Metamorphosis of America

Over the last week I’ve a few ideas. Though not exactly profound in themselves, I’ve thought perhaps as notions they could be developed into full-blooded animals, if I had the time. One came to me while listening to Kentucky’s Poet Laureate Gurney Norman this past weekend. There was something he said about the way Americans used to craft quilts — how just about anything could be saved and called to noble quilthood. Then I thought about all the trash we produce in a single day in this great land. In fact, I think about it every day when I buy lunch at the one of the many dispensers of food on campus. At some of these are positioned receptacles with signs that read: “Don’t be trashy. Please recycle.” The receptacles themselves don’t seem to be specifically for recyclables. They contain all manner of waste, save perhaps feces. Every time I use such a bin, I drop something in there I think could’ve been recycled, yet now I’ve thrown away the opportunity. Obviously, the sign is meant to make me feel bad, because beside the general trash bin no recycling bin is provided.

This all came to mind while listening to Gurney Norman. And in those few seconds of firing synapses I realized something: we’ve thrown away everything. So often in our nation’s history, past and present, we’ve crafted an image of ourselves as the best the world has to offer. We used to do this principally in religious terms. We thought we had found the Promised Land. We strove to possess it once and for all. We raped and murdered for it, revolted and cast our benefactors in an unseemly light. We performed forced baptisms in golden streams and shot the newly baptized on the other side. We were like Jacob: we took by strength and cunning something not rightfully ours, claimed a glorious inheritance and went on to do tremendous things with it, wrestling with God and seeming to win. And like with Jacob’s descendants, generations have passed and we’ve accomplished things unfathomable to our forebears.

But where has it gotten us? Now, we take everything we’re given and throw it in a trash bin telling us to recycle. We’d rather saunter over square miles of pavement than tread acres of wilderness. We choose virtual realities over living souls, and unwittingly feed our young to carnivorous industries of all permutations. And even when we’re made aware of our deleterious choices, we continue sipping from the same broken cisterns, feigning remorse and best efforts. Have we gotten so cozy in this death trap  that we simply don’t want to break free? Are we more content to drink the syrup of Coca-Cola than the blood of Christ?

Unsavory a fellow as Jacob was, God had use for the ignoble vessel. Likewise, the Union of Old committed grievous sin, trampled down human dignity and set itself up as the New Jerusalem, but the clay was still worth shaping. Our ancestors, stained with all manner of corruption, could still marvel in their struggle with the Divine.

But things are different now. We no longer marvel. We can’t even concentrate long enough to stand and stare into His beauty. We must be entertained; we seek satisfaction. Less now like Jacob, we’ve been refasioned as Esau. The robust, ruddy Esau had a terrible hunger, and he casually forsook his birthright to be fed. He gave up hope in eternity for a Happy Meal.

You can see it everywhere now: how we spend our time, what we eat, how we house ourselves. You can see it in the buildings in which we do business. Pass through a sprawling neighborhood, rich or poor, recently built. Do you like what you see? Inspect the tawdry design, the plastic houses. What can the stripmall teach us about wonder? How does Halo, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Motorstorm or Mario Party train us up in the Way we should go, or bestow the life-preserving virtue we all love to miss in our young ones? What does Second Life have to do with life eternal? Somehow we’ve convened — faithful and faithless alike — around the mythic Pursuit of Happiness, and in so doing we’ve cast Mythos far off. We’ve “paved over paradise and put up a parking lot,” because this is where we intend to stay, ever and always rooted simultaneously in boredom and the dread of being bored.

Undeniably we are Esau: We have sold our birthright for a full belly. We too have supplanted hope — an expectation distinctly and divinely human — with a Happy Meal at the Happiest Place on Earth. We crave and demand the toys that gorge our febrile fantasy, and we’ll let men, women and children overseas work 15 hour days for 20 cents an hour if it means we’ll have them cheap. Occasionally we’re alerted to the truth of the matter, that all is not right in the world, and much due to our own design, and we’re indignant. But the veneer of moral indignation does nothing to destroy the construct, because, ultimately, to be unplugged is to be in darkness. And who wants to crusade on an empty stomach; who would rather be foolhardy than full?

