The Jerry Brown Paradox

Perhaps a first. A positive posting, about Democrat CA Governor Jerry Brown, using a story from leftwing Brit "news" service Reuters.

Governor Brown signed a bill prohibiting governments in California from banning male circumcision. Zealots in SF and Santa Monica had ballot measures up to do that.  A "human rights" and "children's rights" issue. And with no exception for religion, of course. Would criminalize a central Jewish (and even Muslim) rite.

In short, Mr. Brown used the power of the State to prohibit the State from exercising power where it has no right to in the first place.

I am calling this The Jerry Brown Paradox and (naively) hoping for its wide application to many other laws, regulations and policies.

When America lost its mind in one of its period fits of utopianism and it constitutionalized Prohibition, it at least left a clear exception for religions. Without wine, Catholicism cannot function. No wine, no Mass. No Mass, no Catholicism. Contemporary liberal utopians are less flexible than the fundamentalist Womens Christian Temperance League was. If our contemporary do-gooders were up to re-enacting prohibition now (though they have substituted tobacco for alcohol) , they'd just tell the Christians to stop trying to escape equality. Which is, as we know, the virtue of virtues.

The Obama administration wants to force health services at Catholic colleges to provide birth control and abortion counseling; States with gay adoption force the closure of religious agencies who won't do it, and in Canada, no parent can be informed or ask for an exemption when grade school kids are educated in the evils of heterosexism and homophobia and encouraged to question gender roles.

When the victim becomes the tyrant. Such an old story.

‎"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

—C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

Bipolar religion

I used to read, or chant, the Psalms a lot. For twenty years in the Book of Hours, twice a day at least, for Lauds and Vespers, often for Compline, as well as at Mass. These 150 "hymns" are, in a way, the Bible set to music. When the West still had a viable literary tradition --that is, writers who were aware of and appreciative of their literary roots-- you would find allusions to the Bible quite frequently. Watching a Merchant-Ivory film of a Henry James novel*, The Wings of the Dove, I heard this voiceover of Psalm 55, one of the darkest.

 ⁴My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
 ⁵Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.
 ⁶And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.
 ⁷Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. Selah.
 ⁸I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.

That is the strange thing about the Psalms. Their almost manic-depressive range. Their labile moods. Groups of them are serene and confident, believing that faith and righteousness will bring a happy life. And others sing despondently of broken promises and inexplicable disaster. Not a one-dimensional collection.

And it really could only have been written by Jews, especially the complaints. Although Christians hold that God's incarnation in Jesus created a new intimacy between Creator and creatures, Judaism has its own intimate connection, the God of Israel --who eventually lays claim to being the One and Only God-- has this unique obsessive relationship to this particular ethnic group. And included in the Covenant is complaining, even accusing, when the Divine Partner fails to keep up his end of the bargain. The Jewish lawyer is not a stereotype for nothing. Psalm 88 is even darker than 55, even hostile. And although Psalm 89 has a long section of praise, it almost seems like a setup for the final verses, where King David basically indicts God for breaking his word. The Jews did and do speak up when unhappy with God. They say that He was even put on trial in Auschwitz by a rabbinical court. And not found innocent.

This is something you do not find in Christianity. I put it rather bluntly: after God crucifies his only child for you, you really lose any right to complain. In a funny way, the Christian God the Father becomes a kind of an uncritiquable Jewish mother. "After all I've done for you..."  Ironically, Christ's cry of despair from the cross --My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?-- is the opening line of Psalm 22.

My problems with Christ usually have come down to feeling that it was hard to be an actual, aka fallen, human being when He was around. Certainly one of the comforting strengths of the Old Testament is that all the holy people have flaws. The doings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, David and Solomon and their kin...all fodder for a huge family therapy session. I used to joke that the Christian Holy Family of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St Joseph would make even the Waltons look abusive and dysfunctional by comparison. Too much goodness is not good for us.

The (Calvinist) Genevan Psalter

So the emotion-besotted Psalms of David*, especially (and strangely) beloved of monks and Calvinists, can present problems for a lot of Christians, or anyone who prefers being spiritual to being religious and who expects a sacred book, especially one called The Good Book, to be filled with nothing but monochromatic light and peace and love and joy and caring and sharing. The Happy Sutra it ain't.



*Contemporary scholars believe that the Psalter is a collection of hymns from a variety of sources, with David being an author, but not the author, of them.

















*Curious, I checked the novel and the psalm is not there. An addition in the film.

Another effect of original sin

If there had not been The Fall, what do you bet that the word "palindrome" would be a palindrome?

Half truth, at best

Both George W Bush and Michael Novak share a common mistake. They believe in, to quote Novak's book title, "the universal hunger for liberty." And imagine that it is something like Western or American liberty.

It is not.

