It’s (Almost) Summer, So Get Off My Lawn

                                                 Sumer is icumin in,

                                                 Lhude sing Goddamn;

                                                 Broileth heat, and sweateth feet

                                                 In beachward traffic jam,

                                                 Creepeth grubs and loseth Cubs

                                                 For want of a grand slam.

                                                 Singeth all Goddamn.

This promises to be a miserable summer.  

The season has always been my least favorite — for many reasons, including excessive temperature and humidity, bugs and snakes, susceptibility to sun poisoning, and not being able to swim.

There’s a simple solution.  Stay inside and do stuff.  Reading, writing, painting, music are all possible pasttimes during the summer, thanks to perhaps the best invention ever, air conditioning.  And ice cream.  But what about the other ways to chill out?

For me, chilling out is best accomplished in the company of good friends.  Unfortunately, many of my friends go away for most or all of the summer.  Goddamn!  That leaves me to chill out with my teevee, usually a boon companion because it brings sports into my home so I don’t have to swelter or freeze or battle swarms of fans hellbent on making a trip to the sports venue a perilous quest worthy of John Bunyan’s most misanthropic imaginings.  

But summer is slim sports pickings.  No football.  No college basketball.  No Olympics or World Cup most years (although the Women’s World Cup will be held this year, it threatens to be eclipsed by the venally tiresome FIFA scandal).  In the past, I’ve been reduced to watching golf, but without Tiger on the prowl, it’s just a bunch of doughy guys named Chip or Bubba whacking away on chemically fluoresced surfaces while announcers whisper as if they were reporting on a Vatican beatification ceremony. (Don’t even mention the grunting boredom of tennis,)

But wait — what about baseball?  

I love baseball!  It was the first major league sport I attended (the Milwaukee Braves at County Stadium, a zillion years ago), the minor league sport I’ve enjoyed forever (the Appleton then Fox City Foxes, the Durham Bulls), a little league sport I've actually coached (a haplessly sweet group of eight-year-olds on Okinawa), and the inherited sports fandom that has united my family in shared, dispiriting reality checks, every year.  Goddamn: we are Chicago Cubs fans.

But wait — aren’t the Cubs doing pretty well this year?

Yes indeed.  And that’s this summer’s big problem — raised expectations that will surely be dashed against the ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field.  We Cubs fans have been here before.  Well, not very frequently: there have been only a few promising seasons in my lifetime, all destroyed by September swoons or October collapses.  I remember well the 1998 season, just to give an example:  my father (a life-long Cubs fan and bleachers-seat witness to the Babe’s ‘called’ home run) really thought he’d see a World Series victory in his lifetime (that would be a big and sad ‘no').  Although he had suffered a series of strokes and napped a lot, Dad could will himself alert to watch the great (albeit golf-course-level chemically enhanced) homerun race featuring Cub Sammy Sosa, plus the team’s pursuit of the Wild Card.  Unfortunately, Mark McGuire out-chemmed Sosa, and in the fight for the pennant, the Cubs were swept by the turncoat (to us geriatric Wisconsin baseballers) ‘Atlanta Braves.’  

My dad was really devastated, as he realized that the Cubs would probably not win when he was alive to celebrate (Dad died in 2000). I thought I’d carry on my family’s hopes but, honestly, I no longer think that the Cubs will win in my lifetime, either.  That’s why the 2015 team’s early season success is fraught with anxiety rather than pumped with anticipation:  the more early victories, the more heartbreaking losses to come.  

Other baseball curses, like the Curse of the Bambino, have been dispelled when the benighted team finally won.  I fear that the Curse of the Goat will stick to Cubs fans like summer humidity and no-see'ums stick to sweaty skin.  Moreover, WGN no longer regularly carries Cubs games, so even if I were foolish enough to want to watch my team toy with a winning season, I can’t on any regular basis.  

So bah, humbug, and sing you all goddamn until friends return, football begins, heat abates, leaves turn, Christmas is closer than we think, and the Cubs officially are out of the post-season.  Until then, stay off my lawn.

What Does It Mean to be ‘Religious’?

I just came across an article about newly announced Democratic Presidential contestant Bernie Sanders, the headline of which declared him the ‘Most Irreligious’ Candidate in the 2016 race. If one reads the article, one finds out that Sanders is the child of a Holocaust-devastated family, a self-identified ‘cultural Jew’ who spent time an an Israeli kibbutz, and an admirer of Pope Francis.  He’s also been a passionate supporter of liberal causes for, like, ever.  

How does this make him not religious?

If ‘religious’ is defined as going to church/temple/mosque/shrine/sacred grove regularly . . . well, maybe.  I’d say that’s being a supporter of a particular religious institution.  I’d also say that public fervency about one’s religious views does not equal being ‘religious.’   

The word ‘religion’ has at its base the latin re-legere: to re-read.  In other words, to take seriously an intellectual (which can be theological, but does not need to be) tradition, to ponder and test it, and to come to conclusions that fit the current world, one’s position in that world, and one’s ethical responsibilities to and opportunities for bettering that world.

Bernie Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s, where the remnants of Jewish socialist movements — fractured by World War II, the fight for Israel, and the increasing revelations of Stalinist horrors — were trying to find a moral center.   By the 60s and 70s, that moral center increasingly coalesced on Civil Rights as well as on trying to bolster the increasingly threatened Labor/Union rights which ‘Socialist Jews’ had supported for decades.  

What I’m suggesting is this:  that the tradition that helped shape Bernie Sanders is indeed ‘religious’ — devoted to ethical action on behalf of the disadvantaged and oppressed.  This is a binding idea (another meaning of ‘religion’ — re-binding, as in the common root with ‘ligature') of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Bible.  [I am not enough of a Koranic scholar to comment in regard to Islamic teachings, but I would think that Islam, as another 'Religion of the Book,' also honors 'rebinding' through re-reading, study, and contemplation.]

