You Can't Make Mistakes.

Here’s to your inevitable political downfall!

I read this article about the respective public spectacles over Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin and it got me thinking about the spectacle that became Sarah Palin last autumn during the American presidential elections and her present attention-grabbing efforts. Her untimely resignation from the Alaska gubernatorial seat should be another nail in her political coffin, but apparently she is up in the polls with republicans. This does nothing to inspire confidence in her ability to lead—particularly considering that she has just stepped out of such a position in a fit of overly-self-confident irresponsibility. The GOP has backed some horrifying failures of late and continues in its ability to conflate “conservatism” with bigotry and fiscal liberality.

Perhaps this is the strangled choking death rattle of the GOP at last.

Somehow I doubt it, but it would be nice to think so.

This maneuver on Palin’s part is little more than her present attempt to get herself back in the spotlight of national political fame—and scrutiny. It turns out that the old marketing folk-wisdom approach—that both praise and criticism have equal value, as long as they turn heads—works as a strategy for political advancement in the United States now. Last autumn, Palin was roasted over and over again by critics, political rivals and comedians. Rather than taking any criticism seriously—and, though dismissive, it was serious—she soldiered on bravely, in the eyes of her supporters. The rest of thought that she did so foolishly. I often felt pity for her. She was placed in the public eye by the GOP essentially unprepared and then made a spectacle of. At the time, it seemed as though this was something that was being inflicted upon her. Now, however, her spectacular displays of incompetence and lack of judgment have proven to be self-motivated.

It is unfortunate for conservatives, particularly for women, to have to even give any thought to this rambling, silly woman as a viable candidate for anything, let alone the Presidency. It is also remarkable that the conservatives who support her, just as they supported President Bush, seem to do so uncritically, praising when she says something they agree with, ignoring the malapropisms and blaming her critics for their “meanness.” I say that it is remarkable because it demonstrates precisely the way that the American political machine has come to operate. Substance and form no longer matter, having been replaced by sentimentality and dogged devotion—probably driven by a desire not to be seen as backing a failure, fool, or asshole.

Perhaps this does represent the death rattle of the GOP after all. The Republicans would do well to leave some of their failures and garbage along the side of the road. If they don’t, they are likely looking at a series of very disappointing years before they figure out a way to turn the apathy and indecision of the Democrats against them again. So, here is to you Sarah, may you be taken out with the rest of the political celebrity trash. God help you until then. You’re going to need it.

Update:
10. July 2009 14:48

In case you needed another argument why we should let her go quietly into the night: here it is.

Liberation Theology for the 21st Century

I caught this article from the Christian Science monitor this morning on the trepidation of Arab states over reacting to the current situation in Iran. They cited the “voice of a disenfranchised [Iranian] people” as the mechanism for the current political and social unrest and that this is the biggest political crisis facing Iran since the 1979 revolution.*

I have been reading a great deal of late about the 1979 Iranian revolution and have begun to understand that the socially and economically disenfranchised in 1970s Iran were not actually active participants in the revolution, nor did they derive any particular benefit from it. Neither the poor nor the merchant class were particularly involved in the rise of the Khomeini movement. It was a revolution apparently driven by an increasingly religiously motivated middle-class and the urban intellectual class which drove the development of an opposition to the Shah. That there was little involvement on the part of the rural poor is quite surprising considering that the themes employed in the revolutionary rhetoric on the part of Khomeini and his supporters was seemingly socialism wrapped up in Islamic topoi or terminology.

In other words, the revolutionaries of 1970s Iran employed a specifically crafted rhetorical framework based on sort of liberation theology in order to galvanize certain parts of the population and pulled support from the most unlikely sectors of Iranian society, all the while setting the stage for continuing the disenfranchisement of the already disenfranchised. Many of the secular intellectual socialists and Marxists went up against the wall when Khomeini’s revolutionaries seized control, many succumbed to the pressure being exerted around them and conformed to the newly political and religiously-mapped social environment around them.

It would seem that all of the seeds of disenfranchisement sewn by the 1979 revolution are now coming to fruition. The intellectual class is no longer happy to be subjugated, the poor are fighting back, not in line with the religious elite who are waiving the liberation-theology around—still, and again—but against them. In 1979 it was that same—then very young—urban middle class who were becoming more religious who built the revolutionary movement. They made Kohmeini into a a figurehead, and he tacitly accepted the role allowing them to drive the revolution forward.