People want their own liberty, the kind of freedom that lets them live as they wish and it does not extend to people and behaviors that they dislike. The kind of freedom that the West has sort-of aspired to has included the freedom of others, required the toleration* of people and of behavior and values that are not congenial.

This is hard work. And not at all universally desired.


*Toleration means "to put up with", not "to embrace."

Puritans never die

A clever Brit agrees with me that the religious and puritan instinct is behind the obsession with health (and safety) in the West these days.

I live in a city where a man can walk stark naked down the street, smoking weed, and he will be unmolested by the police, but where I, dared I, if I smoked a cigar, fully clothed, in the sylvan realms of Golden Gate Park --a space larger than Central Park for a population 1/10 NYC's size--, I would be fined. $100, then $200, then $500 each time after that. Ah, free wheeling open-minded Frisco.

And the aforementioned puritans' agenda includes both fines for smoking in a car with your own child AND presumed consent for organ donation!  You can't smoke in your own car with your own child, but unless you formally opt out, the State can use your body for organ harvesting!

There are days when a cabin in Idaho looks pretty good.

1968 strikes again

Hyper articulate bad-boy writer Jim Goad on the occupation of Wall Street by "Unemployed street poets, unemployed performance artists, unemployed interpretive dancers, unemployed bongo drummers, unemployed Gender Studies grads, unemployed placard-makers, unemployed graphic designers, unemployed social-media directors, and unemployed soup-makers."

There were celebrity visits from washed-up screeching beluga Rosanne Barr* and the perennially aggrieved Susan Sarandon with her communist breasts (!). Cornel West showed up and proudly displayed his woolly hair, gleaming buckteeth, and scholarly eyeglasses. Michael Moore appeared on TV and voiced his support for the protesters, saying that some people were eating more than their fair share of the pie—and if anyone should know, it’s him.

 Washed-up screeching beluga? Communist breasts?

 His pen is a mighty as any sword I ever saw.



*I suspect that Silvio Berlusconi could describe her in the same terms he applied to Angela Merkel, although far more richly deserved.

Ex Cathedra's Inferno

Ex Cathedra has not been in a good mood of late. I mean, even compared to my usual. Not at all. It dawned on me that in the past year and a half or so, nothing in my life has actually improved. In every way that counts, it's been losses. Some recuperation here and there, but the general trend is deconstructive. And shows no signs of altering course.

Just to make matters worse I got an email from a local school --in Marin County--connected to an alma mater of mine. It includes this activity description for one of its "centers", the one for "Cultural Healing and Social Praxis".

It is my idea of Hell.



*

Envying two of the three monkeys

T (my ex) and I often commiserate with each other about the things which piss us off, things which we obsessively tend to notice and which we wish we didn't. He is very sensitive to how people, including random strangers, look at him. And he has an eye for clothing that can make a walk down Market Street painful for him. I remain largely oblivious to both of those things.

For my part, I am unfortunately attuned to voice patterns* and to the gender presentation of males. When T walks down the street, he's mostly eye. When I do, I am largely ear. I have the Stan Mack syndrome, the man who made a comic strip out of overheard conversations on the streets of New York. For me, it's not just content (which is very often a form of whiny complaint and self-justification) but tone and timbre. The Gay Voice dominates. Awful stuff. Combines the worst aspects of the rising terminal interrogative and the raspy vocal fry. And it sounds as artificial and cartoonish to me as thugmale Black hiphop speak, or the harsh proudly middle-class accents of the current BBC.

Anyhow, we have had a rash of public nudity around here lately. There is a small long-standing group of somewhat furtive exhibitionists who've been walking around for years, mostly at night, with nothing but shoes on. While none of them are attractive IMHO, they go to the gym a lot, so at least you have to look at an in-shape naked man against your will. Our new parkette has attracted a second wave, men who should never take their clothes off. At all. Even when alone. Shame is included in the human psychological repertoire for good reasons. Libertarians support this oppositional-defiant narcissism. People with taste are offended.

Anyhow, I was walking home from the gym yesterday and about a half block away noticed two shirtless and muscular young men making out on the corner. If you do not live in the Castro ghetto, you might assume that to be a regular occurrence. It is not. You are far likelier to see heterosexual PDA's --a form of anxious defense, I suspect-- than a lot of male/male smooching or fooling around in public. Even male couples holding hands is not something you see all the time.

As I got closer, they seemed to have turned to face what appeared to be a stooped over old man, dark clothes, white hair, and were starting to make provocative gestures toward him. Odd. Were they playing with him? Were they taunting him? And I could see that there were three of them now.

After walking a bit more, I saw what was really happening. The stooped old man was in fact a cameraman backing up the street in front of three strapping guys with just loose gym pants on them. They were lipsyncing and dancing. It was a music video being shot on the sidewalk.