You know you’re a bigot, when…

These are thoughts from a couple years ago. Recently I’ve had multiple run-ins with the same forces that stirred me to write them down in the first place, so I thought it’d be interesting to post them here, to see, if you will, whether the waters have grown either more soft or rigid. The title of this post should alert you to the fact that these thoughts are by no means popular or compassionate by today’s measuring. 

From Kundera’s Immortality:

“The concept of human rights goes back some two hundred years, but it reached it’s greatest glory in the second half of the 1970s. Alexander Solzhenitsyn had just been exiled from his country and his striking figure, adorned with a beard and handcuffs, hypnotized Western intellectuals sick with a longing for the great destiny that had been denied them. It was only thanks to him that they started to believe, after a fifty-year delay, that in communist Russia there were concentration camps; even progressive people were now ready to admit that imprisoning someone for his opinions was not just. And they found an excellent justification for their new attitude: Russian communists violated human rights, in spite of the fact that these human rights had been gloriously proclaimed by the French Revolution itself! And so, thanks to Solzhenitsyn, human rights once again found their place in the vocabulary of our times; I don’t know a single politician who doesn’t mention ten times a day ‘the fight for human rights’ or ‘violations of human rights.’ But because people in the West are not violated by concentration camps and are free to say and write what they want, the more the fight for human rights gains in popularity the more it loses concrete content, becoming a kind of universal stance of everyone towards everything, a kind of energy that turns all human desires into rights. The world has become man’s right and everything in it has become a right: the desire for love the right to love, the desire for rest the right to rest, the desire for friendship the right to friendship, the desire to exceed the speedlimit the right to exceed the speedlimit, the desire for happiness the right to happiness, the desire to publish a book the right to publish a book, the desire to shout in the street in the middle of the night the right to shout in the street….”

I’ll take this a little further. A couple months ago I read in the NY Times of gays and lesbians who have begun to feel the call of the wild: that is, to father and mother children together with their partners, i.e. become parents. Of course, the fact that they are homosexual and thus not all that keen on copulating with the opposite sex may have hindered them a hundred and fifty years ago. But today, as homosexuals are gradually gaining acceptance in popular culture and advances in technology are edging toward fulfilling every human desire, biologically feasible or not, conceiving, birthing, and nurturing a child has become not only possible but increasingly practiced among gays and lesbians. One might argue that our technology finally caught up with our desires, that since before Oscar Wilde homosexuals who lived together as partners have longed for the opportunity to foster their own child. But as homosexual-as-identity is still a new phenomenon, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone struggling for acceptance in the greater community could have been longing for much else but to live and love as they desired. Furthermore, arguing that our technology caught up with our desires may be a little backwards; instead, we might argue that advancing technology enabled an innate desire to be fleshed out in a unexpected way. Humans have always had the need to procreate. Along with procreation goes the nuturing instinct that drives us to love our offspring. But in the past when a man and another man chose to live with and love one another romantically, the consequence was the absence of offspring, unless they managed to live a double life with a spouse. Not only was a child raised between two men unacceptable, it was biologically and scientifically impossible. So the thought may have never entered the couple’s minds. But now as homosexual couples are becoming more accepted and scienctists are advancing technology beyond anything Oscar Wilde could’ve dreamed, the biological setback has become obsolete and the desire to foster a child between homosexuals has been accommodated. Technology has enabled the desire to exist.

