Thoughts and Ruminations

This has been a year of great learning for me.  Since wise learning necessarily means time spent reflecting on issues (theory) and acting on issues (practice), since I spent much more of my time over the last few years reflecting and theorizing, I made a commitment when we moved to  Cincinnati that I would spend more time acting.

As the title suggests above, one of the places I’ve devoted some time to has been advocating for ex-offenders (what some would call ex-convicts or other various terms).  It so happens that Cincinnati is much like any other community in how we handle ex-offenders, which makes the struggle here extremely transferable to other arenas.  This is the process by which we handle ex-offenders:

1) They commit a crime and are jailed
2) They serve their time
3) They come back into mainstream society
4) They apply for jobs to support themselves and their families
5) They are rejected for these jobs (public and private) because they have had a felony conviction and won’t be hired
6) Given little to no options for meaningful employment, they are tempted to return to “easier,” illegal ways to support themselves, which often put them back in prison
7) Repeat

So, as this seven-step process illustrates, our society, which you would think has a vested interest in ex-offenders being rehabilitated, actually promotes a massive disincentive for rehabilitation.  This is a cancerous tumor in Cincinnati that often is not spoken of or paid attention to because it’s uncomfortable, unsavory, makes us shift in our seats and look the other way.  After all, to truly provide the incentive for rehabilitation would require our time, our energy, and our extending chances to those who have made mistakes. And for various reasons, we don’t want to risk those things for the sake of our personal comfort.  It’s a classic case of short-term selfish benefit at enormous long-term cost to our society.

So what can we do?  How can we make the trek back to more healthy relationship with ex-offenders, to provide incentives for them to be productive members of society?

It is that question that a small number of folks asked not so long ago here in Cincinnati (specifically the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, the Amos Project, and now, more recently, the fledgling Cincinnati Faith and Justice, of which I most directly identify).  About a year ago, the OJPC started stepping up pressure for the city to change its hiring policy, and targeted their action toward the city asking some simple questions like:

1) How old is the conviction and is it relevant to the job?
2) How serious was the offense?
3) What has this job applicant done to turn his or her life around since they were convicted?

About four months ago, the AMOS Project launched the Nehemiah Campaign to Rebuild Cincinnati focused primarily on this issue, which Cincinnati Faith and Justice linked up with, which led to my involvement in the campaign.  The last two weeks have been a roller coaster of emotion for those involved in this, which I’ll address in my next post, but I wanted to lay out in this one some of where my learning-in-action has gone over the past year.

I read this article about Senator Scott Brown today that reinforced some educated hunches I have about him.

Evidently the “Tea Party Express” tour stopped in Boston, MA today and Brown, who the Tea Party supporters go out of their way to say they elected, was conspicuously not there.  In Boston no less, the home of the “original” tea party, which persons would say presents every opportunity for Sen. Brown to enjoy the adulation of the crowd and prove his conservative commitment….yet he didn’t show.

Official release from a spokesperson,

“While he is unable to attend Wednesday’s event, the senator appreciates the strong grassroots support he received from a wide range of individuals, including those who are part of the tea party movement. He hopes they have a successful event,” spokesman Colin Reed said in a statement.

Translation: “We don’t want to fully identify with these people because we find them polarizing and Senator Brown is not arch-conservative like them, even though they cast him in that light during the campaign for the seat.”

Brown’s senatorial victory on January 19th was hailed across the country as a referendum on Pres. Obama’s policy initiatives, with persons variously saying “The people have spoken,” and “Obama better watch out!”  But I had a sneaking sense throughout Brown’s campaign against Martha Coakley to replace Ted Kennedy that his momentum and eventual victory had very little to do with Barack  Obama and very much to do with Martha Coakley and Scott Brown.