The funny—or maybe “horrifying” is a better word—thing about revolutions, and revolutionaries, is that they cease to function as a revolution the moment they are no longer the opposition. That is unless there is a political mechanism established at the same time for limiting the authority of the revolutionary leaders. This was never the case in Iran. Indeed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had to die before his position as the leader of the revolution—and therefore the Iranian government after the revolution—would be questioned. After his death he was replaced by another revolutionary leader who had become entrenched in the “new” political system in Iran in the 1980s.

Now that “revolution” is being called into question, mostly because it is no longer a revolution. Just as Castro’s revolution lost its meaning the moment that he took power in Cuba and Che Guevarra—the real revolutionary—went on his way, as is the preferred role of the true revolutionary. How to ensure then that the revolutionaries live up to the ideals of the revolution and not their own desires for power? How to keep the bitterness of their previous disenfranchisement from their policy and administration and marginalizing those that they once sought to free from disenfranchisement?

I am loathe to cite the American political system as a standard for post-revolutionary political development—and indeed it has its problems, not least of which is the unabashed power-squabbles of our present party-system—but it worked. When the first Americans called for the revolutionary leaders to retain their power, they stepped aside and had an election. The established a set of rules, the interpretation of which has changed over time, but which are still the rules, nonetheless. Those rules, for better or for worse, continue to keep the political system as fair as we can make it. There is still power-grabbing.

There is still lying, cheating, and stealing. Indeed, more than a few of us have been concerned that the administrative regime of President Bush and his cronies would have a deep effect on the way business was done after they left office. It seems, though, that this is not the case. We shall see, but it seems that we are moving back to normal after years of opacity and circumvention of the Constitution to protect the interests of the few at all possible costs.

Perhaps another revolution in Iran is what is called for. Perhaps not. Perhaps the present regime is learning something from the political strife that is now boiling throughout Iran. Likely not. If there is another revolution, it cannot continue as normal. It has to live up to the ideals which galvanize and excite it in the first place rather than simply serving the interests of those who do the exciting.

Khomeini’s liberation theology still applies in Iran, possibly now more than it did before. The present regime had better hope that the people never get their hands on copies of his book, Islamic Government as they would find themselves out the door in very short order. The principles which are outlined therein are a far sight more fair and reasonable than those under which the present regime operates.

For more information about the Iranian political system and the 1979 revolution, I suggest the following:

• Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam Khomeini by Hamid Algar.
• Khomenism: Essays on the Islamic Republic by Evrand Abrahamian.
• The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Ajromand.
• Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. Or for the more visually inclined, the film version.

———

* In solidarity with that voice, the background of this blog is now a picture of Naqsh-e Jahan Square in breathtaking Isfahan.

May your spirit find its way, whichever way that might be

My advisor and friend David Ede, Chair of the Department of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, passed away a week ago today. He was 73 years old and died as the result of an allergic reaction to nuts, something that he had known about and was always prepared for with an epi-pen on hand. I am not sure as to the specifics, really.

I was shocked to learn this when a good friend called me last Sunday to let me know. I was thankful because I might not have known as soon otherwise, being that I just returned to Cairo a few weeks ago. Dr. Ede’s death is an untimely one: for me it seems especially untimely because we were still working on my thesis project. He will unfortunately not be able to see the results.

There was a very nice write-up in the Kalamazoo Gazette yesterday which can be found here. However, as with all such articles and obituaries, I felt that it left something to be desired. So, I will use this forum to express a few of my more fond memories of David.

I hadn’t really realized, having studied under him for almost 4 years, how much I had come to consider Dr. Ede a friend as well as mentor. I, of course, had my gripes with him, but that is par for the course in any grad-student/advisor relationship. Grad school wouldn’t be very interesting if our advisors didn’t occasionally piss us off. However, those gripes were typically assuaged by even the shortest conversation with him. He had a way of setting my mind at ease whenever I was freaking out about my project or anything else. This would typically involve his telling of anecdotes from grad school or living and traveling abroad. One thing that I regret that I will never be able to do now is to help him compile these stories into a memoir of sorts, something that we spoke about briefly this spring after I suggested that he do this. In that same meeting, having not met in months as I was living in Egypt last year, we spent about 15 minutes talking about my thesis and a good three hours talking about our recent travels. He had just returned from a trip to Japan with his wife, Yumi, and his eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store while talking about food, trains, and other little phenomena of which he had taken note.

