Displaying 4,801 To 4,830 Of 5,146 Comments What Martin Luther King Jr. Day means to me Thank you for this candid and heartfelt reminisence Pepe. Thank you for sharing all the depth of your life with us. Happy MLK, Jr. Day with the hope of better things to come. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 3:47 pm Hi WTS – I do NOT follow sports much, but I do follow Cleveland – and Youngstown, Akron, etc. I actually LIKE Cleveland, warts and all, and most of the folks I know in Ohio are huge sports nuts about all things Cleveland. My ex was a sports fiend who now teaches at Youngstown SU, and he has a major rule – he roots for ONLY teams that come from deindustrialized, struggling cities. No sunbelt teams for him, thank you. So Cleveland fits right in beautifully. I know he’s hoping for a breakthrough for the Cavaliers. I, however, am emotionally detached. I grew up near Chicago and loved the Cubs. I believe it teaches loyalty, patience, fortitude to support teams that rarely if ever win. Cub Fan Slogan: “there’s always next year”. If the Cavs don’t win, so be it. There’s always next year. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 8:52 am Nothing to forgive! I do this for a living, and I have barely scratched the surface of how all these denominations came to be. I have a dear friend who once noted that we have our own immediate lives, then a nation, a continent, a planet, a solar system, galaxy, universe – and with all that it’s a little disingenuous to think God is a Methodist. What comes from the historical roots often does not resemble the origins 400 years later, so why should we be held accoutable for all that? Just good to remember that some things morphed into better things, and some just plain did NOT. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 5:06 pm Well shoot – I would hope SO! Gratitide AND puns. What more could God want? » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 12:18 pm Hey boomer – should you be looking for a place to hang out that has the beauty of the Catholic cathedrals, great music, and a serenity but without the total hypocrisy, the Episcopal church might be nice. I love Christmas Eve there, Lessons & Carols, that sort of wonderful environment. The Episcopal Church: Catholic Lite – all of the ritual, only 1/10th the guilt. However, that said, I do not belong to ANY church (Gasp – you work for a faith organization – how could that BE???) because one, I don’t have to, and two, I don’t want to. Faith, not religion, thanks. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 12:16 pm Back atcha, AlphaBitch. Which, written out of context, sounds AWFUL, but meant with respect and love! I always enjoy your posts. What amazes me about all of this is how incredibly, deeply, passionately kind everyone in this discussion is. It’s the nature of the Planeteers, to begin with, but we’ve just walked through the thorniest of issues with massive willingness to learn from one another and to do so without a shred of judgment. Wow. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 11:52 am Kesmarn and boomer – both and. My closest allies in the world of faith are some wonderful nuns for whom the parts of faith are charity and justice, not the rules. I love that aspect of Catholicism or ANY faith group – reclaiming Paradise. If we could unpack the rule book from the heart guide, we could be a lot further along the trail. My first and most important intellectual influence was a former Jesuit whose sense of justice was profound. His wife was once a Poor Clare nun who was equally devoted. But they were forced to choose between the order (how interesting a term) and life, and chose to live together, work for justice, have kids, and everything. I love the women of the Bible at the end – the women were who kept the faith, stayed at the cross, cleaned and entombed the body. So why are they second class citizens in the church – and pretty much all Christianity? I am not a believer in the DaVinci code but do believe Mary Magdalene was a disciple, not a prostitute reformed. She is the one I greatly admire, more than the ethereal Mary, Mother of God. But to do so, I really do have to have some historical and theological revisionism, which, I am happy to say, is transpiring to restore her to her rightful place. The others I cannot follow because they are not fully human. Though I do like the image of Jesus’ mother saying, “Let me ask my rabbi and get back to you.” Horrible joke – why do we absolutely know Jesus was Jewish? He believed his mother was a virgin, and she believed her son was god. (MY best friend, a rabbi, told that to me.) The problem I have with the Catholic church is one I had with the Episcopal church. My late former father in law was a priest who used his bully pulpit to weigh in AGAINST the ordination of women. Why? It drove me from the church, and I’ve had a revolving door relationship with it ever since. In when they do things humanely, out when they don’t. Music is boffo though! The most base form of religion is not to be found in the Catholic church where beauty, wisdom, and kindness abound. It’s in the extremists of outlying Protestanism that labels itself “Christian” thereby saying the rest of us are not. Does anyone read Pat Robertson’s book on the new world order and actually BELIEVE that the federal reserve is run by a council of DEMONS? Is Bernake a demon or a front man for the real things? Where are they? What do they look like? This is INSANITY – yet people believe it. Look I understand the real world is screwed up and we have lost anything LIKE meaningful