One interesting hangup in the current gaylesbitrans reasoning: though yet lacking evidence, many argue that homosexuality, i.e. not only one’s erotic desires but one’s identity, is innate and inborn in those who identify with it. They were born that way, so we should not suggest that they should be otherwise, that it may be the result of some unconcious choice, or that the desire or identification is inherently selfish and/or sinful. Yet what’s interesting is that when it comes to transgendered folk, that line of logic goes completely silent. A man is born male, yet he feels like a woman. How could a man ever know what a woman feels like from within? Yet because his claim is based on the great conviction of feeling, when he decides to become a woman, either via mere dress or surgery, we are expected to affirm it. It no longer matters that he was born male. Now that he feels and desires to be female, and our technology can afford him that new identity, we don’t condemn or even question his actions. We acknowledge his true identity is a woman’s, and instead of helping him to feel like the man he was born to be, we help him to “pass” as a woman. But this is not about identity. It’s about desire. But in our culture desires are only condemned when they blatantly encroach on the welfare and/or desires of others, or, it seems, when it offends our collective sensibility of what’s beautiful or appropriate. Hence, a pedofile’s or drunk driver’s desires are obviously egregious and the desires of the obese are laughable, but the personal desires of the transsexual go unmarked. If I personally believed I were a prince trapped inside a peasant’s body, and went to great lengths to convince everyone around me just how truly I was a prince by donning a princely appearance, purple robes, crown, even having surgery to alter my peasant’s shamble to a prince’s stride, this culture would crucify me as a deranged lunatic incapable of acknowledging the simple reality of my peasantry. Yet the chemical imbalances that institutionalize the would-be princes are at least ignored and at most affirmed via modern technology to adapt the individual to his or her desire.

<—- I first saw this woman on (I think) Maury Pauvich’s show. She has had literally hundreds of plastic surgeries. The face you see in the pic is completely artificial, save perhaps for the eyeballs. And it doesn’t stop at her face. Her entire body has been altered via plastic surgery. She is clinically addicted to the procedure, and was all but forced to sign an agreement to not have another surgery for a year. Not that she doesn’t desire to continue to reconstruct her body from its original form, but I doubt many would argue that she has the right to accommodate her vanity in any way she pleases. Rather, I’m willing to bet most of you think she’s demented and needs psychiatric assistance to help her come to love herself in her natural form. Indeed, she herself acknowledged her need; that’s why she signed the agreement. Still, she can’t help but picture herself as something other than she already is. Higher cheeks, bigger lips, straighter teeth, you name it. Why do we shake our heads at this woman’s delusions yet not lift a syllable against what very well may be a growing sexual delusion among a people (all of us) who are characterisitically unsatisfied with and unwilling to accept our natural-born selves?

ADDENDUM: In related news, this past December Newsweek thought it would be a good juicy joke to publish a work of true satire (an early April Fool’s prank?), in which Lisa Miller argues from a religious (= compassionate) viewpoint for gay marriage. You can read the article here. For a much more reliable religious (= compassionate + well-founded) approach, and a pretty good response to Miller’s article, try this.

Memory Eternal: John Updike 1932-2009

This week America lost one of its last great writers. John Updike was born and raised in Pennsylvania during the Depression. His parents were white and middle-class. His father was a middle-school math teacher, and John was good at math. He once remarked in an interview that he admired his father for being the funniest faculty member at school. He said being the son of a school teacher brought some degree of small-town celebrity, which he relished as a child.

When I heard Tuesday he died of lung cancer, I was on the way to church for evening prayers. Traffic was slow and NPR was blathering on as usual about the tanking economy. Then they surprised me with his death. He was 76. I wanted to pull over and cry, but the best I could do was cross myself and pray for him as my heart sank.

I’m not even that familiar with his works. In fact, I tried to nurse a grudge against him in undergrad after I read his Gertrude and Claudius for having the audacity to move in on Shakespeare. But I didn’t know anything about writing then. I didn’t understand that the process of good writing is all about audacity, about believing that someone actually cares enough to read this, or rather that you have something important enough to say to make people care. Or maybe they won’t care at all, but you have to say it all the same.

Gradually the effects of my misguided grudge wore away as I touched samples of his work elsewhere over the years. I was slowly growing to love him from afar, without even having read any major work. I encountered him in various book reviews in the New Yorker, and heard him on occasion on the radio, remarking sagaciously on something in a way only an old man of letters – a man who’s read books and written them all his life – can manage to articulate.

I was looking forward to learning him better, to taking him on as a mentor, if only by proxy and fantasy. But now he’s gone, like all the rest of them have gone. Perhaps I shouldn’t even give it a voice, but I wondered even if Wendell Berry would be next. John Updike’s death stole some hope I had left for our culture, which is quickly being subsumed in rapine and soda pop. Yet I did not weep as those who have no hope. I’m grateful that God grants us the mercy of prayer for the dead.

