I'm done with Facebook. I'm done with social media that seem to exist for the sole purpose of facilitating treason, seditious conspiracy, Obama Derangement syndrome, Holocaust-denialism and homophobic and trans-phobic bigotry, among other things
This morning, I received terse little missive from the folks at Facebook’s community standards Department informing me that I had been blocked from posting on Facebook for 30 days. I chose to regard this as the permanent end of my relationship with Facebook.
I ended my relationship with Facebook because I was the subject of harassment and bullying from a purportedly liberal Democratic group and from one particular individual therein, who apparently has friends in high places at Facebook.
What I can ascertain from Facebook’s application of its so-called community standards is that the community standards Department is essentially a vehicle for the pursuit of grudges and vendettas.
The way Facebook applies its so-called community standards is not tethered to any fixed principle, nor is it in any way transparent or anchored to fixed and identifiable metrics by which someone can determine what is and is not transgressive.
I posted a comment concerning Bristol Palin’s apparent inability to avoid getting pregnant by not one, but two separate men to whom she was not married. I pointed out that her hypocrisy in doing so, while positioning herself as a “spokeswoman” for sexual abstinence and continence lent itself to slut shaming.
Now let me be perfectly clear, in ordinary cases I would condemn slut shaming in the strongest possible terms. But when someone deliberately injects herself into the vortex of public debate on the issue of sexual abstinence while having two children out of lawful wedlock by separate baby daddies, she necessarily tenders her condition exposes herself to public debate, condemnation, and ridicule. It is especially so when the sex was apparently consensual and carefully planned, as Bristol Palin herself has admitted. People who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones.
This gave rise to a storm of angry responses from so-called liberals, who condemned me and called me just about every bad name in the book. Apparently unilateral disarmament and silence in the face of evil the Palins represent is the desired default posture. To borrow from The Donald, it’s the worst sort of political correctness. (Full disclosure: I despise The Donald. I think he is a crypto fascist who will do horrible damage to this country if he is elected president, but on the issue of political correctness, I find myself agreeing with some of his positions.)
One particular woman, who I shall not name and shame here, decided to wage a campaign of bullying and harassment against me, and apparently recruited a number of her friends do the same. The transgression for which I was banned from Facebook was a response to a threatening post from her. It read simply “keep it up, Tanya.” Apparently to the contemptible liberal surrender monkeys at Facebook this was enough to justify banning me for 30 days.
Yet, while being upset with me for objecting to my being bullied, Facebook routinely publishes all manner of sedition, Obama Derangement Syndrome, Holocaust-denial, anti-Semitism, and trans-phobic and homophobic bigotry. In short, Facebook gives hatred a pass, but gets is politically correct knickers in a knot over something so minor as “keep it up, Tanya.”
This is bullshit. Facebook claims have over 1 billion users around the world. It is small wonder that in a number of countries, including such Western democracies as France and United Kingdom, Facebook operates under much stricter supervision than it does in the United States. The UK and France don’t give a pass to sedition, Holocaust-denial, or the kind of Obama Derangement Syndrome that routinely slips through here.
I think it’s probably time that Congress and the California Legislature took a close look at Facebook’s practices.
When you facilitate seditious conspiracy and treason, you ought to be looked at more closely. Since Facebook has become a vehicle for the bullying of consumers, both Congress and the Legislature have authority to look into their process including the way they apply their so-called community standards. The Legislature would have authority because Facebook is domiciled in California, and even if it were not, it has sufficient nexus to warrant the assertion of California and jurisdiction and supervision by its Legislature. Additionally, Congress can exercise regulatory supervision over Facebook because Facebook is an instrumentality of interstate commerce, and Congress’s power under the Interstate Commerce Clause of Article I of the Constitution is well-nigh plenary.
I will be bringing this matter to the attention of my representatives in the California State Assembly and in Congress. I think it’s long past time that we took Facebook down a few notches, and reminded them that, in the contemplation of the law, they are just another corporation doing business in the state of California, to whose laws they are subject. If Facebook can’t get its priorities right in who it will protect from bullying, then I have a feeling that Congress and the Legislature can do that job for them, even if it means administering a level of discomfort and supervision that Facebook might not like.
So, while Facebook might prefer to have camel in the tent pissing out, what they got was a camel outside the tent, pissing in. Today I join the ranks of Facebook’s legion of detractors and holders in contempt. They won’t see me on their site again. But perhaps, God willing, they will see me testify against them and their pretensions in the halls of the Legislature and Congress.
Friday, January 22, 2016
Friday, December 25, 2015
AMID THE TRUMPERY AND THE HUMBUG, THE SAVIOR IS AT HAND.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Summary: Christmas is a pain in the ass. Crises, snits, and quarrels, ridiculous culture war confrontations, fights over politics, and disappointment at the failure of unrealistic expectations for the season are often enough to cause many of us to growl "bah, humbug!" and to retreat from Christmas altogether. Our surly moods often express themselves in such things as retreating to our places of work, to try to get some work accomplished during the silent time when nobody else is around. Yet in the silence, we cannot avoid contemplating the subversion the Infant in the manger came to set in train. In a time and a society that demonizes the powerless and punishes the poor, we may yet acknowledge some incremental steps toward satisfying our duty of compassion toward the neighbors Christ our Savior called us to love as we love ourselves. The works of justice to which He called us are still incomplete; "substantial additional work" Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, 110, is still needed, but on this Christmas, we may still, with full consciousness of the subversive nature thereof, dare to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him.
----------------------------
Another year almost done, and just as it was last year, it’s still easy to hate Christmas. It's still a pain in the ass. Start with the canned Christmas music and the pre-Yuletide shopping season whose beginning advances ever further into the liturgical season of Pentecost, add to that all of the various other crises, snits, and quarrels that seem to erupt around this time of year, throw in a generous helping of the culture war bullshit that crops up right around this time (think of Bill O'Reilly and his idiotic "War on Christmas" screeds, together with his whiny criticisms of the Roman Pontiff and of aggressively ignorant bigots in so many jurisdictions and their aggressively ignorant defenders), Add to that the Snidely Whiplashes of the season, determined -if they can’t have a good Christmas themselves- to ruin it for everybody else, and finally layer on top of all of that the various expectations we all seem to entertain about what Christmas should be --and our disappointment when those expectations are not met. All these things together are a recipe for a lousy holiday season. To riff on playwright Larry Kramer's famous line, "I have seen the Christmas season and it shits."
So, like a lot of people for whom late fall and winter are a time of torment, my response to the overload of saccharine inherent in this season is to growl a well considered "Bah, humbug!", together with an off-color homage to Bette Midler's character in The Rose: "fuck this shit." It does not take a lot to understand my own surliness of mood as we approach yet another American Christmas. Certainly, such a mood is hardly enhanced by nosy neighbors who want to know why I have put up no lights on my house. Such a mood is not enhanced by neighbors giving me stink eye after noticing that, rather than put up a Christmas tree, I make do with an Advent wreath (complete with three purple candles, a pink one for Gaudete, and a white one for the Incarnate Savior). Indeed, my mood usually gets so surly by Christmas Day that it's become a personal shibboleth of mine to go into my office and get at least some work done.