This short blog is not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders.  Since her girlhood, Hillary Clinton has been an active and, from everything one can learn, sincere ‘Methodist Progressive’ — a mainstream Christian Protestant who believes that to be ‘religious’ is to work to make people’s lives better. Her decades-long efforts on behalf of women’s issues, domestically and globally, are a case on point. 

In contrast, some Republican Presidential candidates, professed and soon-to-be-professed, appear to believe that being ‘religious’ is to trumpet one’s beliefs and allegiances as if just having them, and having them identified with a particular religious sect, is enough.  Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker immediately come to mind.  For other Republican candidates, like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, religious teachings may be factors regarding their stances on some issues, like immigration.  Perhaps — surprisingly enough, given the history of institutional religions in the United States — being a Roman Catholic today can give one a more solid ‘religious’ justification for some sorts of progressive change than can mainstream Protestant denominations or the often reactionary Evangelical/Fundamentalist movements.

Which may be why the non-observant, socially progressive Jew Bernie Sanders admires Pope Francis.

To conclude on a personal note:  religion is important to me.  It was a signal part of my childhood (High-Church Episcopalian, wanna-be Jew because it made more sense) and my adulthood (college specialization in Medieval/Renaissance art iconology, minor in theology, continuing research and publications in world religions).  I am, nonetheless or perhaps therefore, an agnostic — an agnostic who believes that religions and religiosity have been a huge factor, for good and for ill, in world history and in individual ethical development.  I absolutely hate when the term ‘religious’ is slapped upon (or subtracted from) U.S. public figures without re-reading their actual records, and without thinking seriously about what it means to be ‘religious’ in the public sphere.

References:

[Note:  I’m only listing a couple here:  the blog-instigating article about Bernie Sanders, a background piece about Jewish Socialism, and a reliable enough source about Hillary Clinton’s religious views.  If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I often include fairly extensive bibliographies.  I don’t in this case because I was so upset by the implications of the otherwise good post about Bernie Sanders that I needed to write something, without dithering about in tons of validating research.]

Dias, Elisabeth.  “Hillary Clinton: Anchored by Faith.”  Time Online 27 June 2014. http://time.com/2927925/hillary-clintons-religion/

Markoe, Lauren.  “5 faith facts about Bernie Sanders: Unabashedly irreligious.”  Religious News Service 29 April 2015. http://www.religionnews.com/2015/04/29/5-faith-facts-bernie-sanders-unabashedly-irreligious/

Soyer, Daniel.  “Jewish Socialism in the United States.”  My Jewish Learning n.d. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-socialism-in-the-united-states-1920-1948/5/

A Quiverfull of Patriarchal Dominion Theology

Concerned father about daughter’s choice of American Girl Julie, doll child of a divorced doll mother; “we’ll have to have many more conversations with her about why God established families and why he gave us churches and especially the Scriptures to help guide us"

Time waits for no blog.  I started this post a couple of weeks ago, with the working title of ‘What Would Duggars Do?’  The idea was to explore the dilemma faced by extreme right-wing Christian evangelicals in the face of a rapidly expanding Republican Presidential field that tilts to the fundamentalist side of the religio-political spectrum.  I planned to use the highly visible Duggar family as exemplars: they had supported Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, and Family Values flak/eldest son Josh Duggar seemed to support everyone.  WWDD? Maybe I could start a lucrative hand-braided bracelets sideline.  

Then the Duggars destroyed my hypothetical question (and cottage inspirational bracelet industry) by coming out for Huckabee.  I changed my focus:  why Huckabee rather than the more fertile Santorum?  That question led me into the netherworld of cult-like Christian ‘movements.’  I felt like Pee-Wee Herman; my mind was playing tricks on me “like you're unraveling a big cable-knit sweater [vest?] that someone keeps knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting... “  In other words, I kept finding more creepily fascinating stuff, and the in-process blog became buried in a heap of infinitely tangled theology. (The preliminary answer to the Duggars’ allegiance:  Mike Huckabee’s 1998 signing of the Christian Patriarchy manifesto  — since Huckabee didn’t run in 2012, they switched to Santorum, who supports much of what they support but is . . . Roman Catholic!)

Rather than WWDD, maybe I should explore WWPWD

The final blows to my nascent blog occurred last week.  Josh Duggar made headlines for molesting his sisters; the elder Duggars made headlines for covering it up;  Mike Huckabee made headlines for instantly galumphing to the family’s defense; editorial and opinion writers made headlines by digging into the beliefs that shape the Duggars’ way of life.

Which is what I’d been noodling about!  What’s left to write on this subject?

Maybe not much. The most helpful thing I came up with is to attempt unraveling these beliefs, as recent coverage tends to conflate them.  Certainly, they cross-pollinate each other, and people like the Duggars apparently subscribe to all three.  But the doctrines have distinct emphases and pet causes.  Here goes.

Christian Patriarchy

Female family members’ job is to keep a moral home, to please and support the husband/father/brother, to be modest, yet to be an always-available sex object (or potential sex object).  And to cultivate and curl their crowning glory.

This is fairly simple to understand.  The family unit’s head is the father, to whom all other family members owe unquestioning obedience. Males literally rule females — daughters as well as wives — as well as unmarried sons until they wed and become ruling fathers themselves.

—Favorite political targets:  Marriage equality, LGBT rights, Women’s Health Care and Pro-Choice initiatives, Common Core, Equal Pay

—Representative Duggaresque manifestation:  Female curly hair.  It’s most pleasing to the pater familias.  On the other hand, one might argue that — as women are the source of male temptation — it’s a possible tool of Satan.  Another manifestation: a smiling, cheerful countenance at all times.

