4 May 2005

Volume Two

One month later, I've finally gotten around to setting up "volume two" of the "God's ex-Boyfriend" site. From now on, all new entries in this category will go there.

Pope Terry Paul Shiavo Deathwatch

I am so glad that Terry Shiavo has finally died. There are several reasons, but one of the main ones is that maybe now the news-media fixation on her will end.

I'm especially glad that she died before the pope. Now, I'm not at all a fan of Pope John Paul II. I think he (with his whole cadre of cardinals and priests and whatnot) is a theological fraud, and I disagree with his positions on a whole bunch of worldly issues. But he is an important person. He commands the devotion of countless Roman Catholics around the world, and the respect of even more. What he says and what he does matters. Even his dying will matter, because it will lead to the crowning of a new pope, who'll probably have similar influence. A deathwatch for him is news-worthy. And I would be offended if - in the scenario that Shiavo outlived him by a couple days - his death were upstaged by hers.

The Terry Shiavo case was not in itself of any signficance outside the small circle of people who knew her and know her family. Contrary to the way the media portrayed it, there were no groundbreaking legal issues involved. Family members can - and do - make life-or-death decisions about incapacitated patients all the time. Continuing or discontinuing care for someone in her condition is a painful decision that loved ones have been faced with for years. (Even the famous Karen Ann Quinlan case in the 1970s was simply the first time it had gone through the courts.)

The only thing that made this case at all noteworthy (at least at first) was the fact that her husband and her parents were diametrically at odds in making the decision. It was nothing more than a pissing match and turf war between them.

Of course it became noteworthy as the Republicans in Congress and the president got involved, passing special legislation to go shopping for a judge who'd set some kind of "right to life" precedent with it. But the judiciary actually did its job responsibly this time, and not even the judicial activists on the Supreme Court would play along.

As it happens, I would probably make the same choice as Mr. Shiavo, and I'm relieved that his wishes finally prevailed. But you know what? If it had been his decision to keep her alive, I'd support that too. It was his decision to make. It has to be. It sure as hell isn't the U.S. Congress' or the president's or even a judge's. And no, I don't think it was her parent's decision to make.

We have this strange way of treating parent-child relationships. I understand where it comes from, biologically and sociologically, but I still think it's irrational and even pathological. Children who are still minors are treated almost as if they were the property of their parents. And here we have an adult woman's parents insisting that their relationship with her trumps that of her husband. This is the man she chose to spend the rest of her life with, to share finances with, and so on. That's her "next of kin". Did her parents not grasp the symbolism of "giving her away" at the wedding? It doesn't mean their relationship with her doesn't matter, and there are certainly circumstances (e.g. abuse) where a spouse's legal relationship shouldn't matter, but in ordinary circumstances, if it's going to be a contest, the spouse really ought to "win".

The main problem here is that her parents were too messed up to accept the truth: their daughter was gone. Her life was over... years ago. They were still stuck in denial, convincing themselves that - because her body was functioning - she was still alive... and could get better. Sure, it's conceivable that a miracle would restore her to health. It's also conceivable that a miracle will restore my dead-and-cremated grandmother to health. That doesn't make it sane to hold onto such a hope.

The world seems to be better adjusted to the prospect of John Paul II dying. People are praying for him and so on, but it seems like it's only tastefulness that holds the news media back from pronouncing him dead. He may not be clinically dead, but he's rather obviously no longer functioning as Pope, so everyone's getting ready for the inevitable: the selection of a new one. That's a bit more well-adjusted than Terry Shiavo's parents, I'd say.

Bad Education by Almodóvar

my rating:

Bad Education (La Mala Educación) is pretty much everything one might expect from a film by Pedro Almodóvar. There's attractive men, drug use, transsexuality, mistaken identity, some nudity, unlikely coincidences, Castellano dialog, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. But most importantly, there's an interesting human story.

The story can be a little hard to follow at first. Not because the film is in Spanish (thanks to my high school Spanish classes, I could sometimes understand what they were saying without the subtitles), but because the film includes a movie within the movie, and flashbacks to the main characters' boyhood. There's no less than three actors playing "Enrique" and actor Gael García Bernal goes by no less than four names, in character and not. I spent a fair amount of time early on trying to sort out who was who-else.

