an inquisition to punish heretics for unorthodox views. Religion is a very personal thing, and people put as much different personal variability into their beliefs as they do with other parts of their lives, like music, hobbies, and wardrobe. And for goodness’ sake, Falwell and Robertson (and all like personalities) are not Christians’ Bin Laden:

“Asked to rate certain personalities on a 0-100 scale of favorability, Baptist television personality Jerry Falwell scored only a 44 percent rating among white evangelicals. Christian Coalition thunder and broadcaster Pat Robertson fared slightly better, at 54 percent.” (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_9_121/ai_n6173720).

Saying that Jerry Falwell and his 44 percent favorability rating speaks for Christians is like saying that President Bush and his similar approval rating speaks for Americans. The reason you never see moderates on CNN is because people would never say, “Hey, guys! Com’ere and check out this crazy Jesus freak on TV!” It’s the same as talk radio. It’s bad for ratings. If you are a moderate; you aren’t provocative enough to make waves.

Christianity calls for meekness, humility, and loving all of your brothers, Christian or non, gay and straight. I hope that as young Christians and young people of other faiths or of agnosticism and atheism interact, we will be brought together by our many likenesses, not separated and segregated by our less frequent differences. I just hope that one day, when the time comes, us moderates of the middle will arise and take back their religion from the power-mongers who hijacked it.

Chris

1984 was a good year. It is also a prophetic book.

Hello, all. If you missed it, a couple weeks ago my family went on holiday (I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to write “on holiday”) to Washington DC. If you haven’t been, go. It was really a great trip, and there is plenty to do for those of all interests.
It was a more than eight hour drive, so I had to find a way to pass the time. I took my iPod, my laptop, a Time, a Newsweek, Emerson’s summer reading (The Motorcycle Diaries, by the Ernesto “Che” Guevara), and my old, beat-up copy of Orwell’s (no first name needed) 1984. The rest of my reading things went unused, and I dived into a rereading of the old classic.
I first read 1984 during Sophomore year, and therein discovered my love for dystopian literature. I happened across my copy of the book at Triton when I found it on the floor near a trash-can after the last week of school. It sat next to an old, well loved textbook and a destroyed Shakespeare, and I intervened to save it from certain internment in a landfill. It was obvious that this book could not be issued for student reading anymore, even in the face of Triton’s budget woes. Its paperback cover had long ago fallen away, but it still proudly proclaimed “84, George Orwell” on its now front cover. I’m guessing the numbers “19” were on the page to the left of it, but I have no way of knowing. As it could be said (only those who have read the book will understand), the book is coverless, it was always coverless, and it will always be coverless.
1984 was on my list of books to reread, but I felt that it would be worth it to buy new, so I could lend it to friends, peers, and one day, to my children (yes, I thought that far ahead, I hold this book in very high regard). But I felt obligated to claim this mutilated copy, especially considering the themes on which the book is based.
1984, along with Farenheight 451 and Brave New World, are favorites of mine, and were all written within ten years of each other. Despite being written to satirize and delegitimize Soviet-style totalitarianism, this trio of books has only gained relevance and potency over the decades, after the Cold War and Soviet totalitarianism have largely subsided. Now, in the midst of the information age, we are no more out of the woods on the issues of freedom of information and freedom of being than we were fifty years ago. Omniscient “thought police” intelligence agencies, limitless surveillance techniques, alterations of the past, corruption and graft at society’s top, and forbiddance of books and sections of the internet abound in much today’s world.
Many of you may anticipate where I’m going, and I’ll beat you to it. The United States is not “Orwellian.” America of 2006 is eons apart from 1984’s Oceania. But visiting the nation’s capital while reading the book made me think about the way the Bush Administration likes to do business, and made me notice some un-over-lookable parallels between Ingsoc and Bush methodology. These quoted passages are long—feel free to skim, it’s quicker and you’ll get the main idea.

First, contradiction in name of agency or law as a means of justification.
Oceania:
Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. (Chapter 9)

Bush Administration:
The Bush administration developed a plan called the Clear Skies initiative and submitted it to Congress in February 2003 as a proposal to amend the Clean Air Act, which is the primary federal law governing air quality. But "Clear Skies" is a clear misnomer, because if Congress passes the Clear Skies bill, the result will be to weaken and delay health protections already required under the law. The Clear Skies legislation sets new targets for emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and nitrogen oxides from U.S. power plants. But these targets are weaker than those that would be put in place if the Bush administration simply implemented and enforced the existing law! Compared to current law, the Clear Skies plan would allow three times more toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur emissions, and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides. It would also delay cleaning up this pollution by up to a decade compared to current law and force residents of heavily-polluted areas to wait years longer for clean air compared to the existing Clean Air Act. (http://www.nrdc.org/air/pollution/qbushplan.asp#clearskies)
The Healthy Forest Restoration Act was sold as a pro-environment bill that would reduce the risk of large forest fires. However, most environmental groups argued that the title “healthy forests” was a dangerous misnomer and that the bill would actually cause harm to our forests not protect them. The Union of Concerned Scientists noted in their newsletter earthwise (Winter 2003-2004 edition) that commercial timber companies “would be contracted to thin forests in exchange for the trees they cut down, so there is a financial incentive to cut down larger, more valuable trees that actually help keep fires from spreading. There were also no restrictions placed on where thinning could occur; so, rather than protecting communities at risk, timber companies could harvest in remote areas where fires pose no immediate threat to people or property.”
(http://peaceworks.missouri.org/monitor/2005/fall/1.html)

Second, alteration/denial of the past.
Oceania:
On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns -- after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces -- at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally. There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy…One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed. (Chapter 9)

President Bush:
(6/18/02) Reporter: “Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?”
Bush: “I can't make that claim.”
(6/17/04) “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. There's numerous contacts between the two.”