—Founding Fathers:  Douglas Wilson, Douglas Phillips (leader of Vision Forum and mentor of the Duggars, who had to resign after charges of sexual abuse)

Quiverfull

From Psalm 27: As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;

so are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them

This too is fairly simple.  Although the term is based on a Biblical verse, this risibly named movement suggests the vexed sexual frissons that vibrate through extremist religious teachings about sex and sexuality.  It’s all about having children — the more, the godlier.  Any other type of sexual expression is really, really bad. Plus fundamentalist Christians have a duty to outbreed people who are not fundamentalist Christians (see Dominion Theology).

—Favorite political targets:  Abortion, Contraception, Home Schooling Regulation, Immigration Reform, plus anything conceivably promoting ‘homosexual agenda’

—Representative Duggaresque Manifestation:  Uhm, a disconcertingly huge family? One that includes seeking out fertility treatments (against the teachings of Quiverfull, which hold that God decides the size of your family) even after you’ve had enough children for two baseball teams?

—Founding parents:  Mary Pride, Bill Gothard (Duggar guiding star recently outed and disgraced for sexual harassment)

Dominion Theology

James McNaughton’s 2012 painting “One Nation Under God” encapsulates Dominionism’s theocratic view of United States’ history and destiny

This, to me, is somewhat murkier.  It has to do with a radical view of American Exceptionalism: the United States is a Christian nation that needs to be restored to its original doctrinal purity; the United States is divinely ordained to reshape the world in its own (purified Christian) image; humans have absolute dominion over the earth.

—Favorite political targets:  the Supreme Court, Environmentalism, ‘Global Warming,’ Evolution, the United Nations, Immigration Reform, Home-schooling regulation

—Representative Duggaresque Manifestion:  Active advocacy for almost every ultra-right-wing candidate within their sights and who are willing to pay appearance fees

—Founding Fathers:  Rousas Rushdoony, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Calvin Beisner

You might want to visit the McNaughton interactive site, where the artist explains the ideological impetus behind every aspect of his busily programmatic painting, “One Nation Under God.”  Because few will have the time or interest to click on each figure, I recommend focusing on the unhappy group on the lower right.  A supreme court justice plus ‘bad opinions’ (Marbury v. Madison, Roe v. Wade to name a few) . . . an unwed mother . . . a humanist college professor . . . a liberal reporter . . . corrupt lawyers and politicians . . . all representative of the country’s fall from Christian grace.  That this painting, by a conservative Mormon, has been promoted by fringe Evangelicals and extreme Tea-Partiers suggests the interconnectedness, seductiveness, and political testosterone of the movements I’ve tried to outline.  

Back to Josh Duggar, because why not?  His teenage misdemeanors (I looked into Arkansas law about sexual offenses, and his acts were not felonies because of [1] his age; and [2] lack of penetration) are reprehensible . . . and probably more common in large families (where monitoring each child’s activities is logistically difficult) and in strictly religious families (where frank discussions about sexuality are rare) than one would like to think.  What has made his story headline-worthy is the hyprocrisy at its core as well as general cultural schadenfreude.  What should also make it headline-worthy is the crepuscular light it sheds on a hybrid theocratic ideology that is frighteningly active in today’s politics.  

References

[Note:  I stopped listing references three days ago, when the Josh Duggar revelations hit the fan and the news waves.  This list of references is not complete up to that time, either, as I didn’t want to detail every increasingly tiresome or depressing article I’d consulted that covered common ground.]

“8 steps to confront your wife’s sexual refusal.”  Biblical Gender Roles 23 May 2015. [Note -- OK, this I found a day ago -- too stunning to omit. The understandably anonymous author has a series of these screeds, findable on his website if you're a true glutton for punishment.]  http://biblicalgenderroles.com/2015/05/23/8-steps-to-confront-your-wifes-sexual-refusal/

Berlet, Chip.  “Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That’s Undermining Democracy.”  PRA archives online n.d. (apparently 2011).  http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/dominionism.htm 

Bishop, J. M.  “How are the Duggars dealing with the Gothard sex scandal?”  Powder Room/Jezebel  27 May 2014.  http://powderroom.jezebel.com/how-are-the-duggars-dealing-with-the-gothard-sex-scanda-1581883720

Brantley, Max.  “Another reason to oppose Tom Cotton and Asa Hutchinson.” Arkansas Times 17 October 2014.  http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/10/17/another-reason-to-oppose-tom-cotton-and-asa-hutchinson

Burleigh, Nina.  “The Duggars Seem So Nice Until You Meet Their Terrifying Political Agenda.”  The New York Observer Online 10 December 2014.  http://observer.com/2014/12/the-duggars-politics/

“Discussion with artist Jon McNaughton regarding his new masterpiece ‘One Nation Under God.’”  Jon McNaughton Fine Art Company 2012.  http://jonmcnaughton.com/content/ZoomDetailPages/OneNationInterview.html

“How To Remove Demonic Doorways And Demons From Your Home.“ Dreams of Dunamis 1 October 2013. [Note: I include this because it is absolutely demented and names Cabbage Patch dolls as potential demonic portals.  I suppose ultra-Christian daughters need no dolls at all, as they have an unending supply of baby siblings on whom to practice ideal motherhood.] https://dreamsofdunamis.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/how-to-remove-demonic-doorways-and-demons-from-your-home/ 

Hurst, Evan.  “Gross Josh Duggar Admits to Molesting His Own Sisters, Resigns from Family Research Council.”  Wonkette 21 May 2015.  http://wonkette.com/586273/police-report-gross-josh-duggar-allegedly-admitted-molesting-his-own-sisters

Joyce, Karin.  Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.  Boston: Beacon, 2010.