democracy, but honestly – is this the best they can do? Parts of Catholicism really bother me, but parts of ALL religions bother me. I had one of our otherwise progressive members tell me once that he could never trust Muslims because Islam had no place for redemption as Muhammad (pbuh) had no role as savior as Jesus does. Huh? That of course means that despite his progressive views on secular issues, he distrusts ALL the world’s religions and buys into personal redemption as the core of Christianity which, IMHO, it was not intended to be. I do think each of us wanders through all this in the light of what matters to us individually, and each of us finds what is good wherever it feels solid and right and true. It is not necessary to be theistic to be absolutely a great person or to be outside organized religion to be absolutely a great person. It is only necessary to be where you are most comfortable and comforted. Then you’ve begun rebuilding paradise on earth. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 10:43 am Dear Kev- After I stopped laughing, I realized how this sort of thing leads so many of us to have such contempt for faith and certainly rule-laden organized religion. You have asked precisely the right questions – if the Lady of X avoided vital organs, yes, why not the SHOOTING? I thought the saddest thing was Sister Teresa’s struggle with her faith. She could not understand why God abandoned her and all the poor whom she “saved”. The answer was so clear to me – she let the rules of her church dictate that she proffered charity, not justice. She admonished the poor but never the rich. She perpetuated the myth that poverty is just bad choices by the poor, not systemic power disconnects that smash the poor, grind them into the dirt, and allow the rich to exploit them. Had she confronted the rich, her church would have abandoned HER. So God did not let her down – her church did. And she never saw it. When religion becomes preoccupied with Lady X explanations – the very roll of the dice Einstein repudiated – it loses any and all meaning for most people. Loss of faith comes from the high expectations that can never be fulfilled. You cannot crawl miles on your knees or pray enough EVER to stop the ones you love from dying. I once was a guest speaker (and dinner guest) at a women’s iftar – the breaking of the fast during Ramadan – at the Islamic Center in Los Angeles. We had three speakers – a woman rabbi, a Muslim woman, and me as the insufficient Christian. We were discussing women as activists in our different traditions as well as the role of women in the faith. I noted, being not much of a theologian, that the other two had spoken of powerful women in both faiths – REAL women, flesh and blood, brave and courageous. In Christianity, the New Testament, the women are superhuman. they are not real. They are visited by miracles, and Mary is perfect, without sin. All you had to do was ask my mother when I was 3 years old to know that was not MY lot in life! Christianity has sets of standards one simply cannot follow or, more likely, that you pretend to follow coupled with huge hypocrisy. (BTW – after our talk, we broke the fast with the best dinner I ever ate. Get to know Muslims. They are magnificent, open-hearted, generous people with superb food!) The Catholic church used to have a program “Following Mary into the ’90s” meaning teaching Catholic women how to be more like Mary. How indeed! She was reputedly a virgin mother, the only one, who was taken bodily into heaven after an utterly spotless life. How is ANYONE supposed to be like THAT? It’s a recipe for failure. My biggest job, going around CA training people on doing advocacy for justice is having people believe justice IS a proper activity for Christians. We have such roots in charity, but that’s just the band aid. Justice requires change, confrontation of entrenched power and privilege. It’s very uncomfortable. So I tell the story of the village next to a river that suddenly sees (it’s always told differently) people, babies, someone in peril suddenly coming downstream in the water. The villagers rush in and save the (babies, whatever) and tend them, but the babies keep coming. Finally one villager says to the leader, “Maybe we better go upstream and find out why this is happening and stop it.” Charity is given at the riverbank for those in immediate peril. Justice is going upriver and stopping the wrong. I am the upstream person. So I have no room for Lady X and chance or whim. I don’t believe God does play dice with universe – WE do. And Keven – about that infallibility thing? You’re as good a candidate as anyone. All it takes is utter self delusion. Good luck to ya. » Posted By choicelady On January 18, 2010 @ 7:30 am You are equal in our eyes, Kalima. You are worthy of our care. If God can know, God knows. So we will continue to send our care and hope God can do the same. No one is left out in a universe of compassion. You are most worthy, never doubt that. Your compassion for others is the gift you give the world, and the world must return the gift to you now. That’s what we are here to help do. So many write of their care for you, and that’s how we balance the universe around you. Breathe deeply of the air around your life, and feel the warmth of that concern. You do matter to so many. