F*&%ing Birthers

Over the past week or two I’ve been reading news stories about our favorite foil hatted sect of far right republicans… birthers.  It is mind blowing to me that this particular conspiracy continues to be given voice by so many high profile republican pundits. 

This issue is as nutjob as it gets, but it’s worth thinking about why this claim continues to resurface so long after it should have been laid to rest. 

Obviously, there is a faction of people out there who personally hate the President.  When Bush was in the White House a rather large portion of the electorate hated him too.  I count myself among that population and admit that my dislike went well beyond Bush’s policies.  I found him to be personally detestable for several reasons. 

His blatant and unapologetic religiosity annoyed me.  He conflated his own will and the will of God, and people bought it.  I talked to a number of Christians who voted for Bush solely because he claimed to pray every day.  Never mind that Osama Bin Laden also prayed every day… he did it five times a day… and he prayed to the same God, yet he did terrible things.  Bush did too. 

Bush was not a smart president in the way Obama is smart, but that didn’t bother me.  What did bother me was the way he seemed to celebrate his own ineptitude.  He championed his lack of intelligence as though it were a virtue. 

Finally, Bush lied to us over and over and over again.  He lied deliberately in order to further his own agenda.  Despite all this, no one on the left ever claimed that Bush was not an American.  No one made up any idiotic conspiracies about him.  We didn’t have to. 

His record on Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terror, the environment, his pro rich people tax policies, and his blatant public buffoonery made it unnecessary for us to make up ridiculous lies about him.  The truth was more ridiculous than anything we could have imagined. 

What the birthers conspiracy tells me is that there is nothing Obama has done that deserves much criticism.  If there was, we'd be talking about it instead of whether he was born in the U.S. 

So why do people hate President Obama?  I don’t have a good answer to that question.  Maybe it's because he's African American.  Maybe it's because he's well educated.  Maybe it's because he's a brilliant public speaker. 

Mostly, though, I think it's because they're supposed to hate him.  We're all supposed to hate the other side, so we do.  Without reason, without reflection, without a second thought...

Maybe it's time to rethink our political system.

F@#k You Senator Santorum

At the urging of my wife, I just watched a video of Rick Santorum speaking in Pennsylvania after his loss in the republican primary in Illinois. Among the many nauseating things he said was that he has never believed in climate change, and never supported any legislation that would even attempt to address it.

Obviously, I am outraged at his words. But this one imbecilic man is no cause for sadness or alarm. Sure, someone should burn his house down, but he alone is not the problem.

During Santorum's speech, he told a story about his own background in coal, oil, and gas. "My grandfather was a coal miner," he said. "We're very proud of our oil and gas heritage."

If you're reading this blog, I probably don't need to remind you that Santorum is not a climate scientist. His connection to climate change is that his grandfather was a miner and he lives in Pennsylvania. Never mind that neither of those facts qualifies him in any way to make an evaluative judgment about the veracity of climate change. The fact is that a story about family history, a personal relationship to the history of American energy production seems to lend this man credibility.

He is proud to be related to a coal miner, and the audience applauds this line as though mining coal were intrinsically noble like being in law enforcement or the military. His audience confuses his nostalgic tone and affected twang for authority. This man, they think, knows what he's talking about.

This is the problem, the reason I'm scared to death for my future, for the future of my family, my son. Americans can't seem to tell the difference between what's real and what is a lie.

Unlike many, I don't think this is an ability we've lost as a nation, but one we never had. American history is rife with examples of large numbers of people being duped into whatever convenient lie the latest politician came up with. Most of the time, we figure it out in due course and correct our mistakes. Think the Iraq war, Vietnam, McCarthyism. But climate change is different. This phenomenon has the potential to destroy us, not just as a culture, but as a species. If we don't act in time, and that time may already have passed, humanity will end up on the other side of this disaster as something completely unrecognizable.

We cannot afford to be conned into believing this is not happening. We cannot afford to confuse a confident manner and kitschy nostalgia for the truth. Santorum's biggest applause line in the speech was that man-made global warming was not climate science but political science. It's neither. It is a phenomenon that threatens all of us.