(I was also haunted a bit trying to figure out who else García had been, in which previous movie I'd seen. It finally clicked that he was one of the stars of Y Tu Mamá También, a Mexican - not Spanish - film. I guess his Castellano accent in this film threw me off. {smile} He was also Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries, which I haven't seen yet.)

I couldn't help noticing (so sue me) that Almodóvar adheres to the MPAA standard that at no time should a penis be clearly visible... but still manages to imply, suggest, and just-barely obscure them repeatedly. (You can see that part of García in Y Tu Mamá También.) I can't help wondering if there was a more explicit version for less prudish markets. In any case, there's plenty of eye candy for guy-watchers here.

Almodóvar's recent films have been more somber than his more playful (but dark) earlier films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This one was good, but I really recommend Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) or Hable con Ella (Talk to Her) if you only have time to see one of his recent films.

Whose Ten Commandments?

With all the Christian legislators, judges, and busybodies trying to get the Ten Commandments of Moses into permanent public displays at places of government, I thought a review of them would be in order. After all, they're supposedly an important part of our cultural heritage and the basis of our legal code.

So let's check them out one by one, to see if they're something I really agree with, and if they're really the basis for U.S. laws:

1: "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

OK, we're already in trouble here. For one thing, he's not my God. I'm not Hebrew, so my people were never in bondage in Egypt. And that bit about other gods stands in direct contradiction to the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment. So we've got a conflict with my my own personal values, and the law of the land.

2: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."

Again, he's not my God, so the commandment is meaningless to me. And this one conflicts with the free-speech clause of the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to say things like "God this cheeseburger is heavenly!"

3: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them."

Taken literally, this forbids making any kind of respresentational sculptures or even illustrations, which is definitely not consistent with my own beliefs. I'm a practising likeness-maker. I'm not the sort to bown down to these things, but I'm not going to stand in the way of anyone who wants to. And it's pretty clearly inconsistent with the free-expression-of-religion clause of the First Amendment, because it says that idol worshippers... can't.

4: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy."

No day of the week is holy to me. Not even Fridays. Although there are laws on the books that try to enforce such a thing (like those prohibiting the sale of alcohol between 2am and noon on Sunday), they really are nothing more than thinly-disguised attempts to establish a particular religion.

5: "Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long."

OK, finally here's one I'm OK with, personally. I'm all for treating one's parents with respect. But there's precious little in U.S. law that actually reflects this principle. Once a person reaches adulthood, they're free to disobey and disrespect their parents all they want.

6: "Thou shalt not kill."

Another I agree with. And our laws are pretty solidly behind it as well (albeit with exceptions for circumstances). But the notion that this is where civil laws against killing came from is pretty ludicrous, because there were laws against killing in civilisations that pre-date the time of Moses.

7: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

They're starting to lose me again. I agree with the principle that if someone pledges not to have sex with anyone else, he should live up to that. But I'm really not that keen on monogamy, for myself personally. And I think any broken promises of fidelity are a matter between the two people involved, not the state. Nonetheless, there's a long tradition of prohibiting adultery in our legal system. But of course it too goes back to sources other than Moses.

8: "Thou shalt not steal."

See "Thou shalt not kill."

9: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

I'd say that's a good rule. (Especially since it doesn't say "Thou shalt not lie", which would be a whole different kettle of fish.) And since perjury can result in someone going to jail or receiving some other legal penalty, I'd say it's appropriate for the law to enforce this rule, as it does.

10: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's. "

I'll covet my neighbour's ass all I want. Seriously, while coveting isn't exactly the most admirable thing to do, and I generally avoid it myself, I don't see any great harm coming from it. Interestingly this one is at complete odds with our society, in which coveting the Joneses' house and car and other possessions is the engine of our economy. There certainly aren't any laws against coveting.

So there we have it: Only 4 out of 10 (# 5,6,8,9) are things that match my own personal beliefs. Only 4 out of 10 (# 6,7,8,9) are actually consistent with the laws of the United States. And the three that actually stand up to both tests are the no-brainer commandments against killing, stealing, and perjury. Like anybody really needed those handed to them on stone tablets.