That is how he was: his attention to detail was remarkable. One of the most valuable things that he taught me as his student was how to compile an exhaustive bibliography. If you were writing a paper for him, he wasn’t happy until you had found every source in existence with even a mere mention of your topic. It is for this reason that I have been able to find as much primary source data as I have to work with for my thesis. He told me once that you could start out compiling sources by excluding some of them from the beginning. You have to wait until the end to decide what is redundant and what is irrelevant to your work.

I think that it was in that same spirit of being thorough that he conducted his own education. Having been initially trained at a Lutheran seminary, he used to say that he didn’t go into the clergy not because he didn’t believe, but because there were so many other things out there to believe in. He didn’t feel like he could choose just one path. This led him to study religion in a comparative/pluralist academic environment, a field of study which he remarked only recently is “still very new, and still theoretically wide-open.”

This was the same thing that he said to me the day that I, having just come back from Egypt for the first time, went to his office to inquire about the MA in Comparative Religion. He was dressed in a such a way that he looked like he might be off to the beach as soon as he left the university with his flip-flops and Acapulco shirt. I left his office that day having been accepted into the department and with a teaching assistantship for his course on Islamic Traditions. He wore sandals, shorts and Acapulco shirts to class too. I remember him once saying, “when you get to a certain age, if you want to wear flip-flops to teach, you just can.”

A number of the students in that class would come to my office hours with endless questions. They thought that the material was a little obtuse, that Ede was a little boring. I, sitting in the same class so that I could help with the undergrads and grade exams, thought that he was giving the most in-depth survey he could given the time-constraints, and that he was as thorough and as knowledgeable as you could get. His answers to students’ questions were not patronizing, pedantic, or overly simplified, they were complete. When they weren’t complete, he would give students the information they needed to find a more complete answer on their own. He was a big fan of teaching students the joys of utilizing the library for research. On one occasion, we took the entire class to the library to show them where the Islamic Studies references were and how to use the Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd Ed, Brill) and the Index Islamicus (Brill), among others.

David was also very thorough in his other interests. One of the most fascinating conversations that I had with him happened as we were listening to some recordings of Qur’anic recitation by Iranian women reciters that I had found for him. I brought them in on a USB stick and he put them on his Mac so we could listen. He commented that it was amazing how much audio you could fit in such a small space these days, and how it all sounded terrible.

It turned out that he was a HUGE audiophile, actually constructing his own multi-track audio systems from parts: ceramic drivers, hand-wrapped coils, hours of soldering and fitting boards into amplifiers. He had constructed a system which in which he had striven to make the playback sound as much like being live as possible. He said that the secret wasn’t this trend toward very low-frequency sub-woofers balanced with tweeters for dispersal, but those combined with lots and lots of mid-range stacks. “Mid-range is where all of the sound really is,” he remarked, “Without it, all you have is booming bass and screechy treble.” We sat and listened to the rest of the recordings and he made some suggestions for my living-room system, which I immediately went home and implemented. Dvorak had never sounded so good, neither had Zeppelin.

I know that Dr. Ede felt bad that in the past year he had been very distracted with having been tapped as the department chair and not as focused on his students’ research projects. He said as much to a colleague/friend of mine who recently graduated from the department when she spoke to him about my project. While it is true that he may have been distracted sometimes, the advice that he did have was always spot-on, and is still applicable. It will be with this in mind that I finish this project, my interest in which would have never come to the surface if not for him. He was always excited that I had found something so original and new to work with and his eyes would light up whenever we talked about it. He never doubted my ability to conduct scholarly work, sometimes—I felt—over-estimating me. Because of this, I worked ever harder to live up to his expectations, and he was never disappointed. At one point he even asked me to collaborate on a translation of Hasan al-Basri’s letter to ‘Abd al-Malik on the problem of free-will, and some other unpublished things that he had been kicking about for years. We just never really got around to doing anything about it. Had we but world enough, and time, I suppose…1

There is a visitation and memorial service being held today in Kalamazoo. Details are listed in the link above.

Dr. Ede, you’ll be sorely missed. I hope your spirit finds its way now the same way you did in life, whatever way that might be. Rest in peace, dear friend.