Yet, in the lonely quiet of the office on Christmas day, far away from the importunings of co-workers, the ringing phones, the canned music, and the endless advertisements for products I neither need nor want, the silence lends itself to contemplation, and to a realization that, stripped of all the accretions of bullshit we have piled onto it, Christmas is a subversive time. We cannot avoid contemplating the subversion our Savior came into the world to set in train.
Alan Jones, sometime Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, once noted that "We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven." Certainly, in a time of culture wars, pandering political grandstanders, particularly on the political right this year, and aggressive, triumphalist ignorance, it is easy to fall back upon a judgmental posture that sees little redemption in anything. Yet, the Savior is at hand. Come let us adore Him.
What, indeed, would our culture war hardliners have said about a pregnant teenager traveling with an older man who is not the father of her unborn child? Would they have appreciated the weary dignity -- that weary dignity which is so often the lot of the poor among us -- with which this couple sought lodging on a cold night in winter in an occupied territory? Or would they had seen this couple's choice of a manger as a place to rest as nothing more than an example of freeloading by the "undeserving" poor? What would our culture warriors think of the call, in this Incarnation Season, to welcome tens, scores, or hundreds of thousands of refugees from The strife-torn Middle East, bending their weary footsteps, desperately seeking some, any, sanctuary for themselves and their children.
What would our culture warriors think of the events described in the Lucan infancy narrative were they not possessed of the pre-knowledge that comes from that particular Gospel story, a sacred narrative that has become, over 2000 years, one of the most special and precious possessions of the Western mind? I think the answer is simple. Mary and Joseph and their unborn child would have been described as freeloaders at best, welfare cheats, or even terrorists at worst, and instead of being acknowledged as Our Lady Queen of the Angels, Mary might well have been derided as nothing more than a welfare queen, living in the projects and sucking off the largesse of society or as a terrorist with her terrorist baby and terrorist baby daddy. At all events, Chris Christie and Greg Abbott would certainly have campaigned against her, and tried to slam shut the door of their communities against her and her Infant.
Indeed, applying such a narrative, many of the right-wing culture warriors who have made a fetish of insisting that Jesus was white might well have assumed the blackness or brownness -or the terroristicy- of his unwed mother, sleeping rough in a manger and giving birth therein. For across 2000 years, we have yet to heed Jesus' call, prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And herein lies the subversion inherent in our celebration of the Incarnation of our Savior, the Word made flesh, come among us to dwell full of grace and truth and to draw us all to Himself. For indeed, the whole infancy narrative, the whole narrative of the suffering Savior Who offered Himself upon the bitter cross for our advantage, stands at fundamental variance with the way in which our world organizes itself. For notwithstanding Chris Christie, Greg Abbott, or The Unspeakable Donald, His light shines in the darkness, and the darkness, as St. John's gospel assures us, has not overcome it.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
In a society that regularly demonizes the poor and powerless, the very idea that the Savior of the world should have come into it as the child of a homeless, unwed mother is both subversive and confrontational. For the Infant Jesus did not come into the world to bring peace, but a sword. The Infant Jesus did not come into the world to comfort the comfortable, or to afflict the afflicted, but to remind us of God's preferential option for the poor, for Lazarus over Dives, of God's awesome compassion for those unloved with none to love them.
The radical and subversive teachings Jesus brought to the world call us across 21 centuries to an ethic of justice, inclusion, compassion, and compunction. As we feel a sense of inchoate obligation toward the Infant in the manger, so that Infant calls us to feel that same sense of obligation toward our neighbors.
And indeed, in this year 2015 we may perhaps feel a sense of having in some incremental way done right by those to whom we have so often done wrong. Though Congress showed shameless inaction and indifference through much of the year for the longsuffering and too-long ignored 9/11 first responders, there are signs that steps may finally be taken toward ameliorating their condition. Though jurisdictions throughout the country have resisted, to the point of somebody like Kim Davis having to be incarcerated for her disobedience, marriage equality is now the law of the land, even in Rowan County, Kentucky. And to the everlasting irritation of many on the American right, we're finally acknowledging that black and brown lives really do matter, that the Infant in the manger came to proclaim salvation to all of us, irrespective of our skin tone; after having had a female Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church has in the Most. Rev. Michael Curry, its first African-American Presiding Bishop. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it ineluctably bends toward justice.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
Yet, in the sacred silence of this time of Incarnation, we need to realize how much more remains undone, how distant we yet remain from the Kingdom of God. To borrow from the language of the egregious opinion in Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, "substantial additional work" is still needed. 531 U.S. 98 at 110.
In this sacred time, when we recall again that we are the people of a passionate God, Whose passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation, Passion, death, and Resurrection of the Infant in the manger, it is for us, as Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation at Gettysburg, to be dedicated to the unfinished work, to that great work spoken of by the prophet Isaiah:
"to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn." Isa. 61:1-2.
And to say "bah, humbug" to all the naysayers who believe on this Christmas that we can neither attain social justice nor proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
"Substantial additional work" is still needed. Let's get about doing it.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him!
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an updated adaptation of this blog's Christmas post for 2014, because the work of building the Kingdom remains as yet incomplete.
Summary: Christmas is a pain in the ass. Crises, snits, and quarrels, ridiculous culture war confrontations, fights over politics, and disappointment at the failure of unrealistic expectations for the season are often enough to cause many of us to growl "bah, humbug!" and to retreat from Christmas altogether. Our surly moods often express themselves in such things as retreating to our places of work, to try to get some work accomplished during the silent time when nobody else is around. Yet in the silence, we cannot avoid contemplating the subversion the Infant in the manger came to set in train. In a time and a society that demonizes the powerless and punishes the poor, we may yet acknowledge some incremental steps toward satisfying our duty of compassion toward the neighbors Christ our Savior called us to love as we love ourselves. The works of justice to which He called us are still incomplete; "substantial additional work" Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, 110, is still needed, but on this Christmas, we may still, with full consciousness of the subversive nature thereof, dare to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him.
----------------------------
Another year almost done, and just as it was last year, it’s still easy to hate Christmas. It's still a pain in the ass. Start with the canned Christmas music and the pre-Yuletide shopping season whose beginning advances ever further into the liturgical season of Pentecost, add to that all of the various other crises, snits, and quarrels that seem to erupt around this time of year, throw in a generous helping of the culture war bullshit that crops up right around this time (think of Bill O'Reilly and his idiotic "War on Christmas" screeds, together with his whiny criticisms of the Roman Pontiff and of aggressively ignorant bigots in so many jurisdictions and their aggressively ignorant defenders), Add to that the Snidely Whiplashes of the season, determined -if they can’t have a good Christmas themselves- to ruin it for everybody else, and finally layer on top of all of that the various expectations we all seem to entertain about what Christmas should be --and our disappointment when those expectations are not met. All these things together are a recipe for a lousy holiday season. To riff on playwright Larry Kramer's famous line, "I have seen the Christmas season and it shits."