All of which goes to shows that: A) Promoting the Ten Commandments is shoving a religion I don't believe in down my throat. And: B) They're very thoroughly un-American.

Of course a huge majority of Americans favor putting these commandments on display in government buildings. Because they happen to believe in them. But that's whole damn point of putting protections in the Constitution for religious freedom: to protect the minority from the tyrrany of the majority. And the majority who want to override that are welcome to go fuck off and establish their theocratic dictatorship somewhere else.

Middle-Class White Suburban Punks

There's an article in The Grand Rapids Press about some arrests today, involving a recent rash of public vandalism in several inner-city neighborhoods. You can probably picture the situation: former middle-class homes now somewhat run-down, maybe vacant... closed businesses... most of the white folks moved out a few decades ago... lots of low-income tenant and homeowners... and now the scourge of "tagging": graffiti signatures and symbols in spray paint, repeated on any blank vertical surface. There goes the neighborhood, right?

Except that it's not homies or gangbangers doing the tagging. The teenagers they arrested were white kids from the 'burbs.

They had Dutch last names (this area was settled by puritans from the Netherlands), and they were students at East Grand Rapids High School, Grand Rapids Christian High School, and Byron Center High School, so it's a pretty safe bet they're white. EGR is the traditional upper-class suburb of the area; not quite the top of the economic pyramid anymore, but still the home of moneyed powerbrokers, and the high school a powerhouse in prep-school sports like tennis, lacrosse, and golf. GR Christian is your typical Calvinist parochial school, where the Bible is considered a textbook; it's still located in the city but its students are largely white suburbanites who can afford the substantial tuition. Byron Center is the until-recently-rural suburb where a highly talented and well-liked music teacher was run out of town for having a private commitment ceremony with his male lover, died from the stress of suing to get his job back, and the school board then refused to pay up on his severance settlement on the grounds that he was dead.

Which is a long way of explaining what kind of morality these schools and these parents are teaching their children. EGR lauds hereditary capitalism and preaches against liberal social programs. GR Christian rails against evolution and other secular science. Byron Center is hysterically anti-homosexual.

But apparently none of these schools is teaching the fundamentals of respect for other people.

Furthermore, these kids seem to be getting the message - gosh, I can't imagine where - that the neighborhoods to vandalise are the ones where the residents are less white and less affluent (and middle-class white families are often all-male or all-female). They're not picking on each other, or even the middle-class Dutch or Polish neighborhoods in the city. They're coordinating these nighttime assaults on the 'hood. I can assure you they're not coming here because they're less likely to get caught; it's pretty well patrolled, certainly better than the sprawling 'burbs where GR Christian students tend to hail from, and the subdividing farmlands of Byron.

For decades, white middle-class people have been fleeing cities for the suburbs, pointing to crime rates and quality-of-life issues such as graffiti as reasons why they just aren't safe here and don't want to live here. Well evidently it isn't just the fault of the poorer brown people who've stayed; Whitey's kids are coming back to make sure the place runs down.

I just wish these kids would stick to vandalising their own neighborhoods, and keep the malaise of graffiti out of our law-abiding communities here in the city.

Amway: Cancerous or Benign?

I narrowly avoided "the invitation" again the other day. Living in West Michigan, I've received a few of them over the years, and I know what they're about, so I recognised that it was coming and managed to deflect it by explaining that I just don't have time and (lying) don't need the money, and thanking him for thinking of me.

"The invitation" is a sales pitch, to become an Amway distributor. Because Amway is based here, we probably have one of the highest distributors-per-capita ratios on the planet. That's reason enough right there for someone around here to hesitate before adding oneself to the crowded marketplace for soap and other household products. But there are more universal reasons to steer clear of Amway.

At its heart, Amway is a pyramid scheme. It doesn't violate the various federal regulations, which prohibit scams in which there is no real product or service being sold, but that doesn't mean it isn't a pyramid scheme; it just means it's a legal pyramid scheme.