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 10:46 pm LOL!!!! » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 10:38 pm AdLib – we do create God in our own image, don’t we? And we do have a remarkable tendency to import to Him (and it is always a “him”) the WORST traits of all. Seeing God as you’ve described, as a narcissistic, self-induglent cheerleader, really sums it up! I am touched by the people of faith who see God as better than themselves and project infinite possibilities of good to which they then aspire. But you are so right – who’d follow someone who said that everyone is good, all are loved, there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or master. All are equal. Who’d follow a silly thing like that with no hierarchy of rewards? Oh. Wait. That IS what Jesus said. Huh. Fancy that. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 10:37 pm Thanks, KQ – I have scant knowledge of all this but am fascinated the more I read. I do understand that microbursts (amazing you’ve experienced one!) lead to uncertainty, but I was thinking more about the high – very high – level of probability that we get up in the morning, put our feet down on the floor, and STAY there. This intersection of chaos and order is simply amazing. I will be chortling over the bacterium/human:human/God analogy forever. That is SO good a way to describe the conundrum we’ve imposed on ourselves! Nicely said! » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 10:33 pm But remember, Khirad – the most progressive among the denominations, UCC, United Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Unitarians – all came from that same tradition. Calvinism is the fount of both the hyper individualism of personal salvation (although he began with the most dismal of views – the Elect would never KNOW that until it was too damned late) AND what morphed into the Social Gospel pursuing the recreation of paradise on earth. There are also internal variants of Catholicism that have adopted the quasi-Calvinist view while Evangelicals and Pentacostals shunned Calvin for a kind of roll-your-own, get-right-with-God view. That started amazingly well with Roger Williams and Anne Hutchingson (founders of Rhode Island and original Baptist theology which was highly civilized) but got strangled and corrupted in the hills and hollers of the frontier during the Great Awakening (all of them) and the zealots of the mid-19th-C. awakenings and splinter movements such as those that arose in the “Burned Over District” the aptly named region around upstate NY. It was indeed ‘burned over’ with all the white heat of religious fanaticism. Still is. Calvinism gives me the creeps, but Puritans were NOT horrid people, were, in fact, amazingly egalitarian (save for religious freedom). The legacies of hate and repression and xenophobia and all the other phobias actually sprang more from the ‘charismatics’ and splinters of splinters deriving from Baptist theology than from poor old Calvin. There is not a single thread that leads to the Dobsons, Robertsons, Falwells, but you can tie a great deal of it to the fanatacism of these “personal salvation” tendrils that have dovetailed so beautifully with hyper individualist capitalism. Calvin is probably the least of the influcences. So there is the tiny theology historical lesson for today. There will NOT be a quiz. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 10:28 pm Kalima – you have the right to ask. You have the right to ask God and the right to ask us. You’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s fine, and wanting some intervention to lessen the load is perfectly all right. If there IS a sentient Other, then ask. There are sentient others – all of us – so ask. It’s fine. We’re all here sending you energies and power and healing and at bare minimum greater comfort. So ask. It’s NOT childish to want to be relieved of being sick! It’s fully human to ask, and it’s fully human for us to care about you. So yes, ask. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 8:20 pm I always thought Mark Twain closer to real faith than most of his peers who believed in Social Darwinism, wealth as a manifestation of holiness, and an avenging God who brings things like the Johnstown Flood. Unfortunately, that is precisely what the religious right has revived. Faith with judgement and without grace is pointless and utterly self-serving. Twain was right. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 7:04 pm AdLib – this is marvelous! It’s so much a part of my daily query, too, but yes – things happen when God’s mulching. Or whatever it is God does when he/she is bored or needing a hobby. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote the BEST assessment of this in his fantastic book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. He asks why God would kill a child to punish parents for fairly mundane things? What kind of God is THAT? I also just get cold chills when someone survives a catastrophe and says, “God (or angels) was looking after me.” Or “We are blessed”. That SO implies that whoever does NOT survive is – what? Not worthy? Sinful? Hated by God? Of course, if you’ve ever been around ultra right Christians, WE who do not believe will be “struck down” while, when one of them dies, “God called him/her home.” Yeah. Kushner makes your very case. God neither does or does not do anything. God is a presence, not a judge, jury, executioner. God may be the manifestation of love, peace, justice, good we all have within us, but that is SO powerful! Think about two totally unnecessary things: beauty and love. Neither, other than maternal care, is actually necessary for life. If those are manifestations of our ability to go beyond the selfish and material, is that not God? I am fascinated by (don’t understand a thing of) the order of the