First of all, Coakley campaigned as if she “knew” the election was a rubber-stamp for her obvious accession to the Seat.  Coakley famously said in response to challenges she was being to passive in her campaign, “As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?” That ridiculous comment (You’re in Boston, Martha, not Miami), together with commenting that Curt Schilling was a Yankee fan (again, he of the famous bloody sock forever enthroned in Red Sox lore), combined with long stretches of non-campaigning, to show a woman out of touch with the people she was claiming to represent.

Her opponent, Scott Brown instead worked his butt to the bone to win Massachusetts voters.  He did shake hands at Fenway Park in the cold, he did drive his personal truck all over the state, he did shake hands, kiss babies, make speeches, and get his agenda and his aspirations out there, Coakley didn’t, and he beat her.  The combination of Coakley’s blahness and Brown’s commitment was striking, and I think Massachusetts voters saw that.

What is another reason I find the election to be less about Obama and more about Brown? Brown’s proven political positions.  As conservative commentator Kathleen Parker commented in the Washington Post,

In any case, Brown’s more compelling package concerns issues, his positions on which are not so easily categorized along party lines. He supports a woman’s right to choose, for instance, though he opposes partial-birth abortion and federal funding for abortion and believes in strong parental notification laws. He opposes same-sex marriage but believes the decision should be left to states. He would not vote to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act but does not favor a federal constitutional amendment declaring marriage as between a man and a woman.

On fiscal matters, he favors tax cuts, opposes the current government expansion and would oppose a second stimulus bill. He has praised President Obama for both his decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan as well as taking his time arriving at that decision. He criticized the president for being “too slow” in responding to the panty-bomber and thinks we should treat terrorists as war criminals, trying them in military courts.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t recall conservatives panting from their screams that Obama’s “agenda was rejected” ever mentioning that Brown was pro-choice by their absolute standards. I don’t recall them discussing that Brown isn’t hell-bent on constitutional amendments against homosexual marriage. And those are the two massive issues that most arch-conservatives can’t get past to see the rest of someone’s politics.

Brown since has gone out of his way to praise Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator John Kerry in their work with him on the jobs bill that he supported with a slew of Democrats.  Someone seeking to self-identify with the tea partiers would know that ANY positive comment about Harry Reid would earn them a tarring and feathering by tea partiers.  And in response to comments by some that he was either a liberal, conservative, or moderate Republican, he responded, “I’m a Scott Brown Republican.”

I’m more and more convinced Scott Brown is a better, more wiser politician than pundits would like to paint him as.  He doesn’t fit the labels perfectly, he thinks for himself, he is willing to break party lines early in his term instead of being McConnell’s yes man lapdog.  Don’t reduce Brown to a “referendum on Barack Obama.”  Let Brown speak for himself.

Kudos to Brown for holding Tea Partiers at arm’s length.  He doesn’t need their extremism to identify himself, and doesn’t need to smile and wave with their hero, Sarah Palin, on his side for a good photo op and conservative check-in-the-box.  You go, Scott Brown.

“So extreme is the President’s corporatism that he is finding more genuine conservative groups taking sharp issue with his policies.  In a little reported evolution that may change the future complexion of American politics, organizations that call themselves conservative populists are teaming up with their progressive counterparts to oppose corporate bailouts.  Last year this coalition defeated the breeder reactor boondoggle- a high _________  priority.  In _____, it nearly defeated the legislation regarding the Alaska gas pipeline that would coerce consumers into paying for the pipeline even if the project isn’t completed and consumers did not receive any natural gas.  The synfuel industry’s welfare project is under similar pressure, though its predicted mismanagement and awful economics appear to be self-dismantling.  This new coalition put up a strong fight against the _______-ite bailout of the big U.S. banks that made such imprudent loans at skyhigh interest rates to foreign countries.  ________, who spent years lecturing around the country from General Electric on the virtues of sink or swim free enterprise, has become the most prominent advocate of big business bailouts in American history.