I want you to understand this. Climate change is going to kill you. It's going to kill me. It's going to kill Rick Santorum. It's going to kill all of us. This is not to scare you. It's simply the facts. You wanna go down with your eyes closed, fingers in your ears, singing la la la at the top of your voice, get in line behind Senator Santorum. You wanna go down swinging, now's the time.

Sandra Fluke Is My Hero

During his now imfamous rant, Rush Limbaugh seemed to imply that the amount of birth control a woman takes can be used to determine how much sex she's having. There are a number of reasons why this is both funny and disturbing.

Once, after some particularly excellent love making, my wife said, "That was so good I might have to take two pills." Then we laughed. Birth control pills need only be taken once a day regardless of how often a woman has sex. Other methods of birth control like the patch, the ring, depo, and IUD's need to be administered even less frequently. They're not like Viagra which users need to take every time they have sex. I find it interesting that the Catholic church is just fine with covering Viagra. Presumably that drug promotes procreation, but if it's an issue of life and death, I ask how many people have ever died of erectile disfunction? Women die every day of unintended pregnancy, but I digress.

I grew up knowing about sex, about how the human body worked, about how people get pregnant, and about how birth control works, so Limbaugh's comments took me aback because I thought everybody knew how birth control works. After all 98% of American women use birth control, which means 98% of American men do too. How could anyone be ignorant about something this pervasive?

It turns out Rush isn't the only one who fundamentally misunderstands the inner workings of the human reproductive cycle. Many people didn't even raise an eyebrow at the implication that providing no-cost birth control is tantamount to subsidising prostitution. Why?

In Utah, this legislative session, congress passed a bill that outlaws any sex education at all. Other states have passed and are passing similar laws, attempting to keep the general public ignorant of how their bodies work. By the time the average American graduates from high school, she will know more about the American Modernist movement than her own body.

And that's why Sandra Fluke is important. Her efforts to bring the discussion about women's rights to the fore of American politics succeeded more thoroughly than she could have imagined when she first got involved with the issue. Being called a slut and having the guts to stand up and make a very public fight out of it have made a huge difference.

This debacle is more than an idiotic talk radio host overstepping his rhetorical authority. It is an opportunity for us to realize how important this fight is, and to educate ourselves, because we clearly have a fight on our hands, and we can't afford to lose. The stakes are too high. The winners of this fight will control women's bodies. Let's make sure it's women who win.

Change Climate Change

The conversation around climate change is fraught with disagreement and strife. I believe that climate change is happening and that it's caused by human beings, and that all kinds of disasters are moving towards us at an unbelievable speed.

And there are those who disagree for all kinds of reasons. That discussion seems to have stalled. Climate deniers are vilified, and that just makes them hold on tighter. We need to find another way to talk about this.

Let's begin this way, by asking the question, “What do we agree on?” There are a lot of things. We agree that we need to find alternative sources of energy, that it's dangerous for us to rely on foreign oil, or even on oil at all in the long long term. We agree that pollution is a bad thing. No one wants to see people sickened by chemical waste. We agree that we love our children and want a future for them full of happiness and hope. Let's begin the conversation there, in the space between ourselves and our children. I'll get the ball rolling...

Josh Powell and Justice

Josh Powell blew himself and his kids up yesterday, and so I will share a few words about justice. There is no such thing as justice. If justice existed, tragedies like this wouldn't happen. I've heard a few people say that Josh Powell has reserved himself a special place in hell for his actions. I wish it were true.

There is a lot of evil in the world, a lot of bad shit out there. I've tried to come up with some sort of justification for it, some story about it that would make it hurt less when someone murders his two sons. I tell myself that it happened for a reason. I tell myself that Josh Powell was so messed up because he had some sort of desease. Somehow that makes it easier.

What if his sons hadn't run ahead of their social worker into the house? What if the judge who ruled that Josh should have visitation rights with his kids had ruled differently? There are questions and possibilities. There are stories we can tell ourselves about what happened. They are stories.

Two innocent kids died when their father blew up the house they were in. Honestly, what else can we do but mourn?

I love this book!

Touch: Making Contact With Climate Change by Ben Cromwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book looks at climate change in a way I've never experienced before. It is personal, powerful and moving. There's no data that gets dumped on the unwary reader, just a story about how climate change has shown up in one life. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It's beautiful.



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