So, like a lot of people for whom late fall and winter are a time of torment, my response to the overload of saccharine inherent in this season is to growl a well considered "Bah, humbug!", together with an off-color homage to Bette Midler's character in The Rose: "fuck this shit." It does not take a lot to understand my own surliness of mood as we approach yet another American Christmas. Certainly, such a mood is hardly enhanced by nosy neighbors who want to know why I have put up no lights on my house. Such a mood is not enhanced by neighbors giving me stink eye after noticing that, rather than put up a Christmas tree, I make do with an Advent wreath (complete with three purple candles, a pink one for Gaudete, and a white one for the Incarnate Savior). Indeed, my mood usually gets so surly by Christmas Day that it's become a personal shibboleth of mine to go into my office and get at least some work done.
Yet, in the lonely quiet of the office on Christmas day, far away from the importunings of co-workers, the ringing phones, the canned music, and the endless advertisements for products I neither need nor want, the silence lends itself to contemplation, and to a realization that, stripped of all the accretions of bullshit we have piled onto it, Christmas is a subversive time. We cannot avoid contemplating the subversion our Savior came into the world to set in train.
Alan Jones, sometime Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, once noted that "We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven." Certainly, in a time of culture wars, pandering political grandstanders, particularly on the political right this year, and aggressive, triumphalist ignorance, it is easy to fall back upon a judgmental posture that sees little redemption in anything. Yet, the Savior is at hand. Come let us adore Him.
What, indeed, would our culture war hardliners have said about a pregnant teenager traveling with an older man who is not the father of her unborn child? Would they have appreciated the weary dignity -- that weary dignity which is so often the lot of the poor among us -- with which this couple sought lodging on a cold night in winter in an occupied territory? Or would they had seen this couple's choice of a manger as a place to rest as nothing more than an example of freeloading by the "undeserving" poor? What would our culture warriors think of the call, in this Incarnation Season, to welcome tens, scores, or hundreds of thousands of refugees from The strife-torn Middle East, bending their weary footsteps, desperately seeking some, any, sanctuary for themselves and their children.
What would our culture warriors think of the events described in the Lucan infancy narrative were they not possessed of the pre-knowledge that comes from that particular Gospel story, a sacred narrative that has become, over 2000 years, one of the most special and precious possessions of the Western mind? I think the answer is simple. Mary and Joseph and their unborn child would have been described as freeloaders at best, welfare cheats, or even terrorists at worst, and instead of being acknowledged as Our Lady Queen of the Angels, Mary might well have been derided as nothing more than a welfare queen, living in the projects and sucking off the largesse of society or as a terrorist with her terrorist baby and terrorist baby daddy. At all events, Chris Christie and Greg Abbott would certainly have campaigned against her, and tried to slam shut the door of their communities against her and her Infant.
Indeed, applying such a narrative, many of the right-wing culture warriors who have made a fetish of insisting that Jesus was white might well have assumed the blackness or brownness -or the terroristicy- of his unwed mother, sleeping rough in a manger and giving birth therein. For across 2000 years, we have yet to heed Jesus' call, prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And herein lies the subversion inherent in our celebration of the Incarnation of our Savior, the Word made flesh, come among us to dwell full of grace and truth and to draw us all to Himself. For indeed, the whole infancy narrative, the whole narrative of the suffering Savior Who offered Himself upon the bitter cross for our advantage, stands at fundamental variance with the way in which our world organizes itself. For notwithstanding Chris Christie, Greg Abbott, or The Unspeakable Donald, His light shines in the darkness, and the darkness, as St. John's gospel assures us, has not overcome it.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
In a society that regularly demonizes the poor and powerless, the very idea that the Savior of the world should have come into it as the child of a homeless, unwed mother is both subversive and confrontational. For the Infant Jesus did not come into the world to bring peace, but a sword. The Infant Jesus did not come into the world to comfort the comfortable, or to afflict the afflicted, but to remind us of God's preferential option for the poor, for Lazarus over Dives, of God's awesome compassion for those unloved with none to love them.
The radical and subversive teachings Jesus brought to the world call us across 21 centuries to an ethic of justice, inclusion, compassion, and compunction. As we feel a sense of inchoate obligation toward the Infant in the manger, so that Infant calls us to feel that same sense of obligation toward our neighbors.
And indeed, in this year 2015 we may perhaps feel a sense of having in some incremental way done right by those to whom we have so often done wrong. Though Congress showed shameless inaction and indifference through much of the year for the longsuffering and too-long ignored 9/11 first responders, there are signs that steps may finally be taken toward ameliorating their condition. Though jurisdictions throughout the country have resisted, to the point of somebody like Kim Davis having to be incarcerated for her disobedience, marriage equality is now the law of the land, even in Rowan County, Kentucky. And to the everlasting irritation of many on the American right, we're finally acknowledging that black and brown lives really do matter, that the Infant in the manger came to proclaim salvation to all of us, irrespective of our skin tone; after having had a female Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church has in the Most. Rev. Michael Curry, its first African-American Presiding Bishop. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it ineluctably bends toward justice.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
Yet, in the sacred silence of this time of Incarnation, we need to realize how much more remains undone, how distant we yet remain from the Kingdom of God. To borrow from the language of the egregious opinion in Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, "substantial additional work" is still needed. 531 U.S. 98 at 110.
In this sacred time, when we recall again that we are the people of a passionate God, Whose passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation, Passion, death, and Resurrection of the Infant in the manger, it is for us, as Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation at Gettysburg, to be dedicated to the unfinished work, to that great work spoken of by the prophet Isaiah:
"to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn." Isa. 61:1-2.
And to say "bah, humbug" to all the naysayers who believe on this Christmas that we can neither attain social justice nor proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
"Substantial additional work" is still needed. Let's get about doing it.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him!
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an updated adaptation of this blog's Christmas post for 2014, because the work of building the Kingdom remains as yet incomplete.
Friday, December 11, 2015
George Zander, An Appreciation
Summary: George Zander was one of that cadre of dedicated Democrats who was instrumental in turning this Valley blue. That, together with his tireless advocacy for the LGBT community, earned him a place in the hearts of many of us. His death is a loss but we are a better community for having had him in it.
Hard news reached me yesterday that my old friend George Zander, whom I had known for the better part of two decades, died yesterday at at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs.