If this all goes against his philosophic grain, it demonstrates the contrary power of giant business over his government.  His formerly strong belief in states’ rights is surrendered when companies want his backing for a weaker federal law replacing the adaptable common law in the fifty states that gives people injured by dangerous products rights to sue and recover compensation from manufacturers.  It is surrendered when the banks demand that his agencies preempt stronger state regulations designed to protect depositors and borrowers.  It is surrendered again when the nuclear industry wants him to strip state and local governments of their police power over the transportation of radioactive materials through their communities.  Corporatizing the ex-conservative _________  __________ is a routine matter these days, even when Wall Street’s economic and tax policy demands result in placing Main Street, with its small businesses, at a comparative disadvantage.”

Ralph Nader  ”On the corporate state and the corporatizing of America”

I hopped on the internet today to write an email to my local representative Rep. Bob Goodlatte in response to a news alert I received from the group I Love Mountains about the upcoming Clean Water Protection Act’s debate and hopeful vote.  After a bit, I had written a targeted, informed (hopefully) note to Goodlatte reminding him of greater moral responsibility that’s attached to this bill, especially given that District 9 of VA just south of us is a place that will be deeply affected by an up or down vote on this bill, assuming it isn’t amended into oblivion.

In the process of looking up the District and people within, I happened upon the website OpenSecrets.org, the web portal of the Center for Responsive Politics (another Ralph Nader-inspired organization).  The website has summary pages for present representatives that show percentages of votes missed, bills sponsored or co-sponsored, expenditures, and campaign finance.  I happened to look on the profile on newly elected Rep. Tom Perriello and found myself disgusted.  

Now, granted, I’m not disgusted at Perriello’s profile and the things Perriello seems to care about.  In fact, Perriello’s got some impressive international social justice credentials (check out his Wikipedia page). Personal piety that expresses itself in concrete actions in the world for justice should be applauded.  What disgusted me was what drove Perriello’s election over Virgil Goode, which is more of a disgust with the sytem that Goode and Perriello exist in than a disgust with Perriello himself.  I snapped a picture of it for you to look at and see what draws your eye.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d encourage you to see the disparity between the top contributor to Perriello’s campaign and the second-largest contributor.  Seem a little strange?  

“Now, what is ActBlue?” you might then ask.  Turns out it’s a national clearinghouse for Democratic political action and a place to raise money for specific candidates.  Now, supposedly they’re a Political Action Committee (PAC) under the law, which means that they are limited to giving “$5, 000 to any candidate committee per election, primary, general or special.”  But ActBlue gave $268,117 to Perriello.  Now how in the world is that legal/did that slip through the cracks?  I’m glad Perriello had grassroots support from multiple donors, as I am Goode, whose #1 donor was a similar conservative website counterpoint to ActBlue. 

But how in American politics is it that we continue to allow financial loopholes to drive the election of our representatives in government all the way down to the local district in our area?  This ActBlue donation is so outrageously disproportionate to me and doesn’t make sense whether legal or not.  I can only guess that they exploited some legal loophole to accomplish this massive donation.

I’m interested if someone has some way to enlighten me further.

My lovely wife sent a link to me on Friday that astonished me; as in, my jaw hit the ground.  The link was from a letter written by James Dobson’s political action group on October 22nd entitled “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.”  If you’ve got the time to skim something for about fifteen to twenty minutes, I’d encourage you to follow the link to the letter to get an idea of where Dobson went with it.  If you want my summary of it, I’ll give it to you in precisely sixteen words:  a fearmongering childish unwise piece from a leader I’ve come to expect these things from.

Later in that same day I came across a group on Facebook that I promptly joined called “A Christian Bipartisan Rejection of Focus on the Family’s Letter from 2012.”

I will say this, and I’m not exaggerating.  There have been few times that I’ve been this horrendously horrified to call someone a brother in Christ as I have now with James Dobson.  He is a confused, bitter, co-opted, unwise man.

I made a decision on Friday to write my own “Letter from a Christian in 2012.”  Maybe someone else will read it, but I wrote it to organize some of my thoughts as a counterpoint to Dobson’s rhetoric that smears the body of Christ.  I’d like to encourage you to read my equally long “Letter” that was intentionally written to parallel Dobson’s letter at certain points.  Maybe you can place them side by side and follow along simultaneously.  In case you didn’t see the link above, here’s the link to my “Letter”.