Karlin, Mark. “Christian Fundamentalist Group Preaches Patriarchy and Women’s Fertility as Weapons for Spiritual Warfare.”  Alternet 3 March 2009.  http://www.alternet.org/story/134000/christian_fundamentalist_group_preaches_patriarchy_and_women%27s_fertility_as_weapons_for_spiritual_warfare

Kass, Jackie.  “Duggar family on Rich Santorum: We would do it all over again!” AXS Entertainment/examiner.com.  11 April 2012.  http://www.examiner.com/article/duggar-family-on-rick-santorum-we-would-do-it-all-over-again

Koppelman, Alex, and Vincent Rossmeier.  “Huckabee’s radical religious friends.”  Salon 18 January 2008.  http://www.salon.com/2008/01/18/huckabee_connections/

Libby Ann.  “An Open Letter to Duggar Defenders.”  Patheos 20 August 2014. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/08/an-open-letter-to-duggar-defenders.html

“Lucifer’s Toy Chest.”  The Landover Baptist Church December 2010. http://www.landoverbaptist.org/2010/december/luciferstoychest2010.html [note: this is a satiric site, and a swell one]

Mantyla, Kyle.  “Dominionism and the Religious Right: The Merger is Complete.” Right Wing Watch 6 July 2010. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/dominionism-and-religious-right-merger-complete

McNaughton, Jon.  “One Nation Under God Interactive Page.”  McNaughton Fine Art n.d. (2012?) http://jonmcnaughton.com/content/ZoomDetailPages/OneNationUnderGod.html

Marcotte, Amanda.  “The Christian Right Still Dominates the GOP — Is There Any End in Sight?”  Alternet. 18 March 2015.  http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/christian-right-still-dominates-gop-there-any-end-sight 

Marcotte, Amanda.  “Sex Scandal Rocks the Duggars’ Christian Patriarchy Movement.” The Daily Beast 16 April 2014. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/16/sex-scandal-rocks-the-duggars-christian-patriarchy-movement.html

Morgan, David.  “The Art of Jon McNaughton, the Tea Party’s Painter.”  Religion & Politics 25 July 2012.  http://religionandpolitics.org/2012/07/25/the-tea-partys-painter-the-art-of-jon-mcnaughton/

Murphy, Tim.  ‘Who Will Win the Duggar Primary?’  Mother Jones 5 March 2015.  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/duggars-huckabee-santorum-2016

Ohlheiser, Abby.  “After pushback against their political activism, the Duggars spend the weekend rallying against abortion.”  The Washington Post Online 1 January 2015.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/21/after-pushback-against-their-political-activism-the-duggars-spent-the-weekend-rallying-against-abortion/

Palmer, Cliff.  “Seven Basic Needs of a Husband.”  South Heights Baptist Church 2011-2012.  http://www.southheightsbaptist.com/mp3/CliffPalmer/7BasicNeeds_Husband.pdf

Peck, Jamie.  “Michelle Duggar’s Tips for a Happy Marriage are Predictably Stepford-esque.”  Crushable 17 February 2012. http://www.crushable.com/2012/02/17/entertainment/michelle-duggars-tips-for-a-happy-marriage-are-predictably-stepford-esque-354/

Stonestreet, John.  “American Girl Dolls: Divorce and the Legacy of the 70s.”  Christian Post 27 March 2013.  http://www.christianpost.com/news/american-girl-dolls-divorce-and-the-legacy-of-the-70s-92730/#HFjdVg3u3smMmPM4.99

Taleda, Alison.  “Mike Huckabee Launches Campaign for President, Gets Support from Duggar Family. “ US Weekly Online 6 May 2015. http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/mike-huckabee-joins-2016-presidential-race-with-duggar-support-201565

Tumulty, Karen.  “Why the GOP’s 2016 hopefuls angle for the home schooler endorsement.”  The Washington Post Online 10 April 2015.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/why-the-gops-2016-hopefuls-angle-for-the-home-schooler-endorsement/2015/04/10/3da09228-df8d-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html

Digital Iconoclasm

ISIS has captured the Syrian city of Palmyra.  This UNESCO World Heritage site was a thriving multicultural metropolis, boosted into prominence during the reign of Emperor Trajan in 105-06 c.e. Known most for its impressive Roman colonnades, the market and caravan city of Palmyra also exhibits Greek, Persian, Iranian, and Indian architecture and artifacts. Its desert environment has preserved the site remarkably well.  Until, well, yesterday.

People around the world fear that ISIS will destroy Palmyra like they destroyed the ancient Iraqi city of Nimrud and wrecked the museum in Mosul.  It’s doubtful that Palmyra's antiquities were the primary reason it was seized:  it occupies a central position among Syria’s gas fields and is the nodal point of desert roads (just as it had been when it became important to the Roman Empire, two millennia ago). It also houses Tadmur Prison, where anti-Assad Syrian dissidents have been confined, making it a politically resonant target.  And of course ISIS makes tidy chunks of change selling off looted antiquities.  

Obliterating ancient Nimrud (2015; near Mosul, Iraq), with particular attention paid to destroying the lamassu, hybrid protective deities now symbolic of Akkadian/Sumerian/Assyrian culture

That said, why would ISIS not be content with capturing the city and adding to the territory it controls?  Why is destroying cultural heritage a part of the program? 