A decent regard for the truth compels me to acknowledge that George was the victim of a hate crime at the end of October. As a result of the injuries he sustained, he had to be treated for a double fracture of his hip. We do not know for certain at this point whether there was a causal relationship between the crime and his death.
Nevertheless, as a lawyer with some experience in the criminal justice system I can observe that this could not have been a worse development for the two men accused in the hate crime. And worse for them, George’s death occurred within the time window during which the offense is presumptively criminal. And if there is the slightest degree of causality involved, both men could well face the death penalty.
Yet it would do a disservice to George’s memory to think of him in no other light then as the victim of a hate crime. There was much more to George than that. My first encounter with George Zander came in the late 1990s, at a meeting of Democrats of the Desert. The time had come for the election of officers and George was nominated. Having just recently relocated to the desert from King County, Washington, George gracefully declined.
A few years later, however, George did become chair of the desert Stonewall Democrats, and under his leadership, the desert Stonewall Democrats soon became one of the most significant political players in our Valley. George’s commitment to desert Stonewall Democrats, and indeed his commitment to LGBT activism, was absolute. He was a Liberal with a capital L, out, loud, proud, and unapologetic.
Yet, he was surprisingly low-key. While some of us (full disclosure), myself included, did not hesitate to run for and, mirablile dictu, and be elected to, public office, George always preferred the quieter path. Nonetheless, during his tenure as chair of Desert Stonewall Democrats and with Equality California, George spoke with a consistent sense of moral authority, and was, to all intents and purposes, the default “go to guy” for local media meeting the reaction of the queer nation in the Coachella Valley.
Still, George was more than just a mouthpiece. He, and Desert Stonewall Democrats set out to to accomplish what many thought was impossible: to turn our Valley blue. What had once been thought a reliable Republican redoubt has since become Democratic territory, thanks in large part to the efforts of George Zander. Some years ago, George was staffing the Desert Stonewall Democrats table at Village Fest in Palm Springs on a Thursday evening.
He recounted that a somewhat obviously Republican couple from Rancho Mirage (the lady's gold lamé cowboy hat with the bow at the back being the dead giveaway) wondered in front of the Desert Stonewall Democrats table and did a bit of a double take. The wife turned to the husband and said in a tone of considerable shock and dismay “Honey, it’s not our Valley anymore.”
I can’t think of a better achievement by which to remember George Zander.
It’s not their Valley anymore, thanks in large part to George.
Rest fiercely in power, old friend.
Requiem Æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat super eis, amen.
Hard news reached me yesterday that my old friend George Zander, whom I had known for the better part of two decades, died yesterday at at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs.
A decent regard for the truth compels me to acknowledge that George was the victim of a hate crime at the end of October. As a result of the injuries he sustained, he had to be treated for a double fracture of his hip. We do not know for certain at this point whether there was a causal relationship between the crime and his death.
Nevertheless, as a lawyer with some experience in the criminal justice system I can observe that this could not have been a worse development for the two men accused in the hate crime. And worse for them, George’s death occurred within the time window during which the offense is presumptively criminal. And if there is the slightest degree of causality involved, both men could well face the death penalty.
Yet it would do a disservice to George’s memory to think of him in no other light then as the victim of a hate crime. There was much more to George than that. My first encounter with George Zander came in the late 1990s, at a meeting of Democrats of the Desert. The time had come for the election of officers and George was nominated. Having just recently relocated to the desert from King County, Washington, George gracefully declined.
A few years later, however, George did become chair of the desert Stonewall Democrats, and under his leadership, the desert Stonewall Democrats soon became one of the most significant political players in our Valley. George’s commitment to desert Stonewall Democrats, and indeed his commitment to LGBT activism, was absolute. He was a Liberal with a capital L, out, loud, proud, and unapologetic.
Yet, he was surprisingly low-key. While some of us (full disclosure), myself included, did not hesitate to run for and, mirablile dictu, and be elected to, public office, George always preferred the quieter path. Nonetheless, during his tenure as chair of Desert Stonewall Democrats and with Equality California, George spoke with a consistent sense of moral authority, and was, to all intents and purposes, the default “go to guy” for local media meeting the reaction of the queer nation in the Coachella Valley.
Still, George was more than just a mouthpiece. He, and Desert Stonewall Democrats set out to to accomplish what many thought was impossible: to turn our Valley blue. What had once been thought a reliable Republican redoubt has since become Democratic territory, thanks in large part to the efforts of George Zander. Some years ago, George was staffing the Desert Stonewall Democrats table at Village Fest in Palm Springs on a Thursday evening.
He recounted that a somewhat obviously Republican couple from Rancho Mirage (the lady's gold lamé cowboy hat with the bow at the back being the dead giveaway) wondered in front of the Desert Stonewall Democrats table and did a bit of a double take. The wife turned to the husband and said in a tone of considerable shock and dismay “Honey, it’s not our Valley anymore.”
I can’t think of a better achievement by which to remember George Zander.
It’s not their Valley anymore, thanks in large part to George.
Rest fiercely in power, old friend.
Requiem Æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat super eis, amen.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
AFTER SAN BERNARDINO: WHAT DO WE THINK; WHAT DO WE KNOW; WHAT CAN WE PROVE?
Summary: The news of the horrific mass shooting yesterday in San Bernardino causes one to fall back on invoking the deity, on offering anodyne “thoughts and prayers,” and also to begin pointing fingers, assigning blame, and jockeying for political advantage. Yet perhaps now should be a time for principled and considerate silence, as we take some time to ask ourselves what do we think, what do we know, and what can we prove.
When the news hit of yesterday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, just up the road from here, which left fourteen dead, and 17 injured, my first reaction was the almost invariable one of invoking the Deity.
Oh my God.
My second reaction, equally ineluctable, was to ask who has done this and why.
The immediate temptation under such circumstances is twofold. The first response, while somewhat laudable, is nonetheless largely meaningless. From all quarters, and particularly from the overcrowded field of Republican presidential candidates for 2016, there have come anodyne statements that “prayers and thoughts go out to” families, first responders, and just about everyone else involved.
The second response is equally ineluctable: to begin pointing fingers and assigning blame. Certainly, the last 23 hours have seen a veritable feeding frenzy, as commentators, pundits, trolls, and others on both sides of the political divide lob verbal broadsides at one another.
At some point, however, we must allow ourselves to be moved, if not by the better angels of our nature, at least by a sense of personal and professional responsibility to step back, putting our emotions aside and seeking truth from facts.
In short, we need to ask some basic questions: what do we think? what do we know? What can we prove?
At the moment, what we know is that 14 are dead and 17 have been wounded. We know that two suspected shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28 and significant other Tashfeen Malik, 27, perished in a shootout with police. We also know that the President of the United States (and presumably many of the law enforcement community) has not definitively ruled out the possibility that terrorism may have been involved. Certainly, the fact that the suspected shooters appear to have had Islamic names accounts for the president's reluctance to allow terrorism as a factor.