Politics and Prime Time

Today something remarkable happened: the inauguration of Barack Obama to the White House. And yes, it was truly remarkable, no matter to which of the parties you belong. I listened to his speech and the following jamboree on the radio, since I was at work and was only able to catch a glimpse of the televisions up front. It was great, good, grood even, and it felt good to finally see this thing realized. What, pray tell, do I mean here by “thing”? Well, in fact, a number of things, not the least of which is the induction of a black man to our highest office; that right there has been a long time coming. But perhaps more mundanely I meant simply the inauguration itself. I couldn’t bear another morning of waking up to the pundits going on about how he’s almost our new president. It’s hard to believe two whole months passed since that whirlwind of an election. In a way, it felt like a lifetime, like the presidency was on hold. I imagine Obama was chomping at the bit, and perhaps Bush was savoring every last second he had in the Hotel de Blanc. On the other hand, this inauguration and all the excitement that has come with it has got me thinking, in fact, about just how fast this has all happened, and whether the Hope we’re counting on doesn’t ring a bit more like Hype.

On the night of November 4, 2008, I left church and headed over to my friends’ house nearby to say hello. When I got there, they were, of course, avidly watching the start of the election coverage on all the major networks. I told them right off the bat I would not be staying to watch. I was merely coming over to say hello, visit a bit, and would be headed home to wait until the next morning to find out the results of the election.

“Why wouldn’t you want to watch?” they wondered. Indeed, to my friends, as to most Americans that night, my aspirations to avoid the election coverage at all costs must have sounded asinine. This was the most important night of the year – the night we had all been waiting for, which seemed to capture practically every bit of journalistic interest for as long as any of us could remember.

Of course, a part of me did want to watch – and watch I did, for a while. I, like any informed citizen, had tried my best to keep up with the election coverage so as to guarantee my vote would be knowledgeable, sincere and full of conviction. So naturally I was interested in the outcome. But in my gut, however, I knew that it was curiosity that killed the cat, and my gut was not interested in the imminent ulcer several grueling hours of nail-biting news coverage would surely supply.

I like to think, however, that it was more than just my tummy’s well-being that had me so opposed to the carnival of coverage. I hoped there was also in my delinquency an ingredient civil noncompliance, meaning I could abide by the constraint of ideas and principles over and against my personal gratification and the thrill of television at its most unscripted. There was a feeling I just couldn’t shake, which mirrored perhaps the feeling you get when, having slept through a long flight, you wake up in a different country and climate, on a different day, and among foreign-tongued civilians. In other words, this election business was all happening so fast. In my own state of Kentucky, polls had opened that morning at 6 AM and closed about 12 hours later. Next, Americans collectively took a breath and held it.  For five hours the nation sat rapt before the flat screen HD TV, spiking network ratings perhaps not seen since the last hotly contested election four years earlier. Then came the most anticipated exhale of the century. That same night we had a new president, not 6 hours after the polls had closed.

OK, I admit it. I watched the whole damn thing. But let’s face it: if I hadn’t how could I bloviate on the matter as I am? Perhaps this time around, my nervousness was overcome by disbelief. I simply could not understand how the networks felt confident enough to call a state for McCain or Obama when only 5% of the state’s vote had been counted. More mystifying still, how could they call Washington, Oregon, and California for Obama immediately after their polls closed? It’s not that I was dissatisfied with the outcome (I had become an avid Obama recruit), but just how was it that they were able to “project” without fail which way every state and commonwealth in the Union would fall, red or blue, Republican or Democrat, McCain or Obama?