I admit.  I am a naive person when it comes to a good number of things in my life, and that includes the legislative record, press releases, and supposed statements or non-statements.  So when I watch a political debate and hear the same “he-said, she-said” stuff you’d hear in a divorce court, I get confused and frustrated.  If I really want to know the truth, I’d act on my frustration and direct in in healthy ways (say, choosing to go deeper into the issues rather than lazily saying “Politics is meaningless and stupid”); but it sure helps when others do that investigation and help us naive voters with some further wisdom.

That’s why I love fact check websites after debates or on certain issues and claims. While they certainly can be spun a political direction as well, they offer something deeper.  

CNN has their own fact check website.  And factcheck.org has a good one as well that may carry a little less spin than CNN as a self-confessed “non-partisan, non-profit consumer advocate for voters” (though the liberal bias stuff is much more political rhetoric and perception than anything else). *update* I found the site politifact.com today, which has a more wide-angle look at political quotes and stances; also non-partisan. *update*

Let’s go deeper than buzzwords as we consider our vote.

Cameron Strang is the founder and editor of Relevant Magazine, and one of a few leaders from my generation gaining more of a mainstream cultural voice. My highlighting Cameron’s work may seem strange given my harsh critique of his father six days ago, but maybe this can stand as an example of children taking a wise step to critically examine their parents’ faith; deciding where they will continue to agree and where they will choose to respectfully disagree.

I LOVE what Cameron said in the video interview below, appreciated his post explaining why he first accepted, then declined to pray at the DNC (Democratic National Convention), and also appreciated his reflections on the DNC’s faith forums afterwards. I encourage you to watch the interview and check out the links.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot more in the past year about how to move from discontent with how things are around Christmas and Easter (the mountaintop peaks of the Christian calendar), how commodified the events are, and how we feed them by participating in them even as talk about the “real meaning.” In many ways, the “church” is more complicit in commodifying the holidays than different and non-conformist in our message. Even if we do get a little angry that the greeters at Target don’t say “Merry Christmas” and therefore don’t shop there for Christmas, how many Christians have the guts to do that year-round?

I tend toward cynicism, but as I contemplated how to be the change that I want to see in the world, I happened upon the fine folks at the Advent Conspiracy before Christmastime who have done some great thinking about how we can put into practice ways to act faithfully and give faithfully in preparation for our remembrance of the birth of Christ.

Today I found some folks doing some more of that great subversive thought and action.  They go by the name Pentecost Project, and I’ll let them speak for themselves.

The Pentecost Project is an experiment towards a more true and loving economy. Recently, the U.S. Congress passed an economic stimulus package that the President then signed. Beginning in May, most Americans will receive a rebate check that they are being encouraged to go out and spend in order to stimulate America’s sagging economy.

What if, instead of becoming greater consumers, we encouraged people to move towards an even better economy, an economy of abundance? What if, instead of accumulating more stuff, we encouraged people to give things away? What if, instead of the possibility of making a down payment and opening new credit, we encouraged people to pay down their debt?…In this Spirit, we undertake the Pentecost Project: invest in others, share possessions, reduce debt.

Last I checked, that sounds like a good three-week foundation for a series of talks in a church, small group, or some other gathering to guide our thinking beyond the tax break FOR ME (private), to thinking about the tax break FOR US (personal, but within a series of relationships).

In addition, whether your church gives a rip or not, let this drive you to consider, along with me (I’ve already been surprised and convicted by this kind of hopeful thinking), how we can use this unexpected gift to celebrate our abundance by giving it to those truly in need…that and hop on to the chance to thumb our nose at the god of consumerism who expects us to lay down a gift at His altar. It may hurt a little not to be selfish, but it’ll sure feel better over the long term! Seems that Jesus guy had something to say about the life he expects from his disciples that may not feel too good in the short-term, but sure pan out over the long run.