What we think is a more problematic issue. From yesterday’s events, activists, commentators, pundits, and plain old trolls and bomb throwers have drawn whatever conclusions suit their own agenda and confirmation bias. About the only conclusion that seems to enjoy broad support across both sides of the aisle is that perhaps we need as a country to take a timeout, to think long and hard about the extent to which the tone of our political dialogue has served to enable extremists who prefer bullets to ballots, if it turns out that the shooters were motivated by some type of extremism.
Winston Churchill once famously defined a fanatic as someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. By Winston’s definition, there may be a disturbingly large number of fanatics abroad in the land. Fanaticism is in many ways an infantile disorder; many of us have passed through phases in life in which we have been tempted to treat every difference of opinion as irreconcilable, and every issue as a matter of unalterable principle, but for most of us, the operative word is “phase.”
What separates the fanatic from the well-adjusted person is that the fanatic remains stuck in that infantile phase. The fanatic cannot, or will not, acknowledge the possibility that reasonable minds may differ, even on contentious issues. Moreover, the fanatic, by forever misapplying first principles to trifles, will inevitably convince himself (and most of the great fanatics of history have been men) that not only does he possess truth with a capital T, but that those who disagree with him are in error to such an extent that they cannot be suffered to live.
Fanaticism of that kind, with its stark rejection of any view not absolutely accordant with its own, and with its sense of exclusive custodianship of the Truth (with that capital T), and its concomitant insistence that those with other views are not merely to be silenced, but eliminated, invariably arises in contexts in which disputes and controversies tend to become inflamed.
No one would argue that the sluggish tempo of the recovery in our American economy —a recovery where the vast majority of the tangible gains have gone to the One Percent, largely leaving the middle class behind— has left many Americans of all political stripes fearful, fretful, and frustrated. Difficult times have a way of fraying the fabric of civility which is -- or ought to be -- one of the critical components of a successfully functioning democracy. When people are angry and afraid, extremism becomes not merely easy, but tempting.
Add to that the deliberately demonizing and eliminationist rhetoric coming from the so-called pro-life movement, which appears to have been responsible for the Planned Parenthood clinic shootings in Colorado Springs last week, and it’s easy to understand why America manifests an almost suicidal willingness to appeal to violence to address our fears and insecurities.
Nevertheless, when shocking events occur, such as those which transpired in Tucson yesterday, the first and greatest challenge is to take a metaphorical deep breath, to wait before rushing in with theories, allegations, or accusations. As Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, we have very few known knowns at this point. There are far more known unknowns, such as the true motivations of the shooters, or whether they had assistance, or whether there were in fact others involved.
In the days to come, the situation will develop further; more information will presumably become available about the shooters, their motives, whether there are additional accomplices, and whether yesterday’s events were an isolated occurrence or part of something larger and more ominous. At the moment, however, none of these facts have been developed; the evidence is too thin to justify drawing any significant conclusions, as much as we may be tempted to do so.
In short,, we think --perhaps-- too much, we know very little and at the moment we don’t know what, if anything, we can prove.
Nonetheless, whether yesterday’s shooting was a political act, or merely the random crime of unbalanced individuals, to the extent it may have arisen from the embittered tone of our political dialogue, it should still be a warning to us that when we lose the ability to disagree agreeably, we put our democracy at risk.
So today, let our thoughts and prayers, no matter how anodyne, be with the 17 people who were injured for their recovery, as well for the repose of the souls of the 17 victims whose lives were so tragically cut short. Tomorrow, and on the days that follow, it will be time again to ask what do we know? What do we think? What can we prove?
For now, however, we should observe a principled and considerate time of silence, leaving off with partisan rhetoric and poisoned comments. A decent respect for the dead and the injured should demand no less of us.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, California, where he practices law, where he served two terms on the Cathedral City city Council. The views expressed herein are exclusively his own. This post is a revised, extended, and adapted version of one he wrote in 2011, when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was injured in a mass shooting in Tucson that claimed the lives of U.S. Chief District Judge John McCarthy Roll and five others, and injured the Congresswoman and 13 others.
NOTE: comments on this post will be much more strictly moderated than might otherwise be the case. Comments containing any personal attack will not be published, nor will comments that, in the view of the author, are intended to shed more heat than light.
When the news hit of yesterday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, just up the road from here, which left fourteen dead, and 17 injured, my first reaction was the almost invariable one of invoking the Deity.
Oh my God.
My second reaction, equally ineluctable, was to ask who has done this and why.
The immediate temptation under such circumstances is twofold. The first response, while somewhat laudable, is nonetheless largely meaningless. From all quarters, and particularly from the overcrowded field of Republican presidential candidates for 2016, there have come anodyne statements that “prayers and thoughts go out to” families, first responders, and just about everyone else involved.
The second response is equally ineluctable: to begin pointing fingers and assigning blame. Certainly, the last 23 hours have seen a veritable feeding frenzy, as commentators, pundits, trolls, and others on both sides of the political divide lob verbal broadsides at one another.
At some point, however, we must allow ourselves to be moved, if not by the better angels of our nature, at least by a sense of personal and professional responsibility to step back, putting our emotions aside and seeking truth from facts.
In short, we need to ask some basic questions: what do we think? what do we know? What can we prove?
At the moment, what we know is that 14 are dead and 17 have been wounded. We know that two suspected shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28 and significant other Tashfeen Malik, 27, perished in a shootout with police. We also know that the President of the United States (and presumably many of the law enforcement community) has not definitively ruled out the possibility that terrorism may have been involved. Certainly, the fact that the suspected shooters appear to have had Islamic names accounts for the president's reluctance to allow terrorism as a factor.
What we think is a more problematic issue. From yesterday’s events, activists, commentators, pundits, and plain old trolls and bomb throwers have drawn whatever conclusions suit their own agenda and confirmation bias. About the only conclusion that seems to enjoy broad support across both sides of the aisle is that perhaps we need as a country to take a timeout, to think long and hard about the extent to which the tone of our political dialogue has served to enable extremists who prefer bullets to ballots, if it turns out that the shooters were motivated by some type of extremism.
Winston Churchill once famously defined a fanatic as someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. By Winston’s definition, there may be a disturbingly large number of fanatics abroad in the land. Fanaticism is in many ways an infantile disorder; many of us have passed through phases in life in which we have been tempted to treat every difference of opinion as irreconcilable, and every issue as a matter of unalterable principle, but for most of us, the operative word is “phase.”
What separates the fanatic from the well-adjusted person is that the fanatic remains stuck in that infantile phase. The fanatic cannot, or will not, acknowledge the possibility that reasonable minds may differ, even on contentious issues. Moreover, the fanatic, by forever misapplying first principles to trifles, will inevitably convince himself (and most of the great fanatics of history have been men) that not only does he possess truth with a capital T, but that those who disagree with him are in error to such an extent that they cannot be suffered to live.