Many commentators tend to explain this destructive urge as a form of Islamic iconoclasm based in what is believed to be a fundamentalist understanding of the prohibition against graven images and artistic representations not only of Allah and the Prophet but also of any living beings, human and animal.  Others see it as an attempt to destroy traces of other, even more ancient Middle Eastern cultures — a type of scorched earth policy that creates a blank slate for a new Caliphate, rather like the French Revolutionary calendar which, to banish all taint of the ancien regime, designated 1792 as Year One.  Or, more recently, like the Taliban’s dynamiting of the colossal Bamiyan Buddhas— an attempt to purify Afghanistan’s history by erasing material signs of heterodoxy and readable signs that Islam was not the region’s ‘first’ religion. 

The rock-cut Buddhas in Bamiyan, before and after the Taliban’s iconoclastic 2001 attack

Originally, the terms iconoclasm [image-breaking] and iconomachia [war on images] referred to Byzantine Emperors’ attempts to discourage the use of religious images within the Eastern Christian Church.  These artistic purges occurred in the 8th and 9th centuries c.e., when the Western Christian Church was regaining power and was using religious imagery to proselytize and teach, sometimes incorporating ‘pagan’ visual culture and ritual in order to better appeal to the newly converted.  Christian iconoclasm erupted again during the Protestant Reformation in Europe and, later, during the Cromwellian interregnum in England.  

Christian iconoclasm: a damaged relief from the Utrecht cathedral, desecrated in 1566

Most Christian iconoclasm went hand-in-hand with political power struggles.  So has Islamic iconoclasm, or aniconism (prescription against creating images of sentient beings, from the divine to the animal); its foundational event was Muhammed’s destruction of the idols in the Ka’aba.  Although all forms of Islam (as well as Christianity and Judaism) condemn idolatry, the Sunni branch is much more stringent in regard to images and related practices.  A fairly recent instance can be found in Saudi Arabia, when after World War I, fundamentalist Sunni forces (Wahabi, Salafi) wrested control from the Shia Hashemites and destroyed many Shia shrines and tombs in the process.

Fast forwarding to ISIS’s programmatic iconoclasm, we should note that most ISIS ‘foreign fighters’ are Salafi/Wahabi Sunnis, and that one reason they’ve been successful is that Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis, long feeling and probably being oppressed by Shia dictators, have welcomed the largely Sunni ISIS military.  We should also note that most of the Islamic holy sites smashed by ISIS have been Shia.  An example is Mosul’s Tomb of Jonah, surrounded by a 14th-century Shia mosque, which ISIS blew up last year.

The 2014 eradication of the Tomb of Jonah was accomplished with explosives — not a particularly compelling telegenic narrative

Sunni /Shia enmity does not explain everything, though.  If we revisit the vandalism at the Mosul museum, we notice a couple of things.  First, it was carefully videotaped, with attention given to men with sledgehammers and chainsaws whacking away at ancient statues.  Second, some of the smashed artifacts seem to be made of plaster of paris.  In other words, the whole episode looks staged.  For the camera.

This is what makes ISIS’s iconoclasm distinctive.  Like the carefully directed and filmed executions that seem to be trying to outdo themselves in medieval horror, the annihilations of religious and cultural artifacts are produced for digital distribution and maximum outrage.  Whatever sectarian religious or caliphate-building agenda might at least in part have motivated these performances, the overwhelming rationale seems to be to shock the rest of the world, Islamic and non-Islamic, and thus to entice young fundamentalist Muslims into a romantic video-game (real) world of religiously justified carnage. This is politico-theocratic iconoclasm on a grand scale, made possible by the internet and its ever-expanding mesh of social media. 

Choreographed destruction at the Mosul museum, 2015; ISIS could have blown up the place, but that would have pulverized salable objects and not shown the heroic battle of men against stone (or gypsum)

It used to be that iconoclastic acts were localized:  hack off a saint’s face from a cathedral facade, burn heretical books (or just books that have been saved by a competing sect, like the ruination of some of Timbuktu’s libraries), parade a formerly revered professor in a dunce cap (iconoclasm can work in officially non-religious societies as well), raze a tomb of one of Muhammed’s family members (Salafi/Wahabi Muslims do not believe in venerating the Prophet’s family or close associates).  Now the local has truly become the global.  Production and shock values are paramount, and even more so are digital distribution strategies. 

Don’t be surprised if Palmyra bites the dust, spectacularly and soon.

References:

Al-Salhy, Suadad. “The full story behind ISIL’s takeover of Mosul Museum.”  Al Jazeera Online 9 March 2015. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/03/full-story-isil-takeover-mosul-museum-150309053022129.html

Barnard, Anne, and Hwaida Saad.  “ISIS Fighters Seize Control of Syrian City of Palmyra, and Ancient Ruins.” The New York Times Online 21 May 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/middleeast/syria-isis-fighters-enter-ancient-city-of-palmyra.html?_r=0

Crosette, Barbara.  “Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition.” The New York Times Online 19 March 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/19TALI.html 

Ford, Dana, and Mohammed Tawfeeq.  “Extremists destroy Jonah’s tomb, officials say.”  CNN Online 25 July 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/24/world/iraq-violence/ 

Hall, Matthew. “Iconoclasm and the Islamic State” (in three parts).  Atlantic Council. 26 September 2014; 2 October 2014; 16 October 2014. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/iconoclasm-the-islamic-state-whither-the-caliphate

Movsesian, Mark.  “Why Did ISIS Destroy the Tomb of Jonah?” First Thoughts 28 July 2014. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/07/why-did-isis-destroy-the-tomb-of-jonah 

Saul, Heather, and Henry Austen.  “ISIS ‘bulldozes’ Nimrud: UNESCO condemns destruction of ancient Assyrian site as a ‘war crime.’”  6 March 2015.  The Independent Online http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-militants-bulldoze-ancient-assyrian-site-of-nimrud-10089745.html

Shinkman, Paul D.  “ISIS Destruction of Antiques at Mosul, Nimrud Hides Sinister Moneymaking Scheme.”  US News Online 9 March 2015.  “http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/03/09/isis-destruction-of-antiques-at-mosul-nimrud-hides-sinister-moneymaking-scheme

When Good Books Go Bad

I just read a good book that I’d hesitate recommending to my friends.  