Not only could I not get a grip on the networks’ crystal ball clairvoyance, I refused to believe this divination was ideal. Sure, it was nice to know the outcome, to “just get it over with”, to let all those months of anticipation dissipate in buoyant joy or bitter sorrow. But I wondered what were we forsaking in our capitulation to prime time politics? How is it that we were willing to parse down the most important decision of the year, of the next four years, in fact, to a matter of moments? Poor Obama and McCain: so obliged were they to ready themselves for crowning victory or devastating defeat only hours after they left the campaign trail. Gone were the days when each vote was taken singularly and seriously, when the gravity of a nation’s resolve outweighed the “urgency of now.” In those days of yore, eager voters had to wait for weeks before every vote was tallied, and a consensus reached. On November 4th, 2008, we could hardly wait till the polls closed before pronouncing our victor.

I wondered: Was this democracy? Was this our sacred ritual of freedom? Perhaps instead this was a sort of ruse, a comic diffusion done up and digestible for the attention-deficient American public. Rather than any dignified sign of civil liberty, this looked to me much more like Hollywood donning wig and gavel to feed us the plot line which we’d come to crave. Suddenly it made sense that the the dust would settle so quickly. Could we, as 21st century American citizens, really bear the suspense of an actual tally of votes? I hardly thought so. We’re the nation of fast food, TV dinners and instant messaging. We’ve come to expect a happy ending after a couple of hours. In other words, we demand instant gratification, and our presidential elections are no exception.

There was something else entirely lost in our mad dash to victory that Tuesday night. So much of the drama of it revolved around the either-or sensibility. The good vs. bad, old vs. young, and experience vs. change narratives the media had written for us (and the candidates stuck by) played perfectly into our preconceived paradigm of contest. The United States democratic process has been locked in a two-party system for decades. Ross Perot made a decent run in 1996 on account of his deep pockets. And on occasion, rogues like Ralph Nader are lambasted for “stealing votes” from the two major candidates. In spite of these anomalies, the essence of our political process has long lain at the feet of two very similar giants. Of course, the general public doesn’t see them as all that similar. They can be delineated with labels like “big government” and “fiscal conservative” easily enough. It’s not that these names accurately describe the parties they are assigned to. It’s just a way for us to keep things simple, to eliminate any shade but black and white. We’ve got to keep things simple or we might get confused. We like our elections like we like our sports: Two teams, one winner. Ties are a necessary evil. But bringing a third team onto the field – or worse yet, a fourth or fifth – just doesn’t fit the bill.

Hence, the vote for third party is often derided as a “wasted vote,” and often the voter’s conscience is overrun by pragmatism simply to avoid the spoiler effect. What’s the point of voting for someone who’s never going to win? Or so goes the logic. This rationale does not reign supreme, however. In every election you still hear of the bleeding hearts out there who hold out hope for a democratic process bigger than just two parties. The evidence is clear. Ralph Nader and company netted nearly 700,000 votes. Bob Barr of the Libertarians caught nearly half a million, and Charles Baldwin, Ron Paul’s pick, about 200,000. These are by no means massive or impressive results. But they demonstrate, at least, that the outcasts had captured some interest – well over a million voters’ collectively. Racing across the finish line on election night, prematurely calling Obama’s or McCain’s name for every state completely cuts these contenders out of the race. Why? Because their race is any less valid than the Democrats and Republicans’? Because they’re less American than the front runners? Hardly. Most of it comes down to money, and the rest goes to public disinterest. We can’t tolerate the wait – especially if the wait involves a pack of nobodies – and so we rush ahead, call the game before we hop in bed, and let the day end.

By no means do I wish for my critique here to detract from the “historic nature” of the recent election. I’ve said already that Obama was my man this year, and I’m glad he won. I wouldn’t have minded, though, waiting a few more days for things to actually happen, rather than simply letting the talking heads call it for me well ahead of time. I lament, too, that our system can’t bear more competition than the little we’re provided between two parties. Civilized democracies – and even some third world governments – around the world enjoy three parties. Several European countries boast five or six parties even. At times these separate groups align to form a more powerful coalition and solidify a win. Other times they’ll go it alone, resting on the strength of their distinct platforms. But options like these are the name of the game when more than two parties are possible. Voters can indulge in the privilege of deliberation. We, too, have access to said privilege. We need only move beyond black and white and into the shades of partisan gray. This, however, may forever remain too tall an order for Americans, so long we call our elections like we do the Kentucky Derby.