Fanaticism of that kind, with its stark rejection of any view not absolutely accordant with its own, and with its sense of exclusive custodianship of the Truth (with that capital T), and its concomitant insistence that those with other views are not merely to be silenced, but eliminated, invariably arises in contexts in which disputes and controversies tend to become inflamed.
No one would argue that the sluggish tempo of the recovery in our American economy —a recovery where the vast majority of the tangible gains have gone to the One Percent, largely leaving the middle class behind— has left many Americans of all political stripes fearful, fretful, and frustrated. Difficult times have a way of fraying the fabric of civility which is -- or ought to be -- one of the critical components of a successfully functioning democracy. When people are angry and afraid, extremism becomes not merely easy, but tempting.
Add to that the deliberately demonizing and eliminationist rhetoric coming from the so-called pro-life movement, which appears to have been responsible for the Planned Parenthood clinic shootings in Colorado Springs last week, and it’s easy to understand why America manifests an almost suicidal willingness to appeal to violence to address our fears and insecurities.
Nevertheless, when shocking events occur, such as those which transpired in Tucson yesterday, the first and greatest challenge is to take a metaphorical deep breath, to wait before rushing in with theories, allegations, or accusations. As Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, we have very few known knowns at this point. There are far more known unknowns, such as the true motivations of the shooters, or whether they had assistance, or whether there were in fact others involved.
In the days to come, the situation will develop further; more information will presumably become available about the shooters, their motives, whether there are additional accomplices, and whether yesterday’s events were an isolated occurrence or part of something larger and more ominous. At the moment, however, none of these facts have been developed; the evidence is too thin to justify drawing any significant conclusions, as much as we may be tempted to do so.
In short,, we think --perhaps-- too much, we know very little and at the moment we don’t know what, if anything, we can prove.
Nonetheless, whether yesterday’s shooting was a political act, or merely the random crime of unbalanced individuals, to the extent it may have arisen from the embittered tone of our political dialogue, it should still be a warning to us that when we lose the ability to disagree agreeably, we put our democracy at risk.
So today, let our thoughts and prayers, no matter how anodyne, be with the 17 people who were injured for their recovery, as well for the repose of the souls of the 17 victims whose lives were so tragically cut short. Tomorrow, and on the days that follow, it will be time again to ask what do we know? What do we think? What can we prove?
For now, however, we should observe a principled and considerate time of silence, leaving off with partisan rhetoric and poisoned comments. A decent respect for the dead and the injured should demand no less of us.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, California, where he practices law, where he served two terms on the Cathedral City city Council. The views expressed herein are exclusively his own. This post is a revised, extended, and adapted version of one he wrote in 2011, when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was injured in a mass shooting in Tucson that claimed the lives of U.S. Chief District Judge John McCarthy Roll and five others, and injured the Congresswoman and 13 others.
NOTE: comments on this post will be much more strictly moderated than might otherwise be the case. Comments containing any personal attack will not be published, nor will comments that, in the view of the author, are intended to shed more heat than light.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
GIVING THANKS FOR THOSE WITH THE HARDIHOOD TO CALL THE DONALD THE FASCIST HE IS
Summary: We can give thanks again this year for certain small mercies. That we should give thanks for families and friends almost goes without saying. Yet ironically, we should also give thanks, counterintuitively, for the Republican clown car of candidates. For as we move toward 2016, it becomes clearer that the Republican effort to elect a president may well prove unavailing, so yes, let’s give thanks for the unexpected gift of Donald Trump’s mouth.
________________________________
This Thanksgiving, it’s easy, as always, to get caught up in offering banal thanks for quotidian things. For me, to be thankful for family for friends, and for other similarly mundane blessings is to engage in an a most unenterprising and trite litany. Instead, let’s be thankful for other blessings at this time of year, remembering that the blessings of family and friends ought to go without saying, for we ought to be thankful for them always.
Instead, I’d like to give thanks this Thanksgiving for the Republican Party, particularly for the amazing clown car of candidates who, even now, are still seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States.
In particular, I’d like to give thanks for one particular part of Donald Trump’s anatomy, specifically, his mouth, which is, if we Democrats have a hardihood to realize it, is the gift that keeps on giving, if we only were smart enough to unwrap it.
But, of course, we Democrats are too cowardly and inept to know how to unwrap the countless gifts the Republicans have given to us. We, along with much of the American news media, seem utterly reluctant to call out The Donald for the demonstrable lies he continues to tell on national television time after time after time. When The Donald went on record at a rally in Alabama claiming to have witnessed in person thousands of Arab-Americans celebrating when the twin towers fell, there was almost no pushback, either from the national media, or worse, from the Democratic National Committee.
The charge that The Donald has descended into the rhetoric of fascism has not come from the spineless and incompetent leadership of the Democratic National Committee. Instead, it has come from other Republicans, including his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
No, you did not misread. The attacks on Donald Trump are coming from his fellow Republicans, for whom we may perhaps give thanks this Thanksgiving. It has been people like John Kasich and others in the Republican Party who have dared to call out the Donald for his lies and his Fascist rhetoric.
But while I can give thanks for the fact that there are still principled Republicans who are unafraid to call Fascism Fascism, I have nothing but contempt for the people on my side of the aisle who will not call Donald Trump out for the Fascist he is. We Democrats are too nice to do so. So, when George Stephanopoulos confronted Donald Trump on Sunday morning, he couldn’t bring himself to use the word “lie.” Hell, he couldn’t even bring himself to use a weasel word equivalent like Winston Churchill’s famous “terminological inexactitude.”
Just about the only national media outlet that had the hardihood to call out The Donald was the New York Times, which ran an editorial a few days ago entitled “Applause Lies.” So far, most of the rest of the American media have remained cowardly silent, presumably for fear of being sued by the hyperlitigious bully they have been covering.
That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, when Donald Trump lies to the faces of the American people, and neither the media nor the Democratic National Committee has the balls to call Donald Trump's performance what it is: a textbook example of Fascism.
Nonetheless, we can hope that a sufficiently large number of American voters begin to understand that The Donald is simply unfit to be President. Because, in truth, Donald Trump is Benito Mussolini’s soul brother. A Fascist, who, like Mussolini himself, will probably come to a bad end, executed by partisans and strung up by his feet in a gas station where the public can take notice of and be educated by the bad end of a bad man. And for that, should it occur, we should be truly thankful.
________________________________
This Thanksgiving, it’s easy, as always, to get caught up in offering banal thanks for quotidian things. For me, to be thankful for family for friends, and for other similarly mundane blessings is to engage in an a most unenterprising and trite litany. Instead, let’s be thankful for other blessings at this time of year, remembering that the blessings of family and friends ought to go without saying, for we ought to be thankful for them always.