Most of my friends are avid readers.  Some of them mainly read books connected to their fields of study, which in my friends’ collective case is largely literature and history; many of them sample multiple genres, including crime fiction; most of them value the craft of writing highly.  So why wouldn’t I recommend a well-written, interesting detective novel set in South Africa?  

The 2012 Soho Press reprint of The Steam Pig, complete with blandly generic cover

The book in question is The Steam Pig, a novel written by an Anglophone South African named James McClure, published in 1971.  It’s the first in an award-winning series featuring Lieutenant Trompie Kramer, an Afrikaner detective, and his something-close-to-partner, the Zulu policeman Mickey Zondi.  The plot involves crooked English-speaking politicians, loutish Afrikaners, transgressive sex rings, Coloureds passing for white, ‘Bantu’ gangs, and Indian stoolies as they clot around a mysterious murder. It takes place in the provincial city of ‘Trekkersburg,’ based on Pietermaritzburg, where McClure spent his youth. 

Just my cup of bush tea (oh, wait: The Steam Pig is not a charming No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency yarn, although it may be a rough predecessor). My father transmitted his enjoyment of Ed McBain’s ‘87th Precinct’ procedurals and John D. McDonald’s ‘Travis McGee’ detective series to me when I was in grade school; my fascination with ‘Africa’ was in full flourish by the time I was ten (I still have two of the first books I bought with my own money, ‘Teach Yourself Afrikaans’ and ‘Teach Yourself Swahili’).  So how fun was it to ‘discover’ The Steam Pig a couple of days ago (thanks to Book Bub’s cheap or free e-book offerings)! 

Earlier covers of The Steam Pig, suggesting racial and sexual menace

Apart from this conglomeration of personal interests, I admire McClure’s arresting prose.  He’s adept at jolting but apt comparisons, such as Kramer’s thoughts while looking at a victim laid out in the morgue, just after having speculated on the duration and violence of her death: ”The association of violent action with the violently inactive Miss Le Roux had the subtle obscenity of a warm lavatory seat.” He drops unexpected aphorisms:  “Hell hath no fury like a jilted hypochondriac.”  Perhaps most admirably, he can condense layered socio-economic realities into a relatively brief description, like this about a well-maintained road bisecting a squalid township: “It took the vulnerable white motorist through as quickly as possible, reducing the shacks and shanties to a colourful blur, and provided an excellent surface for the deployment of military vehicles in the event of a civil disturbance.” 

A Spanish language edition’s cover obscures any reference to race and sex, settling instead for what may be a depiction of South African mining (not an overt issue in the novel)

And yet . . . as I read, I grew increasingly uncomfortable.  Wogs, kaffirs, Jewboys, curry-guts, coolie-marys, trying-for-white:  the seemingly casual slurs were, to say the least, offputting.  Because the book was published in the early 1970s, when South Africa was fully in the grip of Apartheid, I didn’t know what to make of its vocabulary or its matter-of-fact references to police brutality, prison beatings, pass law abuses, segregated living areas, and the like.  Is it neutral reportage in fictional guise, condemnatory exposure, or plain old complicity?

I know little about the author, James McClure, except that he was a fairly successful working journalist who emigrated to England, where he kept churning out Kramer and Zondi novels while pursuing a career as reporter and newspaper manager (he died in Oxford, in 2005).  It’s quite possible to read The Steam Pig as a subtly satiric South African police procedural, particularly because it has at its center the respect, mutual dependence, even something approaching friendship between the Boer and the Zulu.  On the other hand, the sheer onslaught of racialisms and Apartheid-motivated deprivations presented as business-as-usual makes a contemporary reader blanch.  

James McClure in London

It’s nice to think that McClure was trying to expose the racially-vectored moral rot of Apartheid . . . as carefully as possible, given the Draconian censorship regime.  Even if that were his intent, was it evident at the time he wrote and is it discernable now, when so much has changed in regards to acceptable vocabulary and prevailing socio-political attitudes? (Apparently, the Kramer and Zondi novels are not well-received in South Africa any more).  Or does it even matter, as The Steam Pig remains a compulsively readable (and often republished) document of racial attitudes and their consequences in a particular time and place? Yet a basically repellent one? Has a good book gone bad due to shifts in readerly expectations, ’tolerances,’ and historical memory?

People have asked similar questions about ‘British Colonial’ literature ranging from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.  Such canonical works, which contain no-longer-politically-correct words and attitudes, have been subject to de-canonization campaigns, as have Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle series (out of print for decades until filmic and bowdlerization rescue), George Remi/Herge’s Tintin series, and Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar series.  Not to mention, on this side of the Atlantic, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or, more recently (and back on the other side of the Atlantic), Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with its Central African Oompah-Loompah slaves.  

Illustration from Tintin in the Congo (1930-1931)

These books, however, are or were initially classified as ‘children’s books’ — in other words, books that would provide innocent amusement, perhaps edification, but would not expose young readers to troubling or morally corrosive ideas. (Recently, ‘children’s books’ have opened to controversial subjects . . . if they are presented in sensitive and politically digestible ways.) 