———

1 “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime” – from “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, 17th-century English poet.

because it is none of your business.

I just heard retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis indicate—with regard to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy employed by the U.S. Armed forces for discriminating against homosexual service-people—that “when you raise your hand to swear to defend the Constitution, you are giving up some of your rights to free speech.”1

Really?

I don’t remember seeing that in the constitution. Listen to the full discussion on the Diane Rehm Show.

———

1 Diane Rehm Show, 24 July 2008

Itchy and Scratchy

I came down with a rather bad case of poison ivy last week. I was absentmindedly pulling weeds and likely picked it up then since I wasn’t wearing any gloves, which is abnormal.

In any case, I usually don’t have any problem with it. The point of contact is itchy for a few days, I put calamine on it, it goes away. This time is totally different.

I have had it since last week and it has been spreading. I think that this occurs while I am sleeping so I am reduced to sleeping in a burqa to keep myself from making contact with my own skin.

The funniest part about this experience, though, is the advice that I have found for getting rid of it.

I was, against my better judgment, trolling Google last night looking for remedies. I found the usual sort: calamine, steroid shots, vitamins, etc.

Then I found a treasure trove of insanity. There were recommendations that poison ivy victims use everything from hair dryers to cool whip to saran wrap on their poison ivy. They went something like this:

“I had poison ivy a few years ago, and it was so bad and nothing worked so in desperation I mixed together a paste of bleach, oatmeal, furniture polish, and baking soda. Then I spread the mixture on my poison ivy and wrapped it with saran wrap for five hours. Then I removed the saran wrap and used the hair dryer to dry the mixture into something just shy of concrete and then sanded it and the rash off my skin with a belt-sander. I never got poison ivy again.” – Ralph, Oklahoma, 2001

“When we were little, and got poison ivy from playing outside in the woods, my grandma would draw us a really hot bath, as hot as she could get it. Then, she would pour kettles of boiling black tea in it and tell us to get in. It scalded something terrible, but when our skin finally healed from being scalded, the poison ivy was gone too!” – Sally, New Jersey, 1997

“I get poison ivy every summer because my cats play outside and then come in and I pet them and end up with it all over my hands and neck. Every summer! I don’t know, I just love my cats! So, now I take 8000mg of vitamin c and 10000mg of zinc and wash it down with a tea made of poison ivy leaves, cat hair, and acetone. It works like a charm! I have to carry my liver around in a bag from all the vitamins, but I haven’t had poison ivy in 10 years!” – Gertrude, Idaho, 2006

The moral of the story: don’t google your symptoms, or about any sort of home remedy unless you want to be amused. People are crazy! For now, I am sticking with the way that has worked for me in the past, that my grandma recommended to me one time: cover my entire body in a paste made of baking soda, cut a clove of garlic in half, put one half in my mouth and bury the other half in the yard where the poison ivy is, do a little dance, and take a hot shower, then a cold shower, then a hot shower, then a cold shower, then a hot shower and then dry myself off with a hair dryer with a diffuser attachment.

Then I am going to judiciously apply calamine and aveeno, remember to take my vitamins and hope it goes away by the end of the week.

Wear gloves and long sleeves folks.

The 8th Annual

Likely, you already know about the Fruity Rum-Drink Party. If not, check out the site that went live this week: fruityrum.com

Eleven score and twelve years ago brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

After that, some things went terribly wrong. But really, is it the first time that we had tried and failed a little. No. We got through most of the worst bits and things seemed to work out alright.

Today we’re still limping along, economy in shambles, war-torn, demoralized. No matter! Behold our pluck! We still celebrate the advent of this great nation by hurling explosives skyward, searing the flesh of animals, and drinking vast oceans of beer until the urge to lie down and groan with bloated discomfiture takes us. That, after all, is the American way.

Keep hurling Americans. Happy Independence Day.

Okay.

I guess my last post was a little more rancorous in tone than I had thought. I don’t really hate weddings that much. And I failed to mention that once engaged in a wedding, I always find myself enjoying myself. I think that what I dislike the most is the amount of time/energy that goes into fighting with family members/caterers/clergy over the preparations. You can see it often on the faces of brides and families that they are not enjoying themselves and are rather just panicking and freaking out.

That said, I had a great time at the wedding yesterday, unsurprisingly, as I have so often done in the past. It also helped that the bride was the sister of one of my best friends, who was the maid of honor for this particular festival of freakouts. However, she delivered the following toast, which had me on the floor. Sometimes all it takes is a few well chosen words and I melt like butter.