Instead, I’d like to give thanks this Thanksgiving for the Republican Party, particularly for the amazing clown car of candidates who, even now, are still seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States.
In particular, I’d like to give thanks for one particular part of Donald Trump’s anatomy, specifically, his mouth, which is, if we Democrats have a hardihood to realize it, is the gift that keeps on giving, if we only were smart enough to unwrap it.
But, of course, we Democrats are too cowardly and inept to know how to unwrap the countless gifts the Republicans have given to us. We, along with much of the American news media, seem utterly reluctant to call out The Donald for the demonstrable lies he continues to tell on national television time after time after time. When The Donald went on record at a rally in Alabama claiming to have witnessed in person thousands of Arab-Americans celebrating when the twin towers fell, there was almost no pushback, either from the national media, or worse, from the Democratic National Committee.
The charge that The Donald has descended into the rhetoric of fascism has not come from the spineless and incompetent leadership of the Democratic National Committee. Instead, it has come from other Republicans, including his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
No, you did not misread. The attacks on Donald Trump are coming from his fellow Republicans, for whom we may perhaps give thanks this Thanksgiving. It has been people like John Kasich and others in the Republican Party who have dared to call out the Donald for his lies and his Fascist rhetoric.
But while I can give thanks for the fact that there are still principled Republicans who are unafraid to call Fascism Fascism, I have nothing but contempt for the people on my side of the aisle who will not call Donald Trump out for the Fascist he is. We Democrats are too nice to do so. So, when George Stephanopoulos confronted Donald Trump on Sunday morning, he couldn’t bring himself to use the word “lie.” Hell, he couldn’t even bring himself to use a weasel word equivalent like Winston Churchill’s famous “terminological inexactitude.”
Just about the only national media outlet that had the hardihood to call out The Donald was the New York Times, which ran an editorial a few days ago entitled “Applause Lies.” So far, most of the rest of the American media have remained cowardly silent, presumably for fear of being sued by the hyperlitigious bully they have been covering.
That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, when Donald Trump lies to the faces of the American people, and neither the media nor the Democratic National Committee has the balls to call Donald Trump's performance what it is: a textbook example of Fascism.
Nonetheless, we can hope that a sufficiently large number of American voters begin to understand that The Donald is simply unfit to be President. Because, in truth, Donald Trump is Benito Mussolini’s soul brother. A Fascist, who, like Mussolini himself, will probably come to a bad end, executed by partisans and strung up by his feet in a gas station where the public can take notice of and be educated by the bad end of a bad man. And for that, should it occur, we should be truly thankful.
Monday, October 12, 2015
WHOSE DAY? COLUMBUS DAY? DAY OF THE RACE? DAY OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES?
By: Paul S. Marchand
Cathedral City, October 12, 2014– Today is Columbus Day, as officially observed. It is also traditional Columbus Day. The day members of the Italian diaspora celebrate Cristoforo Colombo, for whom an Italian crusier and an ocean liner (and sister to the ill-fated Andrea Doria) were named. The Spanish remember him as Cristobal Colon, the adelantdo, Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy of the Indies after whom two cruisers were named, presumably to get the better of the Italians, who actually built one of them.
There is an ironic New Yorker Columbus Day cartoon of some notoriety depicting two American Indians standing in the underbrush by the shore of a Caribbean island. From three high-castled ships anchored offshore, boats are rowing toward the beach. In the lead boat, an explorer (presumably Columbus) stands, holding a flag. The caption of the cartoon has one Indian saying to the other something like “now might be a good time to review our immigration policies.”
The cartoon strikes us as funny because we know the history of the 500-plus years since Columbus’ arrival in the New World triggered the greatest völkerwanderung -a vast migration of peoples- in the recorded history of the world. Since then, millions of immigrants from all over the world have made their way to the Americas, and the history of their interaction with those who came before has been checkered at best. Yet, despite all the finger-wagging going on in some quarters, völkerwanderungen themselves are morally neutral phenomena.
Yet, in the last analysis, we all are descendants of immigrants from elsewhere, even Indians. If my white ancestors came here as part of the Atlantic migrations, my Indian ancestors arrived here tens, perhaps scores, of thousands of years ago, presumably across the Bering land bridge from Asia, and are still ultimately immigrants. The term “Native American” is thus something of a misnomer, a fact Canada recognizes by designating her Indians and Eskimos as “First Peoples.”
Still, by the time the first Europeans reached America -whenever that may have been, but certainly well before Columbus- the Indians of the Americas had established a lengthy tenure of occupation. The Americas were not -as generations of schoolchildren were once taught- an empty wilderness, but a landmass populated by a mass of humanity more diverse by far than Europe itself. By 1492, the social development of the Americas ranged from primitive hunter-gathering groups to complex state societies ranging from the mound-builder descendants of North America and the Méxica peoples, to the South American empire its Inca inhabitants called Tahuantinsuyu, the Four Quarters of the World.
Within two centuries, all of this had gone. The westward migration triggered by Columbus’ voyages had grown from trickle to flood. Wave after wave of migration, particularly to the settlement colonies of British North America, coupled with superior weapons technology (coupled with a disturbing European willingness to use it), superior agricultural and industrial technology, and the spread of European diseases -trivial childhood ailments to whites, fatal to unexposed Indians- tipped the balance decisively in favor of the pale invaders from across the water.
Thus the history, and thus the deeply conflicted emotions that swirl around any October 12 observance. Is it Columbus Day? Is it Dia de La Raza/Day of the Race? Is it Indigenous Peoples Day? Whatever one calls it, October 12 can be relied upon to pit the Sons of Italy celebrating one of their own against Native American groups calling attention to what has been called “half-a-millennium of resistance.” As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, in that no-man’s-land to which moderates and truth-seekers -and indeed, most of us- are exiled. Do we celebrate the human achievement of the explorers and the immigrants, or do we weep for our Indian ancestors? Do we call attention to the evils the explorers so often brought in their wake, or do we celebrate the achievements of our First Forebears?
The answer is: all of the above. We cannot reverse the pragmatic sanction of history; the völkerwanderung that brought my European forebears to the Americans is as irreversible as that which brought my Indian ancestors to this place. The peoples have mixed too much to separate them; the rate of intermarriage among the Cherokee, for example, is close to 100 percent. Now is no longer an opportune time for the Indians in the underbrush of the New Yorker cartoon to discuss immigration policy. The invaders cannot be marched back onto their Naos, caravels and Mayflowers, their Susan Constants, their Godspeeds, and their Discoverys and packed back whence they came; their bones and the bones of their children have also become part of this land.
The invasion has been a success. Generations of interpenetration have produced a people that like mythic Coyote -the culture hero of many tribes- is one of shape-shifters. Millions of Americans carry the blood of both sides in their veins; millions of us are at once both the invading European and the resistant Indian. In a time of shape-shifting and mixing, Columbus Day, like Coyote, must be a shape-shifter. It must be an occasion for celebrating the nobility of the exploring spirit, but also for reflection on the duties we all owe to one another as common human inhabitants of the place we all call home.