Further, children’s books (understandably) have not been held to the same standards as ‘serious’ adult fiction.  Neither are detective novels or police procedurals — which may be why the overt racism in, say, Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” or Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of the Three Gables” is pretty much overlooked, not to mention that the authors in question are fairly firmly ensconced in the Western canon (and thus in the academic publishing-and-reputation industry). In addition, there may be an underlying assumption that crime fiction afficionados are incapable of applying historical context, irony, and trans-cultural knowledge to what they read.  Rather like children.  

Arnold Lorne Hicks, artist, “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Classic Comics, 1943, highlighting an un-orangutanly bestial urban menace 

Is it easier, therefore, to turn a good book into a bad book if its genre is marginal, its target audience is deemed to be unsophisticated, and the author is not bullet-proof?  Is it easier if the currently offending material is racist/imperialist/white man’s burdenish rather than, say, sexist?  Isn’t much of the Western Canon (and for that matter, the great works of ‘World Literature’) patriarchically grounded if not outrightly misogynist? 

Jane Eyre, for instance, has spawned a cottage industry of soft-erotic (often self-published) contra-feminist continuations, such as Janet Mullaney’s 2014 novelette

All this makes my hair hurt.  I have no desire to reengage the canon wars, or the what-is-great-literature-wars, or the what-should-or-shouldn’t-be-taught (or republished) wars.  But reading The Steam Pig has brought these always contentious issues slinking back into everyday life.  Should I write a blog about this rather astonishing book?  If I were still university professing, would I include it on a syllabus (and for which class)?  

I suppose that by writing here about McClure’s South African series, and doing so while raising questions about its palatability, is a roundabout way of recommending the book. I guess. Maybe. Thank goodness (or badness) it’s now cocktail hour at the local shebeen. 

Jade Helm, Agenda 21, and the Great Squirrel Menace

It’s easy for those of us not living in Texas to dismiss the current government-invasion hysteria as a tin-foiled Lone Star brain fart.  But have you looked out your window recently?  No, not up at the mysterious helicopter squadrons buzzing your neighborhood, but closer . . . at the trees shading your house, at the lawn around them, even at your roof.  What do you see?  Squirrels in unprecedented sizes and numbers, running and jumping and digging as if they owned the place.  WHICH THEY SOON WILL.

That is, if you buy into the unified conspiracy theory of everything that is shorthanded as ‘Agenda 21.’  

There’s been a lot of reporting about operation ‘Jade Helm 15,’ the giant joint military exercise taking place in Texas and other Southwestern states.  Rightfully so: when government officials (Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert for starters) take the paranoid fears of a United States ‘takeover’ seriously, it’s time to run for the bunkers.  What’s not been widely reported is how the Jade Helm scare is connected to a much larger conspiracy theory — one that has infiltrated many state governments, including my own state of North Carolina’s, and that is silently influencing anti-progressive legislative initiatives. 

But what about the squirrels?  

Their numbers are increasing, alarmingly . . . 

(We’re getting to that.)

Certainly there are things to question about Jade Helm 15.  It’s a suspicious moniker for a military exercise, one that calls to mind Chinese erotic novels or self-published James Bond continuations.  The ’15’ may be a feeble attempt to give a history to this presumably hostile endeavor (why didn’t people freak out over numbers one to fourteen?).  The initials JH recall Cold Warrior Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Senator revered for holding the gubment to account when it deviated from serving wealthy white interests. Back in the real world, one could wonder whether the cost of such a massive training exercise is justified. 

Yet when one looks at the anti-Jade Helm protests, they center on different concerns: confiscation of private property and confiscation of guns.  Neither of which has anything to do with Jade Helm 15 — but both of which are central to the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory.

The squirrels are locked, loaded, and ready to force us into high-density housing.

When is this stupid blog going to pay attention?

What is Agenda 21?  It has been around for decades, both as a real thing (a relatively non-controversial and non-binding 1992 United Nations working paper about sustainable growth) and as a conspiracy thing (a plot for new New World Order domination under the aegis of the U.N.).  Backed by such hoary nutcases as Alex Jones and even hoarier nutcase organizations like the John Birch society, the vilification-of-Agenda-21 industry has operated for years, but pretty much under the radar of mainstream reportage.  Which is unfortunate.

Not just another inchoate dithyramb against big government, globalization, or the like, the anti-Agenda-21 industry specifically ties environmental regulations and climate change concerns to fears about government infringement of individual property and gun rights.  In addition, it promotes financial support for home schooling and religio-ideologically propelled ‘school choice’ (not to mention the disastrous ‘religious freedom’ laws, the only conceivable purpose of which is to green-light bigotry and general my-way-or-the-highway-ness). Oh, less we forget:  conspiracists believe that greenbelts, bike trails, and mass transit form part of Agenda 21’s strategy to destroy suburbs, golf courses, and the (aggrieved and besieged white middle-class version of the) American way.

This conspiracy combine is well-financed, not only by the usual suspects but often by tributaries like the ceiling fan industry that may not be aware of the broader agendum when an anti-Agenda-21-er takes up their purely monetary complaints.

First our incandescent lightbulbs, next our ceiling fans. 

Gotta stop these squirrel home invasions. 

(In 2013, Representative Marsha Blackburn [R-Tennessee] waged war against pending EPA regulations on ceiling fan energy standards.)

The anti-Agenda-21 industry has helped elect a host of conservative Republicans who now control legislative initiatives in many states, including my state of North Carolina.  These initiatives are hell-bent on dismantling any regulations concerning the environment or energy conservation or ‘sustainability’ in general, which include the dreadageddon of wealth distribution . . . in the name of states’ rights, constitutional protections, individual freedom, religious liberty, and other squirrely rubrics.  (Not to mention the expected opposition to anything connected to gun control or eminent domain or public education.)