Contrary to what you might think from looking at some of Amway's "double diamond" distributors, no one ever got rich selling Amway products. The only way to get rich with Amway is to sell distributorships. You sign up a few of your friends to be distributors, and you get a percentage of the profits for every item they sell... including a percentage of the profits from any distributors they sign up. That's how Rich DeVos and Jay VanAndel became billionaires: by taking a percentage of the profits from every person who ever became an Amway distributor. It's really, really good to be at the top of the pyramid.

Despite living in the heart of Amway's operations, I've never received a sales pitch from an Amway distributor to buy Amway products. Just to become a distributor. OK, that's not quite true. I have been asked to become a customer... my own customer. I was told that I could offset my losses (the cost of starting up an Amway distributorship) with the money I'd save buying household products from myself at wholesale prices. This is clearly a standard sales tactic.

Of course Amway does sell actual products. But its flagship product line isn't their legendary biodegradable soap or any other items for the home. Its for businesses... for Amway distributorships, to be specific. Amway is quite honest about the fact that to make a lot of money, you need to be motivated to sell sell sell. (That's their explanation for the countless unprofitable distributorships: they blame it on individual laziness.) Which is why they have an entire division of the company devoted to motivational materials, seminars, and so forth.

The seminars - especially the big ones - are a lot like evangelical revivals for the religion of Mercantilism. They trot out people who became highly "successful", to tell their stories, preaching to the needy and faithful about how they made a lot of money selling Amway (the business model, not the products), and pumping them up to do the same. Of course the kind of people who need someone to tell them how to do this are the ones who'll never be able to pull it off. They just aren't the kind of extroverted Type-A glad-handing salescritters that do well at that. Instead they're the "fallen" of Mercantilism, and they need regular preaching to stay on the road to riches. Fortunately Amway has plenty of that to sell them.

Of course most Amway distributors understand that the key to making money is to have lots of other people selling for you, which is why they work so hard on those invitations to join the Amway clan. And that's my main objection to Amway on principle.

The whole company is based on the idea of turning personal relationships into commercial ones. They want to destroy the traditional family of parents, children, and siblings, and replace it with the Mercantile family of distributors, customers, and clients. They want to supplant friendship with distributorship. Neighborhoods with business networks. The founders and executives call themselves Christians, but there is nothing genuinely Christian about them. They're devout Mercantilists.

You can see this clearly even from the founders early lives. Rich DeVos and Jay VanAndel were best friends in school. So what did they do together? They formed businesses. Not "I've always been interested in ____, so let's turn that into a job" businesses, but seemingly random "I think we can make money from this" businesses: a flight school, a drive-in restaurant, a vitamin sales network, and finally a company to sell soap to their friends and neighbors. They were true believers since their youth.

Of course they've also done a lot to promote certain "Christian" principles, with VanAndel funding an institute dedicated to finding evidence to support the foregone conclusion that the world was created in seven days by God, and DeVos single-handedly prevented local Grand Valley State University from offering benefits to partners of homosexuals by threatening to withdraw millions in funding for their downtown campus. And they've both bankrolled political campaigns to advance the agendas of right-wing religious organisations. All stuff inspired by the books of Genesis and Leviticus, not by the gospels.

But they've channeled more of their cash and time into promoting their core faith... building up the downtown Grand Rapids business district, serving on the Chamber of Commerce, etc. And Amway itself has been relentless in its missionary work in the third world, spreading the gospel of Mercantilism to China especially.

Of course not all of the effects of this have been negative. Downtown Grand Rapids is a better place because of their investments. I'm sure good things are coming from the VanAndel Medical Institute, and the DeVos Center Women & Children Center at a local hospital (both of which came about after the founders started suffering from major health problems, requiring DeVos to buy an overseas heart transplant, and VanAndel to watch his wife suffer from Alzheimer's while experiencing Parkinson's himself). Their ongoing support for the arts, education, etc. - even with the strings attached - did a lot of good. But at what cost? They didn't create this wealth of theirs out of thin air; they got it from other people. And who's to say what good the people they got it from might have done? (Even simple things like feeding their families, or making their mortgage payments.)