Dennis Kucinich is a voice of reason in politics today.  He says what he believes, refuses to spin his positions to ensnare potential voters, and speaks wisely about how a just economic system and country would seek to act.

Here’s his video response to Bush’s State of the Union address. 

In other news, here’s a link to a story of a 23 year-old Afghani journalist who’s getting the death sentence for “insulting Islam.” You might be surprised what they defined as an insult. I don’t rant and rave about Muslims, but this is a clear case where, if this decision is true to the heart of Islam, there’s a vision for the world there that I don’t want any part of. There’s a place for conversation and listening well, but we’re extremely naive if we think all religions carry a similar vision for the world…or of a Divine Being, for that matter. Killing a journalist for questioning authority. I draw the line there. Not that the church hasn’t done this in the past, but I think I could make a serious case that that sort of action is not true to the vision Jesus called his followers to.

I was reading for a bit in the instant classic Moneyball (by Michael Lewis) this morning, and he made several observations I found immediately incisive and made my thoughts wander a bit. He’s talking about the game (and management) of baseball, but hopefully you’ll see where my thoughts went. Lewis is talking specifically of Oakland’s former assistant GM Paul DePodesta and his decision to enter the business of baseball rather than a more lucrative finance career;

“He was just the sort of person who might have made an easy fortune in finance, but the market for baseball players, in Paul’s view, was far more interesting than anything Wall Street offered. There was, for starters, the tendency of everyone who played the game to generalize wildly from his own experience. People always thought their own experience was typical when it wasn’t. There was also a tendency to be overly influenced by a guy’s most recent performance: (but) what he did last was not necessarily what he would do next. Thirdly- but not lastly- there was the bias toward what people saw with their own eyes, or thought they had seen. The human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw, and every trick it played was a financial opportunity for someone who saw through the illusion to the reality.”

This is just a wonderfully interesting quote by itself that could be spun off in a number of directions if one had the time and the energy to think/write about it, but in this post, I thought I’d explore the “thirdly” part of Lewis’ quote that included the suggestion that “the human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw.” Just to take you through the progression of thoughts in my mind, I immediately thought “Hmmm…” followed by a moment of the suggestion sinking in, followed by remembering a little of what Neil Postman had to bring to bear on the power of image to overcome rational thought, followed by beginning to wrestle with the “false reality” that can be created by persons with the wherewithal to do so (which preys on the temptation for us to only rely on what we have “seen”). That was the process…I’ll work through it a bit more here following.

I guess a relevant question would be, is it true? Are we more deeply affected by what we see or directly experience than what is said to us or revealed to us outside of our experience? I’m assuming yes, though I’d label that as a temptation rather than an assumed truth. This over-emphasis on experienced truth is one of the deep weaknesses of uncritical postmodern thought as I see it. I could talk about this for pages probably, but that’s not my intent in this post. My basic intent is to expose the basic inadequacy of relying on experience or what one “sees” as a foundation for what is true through a couple simple examples. I recognize there are multiple shades of gray between the black and white of experienced truth vs. revealed truth, but hopefully the reality that what is “experienced” or “seen” can be manipulated shines through here.

The age of the internet complicates things, making news much more open-source and therefore less able to be easily manipulated for propaganda purposes, but it is still very possible (especially if the populace relies on basic news outlets for information) to present something as “reality” when it really is a series of images that have been manipulated to achieve a desired outcome. One example to support this suggestion was the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in the center of Iraq as the U.S.-led Shock and Awe campaign swept into the center of Baghdad in 2003. In describing the fall of Hussein’s statue, Donald Rumsfeld described the images as “breathtaking,” the British Army saw them as “historic,” and for BBC radio they were “amazing.” In the pictures that spread through media outlets like wildfire, there seemed to be a massive crowd of jubilent Iraqis pulling down the statue of Hussein that represented their celebration of freedom from his oppressive rule. Here’s the central picture of that series;

If you check out a Youtube video that follows Fox News’ coverage of the statue toppling, you’ll notice the anchors saying “jubilant seems too mild a word for what you’re seeing here,” followed by poking fun at French governmental officials for their opposition to the “liberation of Iraq.”