“In 2012, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution denouncing Agenda 21 as a ‘destructive and insidious 'scheme that would result in a "socialist/communist redistribution of wealth.”' That same year, the North Carolina Republican Party passed a resolution against Agenda 21 declaring that the plan has been ‘covertly pushed into local governments’ and that ‘free enterprise cannot exist in a managed 'sustainable' society.’ Some of the language in the N.C. GOP resolution appears to have come directly from the John Birch Society's model resolution against Agenda 21.”

 — Sue Sturgis, “Meet the NC Officials”

Both Duke Energy NC Governor Pat McCrory and ultra-conservative home schooler NC Lt. Gov. Dan Forest are on record as supporting this legislation. I need not detail the recent North Carolina record on environmental protection, the public education system, firearm laws, separation of church and state . . . (sigh).  Health care is in here somewhere, probably under the anti-Agenda 21 rubric of government jackbooting individual choice — unless, of course, the choice in question is a woman’s.

So how to tie together gun control, private property confiscation, ‘education’ autonomy, the war on Christianity, and treasonably unamurican ‘environmentalist’ programs?  

“Praise the squirrels. Praise those who feed the squirrels.” 

—Glenn Beck, Agenda 21

(Note that the squirrel seems to be leading his devotees in a non-Christian form of prayer.)

According to Glenn Beck’s apocalyptic 2012 novel, the Agenda 21-controlled near future will be run by radical environmentalists who put squirrels (and other non-human species, endangered or not) before people, who make humans produce their own energy through hamster-habitat treadmills, who herd humans into teeny-carbon-footprint urban high-rises, and (perhaps worst of all) who take away our cars as well as our weapons. It goes without saying that these enslaved humans have no access to guns, that the government chooses mates, that ‘education’ is a government plot, and that the elderly and infirm are denied medical care (can we say ‘death panels’?). Not to mention being forced to pay homage to furry rodents.

Glenn Beck may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. He knows how to mine a vein of batshittery that could bring him monetary rewards. Those of us outside his toxic orbit might be well advised to pay some attention to his money-grubbing efforts as they track, even predict (maybe even propel in a minor way) extreme right-wing political trends.  At the core, it’s all about those jade-helmeted, United Nations-backed, gun-grabbing, tree-hugging, snail-darter-fetishizing, private-property-rights-trampling, anti-Christian, Protocols of the Elders of Zion revenants who support and promote Agenda 21.  And . . . the usurping squirrels, who now that they’ve confiscated your constitutionally protected weapons, are aiming at your windows even as we speak.

Guns don’t kill people.  Squirrels kill people.

References

Beck, Glenn with Harriet Parke, Agenda 21. New York: Threshold Editions (Simon & Schuster), 2012.

Bump, Philip. “How Obama’s hostile takeover of the American Southwest (aka Jade Helm) will impact 2016.”  The Washington Post Online. 6 May 2015.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/06/how-obamas-hostile-takeover-of-the-american-southwest-a-k-a-jade-helm-will-impact-2016/?postshare=9571430935698908

‘Felder, Grumpy.’  “Homeschooling Parents Declared to be ‘Bona Fide’ Guardians and Won’t Face Jail.”  Agenda 21 News. 17 January 2015. http://agenda21news.com/2015/01/homeschooling-parents-declared-bona-fide-guardians-wont-face-jail/

Fernandez, Manny.  “Conspiracy Theories Over Jade Helm Training Exercize Get Traction in Texas.”  New York Times Online. 6 May 2015.   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/us/conspiracy-theories-over-jade-helm-get-some-traction-in-texas.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0

Goodwyn, Wade.  “Texas Governor Deploys State Guard to Stave Off Obama Takeover.”  NPR Online . 2 May 2015.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/05/02/403865824/texas-governor-deploys-national-guard-to-stave-off-obama-takeover?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150502

Reynard, Mike. “Blackburn Secures Provision to Save Our Ceiling Fans and Protect American Jobs in FY15 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill.” U.S. Congressman Marha Blackburn (online). 10 Juy 2014.  http://blackburn.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=387488

Rice, Neil, Roy Callahan, Karen Schoen.  “New Frontier of Evil Part 2: Florida Greenways and Trails.” Agenda 21 Today.  6 February 2014.  http://americanfreedomwatchradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/6-New-Frontier-of-Evil-Greenways-and-Trails.pdf

Schofield, Rob.  “Just how extreme is North Carolina’s new Lieutenant Governor?”  NC Policy Watch.  28 November 2012.  http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2012/11/28/just-how-extreme-is-north-carolinas-new-lt-governor/

Southern Poverty Law Center.  “Agenda 21:  The UN, Sustainability and Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory.”  April 2014.  http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/agenda_21_final_web_0.pdf

Sparrow, Jeff.  “To the Squirrels.”  The New Inquiry 28 January 2013.  http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/to-the-squirrels/

Sturgis, Sue.  “Meet the NC officials who promoted a far-right conspiracy theory to discredit environmental sustainability.” Facing South (The Institute of Southern Studies). 16 April 2014. http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/04/meet-the-nc-officials-who-promoted-a-far-right-con.html

[Note:  This list of references could have been much, much longer.  Frankly, after reading hundreds of pages of craziness, and trying to discern an organizing logic, I became very, very weary.  I’ve listed representative stories about the Jade Helm panic and some reliable sources about the Agenda 21 paranoia (the Southern Poverty Law Center’s monograph is particularly useful).  As far as pro-anti-Agenda 21 stuff goes . . . there’s an incredible amount of it on the web.  I really didn’t want to link to much of it.  The ones I did note (‘Felder’ and Rice et al, plus of course Beck) seem to me representative of this appalling sub-genre of ‘journalism.’]