universe, with the underlying chaos of utter randomness. Is the boundary and intersection God? I am quite sure it’s not conscious and intentional, but – how does order exist with chaos so we can walk on the dirt and know we won’t be blown away? KQ – is that quantum mechanics? At any rate – where mystery lives, there is God, IMHO. The capacity of people to know beauty, to be selfless and kind, to love without reservation, to create and to share all this with others – if that’s not God, then what is? We indeed are more than just the sum of our parts as humanity. We are capable of creation of something fine and good. That may not require a sentient being beyond us, but we need to honor the incredible process and power of that, and we basically don’t have the language for it other than faith. We’re still pretty limited that way. Thanks now and then seems appropriate. Just to keep our hand in, so to speak. But a God of destruction for some and survival for others – how petty a God that would be if it were His/Her whim. That version of God simply shows that we are limited, too limited, and incapable sometimes of thinking of things bigger, finer, better than we are or can currently be. God is indeed love. God ought to be what is best in us, not the pettiest. It’s why Pat and his ilk really have no conception at all of their own religious history, philosophy, writings, traditions. How arid are their lives. And how rich a life you must have AdLib to be able to think God mulches! I bet you’re right. Thank you, AdLib. Lovely, thoughtful, funny, joyous riff. Made my day! » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 6:59 pm Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? KQ and nellie – I suppose this is not new. Years back when I was a teaching assistant, I had students who were ‘too good to vote’ for either Carter or Reagan. And that arrogance and sniffy dismissal got us Reagan. For various reasons (I think I understand but you all don’t need my history lesson) we’ve reverted to a professional victim status. I cannot tell you how many people act as if their privilged lives were somehow trampled by someone simply disagreeing with them. So, as victims, they can continue to be “too good to…” fill in the blank. False and unrealistic expectations are killing us. False and unrealistic dichotomies of good and evil are killing us. False and unrealistic self-centered absolutes are killing us. I am really, REALLY afraid that despite the gains we will make under Obama and this Congress, that there are enough spoiled children in the left who will just sit out 2010 and hurt us as a nation. Damn. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 1:23 pm Works for me. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 1:16 pm Of course, boomer! I just think you happen to be correct! Thirty seconds. Tops. My organization is very much on the side of LGBTQ rights including marriage equality. We take a LOT of heat for that! When Obama invited Rick Warren to the inaugural, you’d have thought he was selling babies in the town square. We thought it was a good outreach, not worth getting one’s knickers in a twist over. That was the end of the 30 seconds. I respect that he respects other people’s right to be different. I agree that this was perceived as “weak” – how stupid! The crisis of legitimacy in government requires someone to acknowledge that everyone has rights, even if you HATE those people! He has now given the Rethugs a chance, they have failed to rise to the occasion, and he’s no longer bothering with them. I think that’s brilliant. But oh noooooo – that was insufficient for the phony progressives. He was supposed to be Bush with a leftie view. That’s not what I wanted, and I am relieved at what he’s done because they, not we, brought about their own downfall. If phony progressives can’t see that, they are childishly immature. (Not that I’m attacking them or anything… hah!) » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 11:32 am Huey? Went to university with Huey – well, his bodyguard who appears to have been the one deserving the degree since he attended class in loco something-or-other for the missing Huey. Did not want Huey, did not want Cliff Huxtable (too apolitical for me). No – I wanted someone progressive, and I GOT that. Progressive is respectful of differences. Progressive is realistic. Progressive is careful, thoughtful, humane, wise. Progressive is having the right goals and policies AND watching how it all has to work out so that other people aren’t stomped on. I very much appreciate the sentiment, LABC that if Cheney’s pacemaker batteries conk out, so be it, but taking him out and shooting him is NOT progressive! Congress has a role in investigating the previous administration if they so choose. Don’t know what’s up, but they aren’t pursuing that save for Sheldon Whitehouse’s CIA inquiry. I want accountability, and a presidential Commission of Inquiry will NOT accomplish that, so let’s move the burden back on Congress. They need to hold the previous administration’s role in torture and constitutional violations up for both investigation AND penalty. If they won’t – how is that on Obama? Progressive is restoring the democratic PROCESS in Washington, NOT becoming a leftwing imperial president that makes us feel good with vengance. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 11:01 am I’m in! » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 10:53 am Thank you for finding that, AdLib. One of the funny things I got from one of the Left Narcissists was the ranting against Obama for “abandoning progressive values” then pointing out to me that he’d lost a lot of independent support. OK – and how would going further LEFT help THAT? Another (I think I’ve said this before, sorry) predicted that no one would vote for Dems, and then immediately noted that everyone liked their OWN Dem just fine. Until I get to live in CA and vote in AL, I don’t think this will be a game changer, do you? What horrifies me is the lack of knowledge that the leftie pundits and observers seem to have about how government works. In that Harper’s article, he sneers at Obama using signing statements – which EVERY president has done since at least FDR. That does NOT mean a willingness to flout the laws passed by Congress simply because Bush did it that way! Substance matters. Tell me what he specifically has done wrong or be quiet! I give up on these people. I have way too much to do trying to get a decent health care bill and many other items through Congress and the CA state legislature – which, for those of you who don’t live here, is more dysfunctional than a banana republic. So who has time to whine? » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 9:44 am boomer – I stand corrected. You’re right. It was 30 seconds. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 9:37 am Much as I wish I could support the contention that the RW is boring from within the left – that progressive criticism of Obama is really RW paid people – I get it all the time from allies, even friends. Mostly it’s from people I do not know well, but even within my progressive world of public policy, there are LW anti-Obama people who take this position because they wanted everything fixed immediately. AND they did not want to have to work to make that happen. They are mostly white people of privilege with progressive sentiments, but they are people who win nothing, lose nothing no matter what. They are in love with Arianna and with the sound of their own voices. I find it very telling that the collapse of support for the health care bill came NOT from the right but the left when the public option was omitted in the Senate. And these people who supported it – I being in the lead but not stuck on myself – will NOT vote for Dems if the public option is omitted. Another acquaintance refuses to vote because Obama has not brought peace to the middle east. They will all just sit it out, “too good” to vote for anything but perfection – by their own lights. That may very well be what happens Tuesday in MA, leaving the field to the RW. I am SO ANGRY at what passes for progressives today. I’m old enough to remember when that meant you went out and WORKED for what you wanted and supported the officials who were closest to you. Since when do we give up because a president – an amazing and outstanding president – is not perfect????? I am sick of this. Time for progressives to GROW UP and join the adults on The Planet. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 9:29 am Thank you escribacat! I was beginning to think I had lost perspective. This month’s Harper’s Magazine has an unfettered LW slam against the President, “The Mendacity of Hope” by Roger Hodge. His article rests on major assertions for which he offers no evidence. He claims we are still doing “soft” torture but cites no evidence. He criticizes the “failure” to close Gitmo and the use of military commissions among many other factors. He also says Obama promised “to end the war in Iraq, close Guantanmo, restore the constitution, heal our wounds, wash our feet.” It is precisely this sort of lying hyperbole that allows the left to wash their hands of a president. There is NO recognition of how carefully Obama is submitting these very difficult issues to the courts and Congress. Hodge’s claims of continued warrantless spying et al. have not come to my attention, and this IS an arena in which I work a great deal. The courts, with the DOJ simply submitting the Bush arguments, have struck DOWN a great deal of the Bush Doctrine on these matters. I want evidence that we are doing what Hodges claims or whether he’s predictating this on such “evidence” as the yet-to-be revised Army Field Manual Appendix. Having leftover policies still in writing does not mean we’re USING those policies, and I see little outcry from human rights groups pointing fingers to actual soft or hard torture under this administration. I recall just after the election that the American public said they’d give Obama time to sort out the grave mess he’d been handed not just by Bush but the legacy of predecessors since WW II. I think we gave him five minutes. Hodges says those of us who respect what Obama is working to do are fools, delusional, that we are just freaky in our “justifications” of his work. Well this IS a Democracy, and like it or not, even Sarah has rights. As loony as the right can be, they are part of the mix, and correcting the deficiences of the past 60 years of US imperialism is NOT going to be done overnight because they will slow the process. Sure Obama could issues massive and sweeping executive orders – which would not last, and which could very well destroy the fragile stability we now have. The American public IS to blame for electing buffoons and failing to pay attention to major issues until something blows up in their faces. Obama honors the complexities of democracy and diversity of who we are as a nation, while the snarky progressives appear to want nothing less than for Obama to dynamite everything, and damn the consequences. We just want to feel good by sticking it to the Right even if that trods on their rights AND