(New York Times, 7/13/04) Mr. Bush was asked in June 2004 whether he would fire anyone who leaked Ms. Wilson's name. Without hesitation, he said "yes."
(7/18/05) "If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

Third, “War is Peace.”
Oceania:
“The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading…The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace.” (Chapter 9)

President Bush:
“I want to thank the choir for coming, the youngsters for being here. I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace. We want people to live in peace all around the world. I mean, our vision for peace extends beyond America. We believe in peace in South Asia. We believe in peace in the Middle East. We're going to be steadfast toward a vision that rejects terror and killing, and honors peace and hope. I also want the young to know that this country, we don't conquer people, we liberate people -- because we hold true to our values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The security of our homeland, the need to make sure that America is safe and secure while we chase peace is my number one priority for the country.” (http://www.studentsfororwell.org/yarr/warispeace)


On Wednesday, November 3 2004, the day after our country reelected President Bush, our own Erik sat at a Triton Library computer, uttering, “We’re screwed,” under his breath.
Are we? Far from it. But we have to pay closer attention, and improve our sophisication of how we gain our understanding of the news and the government. The media has turned our newscasts and newspapers into propaganda. The 30-minute newscast (22 minus commercials) devotes about 90 seconds to its top story, and only superficially reports the news, while adding the spin of its given network. The consolidation of media companies into a few megacorporations (see chart: http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml) has resulted in selective purges and censorship of the news. The front page filling “gotcha” photos on major newspapers (see The Boston Herald or New York Post) look more like picture books than the deliverers of the day’s news. The sound bite-ization of our public officials’ speeches allow President Bush and political spin masters to disguise their words as truth.
And even if the Rove-driven political machine did want to turn the United States into an absolutist police state, they have proven too incompetent. Their errs would block whatever progress they could make. What could, however, allow America to fall victim to this scenario is our nationwide case of ADD. I’m a huge fan of CNN. It’s quick and easy. It wraps up the world into a handy half-hour long package. I watch for 30 minutes, and BAM! I’m on my way, armed with the day's news. Believe it or not, the goings-on of the world cannot be compressed into a half-hour bloc of Paula Zahn. It just does not work that way, and because we think it does, terrible tradgedies happen.
What happened to the Darfur Sudan crisis when ABC's World News Tonight ran out of room to report it? It wasn’t solved. It didn’t go away. But we forgot and stopped talking about it because news anchors no longer brought the subject to the forefront of our minds.
Hurricane Katrina? By December, it was off the news, but its refugees were not off the streets. It only returned to newscasts to be in time for the anniversary specials, where much of the Gulf Coast is still trapped in September of 05.
Stem cell research? Not enough room! It was a hot topic in July-August of 2005 and June of this year, but not since. And besides, cancer can cure itself.
AIDS in Africa? That story is tired. And it makes Americans feel guilty and uncomfortable.
Our nation’s immigration policies? The ones that have failed our citizens, our businesses, and the immigrants themselves? Congress did nothing, but the story is gone from the news.
1.1 billion of the world’s people not having clean drinking water? Nope. That one was never on the news, it isn’t sexy enough, viewers might have clicked over to another newscast, and we don’t want that!
Michael Jackson, Natalee Holloway, JonBenet Ramsey, Jessica Lunsford, Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Barry Bonds, Ann Coulter. Yah! There’s some real news! They can have as much of the newscasts as they want, that’s what the public wants to hear about!
I guess what I’m trying to say is, AMERICA: WAKE THE HELL UP. If we don’t inform and teach ourselves, no one is going to do it for you. Seek out “whole grain” news, instead of “white bread” options. Watch and listen to public broadcasting, PBS’ on television and NPR on the radio. Read blogs and news services that aren’t affiliated with corporations (by the way, I’m not claiming that we should be you news source, then we really would be screwed). Find BBC World Service on the newsdial. If you’re a Liberal, listen to Conservative talk radio to develop counterpoints. If you’re a Conservative, listen to Air America, or visit any forum on the internet (they’re all left anyways). And if you do have to fall back on Fox News or CBS or The Boston Herald, DON’T TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT! Review what is reported and look for signs of bias or omission in the article/report. Trust me, they are there. Please, do not overlook what is happening around us. It is not just a governmental phenomenon, but a media and cultural one too.
Thank you for trudging all the way through this entry. It is long and it’s content heavy, but I believe it is vitally important. Good luck, members of the Brotherhood.
We will meet in the place where there is no darkness…


I did cite from where on the internet i took the quotes, but the research was compiled by Students for an Orwellian Society (studentsfororwell.org). Visit the site and see if you noticed all of the loops we've been thrown by the media/Bush Administration, I know I didn't.

Chris