As progressives, we must particularly be attuned on Columbus Day and every day to what our communities are telling us. We are a coalition -a movement- composed of communities and tribes and lineages of every sort and condition. We march with labor, but also support the right of Indians to be accounted as first class citizens of the commonwealth. We confess many faiths, and none at all. We acknowledge the right of many Americans of faith to oppose marriage equality within the context of their own churches, but we also insist that America’s queerfolk be treated as first class citizens, too. We embrace inclusiveness, knowing that ours is the harder choice and the nobler path, one from which the fearful of change turn away.
Columbus Day has become a paradox, laden with so many layers to deconstruct the debate will continue long after those currently engaged in it have passed out of this world. It is part of our larger American paradox, in which, as Babylon 5 writer J. Michael Straczynski once observed, "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, [and] the future frightens us...." Whose day is Columbus Day? It is our day, on which, perhaps more than on any other holiday, we need to reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is a pale, European-looking, attorney. He lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the City Council. Thanks to an Act of Congress only a lawyer could love, and the fact that he lives on Indian leased land, his government considers him an Indian living on a Res. Go figure. The views herein are his own, not those of any jurisdiction, agency, entity, club, or other organization, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
This post is a revision of an earlier post published at this time last year. Since knickers are still in knots, it remains timely.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
A PAPAL BLUNDER
Summary: Pope Francis improvidently cast away a huge reservoir of goodwill by receiving in audience at the Papal Nunciature militantly homophobic Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis earlier this week. The Pontiff’s ill considered action managed to dissipate overnight many, if not most, of the good feelings that had started to come his way and the way of the Vatican from American progressives, from non-Roman Catholics, and from queerfolk. Having been illusioned, many of us now regretfully knowledge being disillusioned. All of the old misgivings and suspicions have come roaring back, as we realize that the Roman church has actually changed very little from the stultifying neo-Pian, Republican-leaning days of Karol Wojtyła and Jozef Ratzinger’s papacies. The whole fiasco looks like the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact that made Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union partners in the criminal dismemberment of the Second Polish Republic.
Given the “yooodge” (pace Donald Trump) magnitude of the Pope’s error, now might be opportune time to urge again the impropriety of having an American ambassador to the Holy See. Certainly, there is an Establishment Clause issue inherent in having official U.S. diplomatic representation at the headquarters of a religious organization. If an occasional official visit to the Apostolic Palace is necessary, it can be just as easily and just as economically handled by the American Ambassador to the Italian Republic.
The notoriously anti-clerical Italians, who have had the Roman Catholic Church on their backs for far too many centuries to allow it to ride their consciences as well, have a kind of Socratic joke for proving the existence of God. God must exist, the Italians assert, because only a truly loving and astonishingly merciful God could have allowed the Roman Catholic church to exist for so many centuries under such incompetent mismanagement.
Certainly, both the Vatican and the Roman Pontiff have themselves managed to provide the American public with an astonishing example of the kind of incompetent mismanagement that has kept Italians shrugging their shoulders and rolling their eyes for so many centuries.
When Pope Francis gave an audience to defiant, homophobic, marriage equality-denying Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, he managed, in one act of breathtaking improvidence, to fling away a huge reservoir of goodwill from American progresses, American queerfolk, and the majority of Americans who are not of the Roman obedience.
Romanist recusancy became the enabler of militant Nonconformity. Not only did it come across like St. Peter cuddling with a snake handler, but even worse, Pope Francis's meeting with Kim Davis puts many historically-literate Americans in mind of nothing quite so much as the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact by which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union became complicit conspirators in the dismemberment of the Second Polish Republic.
Now, most Americans are profoundly reductive in their thinking. We are the kind of people who if an individual's track record contains 99 things and one bad one, we will allow one bad act to cancel out all of the other 99. Unfortunately, our reductive thinking is often justified. While conservative Americans have eagerly lambasted the first Jesuit Pontiff for "interfering" in areas in which he is ostensibly not well enough informed to opine, most liberal Americans have given Francis a pass, largely because he has so emphatically not been cast from the authoritarian, neo-Pian mold of his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Under The aggressively conservative pontificates of Wojtyła and Ratzinger, The Roman Catholic Church in America skewed its allegiance decisively toward the Republican Party. It was easy for American conservatives, particularly for conservative Roman Catholics, to be ultramontane, and to solicit vigorous, muscular Vatican intervention in domestic American politics. Until the other day, American liberals had thought those days behind us. Having been illusioned, we must now regretfully acknowledge being seriously disillusioned.
Until the other day, most American liberals, most non-Roman Catholic Americans, and an awful lot of queerfolk had been prepared to think very well of Papa Bergoglio. After all, who could not think well of the pontiff who, when asked about queerfolk had responded by asking who he was to judge?
So, who are we to judge? The answer is very simple. We are Americans living through a Maoist time, in which every single act of every single public figure is routinely scrutinized for its political implications. If the Roman Pontiff had thought that the personal was not the political, then he has made a tragic mistake.
If the Roman Pontiff had thought that by giving an audience to a huckstering woman who has become the poster child for Christian Persecution Syndrome, a woman who has come to personify everything a majority of Americans don’t like about self-pity, self victimization, and self-promotion, he was making some kind of anodyne statement in favor of “religious liberty,” then he has managed to set back the Roman Catholic cause in this country by generations.
Because when Papa Francesco received in audience the voice of militant Nonconformity that Kim Davis has become, it really did represent a slap in the face not only to millions of progressive American Roman Catholics, but also to the estimated three quarters of the population of the United States that is not Roman Catholic. Recusancy and Nonconformity came together in a mutually enabling love feast.
Sadly, the bloom is now off the rose with this Pontiff. In one ill considered audience, but Francis has managed to resurrect all of the suspicion and doubt so many American progressives had come to entertain about the good faith and good intentions of the Roman Catholic Church.
God must love the Roman Catholic Church, and must look out after saints and fools especially, because while Pope Francis may have the makings of a saint, he also was a great fool to have met with Kim Davis. It will take American progressives of very long time to find it possible to forgive the Holy Father for what may be one of the most rash and impolitic acts ever committed by a visiting Roman Pontiff on the soil of a host country.
Indeed, so serious is the magnitude of what The Donald might call the “yoooodge” papal transgression in this matter that a serious case can, and should, be made for discontinuing US diplomatic relations with the Holy See, on the grounds and accrediting and ambassador to the Vatican represents a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. We’ve done quite well across more than two centuries without a Papal Nuncio in Washington. Our relations with the Vatican can certainly be handled just as well by informal visits to the Apostolic Palace by our ambassador to the Italian Republic.
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