After the event, conservative commentator Robert Novak weighed in with his opinion, saying that

“As the war began in 2003, the New York Times required less than three weeks before it ran a front-page report by a star correspondent of the last generation, R.W. Apple, which hauled out the heavy word of the Vietnam generation, quagmire-as in the quagmire in which, Apple wrote, U.S. troops were already bogged down. Three weeks later, those same quagmired troops had sped into Baghdad, watching as jubilant crowds pulled down the great statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of the city and organizing a systematic search for the suddenly deposed butcher of Mesopotamia.”

And these images then were exported throughout the world as display of the celebration that had ensued in Iraq and the momentous change of regime on par with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some of the images follow;

This third image represents the global impact of the photography, as viewed in Frankfurt, Germany.

(pictures linked from here)

So, it seems there was a massive crowd celebrating the end of the Hussein era, right? Not so fast. If you had a healthy sense of skepticism and traveled outside the seeming exultation of the crowds presented by prominent media outlets, you would have found a different picture…literally. And while one could argue which pictures represent reality more faithfully if two different groups take different pictures and claim different things at the event, I think we’d all agree that pictures of wider context usually display a more full picture of the reality.

Take a gander at a bit wider angle shot of the event, then two definitely large-scope shots taken chronologically;



It seems that less-euphoric/less-subjective/less-manipulative news sources reported a much different scene than the CNN/BBC/Fox News one. Journalist David Zucchino interviewed a member of the Army’s psychological operations unit and found that the event was almost entirely put on by the US military. After a US colonel “selected the statue as a ‘target of opportunity,’ the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member.” And when cameras zoomed in on the Marine recovery vehicle toppling the statue, “the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.”

And in the words of eyewitness Neville Watson, a clergyman from Australia,

“Well, there certainly was some jubilation, but I certainly wouldn’t go along with that presented by television. The one that I’ve seen a lot of since I’ve been back is the toppling of the statue of Saddam and I can hardly believe it was the same one that I saw, because it happened at only about 300m from where I was and it was a very small crowd. The rest of the square was almost empty, and when we inquired as to where the crowd came from, it was from Saddam City. In other words, it was a rent-a-crowd. Now, that piece of television has been played over and over again, but I’ve seen nothing of the pieces of television, for example, what happened in Mosul the other day, where the Americans opened fire on a crowd killing 10 and injuring 100 when it became anti-American. So I think the scenes of jubilation have to be balanced against the other side of the picture.”

All in all, the wide-angle shots and different testimonies reveal a much different picture. In total, there were about 200 people in the square, with a vast majority of that number being military personnel and international media (we won’t mention that the square is just adjacent to the Palestine Hotel where the international media were based) along with a handful of Iraqis. And even the spontaeity of the handful of Iraqis is in doubt; one could say those who came after encouragement by the loudspeakers were somewhat spontaneous, but a picture of a central celebrant reveals him to be a member of the “Free Iraqi Forces” militia who were flown into Iraq several days before the statue-toppling. Starting to shape up into a different “picture,” eh? *pun intended* I guess I shouldn’t mention that the BBC reported the American flag initially put over the face of the Saddam statue was one flying over the Pentagon on September 11th either. Seems less and less spontaneous, the deeper we go.

I don’t want to belabor the point, because my intention, again, was just to expose the inadequacy of relying on experience or what one “sees” as a foundation for what is true, because one can be greatly deceived by persons interested in keeping us in the alternate reality shaped and colored by their perspective. And governments (ALL governments) certainly have a vested interest in the support of the populace. Just a cautionary note; don’t believe all that you see. Maintain a healthy skepticism. Be willing to wade deeper, even if it may cost you or cause people to label you.