The name "Amway" is short for "American Way", and their headquarters is built around a shrine to "Free Enterprise". Maybe that's what America is about, but I'd like to think that it aspires to something more ethical and morally defensible than the Mercantile gospel according to Rich and Jay.

Like maybe even the teachings of Jesus.

For example.

God is a Terrorist

For God so loved the world that on Christmas Day 2004 (early the next day, local time) he sent a 9.0-magnitude earthquake to the Indian Ocean, creating tsunamis that would kill hundreds of thousands of people in the surrounding countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, etc. Similar numbers would be wounded, and millions left homeless, hungry, and sick, as far away as Africa. With one singular "act of God" he easily belittled the result of years of planning and four jetliners by al-Quaeda in 2001.

This wasn't his first holy-day attack. It was exactly a year (almost to the hour) after he caused a 6.6-magnitude quake in Bam, Iran, killing 26,000. Four decades earlier, on Good Friday, he sent a 9.2-magnitude quake to the waters off Alaska. Erzincan, Turkey lost 30,000 in his 7.8-magnitude quake late on Christmas in 1939. On Christmas in 1932, he killed 70,000 in a 7.6-magnitude quake in Gansu, China. (Where he'd killed 200,000 in an 8.6-magnitude quake in mid-December 12 years earlier.)

He hasn't been limited to seismic attacks, as evidenced by the cyclone he redirected on Christmas Eve in 1974, doubling back and nearly wiping out the city of Darwin, Australia (population 43,500). On Palm Sunday in 1965, dozens of 250-mph-wind tornadoes hit the North American Plains and Midwest, brutally killing 260, injuring 1500, and doing billions of dollars of property damage. Including demolished churches.

Which is not to mention the massacre nearly two millennia earlier, in which countless boys under the age of two in greater Bethlehem were killed in connection with the birth of God's son Jesus. And flip through the Old Testament for more large-scale attacks, hitting the children of Egypt at Passover, the cities of Gomorrah and Sodom, flooding the entire world, etc.

Of course as these last examples show, not all of his attacks have been timed to established holy days. That would make them too easy to prepare for. Instead these "acts of God" often happen randomly. Sometimes, like a human terrorist phoning in a bomb threat, he'll provide some advance warning, as with hurricanes, but that only emphasizes our inability to actually prevent these disasters. It's much more effective when he slaughters an estimated half a million souls without warning, like he did in Tangshan, China in July 1976.

God's followers generally argue that it's not God who causes all this suffering, but his evil counterpart Satan. Which begs the question of who's responsible for causing Satan. Also, the notion that God is incapable of protecting us from Satan is a little frightening. And the notion that God is unwilling to protect us is downright horrifying.

Personally, I find comfort in the notion that there is no such being. Given a choice between believing in a malicious or impotent or indifferent deity, and a universe in which everything happens by mere chance... I'll take my chances with chance.

Person of the Year

OK, so Time magazine has picked George W. Bush to be "Person of the Year" again this year. At first I was disgusted with the choice, making the common mistake of thinking of that designation as an honor. But it's not. The idea is to identify the person who had the most impact on the year's events.

I'm sure GWB and his worshippers are looking at it as an honor. The way Time wussed out and named the suddenly heroic Rudy Giuliani "Person of the Year" for 2001 instead of the more deserving, villainous Osama bin Laden, makes it easy to look at it that way. The news coverage of Time's choice this year (yes, a newsmagazine is being covered by newspapers) makes it sound that way as well, for example pointing out the esteemed company he's in (several popular presidents) for having been chosen twice.

But I'd like to put him in context of some other "Persons of the Year":
* Pierre Laval (French prime minister, collaborated with the Nazis)
* Adolf Hitler (Nazi führer, you know the story)
* Josef Stalin (Soviet dictator, a lot like Hitler just within his own country)
* Mohammed Mossaddegh (Iranian prime minister, took over oil operations and allied with radical Muslims)
* Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet premier, told U.S. "We will bury you.")
* Richard Nixon (U.S. president, resigned in disgrace)
* Faisal bin Abdul Aziz (Saudi king, created the 1970's oil crisis)
* Ruhollah Khomeni (Iranian ayatollah, held the U.S. embassy hostage)

There are other folks on the list, such as Deng Xiaoping, Gen. William Westmoreland, Henry Kissinger, Newt Gingrich, and Kenneth Starr, who aren't quite world-class exemplars of evil, but not exactly heroic role models, either.