is guaranteed, as KQ well notes, to alienate the vast majority of Americans. I do not celebrate the snarky progressives who, as we’ve discussed before, have no skin in the game. They tend to have health care, incomes, homes, food, and disposable income. They yield nothing and do nothing except point fingers at the president who never promised the things the castigage him for not delivering. I remember most of them who are my age – they are the ones who sat out both Vietnam AND pacifism, finding deferments and ways not to have to do anything but carp. Don’t think they’re all that age, but the American tendency to whine rather than work for real change is beginning to get on my nerves. One ally gave me a great button that I want to share: “Don’t whine. Organize!” Oh that the lefties would begin to do that! Thanks Escribacat for actually outing both the trolls and the whiners (even if some are really trolls). They are making me absolutely fed up. I don’t have time to critique the Prez – I’m too busy trying to make change come true. » Posted By choicelady On January 17, 2010 @ 6:14 am Brilliant understanding of the fool who calls himself Pat Robertson! You know – we have no need of supernatural evil. Human beings just generate it all on their own. The devil does not existbecause human beings don’t need any help, and Pat Baby shows the way. GREAT parody but with a solid message indeed. » Posted By choicelady On January 16, 2010 @ 10:24 am Hi all – just got online to find the wonderful message from God. I totally believe that would be he/she/its point of view. I love it! Thank you for sharing God’s message, AdLib – I laughed til I cried! I would SERIOUSLY like to recommend that if you loved what AdLib passed on from God (ahem) you will like reading the ‘missing gospels’ of Jesus’ youth written by his best childhood friend, Biff. The book is “Lamb” by Christopher Moore, and it’s one of the most hilarious, bawdy, racy, irreverant and truthful books EVER about Christianity and Jesus’ life, albeit total fiction. It’s supposedly the story of the ‘missing years’ of Jesus’ life, and it makes sense of how Christ matured and grew and changed his entire view of life, faith, God, humans – why his teachings are so radical. It’s at points deeply moving and sometimes heartbreaking, but it’s also one of the funniest books you’ll ever read, and I recommend it heartily. This is an audience that would truly appreciate it! Enjoy! » Posted By choicelady On January 15, 2010 @ 8:20 pm When You Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well… Finally – something that Explains It All. Thank you! » Posted By choicelady On January 15, 2010 @ 6:57 am Thank you for raising this critical issue SueinCA!!! I decried Clinton’s capitulation to global capitalism when he was president. I think that, as with former President Carter, at the core he is decent, but he listened to the last person who talked to him, and given power relationships in DC, that probably was a corporate shill. Hillary – are you ready, those who’ve not read “The Family” – is a member, at least a close ally, of The Family and is in sync with the perpetuation of US exploitation of the world. She was weaned in her teens on a version of Methodism that is ugly and pernicious. I regret those strains exist – a kind of noblesse oblige wherein fighting for justice is considered unseemly or yes, a form of socialism. Some of my organization’s partner denominations are not perfect and not immune to conservative ideology. It just tends to be the minority, thank heaven. However, she is someone I massively distrust due to this inculcation of extreme individualism and sense of entitlement of the rich. She creeps me out. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter need to be called out on their presidential support for global capitalism. In retirement, both men have proven much more humane than when they were world leaders. But the harm they did is being reaped even now in places such as Haiti. Nothing Bill Clinton does to aid the earthquake victims can compensate for what he did that allowed US capital to abet substandard construction of buildings, the pillaging of subsistence farming, the heartless creation of growing dependence of people on foreign imports. All these factors contribute to the victims’ immiseration in the quake aftermath. I see in President Obama a move away from this sort of pillaging of other, especially impoverished, nations. His unwillingness to support the coup in Honduras alone is a massive step away from our nearly medieval sense of dominion over all people and lands. He honors foreign nations’ right to self determination from rich nations to poor. He has broken the tradition of thoughtless exploitation, and with any hope at all, the rebuilding of Haiti may lead us to help them create a REAL democracy and rebuild a vastly more self-sufficient economy. We will have turned a corner when we can see that US policy does not view the world as there simply for our pickings. I hope that time is now. We shall see. What happens from now on in Haiti may well be a foreshadowing of our entire future. » Posted By choicelady On January 14, 2010 @ 10:34 pm And I yours, KQ! You have a wealth of insight into SO many issues! As I said before, YOU were my first “fanned” link over at the Dark Side, and I followed you here. I have always found your analyses brilliant, humane, and wonderfully insightful. Thanks for being so thoughtful on all levels. » Posted By choicelady On January 14, 2010 @ 4:15 pmComments Posted By choicelady
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