Yesterday was not a happy day for me. My grim ruminations and mood got the better of me. Work, love, my character, the Western world...none of them were looking viable. So this is how I reacted.

First, I thought, why the hell can't you three be naked instead of those mountain trolls back on the corner? And then I saw how they were moving: like women. Their idea of being sexy was apparently to mimic the moves of a cinematic seductress,

 

like TJ on The A-List.

Not enough Chippendales and way too much Marilyn Monroe. Damn, I thought. All that 5'9" muscle, tan, fur and ink gone to waste. Urnings.

It still puzzles me why gay men go to such lengths to masculinize the frame and then leave the insides untouched by the same drive? Do you wanna be more of a man or just look like one when you're stationary and silent?

As I say, I notice these things. I wish I didn't.

*It's a two-edged sword. I had a very brief but surprisingly affecting thing back in 2006 with a guy named Kevin. We wrote on line and by email. I liked his pix fine enough. But the first time he called me on the phone...he had a corduroy and gravel low baritone voice with a Texas-Oklahoma drawl...totally unexpected...it was like aural sex pouring into my ear. Unfortunately he wanted us to be exclusive. After one coffee date. I declined. He bolted.

Jesuitry

In Jesuit-owned and operated America magazine, an editorial laments the loss of altar girls at the Phoenix cathedral, wondering aloud if seeing the priesthood as an all-male clerical caste is really a good thing for the Church.

The Society of Jesus is an all-male clerical society. Unlike the older orders which have female branches, women may not join St. Ignatius Loyola's club. And men who join and are not destined for Holy Orders, the lay brothers, are never in line for any positions of authority. That is restricted to priests, a minority of whom are invited to take a fourth vow which then allows them to become important superiors.


Now what was that again about an all-male clerical caste?

Civilizing ourselves to death

I was watching an episode of Kenneth Clark's terrific 1969 series, Civilisation. About Western Europe. Although he is focusing very much on art, he frequently makes the point that civilization is fundamentally about self-confidence and energy. That isn't sufficient for a culture to create a civilization, but it is absolutely necessary. Once that self-confidence and energy.is lost, it's just a matter of time before all is lost.


With a hat tip to er, I was then informed by the UK Guardian (turn to the Left and bow deeply) that bullfighting has been banned in Catalonia and the last fight just took place in Barcelona. The situation is not quite a simple one because the Catalans, who speak their own Romance but not-Spanish language*, have long been restive and even violent in pursuit of their national autonomy. I spent Christmas Eve in Barcelona in 1973. I remember the bilingual Mass at the Cathedral, Spanish and Catalan, as well as the people in front of the building at night, doing their courtly national dance, the Jota.

Bullfighting is identified with the Spanish. So there is a nationalist motive along with the usual "barbaric cruelty to animals" motif. Spain still largely permits bullfighting, even though its popularity has fallen.

Nevertheless, I take two things from this story. One, which er pointed out, is the use to which closed bullrings are put. One has already turned into a shopping mall. This one has several proposals on the table: "an indoor market, a block of luxury apartments and a mosque financed by Dubai." What does it say about a civilization when a scene of ritualized conflict between man and beast becomes a market, houses for the rich, or another fortress for the Mohammedans to undo the Reconquista? Where is Santiago Matamoros when you need him?

And although bullfighting is a particularly Spanish taste, it is part of the repertoire of strong masculine symbols in Western culture which are now under attack and fading away. Whether it be the phallus of the lion rampant on a military shield, foxhunting in England, the very idea of carrying and using a gun, corporal punishment or the death penalty...everywhere the drift of liberal society, in the name of "civilization" is against masculine self-confidence and energy, in favor of a feminized pacifist vegetarian world full of neutered puppies consuming only sustainable green products from Fair Trade non-profits.

The only trouble is that the rest of the world is not like that. I recall a mid 60's movie about Genghis Khan** where the young Temujin finds himself at the court of the super-civilized Chinese emperor, who is overweight and cares only for poetry and court etiquette; very sophisticated and urbane, he sees the future Khan merely as an intemperate barbarian.  Which he was. Utterly lacking in self-doubt. Full of Lord Clark's self-confidence and energy. Temujin learned what he needed to, both about Chinese military strategy and Chinese corruption. Later in the film, of course, the old emperor and his exquisite taste gets obliterated. Omar Sharif vs Robert Morley. Guess who's gonna win?

And as shit-disturber Jack Donovan has pointed out in Androphilia, "A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive."



*If you know Spanish, you can sorta read Catalan (I had to use a Catalan article for an esoteric paper I once wrote about the history of Vespers!) but when spoken, it's as different from Spanish as Italian or Portuguese.

**It's a good flick, but no comparison with the epochal The Conqueror, with John Wayne as Genghis and Susan Hayward as Bortai.