The first time GWB was named was for 2000, the year in which his sole accomplishment was to get himself appointed to the presidency. This year that's his chief accomplishment again with even more divisiveness than before, with the added "bonus" of his occupation of Iraq going badly. He truly does stomp across the world stage like a microcephalic brontosaur, and his misdeeds currently dwarf those of any other player on that stage, including bin Laden. "Person of the Year"? Damn right.

Humbug?

I just watched Patrick Stewart's TV adaptation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" from a few years ago. Not that I usually go in for Christmas specials, and I already know this story pretty damn well... but Star Trek: The Next Generation was a big part of a good period of my life, so I have a certain fondness for Mr. Stewart.

Since this was the first time in many years that I've seen the story played out, I had a somewhat different perspective on it than in my younger days. The main difference is that I saw some of myself in old Ebenezer Scrooge. After all, here I am: getting on in years, still nursing a broken heart over a lost love, single and childless, not particularly social, very careful with my money, and (yes, that's right) inclined to view this whole Christmas thing as bothersome as a humbug.

On the other hand, in many ways I am not Ebenezer. I have never been fixated on business or the bottom line. I've never been a "boss", but if I were, I would never treat my employees in any way like Scrooge did to Bob Crachett. Back when I had more money, I was more than happy to spend it on other people, and I still get mail solicitations from dozens of organisations I used to give money to on a regular basis.

Dickens' basic message was that if we can make others' lives better, and they can make ours better, if we open our hearts to them. I get it. Always have. That's why I still keep in touch with my family throughout the year, celebrate birthdays and holidays with them, buy presents for my sisters' kids, etc. But the notion that I - like Scrooge - might die alone and largely unmourned... doesn't bother me much. I'm pretty much figuring on it. My closest relatives will be equally-elderly sisters and a couple nieces and a nephew, and I don't expect them to drop in on me much when I become a "shut in".

That's OK, because I generally like being alone. I liked being in a relationship, but that was a strain at times, and something I'm definitely not up for these days. If in my later years I develop a wish to be around other people... well that's what overcrowded nursing homes are for, right?

In the meantime, I'll go on the way I have been. I won't go around squawking "Merry Christmas" at people, but when my nephew says "Merry Christmas, Uncle," I'll answer "Merry Christmas" not "humbug".

Fascism Already on the March in Michigan

This week just keeps getting worse.

The Michigan state Senate has just passed a bill that would require pubic school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They did this during a quickie lame-duck session this week, without any advance notice. The Republican party has a majority, of course, so they can do that.

Most elementary school students already recite the pledge every morning. But so far, despite plenty of pressure on kids to say it - whether they mean it or not (hell, whether they understand it or not) - they've always had the right not to. There are some people who consider the recitation of an allegiance oath like that to violate their religious beliefs, which require them to give allegiance only to God. They may consider a pledge to a flag to be a form of idolatry. Then there are those who object to the "under God" bit in there, because it contradicts their belief that there is no such thing. (Ironically, one of the arguments for keeping "under God" in the pledge has been that no one's forced to say it. Until this.)

The principle of "free speech" includes the ability not to speak. It has to. Without that, you're just coercing people to say things they may not believe in. We have the right to remain silent, after all. Requiring someone to put his hand on his heart and say "I pledge allegiance..." when they don't mean it, is requiring them to perjure themselves, a form of self-incrimination. It's the Fifth Amendment being spat on along with the First.

The bill's primary sponsor is Sen. Patty Birkholz, a Republican and evidently a banner-saluting fascist. But she had plenty of company in voting for it. One more piece of evidence that the people we elect to our government either have no understanding of the principles this country was founded on, or they just don't give a damn. They should be recalled. They should be impeached for willfully failing to uphold the Constitution. Instead, they're going to stroked and fondled by their equally freedom-hating, flag-worshiping constituents. And this is in one of the states that Bush failed to win.