Now that you’ve found happiness and love with each other, there remains one question: how will you make love stay?

Here are some ideas [with some help from Tom Robbins]:

1) Tell love you are going to Hinkle’s Bakery in Otsego to pick up a cheesecake. If love stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2) Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin-yang symbols on 3 sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell them you are someone new. It will stay.

3) Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything will be alright. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.

And with that I’d like us to raise our glasses in a toast to making love stay…

So, after that, I woke up this morning hung over, but smiling. I just need to read this the next time I get a wedding invitation to remind me of why we do these things.

I’m dyin’ here

I have another wedding to go to today and I’m not overly enthused about it.

I am not attending any more weddings this year, possibly ever.

So, if you’re getting married, don’t send me an invitation. I won’t come. It’s not because I don’t like you. It is because I want my life back.

I may or may not send you a card, or postcard, but I will not show up to sit through an hour-and-a-half ceremony or to drink the booze that your parents paid for.

It’s not that I have anything against marriage—though I do believe it to be an arcane and now purposeless social contract which we hang on to in order to make having sex seem legitimate, which shouldn’t be a problem in the first place—it is that I have a problem with the wedding part of the marriage. There are so many ways to go about it that don’t inconvenience your family and friends and yet so many people choose the way of significant inconvenience.

Plus weddings have become boring and tedious.

Why can’t everyone just go to the courthouse and have the quickie elopement that works so well. I know what you are going to say; “But John, it is a way of affirming our commitment and making our marriage stronger by involving our family and loved ones,” or “You have to have a ceremony with your friends or your marriage will not be as good as other marriages.”

Bull. Shit.

My parents, and many others, went to the courthouse, got married in ten minutes, and are still happily married today. I’m sure that you can still convince your friends and family to send you gifts and cash. Maybe some moron will even send you a silver knife and spatula to cut the wedding cake that you will never have. I would recommend using these as gardening implements.

“Lovely silver garden shovel…”

“Oh, why, thank you.”

I know, I know. I sound like a mean, curmudgeonly bastard. Well, that’s because I am a mean, curmudgeonly bastard. Big surprise that I sound like one.

There are so many more interesting and important things that we could do with the money that we spend on weddings. Is it really necessary to go through all that hassle so that you can claim your tax benefits and file jointly? This mean, curmudgeonly bastard certainly doesn’t think so.

Whatever. If you are reading this and have just gotten married or are thinking about getting married and it made you feel bad or pissed you off: good. That is your right. Good on your for exercising it. However, if you agree—or if you don’t, I don’t care—then watch the video below.

This sci-fi is fortified with extra “fi” and low in “sci”

I read this article on Slashdot and started thinking.

Never good.

The idea is that climate changes on Mars happened more recently than we previously thought. Maybe our Sun used to really kick out the jams and Mars was warmer. As the Sun lost some steam over 3 or 4 billion years, Mars cooled, glaciers form, then recede. Canals and trenches, etc are created in the process. Atmosphere changes. Suddenly, nothing more than a frozen little rock floating around the Sun.

In the mean time, the very, very hot Earth next door has also started to cool and settle down. Volcanic activity is down, rainfall is up. It is becoming more habitable.

In the mean time, Venus next door is still rocking and rolling with the greenhouse gases. Hot and smoky: no fun for a vacation.

Let us introduce a race of intelligent beings into the mix. They are hanging out on the homeland, doing their thing. Then there occurs what is called an Extinction Level Event. This may have been caused by a weapon of some kind which the folks decided to test or use against one another some sunny afternoon, or an meteor. Who can say? It kicks up the dust. The planet cools, the Sun is cooling anyway, freezing, glaciers, we’ve heard it all before.

These guys have very little time to get out of Dodge, but they have the technology. They gather together a group, lie to the rest—who are, by all accounts, totally screwed—by telling them that they will come back for them, and blast off.

They head for the nearest safe-looking haven and land on, that’s right, Earth.

Perhaps that is where we are now. We’re the Martians. Our new digs aren’t so new anymore. We’re approaching critical population mass, Earth is warming up.

Do we need to think about calling up Two-Men-and-a-Spaceship and heading for Venus? If so, be sure to make your reservations early.